I spent most of last week in Crawford County, Georgia. My sister has an organic farm down there, and my brother-in-law needed surgery. So I went down with my 14-year-old nephew, our other sister's son, to give her moral support and to handle some farm chores while she stayed at the hospital up in Macon. And to increase the Jewish population of Crawford County by 200%.

The surgery went well, and Bennie will probably be home next week. Meanwhile, my nephew and I pruned the strawberries, rigged up a stupendous Rube Goldberg fix for a leak in the greenhouse, and drove the tractor* from the back fields down to the compost heap to turn the compost with the hyraulic bucket. We didn't get to use the belly mower, though. (No, it doesn't mow your belly.)

Most of the time the weather, though warm, was rainy, including some beautiful fog rolling down from the fields to the house at twilight and some serious percussion on the tin roof of the porch. All kinds of birds flitting into the trees, but except for a pair of cardinals nothing I could make out.

The next farm over has cattle. The house on the other side has no fields, but a big enclosure with two Shetland ponies and three alpacas, which my sister's dogs like to visit. They also like to visit the cattle, having discovered that the big ones don't run if you bark at them but the little ones do, and the big ones will run if the little ones run. So they go find a calf to chase, and the next thing you know all the cows and steers are trotting up the hill or down the hill or across the hill. And this ditsy hound and this one-eyed cocker spaniel think they're big herd dogs. Lucky they have no bulls on that farm, if you ask me.

*You thought that was going to be a picture of me on the thing, didn't you?