The Would-Be Farm: It's All Re-Runs on Farm TV

Beach life. I worked as the first mate on a small passenger ferry* that shuttled tourists from Pass-a-Grille Beach across a short stretch of salt water to an uninhabited barrier island called Shell Key.

​If there were customers, we'd also take them on a sunset cruise. 

It was a great gig. My sister and I job-shared. We rendered tourists happy by the application of two-hour doses of undeveloped beach and surf. They got to see the real Florida. Sometimes they tipped.

(*The Shell Key Shuttle is still in biz, but under new management.) ​

The boss, Captain Alva, was perhaps the most mature and sensible adult male I'd known up till then.   He offered positive, actionable advice when asked and took joy in the highlights of the day. Still does.

Inevitably, after a sunset cruise, the friendly fishing folk hanging around Merry Pier would ask how the sunset had been.

​Because I love to get the laugh, I usually answered with something flip, deadpanned for shock value: "Aw, you know –– same old same old. It was a re-run. Saw it last week."

At the Would-Be Farm, we get a lot of that re-run stuff.

The fire-pit doing its thing, for instance. A bonfire doesn't seem to get old.

Even if we don't have any magic on hand, there's a lot of material for rapid oxidation. Brush transformed to dust. Heat and light. Sticks in the fire, sparks in the sky.

The night-time music is on repeat, too. Between the maniacal Whip-poor-wills and the spring peepers, it's something to have a bit of peace.  Not to mention, though I am, the canids.

Coyotes serenade us most nights. We call it the chorus of the damned.

​We try to pick out the individual voices in the quavering-howling-yapping-yipping wall of sound. In late summer, the pups join in with typically youthful enthusiasm.

The closest human sound might be atonal music by way of a middle-school band tuning up. An example? Sure, she typed, grinning evilly.

Check this Messiaen YouTube clip. At your own risk, by the by: Despite everything, I think I'm getting addicted to it. 

​We often end the sunlit day at the beaver pond.

We put a two-seater deer stand up a pine tree so we can get above some of the mosquitoes and see beyond the fringe of cattails that surrounds the pond.

The beavers –– true to stereotype –– clock in at dusk and work their fannies off maintaining the mud dams. They are reliable as clockwork, chugging through the water like mammalian tugboats.

With the right show, we can watch re-runs –– one most devoutly hopes –– for years.