The Romance of a Canebrake

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A canebrake loomed large in my imagination as a kid. In the books I read, my forbearers would hack their way through canebrakes for days, endure snakes, elusive and hostile Indians, finally emerging into a river valley of rich and rolling pastures, where they would settle. Images of heroic Scotch-Irish explorers, pioneers and dashing pirates peopled all kid’s literature in those increasingly remote days (of my childhood).

I’d head off as a kid to the Barbe Property, a wild wood and swamp at the end of Holly Hill Rd., with my machete, and hack my way through the undergrowth. Since my machete was a wooden stick I really just sort of mashed my way through the undergrowth. Only to emerge out on the bayou staring at petrochemical plants across the ship channel. But, as a kid, I was never disappointed. There was mystery here, layers of history and days to explore.

Those woods were rich with romance and history. Contraband Bayou, where Jean Lafitte roamed and reportedly buried his treasure, served as a border to the east and north. One summer we discovered a rotting hulk of a shrimp boat and whiled away a week or two navigating it over the Spanish Main in pursuit of loot and captives.

The ability to create play and not have it manufactured and its loss must have an impact on our culture. Perhaps it is too the good, shove a game-boy in their hands, teach them to find entertainment only in what you provide and you produce a new generation of compliant consumer citizens. But, I digress.

Mr. Kyle and I stood in the remains of an old canebrake off of Johnson Valley (around the corner from Possum Trot). It measured thirty yards across wedged up against a creek. As we cut beanpoles for our gardens a history of sorts was in the air. Here, my English friend Phil and his wife, Malley had helped me cut beanpoles three years ago during their visit. Cindy and I had joined Mr. Kyle six years ago cutting poles in this stand that continually replenished itself. Mr. Kyle had cut beanpoles here for 60 plus years and residents of the valley had been cutting from this patch for the past two hundred years.

We had driven down Johnson Valley and turned into a drive. Asking the permission of the owner before driving down an access lane along the creek bottom. Mr. Kyle had lived in the house on the property with his family from 1941-47. He named off the dozen or so families that had owned that small farm over the years as we bumped along the lane.
We cut down our poles tied them together, left my images of pioneers and pirates there among the cane, and headed back to the farm.

Today the Barbe Property has been cleared and turned into a super Wal-Mart or a Target, a housing development, and a casino. And, I have to wonder, do kid’s still see Lafitte’s lanterns swing in the fog as his treasure is buried? I hope so.

Staying in one piece with chainsaws and augers

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Looking back over my shoulder, I’ve come to a sprinting stop halfway into the woods. My heart is beating fast. The 30-foot-tall tree I have been cutting down has fallen against another tree. Now it’s dangling precariously over a fence, the opposite direction from which I had notched it to fall. At this point, I am aware that my chainsaw is still idling–and hanging perilously close to my leg.
Recently I had a discussion with Cindy, trying to sell her on the idea that spending $2500 on a portable sawmill was a good investment. We can earn that money back with one good oak tree, I tell her. We will have a lifetime of well-cut lumber. I can quit my day job and cut lumber on other people’s property, I throw in hoping to persuade.
She says, “$2500. Hmmm … I guess that’s about the cost of one prosthetic limb?”
Equipment on the farm allows you to save time and energy (perhaps even money), but it is infinitely frustrating and dangerous. Soon after we bought the tractor-powered posthole digger, the nightmares began: Scarves, hair, shoelaces, fingers, all caught and sucking me into rapidly moving gears. Arms pulled out of sockets, wheelchairs, physical therapy, and charity stretching to the horizon. Pleasant stuff.
Hopefully that scarf, missing finger, empty arm socket, wheelchair, and an infinite horizon of charity will remain just a nightmare. But the frustration of dealing with cantankerous machinery or forgetting basic principles of leverage seems to be the rule in my life on the farm. And so it’s been since the beginning.
Cindy bought her first horse a week before we actually closed on the farm. Paint was very pregnant—a two for the price of one, an “offer we couldn’t refuse,” but we had no home to put her in. With the blessing of the man selling us the property, we headed out to build a corral. At that time we had neither fencing on our 70 acres nor the skills to put it up.
That first day on the farm, we brought in T-posts; telephone pole-size corner posts, posthole digger, a rented hand-operated auger, and enthusiasm. It was 95 degrees, the ground was baked, and the auger was missing a bolt. First experience with driving endless distances when you run out of something in the country, first experience with businesses rolling up their carpets at noon on Saturdays. Cindy returned with bolt an hour later, donated by an ATV repairman some miles down the road.
The auger is a dainty piece of equipment: a gas engine on top of a nine-inch-diameter, three-foot-long turning screw. The idea is simple. Start engine, hold auger away from privates, and drill hole.
Two hours later, both of us red-faced, our frustration level is very high. I have barely managed to dent the surface of the ground. I ditch the gas-powered auger. A couple more hours later, using a hand-driven posthole digger, I’ve carved out two holes barely deep enough to hold the massive corner posts. We manage in another few hours to set some T-posts and stretch some woven wire.
While this has been going on, our dear friends Jack and Deb turn up to see our “idyllic country place.” They just can’t understand why we have sold our restored Victorian home and moved to the sticks to live in a concrete-floored garage. Before their arrival, I had entertained hopes of boasting a healthy day of physical activity and a neat bit of fencing to show for our effort.
Instead, our tempers are frayed and my sunburn has turned to a nasty molten shade. I look at our effort, T-posts set out of line, the corner posts set too shallow, fencing already sagging, and I wonder, what in the hell made me think we could do this. My enthusiasm is waning as quickly as the setting sun.
A few months later, along with a 40-year-old tractor with a three-point hitch, we buy a tractor-operated auger. This single piece of equipment should allow us to (more or less) effortlessly drill holes all over the property.
The first time we hook it up to the old Ford, we are just starting to fence our first pasture. This is a small pasture below the barn that encloses about an acre and half. The fencing is woven wire. It was originally meant to protect sheep. (One day I’ll tell you the story of when I was in New Hampshire and Cindy pulled up the drive only to see our sheep-guarding dog playing catch with the head of a decapitated lamb.)
The first post for our new pasture system is to be set halfway down the slope of our lower fields. I stand ready to guide the auger into correct position as Cindy backs the tractor up and lowers the auger to the ground. Once the clutch pedal is depressed, the power takeoff (PTO) is engaged and the auger begins to turn, boring easily into the fertile soil. It drills down to its three-foot maximum, and Cindy takes her foot off the clutch. The auger stops spinning, and she pulls the lever that lifts the hydraulics. Nothing. She depresses the clutch pedal. The auger spins, but again it won’t budge. It is buried to the top by earth, and the tractor can’t pull it out.
I guess the easiest way to understand the predicament is to imagine a wood screw torqued into a block of wood until only the head is sticking out. No amount of brute yanking will budge it.
There is an acute embarrassment that comes with standing in the middle of a field, visible to all, at a complete loss on how to solve the problem. Hanging my ego out to dry in public does not build self-esteem.
So how to fix it? Getting out a shovel, I dig a hole three feet down and three feet in diameter all the way around the auger. Then, engaging the PTO, I yank the SOB out of the ground. We set our post. One post set in four hours.
Having found out that there is no “reverse” on an auger, I ask our neighbor Mr. Kyle for advice before we started the second hole. There is a trick, I’ve learned: When you engage the PTO on the tractor and the auger starts spinning, don’t stop. Don’t ever stop. Dig your hole and, with one continuous motion, pull out the still spinning auger.
We try this on our next hole. Again, the auger digs down. When it is down to three feet, we pull up on the hydraulics. As if to mock our farming ambitions, the auger continues to dig down, again burying the casing of the motor. Two hours later, I finish digging out the auger.
Four hundred dollars worth of auger, eight hours worth of work and we have set two posts. I dig the remaining 12 postholes by hand.
It was many months before we dared again to use the auger. Today, we are quite proficient. Cindy operates the tractor, and I handle the metal bar that guides the giant screw into the ground. The trick, we’ve figured out, is to keep it spinning, digging down one foot at a time, and then pulling it up. That way there is less resistance from the soil on the tractor’s hydraulics.
You know the old saw “That what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”? Farm work is a lot like that; it offers plenty of opportunities to show your ignorance, as well as to run the risk of losing limbs. There always seems to be a tree falling the opposite direction from where I intended and a running chainsaw dangerously close to my leg.
But, I now can look at 70 acres of fencing, barns, chicken coops, equipment sheds, orchards, and gardens and say, “We did all that.” And as Robert Frost wrote, that has made all the difference.

Medieval Viagra?

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The first one arrived the day before Thanksgiving. Since that day a new seed catalog arrives every two to three days. Some are new and unknown, perused and easily discarded. Some like old friends are welcomed across the threshold and read from cover to cover. A few treasured catalogs have yet to be seen: Baker Creek and Sand Hill where are you? I do not need additional seed. We have an ample stock for the year, more than we could ever grow. Included in that hoard is a gifted large selection of vegetable seed from Siberia to use in some trials. And I’m anxious to see how they grow. But, I read, consider and always purchase new finds.

As the winter continues its unusually warm path I keep finding myself in the garden looking at the spaces and beginning to layout, in my mind, the coming year’s garden. Books get pulled down, stacks of which topple every evening onto the floor next to our bed. Wisdom of the ages is to be found if you know where to look.

My favorite find: Sir Thomas Elyot, in his popular book on health and life, had this warning about turnips in 1539: “it augmenteth the seed of man and provoketh carnal lust”.

This is a warning? Where did I put that pound of turnip seed?

Ham, Anarchists and Lardo

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12-3-11
Last Sunday in the pouring rain, with creeks over the banks, our pond over the dam, we received a not unexpected call from our neighbor Melanie. Her brother had killed a buck down in Georgia that she had hauled back on ice. If I would help cut one of the haunches into three roasts, we could have the other. With nothing else to do but watch the farm slide down the hill I jumped in the truck with a butcher saw and a couple of boning knives and headed to Paint Rock.

Have you ever watched a video on butchering? Well, I have, and they make it look so easy, a few quick and effortless cuts and the whole beast is neatly packaged into recognizable roasts and prime cuts. For me…after about ten minutes of hacking and sawing I managed to separate one haunch into three distinct roasts (I hope it was worth it, Melanie). Loading up my reward into the truck, I said my goodbyes and headed back out in the rain.

Tuesday morning before work I pulled out the venison from the fridge and three pounds of fatback from the freezer. My goal was to cure the ham and to make lardo. Lardo is a cured product consisting of fatback and various herbs and spices. It was the classic food of the anarchist partisans in Italy while they roamed the hills taking potshots at fascists and the nobility. And, one never knows when they might need the inspiration of having lardo on hand.

To cure the venison I used a recipe from the Missouri extension service. The cure consists of salt, sugar, nitrates, black pepper, all in specific quantities. Laying the ham out on butcher paper I salted the mixture into the meat. Using my knife I lightly scored the flesh so that the salt would get quicker penetration while also forcing some of the cure into the ends of the bone. The next step was to wrap up the ham in the paper, tape it securely, place in net with the shank end down and hang it to cure.

I hung the ham to cure in the well-house, placed a bucket under it to catch the drippings and left it. Within a day it began to drip as the salt extracted the water. It should finish curing around Christmas. When the cure is complete the ham will be taken down, removed from its wrapping and washed. It will be hung back in the well-house for three months to age. At which time Cindy, Melanie and Sara have sworn that they will be willing to eat it. Provided, of course, that I sample it first and survive for 24 hours. Oh, ye of little faith.

The lardo was made using a combination of recipes from the book Charcuterie by Ruhlman and from the wonderful blog Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook (well worth checking out). Again, you begin by mixing your cure. In this case I took the portion remaining from curing the ham and added fresh thyme and rosemary sprigs. The slabs of fatback were slathered on all sides with the cure. The herbs were placed in between the pieces of fat. I covered the whole pile with plastic wrap and weighted it down with foil covered bricks (to help expel moisture).

The lardo will cure for about two weeks. I have it in the fridge although one could keep it in any cool dark place. Fat will quickly turn rancid if exposed to light. At two weeks or longer, if desired, the lardo will be pulled out of the brine, washed and dried. I’ll then puncture a hole in the top and loop some string through it and hang under the stairs for another two to four weeks. At that point it should be cured.

Traditionally lardo is eaten sliced thin on warm bread. But, it can be used anytime you are cooking for something that requires a bit of salt pork. Or, save it for when you have to take to the hills.

Making Headcheese

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No Cheese Needed

Fromage de tete, coppa di testa, brawn, presskopf or souse, we are speaking here, of course, of headcheese, a frighteningly disgusting term for what turns out to be a delicious dish. The old saying that with a pig you eat everything but the “squeal” is true.

“If we are going to live on other inhabitants of this world we must not bind ourselves with illogical prejudices, but savor to the fullest the beasts we have killed. Why is it worse, in the end, to see an animal’s head cooked and prepared for our pleasure than a thigh or a tail or a rib?” M.F. K. Fisher

Our new processor asked last year when I delivered four hogs if I wanted the heads. Immediately I knew that headcheese was in my future. But, time and energy interfered. The heads lay bundled up at the bottom of the freezer, forgotten, and eventually pitched at the dump. A year later, last week, another hog delivered and the same question. And, yes, was my answer.

So Saturday morning I hauled out the head, ears and trotters and placed them in the sink. Using Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s recipe for headcheese from the River Cottage Cookbook I gathered up onions from our garden, clove, coriander, nutmeg, peppercorns, and a big bundle of fresh thyme, rosemary and parsley from the herb garden and got to work. Using my butcher saw I quartered the head so that it would fit into the pot easily. Adding the head, ears, trotters, onions, seasoning and herbs to a biggish pot of water and brought that to a boil.

Next step is to skim of the scum that floats to the top for about 30 minutes then reduce to a simmer for four hours. After four hours the meat and bones are removed. The liquid is reduced by 2/3 to a gelatinous soup. Next I pulled the meat from the head and jaw and finally chopped into a hash, peeled the skin of the tongue and did the same. Then mixed in a good sized clump of fresh parsley (chopped) and juice of a lemon (many use apple vinegar) and put the mixture in the fridge.

When the liquid was reduced it was strained into another pot. The onions and bundle of herbs were tossed. The meat mixture was then pressed into a terrine and the liquid was ladled over the top. Placed back into the fridge until the jelly set.

What a nice way to create a delicious dish from some very inelegant ingredients. I do recommend using the head next time for those of you who raise or buy a side of pork from time to time. Talk about nose to tail eating!

I’d close by recommending three other books, a holy trinity of sorts, dedicated to the concept that nothing gets wasted. They are all by Jennifer McLagan. “Bones”, “Fat”, and “Odd Bits”. Each is beautifully produced and full of wonderful recipes: Ex. ravioli of brains and morels.

Where did I put my brains?

Thanksgiving: from the archives

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A thanksgiving note from 2004:

11-24-04

I had just settled into my office one evening, after driving back from a bookstore in Kentucky, when the phone rang. It was Cindy asking me to head on home. Art (our Milking Devon bull) had been causing trouble and our neighbor was demanding $500. I loaded up and headed home. Forty-five minutes later, I was greeted on our driveway by the sight of said neighbor, an aged farmer whose property backs up to a portion of our property.

For those of you who have been reading these notes for a few years, this neighbor is the farmer who never buys a bull. He instead waits patiently for a bull from another herd to leap fences to spend time with his cows. A few years ago Bellow (our former sire) spent most of one summer frolicking with his ladies. The neighbor was unconcerned since he was getting stud fees for free. And, I spent a lot of time bringing Bellow home only to have him head back over the fences (once he’s seen Paris….) However, this past year he finally bought a bull of his own.

This neighbor and his niece, in their battered pick-up, rumbled past with a smug look and wave of his hand. I drove on up to the house. Cindy filled me in on the particulars. Art apparently during the day had smashed through our barbed wire fence. He then tossed a gate and corner post and entered a promised land where an abundance of cows awaited. Mr. Johnson’s bull was not amused and combat commenced. When the dust settled his bull lay on the ground with his pelvis smashed and his leg broken in half. And, Mr. Johnson earned $500 for a dying mongrel bull.

Cindy and I headed up to the back -field to locate Art and try and get him home. I walked through the fields, hopped a fence and went through the Raby and Johnson fields in a vain effort to locate him. Meanwhile Cindy had located him in another of Raby’s fields. We were quickly running out of light when she went home and saddled her mare in an effort to move Art across the field and into our upper pasture.

Sometime later, as I stumbled through the late summer hay that came to my knees, the light faded. For about the fourth time Art balked halfway across the field and turned back as Cindy pushed him from the saddle. My job was to put side pressure on him as we tried to move him in a straight line. In the darkness I heard rather than saw Art thunder down a small hill in my direction. He was upset. I quit the field. We went home.

The sad part of this affair is that Art shouldn’t have been on our farm. We had made arrangements to sell him to Mulberry Gap Farm in North Carolina. The owners raise the same breed of cattle and had bought a number of heifers from us the previous year. For the past month we had missed connections to transport Art to them. Now we were out $500.

Next weekend Cindy rented a cattle trailer from the co-op. Art in the meantime leapt fences and returned to our herd. With a feed bucket I called all of our cattle into the corral. It was then a simple matter to cull them, leaving Art alone. We ran Art into the chute with the intention of him ending up in the cattle trailer. After several false starts he turned and leapt over the steel gate leaving it bowed in the middle from his heavy bulk. And he was gone. He headed up the hill and with one backwards glance jumped the fence. He was back where he could be appreciated. (Cindy had to restrain me from using the deer rifle to drop him for the vultures).

Saturday morning I called the boys in North Carolina and told them that we could not in good conscience sell them Art. After conferring with Raby we called in the “Specialist”. “The Specialist” was a good old boy who made his living collecting up rogue cattle (there is a niche for everything). After viewing Art, who had now taken up residence in some woods, he bought him for $600. He wanted to try one last effort to get him in the corral before he roped and drug Art onto a trailer. That evening we managed to get Art in the corral. We called our specialist who came out immediately with his trailer. With an embarrassingly efficient display of cattle skills he screamed and beat at Art who ran right into the trailer in seconds. And, he was gone! However, for the next few days, we half expected to see Art standing in the front yard in some sadistic parody of “That Incredible Journey”.

Things have settled down, fences have been repaired. I brought two bull calves back from Kansas in a marathon bit of driving, selling one to the boys in North Carolina. Things are peaceful on the farm. And for that I’m thankful.

Have a nice Thanksgiving.

Farm Sounds

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11-11-11

Each season has a distinctive sound on our farm. I’m convinced that blind I could tell you the month by the sounds that reach the ear. I’m speaking of both natural and our modern sounds. November sound reaches the farm more easily as leaves begin to fall. A neighbor’s voice is heard even at a few hundred yards away. The whine of a mower in fall is clear, unlike the background roar of the summer mowing. The sounds of crows gathered in the tall sycamore at the woods edge. Or, the sound of guns an hour after sunrise signals the arrival of deer season.

The sound of wood being chopped echoes the valley. A particular sound only heard in the fall or winter, muted by damp and dying leaves it is heard as a dull “crack”. The winter axe has a sharp report like a rifle. On the other hand a chainsaw is heard in all seasons.

Last winter Cindy’s car slid off Pond Creek Rd. during a surprise ice storm. I have no idea what that sounded like…perhaps only a sharp explosively voiced “Oh Shit”! After walking up a long drive only to find no one home she returned to her car and found a Samaritan waiting to see if he could help. He brought her home while the wrecker towed her car. She offered payment. He asked, instead, if he could hunt our property next deer season.

Gene (his name) showed up last weekend with his wife Mary. We spent an hour walking the back of the property looking for a suitable site for his deer stand. He returned this morning about an hour and half before sunrise with his bow and arrows.

At 10 am this morning I’m pruning in the orchard when Gene pushes through the gate. At 8:30, about 30 minutes after sunrise, he shot a large buck. It ran about 30 yards before it dropped. After field dressing his kill he hauled to within a few hundred yards of the barn. I used the tractor to bring it the remaining distance.

He had offered to pay us to hunt. We asked instead for a roast from any deer he shot. I’m not sure of the sound an arrow makes hitting a deer. But the sound of a dinner of venison is a sigh of contentment.

Small town racing

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Where we live, it takes a serious effort to get anywhere … or nowhere. Within a 25-mile radius, we can enjoy the pleasures of dining at Watts Bar Resort, nestled in the shadow of the nuclear cooling towers, while watching skunks cavort in front of the windows. We can buy ice cream at Galyon’s market, where the sign out front reads “Pizza, Hot Wings, Cow Feed.” We can take in the weekly performance of Blaze, the balloon-blowing goat at the Midway Drive-In Theater. Or, we can bring out the earplugs and thrill to the spectacle of the Atomic Speedway.

The year before we “bought the farm,” we left Knoxville with a group of 15 friends for what turned out to be the penultimate Roane County experience: a trek out to Atomic Speedway one Friday night in high summer. Atomic–as in nearby Oak Ridge and the atomic bomb–is the place where local boys test their tuneup jobs and entertain NASCAR dreams on a dizzying red clay track. Forty-five minutes due west of Knoxville and 45 minutes northeast of our farm, Atomic occupies a bare patch of land alongside Interstate 40, off an exit without amenities, down a gravel road. The Atomic track is essentially a tight oval with no straightaway. The racers spin around like tops for a predetermined number of laps. It’s next to impossible to pass on the narrow and endless turns, and usually the car that starts first finishes first.

That Friday night, we turned onto a field packed with hundreds of other vehicles and streams of people heading to the grandstands. Once in the throngs, we had to decide whether to sit on the “family” side, with its nice bleachers, or on the opposite side in the optimistically (euphemistically?) named “beer garden.” Beer garden guests sit on planks resting on cinder blocks. We took up our positions on the crowded planks, thumbed our noses at the respectable citizens, and toasted our night out with large paper containers of draft.

We sat and we watched what we could see through the dust kicked up by the cars. We sat and we drank, and finally the intermission came.

The announcer’s voice instructed the crowd to withdraw their ticket stubs and inspect the numbers for the door prize. One of our group, Mark, jumped off of the bench, fists pumping as he waved his ticket. A poor university TA, Mark won a hundred dollars … then selflessly contributed all to our sadly depleted beer funds.

A fresh round in our hands (and many newly acquired friends), we listened as the announcer excitedly introduced the entertainment of the evening: Johnny J of Jacksonville, driving his modified ’68 Chevy. The crowd went silent as Johnny J and his car were hauled onto the track. In the true spirit of American ingenuity–a combination of Eli Whitney, the Wright brothers, and PT Barnum–Johnny J had added an F-15 fighter jet engine to the rear end of his car. The first intermission saw him drive, propelled by a short burst of flame, from one end of the track to the other in, well, seconds. The punchline was a little bit of a letdown after the buildup. Since the track was so tight, he couldn’t do much more than hop to the other end before braking to avoid leaving the track. The tractor would then pull him back around, point him at the other end, and he’d hop again in a short burst of flame. After a couple more lackluster exhibitions, he pulled onto the infield.

The races resumed with a compact truck race followed by a stock car race. Then another intermission. Once again the announcer shouted over the loudspeaker that we were all in for a special treat. And again the crowd hushed. This time Johnny J pulled his jet-powered car onto the infield on a low trailer and backed it up to a 1971 Pinto. Time was spent chaining the jet car to the flatbed, and all the while the crowd waited with wide eyes. The quiet continued over both sides of the field as the lights were doused. We sat with high anticipation in the humid dark.

At last, the jet engine roared. A brilliant flame cut a cone of fire at the Pinto. The car glowed, shimmered and ignited. Cameras clicked. Lusty had been the partisan cheers for favorite sons at the end of each race. But as the Pinto melted back into the red clay infield, we rose as one, all differences set aside, and gave voice, into the August summer night, of our joy, in inarticulate yelps and screams. Only one among us could articulate what everyone there must surely feel. Tom, our only Ivy League graduate, turned to me with tears in his eyes and slurred, “Surely we have seen God’s work done here tonight.”

Amen, brother.