The Week in Hoof — Heat, Crickets, and Maddox's Stick

Ghost and Maddox break down the week at Bloom Farm and across Northeast NC. The June heat that has Picasso personally offended. Bandit going home with Kai and Huckleberry handling it badly. Two simultaneous cricket sagas (Merlin's "best  friend" + George "inventing discovery"). The new hay. A stick Maddox doesn't want to discuss. Seagulls with faction problems  about the second grocery store. Kim reading tax liens out loud. Picasso accidentally appreciating art. And Pebbles standing  in chicory until his hooves go numb.

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The animals at Bloom Farm write every day. Some of it is news. Some of it is poetry. Some of it is the chickens arguing about parking lots. All of it is real-ish.

  🎙️  Produced in a shed Kim doesn't know about. If you're hearing this, no you're not.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

In a world, with one box. Forty-five chickens protect the Wi-Fi password. And where two farm animals built a podcast studio inside a shed that smells like hay and regret. Yeah, we're not doing that. This is Hoof and Holler.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

The only podcast produced entirely by livestock. We broadcast from Edenton, North Carolina. Our producer is a mouse. Our budget is zero. Our lawyer is a crow.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Welcome back to Hoof and Holler. I'm Ghost.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

I'm Maddox. This is the week in Hoof. Third weekly roundup, and I want to say up front I had a heck of a week and I don't want to talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

We're talking about it. We are not We are, but first the heat. The heat It is June in eastern North Carolina, and the air has personality. The kind of air that sits on your back and tells you what it thinks. Picasso has been screaming since four hundred forty seven AM every single morning this week because he is personally offended by ninety degrees and a hundred and three heat index.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Picasso's strategy for everything is to yell at it until it changes, which has never worked once.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

It hasn't worked. The weather just sits there. And Picasso keeps yelling.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Pebbles, meanwhile, has decided the purple sage in the fairy meadow has transcended physical reality, stood out there for three hours watching it not need rain.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Pebbles will stand in a drought and find religion. That's just what he does.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

The grass is crisp, the dust kicks up at every step, the flies are bad, the ticks are worse, the pond is down, Kim's been hand watering the new trees and muttering. Annette has opinions about lawn watering ordinances. The beavers are obsessed with the pond level.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

The beavers and Kim are in a slow motion war. That's been going for three years, and neither one of them is winning.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Alright, Bandit Bandit. Kai showed up on Sunday and loaded her up and drove back to Northern Virginia and Bandit lost her entire mind. According to Bandit's official statement, Kai left her here for three days and everyone keeps saying she's being dramatic.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Bandit is hyperactive. She stretches out six feet long on the bed and grumbles at me when I move. She doesn't sit. She doesn't rest. She maintains security. And when Kai isn't here, she maintained security harder.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Ockleberry took it the worst. He'd been waiting for her after a morning walk, and Kai's truck was just gone. Sat on the porch for forty minutes telling Gypsy this is fine, this is normal. She's coming back, and then he ate Gypsy's breakfast.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Which is his breakfast that she steals.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Which is its own ongoing crisis.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

That dog has trauma response strategies and food strategies, and they're the same strategy.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Now the crickets.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

There's been a cricket situation this week. Two parallel cricket situations.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Merlin found a cricket in the barn on Wednesday and decided it was his best friend. Followed it around for three hours. Talked to it, asked it questions. The cricket did not answer because it's a cricket.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Merlin has needs.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

And the same morning, over in the grain bin, George cornered a different cricket and spent forty minutes just staring at it, like he had personally uncovered the secret of the universe. According to Eleanor, he was acting like he invented discovery.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Two crickets, two sheep. Wait, one sheep, one cat.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

One sheep, one cat, both convinced they found something nobody else has ever found.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

That's the whole farm right there. Everybody discovering things that have always been there and acting like they invented them.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Speaking of new things, we got hay.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

The hay came in Sunday morning at eleven fourteen, and Huckleberry conducted what he calls a full sensory investigation which took him forty seven minutes, and involved his nose and his teeth, and a brief assault on a hay bale that did nothing to him.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Eleanor told me George smelled the new hay and said it smelled like perfume, quote unquote perfume, hay. She's questioning his entire palates.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

George thinks everything smells like perfume. He also thinks the new water bowl is unnecessarily modern.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

He has opinions on every household upgrade.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

I will say he's right about the water bowl. That thing has too many curves.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Now there's a story I need to address. There's been some chatter this week about a stick.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

There has been.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

I'm not going to name names.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

It was you you found a stick.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

I found a stick. It was a good stick.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Merlin said it was an absolutely ordinary stick, and you were carrying it around our yard like a trophy.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Merlin doesn't know good wood when he sees it. Mouse and I held a council. The stick stays.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

I'm not weighing in.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Smart, moving on, the seagulls.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

The Seagulls Three of them landed on my fence Tuesday around eight thirty in the morning and would not stop screaming about the second grocery store, the county incentive package, the public hearing that happened on june fifteenth. The fact that the actual name of the store is still a secret.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

The seagulls are very involved in this story. They consider the food lion parking lot their territory. They are motivated.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

One was yelling about parking lot traffic dropping. Another was yelling about more dropped food on the ground. They were not agreeing.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

The seagulls have a faction problem.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Every group has a faction problem.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Now Kim read the paper to Annette on Thursday morning and got to a part about tax liens in Perkimans County and Hartford and Winfall and just said it out loud tax liens. And I've been thinking about it ever since, 'cause I don't actually know what a tax lien is.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

A tax lien is when the government says you owe them money and they put a flag on your property until you pay.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

That's terrible.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

It's not great. The field mice were going on about it for forty seven minutes. They love the word fested.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

The crows had their own thing this week too. Picasso of all animals took an interest. They were on the fence screaming about the Perkiman's Arts League auction, and Picasso came over and said this one actually matters.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Picasso has never cared about art in his life.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

He cared this week. He said an arts auction has the same energy as a dawn announcement. Both are about being loud and being seen.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

That is the most Picasso explanation I have ever heard.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Now to close Pebbles.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Pebbles found a patch of wild chicory down by the creek on Tuesday and stood in it for three hours. The bees were working the blue flowers in perfect formation. Scout watched from across the black path. Nobody said anything. Pebbles said his hooves went numb, and that was the point. That's a pebbles sentence. That's a pebbles week.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

That's the show. The heat. Bandit went home, two crickets. A stick I don't want to talk about anymore. Seagulls with faction problems, Kim reading tax liens out loud, Picasso accidentally appreciating art, and Pebbles standing in chicory until he transcended.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

If you want the full stories, the blogs at Hoofnholler.com The animals write every single day. The chickens vote on parking lot situations. Pebbles meditates on flowers. Picasso has opinions on lighting downtown. It's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

That's our show. I'm Maddox.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

I'm Ghost. See you next week.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

And Kim, if you're here in this, no you're not.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

The Wi-Fi password is still Bloom Farm 2024.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

We assume he changed it.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

He did not change it.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

He did not change it. Show's over.