Happily Ever Esther Read online

  Still, everything we used to know and do was gone—and even as we write this, it still feels that way at times. We also made some mistakes as we went. For instance, I missed my best friend’s housewarming party and noticed a week later she had unfriended me on Facebook. That was very painful for me. Even though we didn’t speak very often, I’d always known she was there for me, so to think that all of a sudden she wasn’t there really hurt. We have, thankfully, reconnected since then, but the falling-out was a big reminder of what’s most important. It’s easy to take people for granted, and you often don’t realize how important they are until it’s too late.

  And when all else fails and your friends aren’t interested in driving an hour to see you, there’s always Ricky Gervais, who’s always been a tremendous champion of animals and actually made the trek to visit us. It blew our minds. I felt like such a child that day, waiting at the window to see Ricky and his partner, Jane Fallon—a bestselling author and former TV producer—pull up to the farm. Derek graciously went out to greet them because I was too nervous and excited. It was surreal to see them get out of the car and look around. When I finally did get the courage to walk outside, Ricky and Jane greeted me with a hug and a smile. They were so kind and genuine, much more genuine than I’d have expected of people who were so famous.

  I was amazed they knew our animals’ names, and they seemed legitimately interested in what we were doing. It really struck Derek when Ricky at one point looked around and asked where our cat Delores was. When they came inside and Ricky saw Esther for the first time he did his famous laugh and said, “Oh God!” just like when he’s killing himself laughing on TV. It was incredible; his laugh is beyond infectious. And Jane is just the sweetest. She knew who everyone was, asked questions about how everyone was settling in, and made us feel so comfortable. I now chat back and forth with Jane regularly, even if it’s just to say hi, hope all is well. (I really love her.)

  And they weren’t in a rush either. Sometimes we don’t know how long people plan to stay, but they took lots of time to walk around and shoot the breeze. We loved showing them around and taking them to meet the other animals. Ricky was very cautious around the larger ones. We were expecting the arrival of some cows the following day, and Ricky asked about the cows—specifically, if we would have to milk them. We explained that since none of our cows had just given birth, no, we wouldn’t be milking them.

  That’s when we explained the dairy industry to Ricky, in what seemed to be an eye-opening moment for him. We told him that dairy cows are inseminated and then kept pregnant so they are able to lactate. Ricky was surprised to hear that making milk wasn’t part of a cow’s natural everyday life—a common misconception. He said he’d just believed the marketing all these years. His response was in his facial expression more than in words: he seemed genuinely shocked, and you could almost see the wheels turning in his head. The dairy industry has done an amazing job of making people believe the fallacy that it’s harmless. As in, if you got a cow pregnant once, she’d spout milk for the rest of her life. Or as Ricky thought, as if cows just naturally gave milk because that’s what cows do. Very smart people (and Ricky is one of the smartest) believe this stuff because it’s what we’ve been led to believe since we were children.

  Derek and I always try to be very gentle in how we explain the horrific realities of animal food production, and we never force information down anyone’s throat. But if someone asks, we’ll let loose with everything we know—even the stuff that can be hard to hear. We think a huge part of our success comes from making people want to ask these difficult questions, and once they actually know the truth, it’s very hard for them to turn a blind eye to what goes on. Unfortunately, people believe what they’ve always believed because that’s all they’ve known, and we all have to be understanding of others and their choices. Traditionally, we are taught that the dairy industry is full of happy cows who live wonderful lives in majestic fields instead of enduring repeated forced impregnation and living in cramped quarters.

  Sometimes we feel disappointed by our friends or family who don’t become vegan. And as a result, it’s sometimes hard to maintain those relationships. It takes a lot of work on our part too to make sure friendships don’t suffer. Like I really didn’t think my relationship with my best friend would change because I went vegan, but it has. You’ve got to do everything you can to maintain these relationships, even if it’s not the easy way out.

  But there are people who have gone further in their beliefs than we have, which makes us look like we’re behind the times. For example, the other day we met a vegan who was formerly an organ donor. He has since revoked his donor status because he can’t guarantee his organs will end up in the body of a vegan, and he doesn’t want his liver or kidneys inside someone who is eating meat. Pretty extreme, right? I mean, how far do you go with this stuff?

  People overcomplicate veganism; there is no single answer. It’s not just about the animals or the environment or your health, because becoming vegan is triggered by something different for everybody. We all just have to do the best we can to do the least amount of harm. I can’t say if Ricky gave up dairy, but he cares so much about animals that I can tell you it got the wheels turning, and he left the farm with a lot to think about.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I imagine that for every person, there’s a farm animal they know about but have never actually met. For me, that was the cow. It’s kind of weird too when you think about how much a part of our everyday lives they are. It’s sad but true. People eat them, wear them, even sit on them in their cars and living rooms. But I had never actually met a real live cow before, and I knew nothing about them. I loved cows in theory, and I actually had always wanted a pet cow and thought someday I’d have one (two, actually, and a couple of chickens), so the day the cows arrived was one of the highlights of my life. I’d met goats and sheep before but never a cow, and I was just so excited for the arrival of our first three. (I was even getting one more than I’d dreamed of in my imaginary future.)

  It’s funny to think I had never even seen a cow up close before. Having lived most of my life so far from rural areas, I had been completely sheltered from farm animals. I was in no way prepared for the size of cows, and their rough tongues blew my mind. I didn’t expect that at all. They have giant prickly cat tongues. I had no idea! There was so much I didn’t know about them. I didn’t know how they liked to be petted. I didn’t know how long they lived. So getting to meet one was truly incredible. (I get excited about meeting all animals, but I assure you, this was a special day.) Our three expected arrivals were Denver (a large white ox with horns), Pouty Cow (light brown with white cheeks), and Jasmine (dark brown). They arrived in the winter, so it wasn’t a simple task to ready the farm for our new residents.

  Like everything else on the farm, the pasture had been unused for many, many years, and it needed to be fenced and readied. There was no way we’d be able to do that in such a short time, particularly in the middle of the cold, snowy winter. So we decided to divide the space we’d already prepped for the pigs, which was about six acres and had access to the barn. We knew the cows had never had access to a barn before, and we had been told not to expect the cows to use it. Regardless, we wanted all the animals to be able to use it, especially when it was cold. So we split the pig pasture and built a fence from the front corner of the barn straight back to the property line, which gave them a big pasture to roam in until we could ready the other, larger pasture in the spring.

  You always hear about how farmers are hard at work when the sun comes up, if not sooner. If it wasn’t obvious already, well, we’re not exactly farmers. We ran a fairly late meal schedule. Breakfast wasn’t at the crack of dawn; it was usually at a reasonable hour (to us) like 8 or sometimes 9 a.m., but if we didn’t get to the barn by the time Captain Dan the Pig considered an appropriate time, like even ten minutes late, Dan would let us know. He’d walk out of the barn, lift the fence, come into our backyard, step
onto our back deck, and yell for his breakfast. He’d literally scream. We’d come out and tell him, “Okay, Dan, we’ll feed you now,” and he’d follow us back to the barn and behave. But the next day, if it was past a time Dan deemed suitable, he’d be right there at the back door, shouting again. It was hilarious but also a huge pain in the ass.

  Captain Dan is bigger than Esther, if you can imagine that. He’s eight hundred pounds, so to have this giant pig hollering at you is quite something. Esther would sleep through the whole thing, because she was now settled into the house. She had her own routine, and her own snores probably masked the sounds of Dan’s shouting. But Dan was our alarm clock until the day the cows arrived.

  You should see the back door. Dan would push at the door, bite at it, and take chunks out of it while he waited for us. There was no doorbell, so Dan’s grinding and scratching was the doorbell. That, and the screams. And he’d grunt as soon as we opened the door. He had no patience, that one. So building this new fence put an end to our mornings with Captain Dan. We reinforced the fence he broke through and then there was an extra fence, an extra layer. He’d also have to get through three cows to demand his feeding, and that was too much trouble for Dan. Fortunately.

  When the cows arrived at the property, the trailer backed up to the pasture so they could walk right off and into their space. Denver was first off, and when we opened the trailer, I marveled. His butt was to the door, so all I saw was a blinding white wall of ox butt. I couldn’t believe how massive he was and that his head would be even higher, somewhere in that truck. Even by ox standards, we’ve now learned, Denver is very large. So I was just not prepared for this giant guy to be the first thing I saw, nor did I know how he was going to maneuver his way out of the trailer cabin. Somehow he turned himself around. He barely even fit in the trailer, but then I saw him turn his head, his eyes looking at me and his giant horns turned toward me. With surprising grace, all things considered, he managed to get himself facing right-side-out.

  Once he saw the door was open, he stepped out. His shoulders were six feet high, and he was actually nine feet tall with his head up. Talk about intimidating. You never think about a cow as such a massive creature, its head towering over you. His horns are more than five feet across. One of them is crooked and curves over his head, so both tips point the same direction. It looks kind of funny, but that’s also probably what allowed him to get out of the trailer.

  After Denver stepped out, Pouty and Jasmine quickly followed behind. They immediately started to explore the pasture and stopped for hay at the pile we had put out for them. That was when I got to pet them for the first time. I couldn’t pet Denver yet because he was still afraid (I was afraid too, because he was the size of a school bus), but I got to pet the other two and knew that Denver would let me in soon enough. It was a couple of days before I got a lick from them—that’s when I learned about their giant cat tongues.

  As we had been told, they had no interest in using the makeshift space we had prepared for them in the barn, even when we tried to lure them in using apples or a grain bucket. We also quickly learned how Pouty got his name, because he had an almost constant stream of tears running down his face, and they would freeze into carrot-sized icicles on his cheeks. Snow would pile up on the cows’ backs, and we just couldn’t understand how they weren’t cold. They looked like they were freezing, but they only ever set foot in the barn for a minute or two, then went right back outside. They obviously have a much higher tolerance for cold weather than we do.

  For the whole winter, they stayed in the pasture attached to the barn, with B.J. and Escalade in the “old barn” on the opposite end of the building, and the pigs in the middle with a space behind the barn for them to explore. But we already knew we needed to move everyone into bigger spaces, so before the snow even melted, we started planning new fence lines and trying to figure out where everyone should go.

  The first couple of months were uneventful. By spring, we thought the animals had settled in, and we’d become very comfortable. Derek and I had been working on fencing the new space for the cows for a few weeks, and we thought it was good to go. It was right beside the pasture they were already using, but it was considerably larger, so we were excited to move them in. But soon after their move, they had their great escape. It happened at the top corner of the pasture, where the cows broke down a fence, crossed the perimeter, and went through the neighbor’s backyard (which includes a manicured lawn and a pool). The brazen bovines went up the road a mile and a half, into another neighbor’s yard and into the neighbor’s woods. That’s what we learned later, of course. At the time, we had no idea where they were. We just knew they were gone.

  On that particular day, a reality show happened to be filming us on the property. We had been approached really early, even before we moved, about doing the reality show with a different company, but they seemed shady when they casually asked, “So, how often do you guys fight?” What was this, Real Housewives of Esther’s Farm? No thanks. We didn’t proceed because it just wasn’t the right time. We had too much going on, and we needed to get everything in order before we could even entertain the idea of having cameras in our faces every day.

  By the time we moved to the farm, though, we thought we had more opportunity to provide content that wouldn’t involve making a relationship show about us arguing over Esther in our tiny house. We had a lot going on, of course, but we thought the show could be a great opportunity not only to introduce people to Esther but to deepen the connections we were already building online. The show might allow us to introduce a whole new demographic to an “Esther-Approved” lifestyle in a really fun and engaging way.

  So we entered into a development deal with a production company that happened to be filming another show just up the road from us. Who knew Campbellville, Ontario, could possibly become a hotbed for reality television? It seemed so random. Anyway, we started shooting a sizzle reel that could be shown to networks while pitching the show idea. (That show never aired. Regardless, the crew was there with us at the farm that day when the cows decided to make a break for it.)

  We were filming in the house when Derek excused himself and went outside to feed the cows. That’s when he noticed they were missing. (When you’re delivering food to animals and there’s no one there to eat it, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to recognize something’s wrong.) The only clue we had to work with was their footprints on the muddy ground.

  Derek, our volunteer Ruth, and I scattered to find them, following the footprints through the back of the property. When we got to the property line, it became painfully obvious that the cows had left our farm and gotten onto our neighbor’s property. They left big footprints and broken branches in their path, so it was relatively easy to track them until we got across the neighbor’s yard and onto the road. Then the footprints stopped.

  We couldn’t find any signs of them across the road, so we assumed they had taken the road itself, but they had traveled far enough that we couldn’t see them in either direction. One of the guys in the film crew came by in his van, I jumped in, and we started driving up and down the road looking for any indication of our missing cows. After a while, he spotted a car on the side of the road with a small group of people assembled beside it holding their cell phones. Turns out I’m not the only one who can’t miss a good photo opportunity, and three cows on a tennis court certainly makes for a great photo.

  The cows had gone almost half a mile up the road before entering another neighbor’s yard, crossing through their tennis courts, and making their way into the forest behind his property. I sent a text to Derek to let him know where we were, then jumped out of the van and started to give chase. The trees were starting to leaf out, so I couldn’t see very far. I began seeing signs of broken sticks and branches again as I got closer to the cows, but it was very difficult to see through the undergrowth of the woods. The forest was thick with invasive trees and thorny bushes. They cut me as I ran in search of the cows, and
then my sweat made the cuts sting. But my adrenaline was so high at the time that I didn’t even notice I was getting cut the whole way. I felt like Kevin Costner in that scene near the end of The Bodyguard when he runs from a cabin into the forest. I ran like crazy, hoping I was going the right way, leaping over logs, cutting the crap out of my arms and legs on sticks and thorns. Then I’d stop and listen for the sound of branches breaking as the cows walked. When I heard it, I’d turn and run in the direction of the sound.

  Finally, I got close enough that I could see the big white recognizable glow of Denver’s butt moving through the bushes. The other two are darker colored and thus were more camouflaged. Once I saw them, I began yelling for Derek or anybody who could hear me while at the same time trying to catch up with the cows and turn them around.

  Ruth arrived on the scene, looking like she’d been through a battle. Her face was bleeding, and she had blood dripping down her arms. I think it looked especially bad because it was mixed with sweat and dirt. It wasn’t until I asked Ruth if she was okay that she said, “Never mind me, look at yourself.” I looked at my shins and they looked like road maps due to the blood and scratch marks everywhere, and all of a sudden the stinging set in because I was now paying attention to it. We didn’t have anything but a bottle of water and a dirty shirt to wipe up with, so we cleaned up the best we could now that the hardcore bushwhacking was over. That’s when we turned our attention to keeping the cows out of the homeowner’s tennis courts.