Now, Please Bring Me The Onion And The Giraffe

These are the kinds of conversation snippets I overhear in my house. Every once in a while, they strike me as deliciously odd, and I feel like selling them to the Shins for use as song titles.

Last weekend, these conversations took on a bestial bent when we rented the cottage at Sprout Creek Farm.

Sprout Creek Farm is a tiny operation in Dutchess County that specializes in artisan cheese, education programs, and animal husbandry. Fowl and cats roam the grounds. The cows and goats are friendly, though behind fences, and the sheep are aloof. Almost as an afterthought, the farm owners rent out a little house with three bedrooms, two fireplaces and a full kitchen.

It was the perfect two-day vacation for the three of us. But yes, queries like “what does a chicken say?” surfaced a bit too much for comfort in retrospect. And trying to explain the physical difference between goat poop and mud to a two-year-old was an insurmountable challenge.