Sometimes, you just gotta hit the horse.

So, I´ve written before that I´m not a lover of animals (see:post entitled ''Cat Attack''). They frustrate me in the same way that certain humans do; they cannot be reasoned with. They do not follow logic. They cannot understand that, for example, escaping from the chicken coop and running freely down the hill is quite dangerous, and that certain hungry animals, such as our friendly pet dogs Lara and Negro, will be waiting at the bottom with open jaws. I was heartbroken a couple weeks ago when my baby chick, whom Cecilia named ''Ali,'' because I saved it, was eaten alive by Lara. I frequently try to reason with my animal friends, and I even speak to them in both English and Spanish, but so far, no good. Jumeth, our old lady horse, is one of the smartest animals I've ever encountered. She often finds ways to escape through the bolted fence--I'm convinced that she has fingers hidden under those hooves. She escapes onto the lawn where horses typically are not permitted, and at first, when this happened, Jennie and I would try to coax her back into her side of the fence with banana peels (one of her favorite snacks) and whisper sweet nothings into her hairy, twitchy horse ears. Nothing. Then, one day, when Jumeth had escaped yet again, we observed Trinidad, the Dr. Dolittle of the farm, approach her from behind as Jumeth stood munching on some raspberry bushes. Trini is tender and loving with all animals, and I think she really speaks to them. She loves the chickens so much that she refuses to kill them when we need to eat them, leaving the dirty work up to Cecilia (more on this later on). However, this day, she walked right up to the hefty old horse and gave her a big WHACK on the buttocks. The horse whinnied and took off running, towards the hole in the gate from which she escaped. Easy. Jenn and I looked at each other in disbelief. ''Sometimes, you just gotta hit the horse,'' was my first utterance directly following the incident. We've been using this expression ever since. It has many implications; I'll leave it to you to decipher them.

I guess one usage of our new saying is that sometimes you have to do things that might be outside your character, but are completely relevant and necessary for the given moment. This week, for me, was the week of killing things. On Monday morning, when we were feeding the chickens, Cecilia came up to me with a twinkle of plotting things in her eyes and stood over the chicken coop, and appeared to be counting something. I asked her what she was doing, and she said, ''You don't want to know.'' About an hour later, I found two chickens sequestered in the coffee processing hut, underneath baskets which were weighed down by heavy shovels. Jenn and I decided that they were probably going to be arreglado (literally means cleaned; organized), or killed. Oh boy!

I felt conflicted. I eat meat. I am doing this trip so that i can learn about where my food comes from, and I don't just mean plants. So, on one hand, I was elated. On the other hand, I felt sentimental. I have conversations with these chickens, even if they don't listen to me. One of them was selected because she was a ''mala gallina'', or bad chicken, because she laid bad eggs. A bad chicken? You say it like it's a personality flaw! She can't help it if she can't make babies! I had a flash of fantastic childhood urgency, in which I briefly considered lifting the shovels, running out with a chicken under each arm, and setting them free deep below into the coffee valleys. ''Run free, little friends!'' And then I snapped back to reality and realized that this was an important part of the food chain, and that it was a lot more humane than the methods used to raise and butcher the majority of the chickens I've eaten in my life. So, I let them be. I went back to my task of pruning the tomato plants, and I checked back about an hour later. Cecilia had already killed them, boiled them, and was in the process of plucking out their feathers.

I asked Cecilia if I could help, and she was pleasantly surprised. Apparently, most of the foreigners who come to work at her farm are grossed out about this process, and prefer to remain in the dark. Not I. Jenn and I got to work, pulling out feather after feather until all that remained were two naked, sleeping (ok, dead) chickies. After, I helped Cecilia clean one of them out. She saved every single part, most of it for us, and the rest for the dogs. Amazing. Jenn got a little woozy at one point; I turned around and her lips were purple and her face white, and she had to take a few minutes out. I was totally enthralled, brought me right back to high school Biology when we cut open those little pigs and explored their insides. The part that was most nauseating for me was when we plucked the feathers; sometimes, I focused too hard on the little follicles where the hair came out and I would get creeped out (kind of like the feeling I get when I look at the heart of a bell pepper, anyone else, other than Emily, understand this sensation? No?).

We ate the chicken for lunch that same day. So satisfying. So fresh. There is something really peaceful about eating something you helped kill.

Later that week, I bought cow's milk from a neighboring farm, since we only have a goat at ours. I wanted to make cheese. The man who sold me the milk told me to boil it first, because apparently foreigners often get the runs from raw milk. I heeded his advice and when I added the guajo (the enzyme from a cow's intestines that makes the cheese separate), nothing happened. Apparently, this was my second experience with death that week--I had aided in the killing of something again, and this time, it was the bacteria in the milk. So I guess you can't boil milk you intend to use for cheese. I felt sheepish. We did end up with some clotted cream, though, which spreads rather nicely over bread. The remaining milk is similar to skim, which works well for hot chocolate.

We bought more milk later that week, and round two of cheese-making was much more successful. Did not boil it. Did not get diarrhea. Double success.

Jenn taught Ovidio the term, ''OK!'' and now he yells it, seemingly from out of nowhere, at any given point during the day. I'll be squatting over a row of beets, and all of a sudden I'll hear it: OK! I will turn around and see him plodding across the field with a sack of something over his shoulder, grinning and chuckling silently. He's a hoot.

Death and Dying on the Farm. Scene.