Celebrating the vultures

No, I'm not celebrating the vultures like Eddie Lampert and Bill Ackman, vultures who swooped into Canada to destroy the lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands of working class Canadians. They've been amply celebrated in the pages of Canadian buisiness press already. The vultures I want to celebrate are the turkey vultures. I think we got a clan of them roosting in the barn. Like everything else at Falling Downs, the barn is falling down. It's an old-school homesteader era barn, and it's a shame to watch her go. At the same time, farming isn't done the way they used to do it when that barn was built. You had a large hay-mow up top, and usually a granary, and down below, you had space for cattle. Today the hay is stored in those massive plastic-wrapped sausages that festoon the countryside. Apparently it's way more nutritious if you wrap it in plastic than if you store it in a barn. The main reason for restoring an old barn today would be to use it as a wedding venue. I've thought of that. Rent out the barn for ten grand a night instead of fifteen hundred for the year. Alas, I'd have to sink in half a million I don't have in order to turn that falling down barn into a wedding venue. But I can enjoy the vultures without doing a damn thing! They are a beautiful bird to watch soaring. Where there's one there's usually an entire crew not far away. They float through the thermals and are one of the most graceful birds you'd ever want to see. They get a bad rap because they eat road-kill, but that's a great public service too. What a blessing it is to appreciate the beauty that surrounds me!