garlic curing

Buster stands hypnotized as our aged cat, Chip, gingerly crosses the porch. It is 5 a.m. and the rat terrier is on high alert: “If I squint just right that could be a rat.” I call his name and the spell is broken. We —dogs, cat, and me — resume our predawn reverie in peace. A little drizzle is just beginning to fall in what is forecast to be a rainy Sunday. Which reminds me that I never did clean the gutters. It’s a task best remembered when the rainwater is overflowing along the whole of the roof’s little canal.

I came outside with my coffee hoping to be favored with the pulsing din of the cicadas. In spring and summer of 2004, we sat out most evenings until late into the night, not talking, letting the deafening chorus envelop us. But this morning, like last evening, like all season, it is quiet. Friends report the emergence of Brood X in Blount, two counties away. Here in Roane, there are only the usual sounds of birds, crickets, a few echoing roosters up and down the valley, and the bass of a bullfrog setting the rhythm in the backyard pond.

Beyond today’s gutter cleaning, my mental list of what needs doing is short. Depending on the rain, I need to finish the garlic harvest. Yesterday I pulled up all the red onions and half the garlic (200 and 100, respectively); I then laid them out on tables in the barn to cure before storing under the stairs inside for future use. I also finished cutting up two felled trees, tossing the logs into the bed of the old farm truck, where they’ll stay until the truck is required for something else. Later in the morning, the Kid and I walked up and down hills disassembling the electric fence and restringing it elsewhere, a task we do each Saturday.

The Kid continues to work out well. He tackles the farm chores if not with finesse, with gusto. Other than hand weeding, that is. It is a fact universally acknowledged that a 13-year-old boy doesn’t want the piddly tasks. Experience (and I speak here with authority gleaned from dim personal recollection) has taught that they want the sweaty, testosterone-pumping, tear into it, get ‘er done kind of work. Great for us, because we always have that work to do on the farm. Yesterday the Kid and I tore into it and got ‘er done, which today leaves me in an exertion avoidance mode.

Maybe some kraut or kimchi making is in the pipeline for this afternoon? The garden is loaded with cabbages. It is time to use them or feed them to the pigs, the snails, and the fluttering cabbage whites. Everyone gets to eat on this farm.

Yesterday morning I was in the gardens by 6 a.m., feeling giddy at the start of the day. I had that goofy, grin-on-the-face feeling that all is right with the world if one lives in East Tennessee on a small farm with a full day ahead. Many days are like that, most even. That the day ended with us sitting on the back deck gorging on steaks, salad, new blue potatoes, and grilled asparagus and spring onions solidified my first impression. The only thing that could have improved a perfect day was for the sun to have set to the accompaniment of serenading cicadas seeking love.

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Reading this weekend: The Bookseller of Florence: the story of the manuscripts that illuminated the Renaissance (R.King). A fascinating peak into the bookselling world pre-Gutenberg. 

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