Category Archives: Childhood

Hire the Farm Kid

Posted on by
5

For many years and many times, both personally and professionally, I’ve given the offhand advice, “Hire the farm kid.” Sometimes it has been meant as a literal instruction, but at least as often it has been given as a more general recommendation to hire the person who has a history of family work. It could be the woman who as a child cleared tables, placed orders, and ran the register every evening and weekend at her family’s restaurant. Or the man who grew up cleaning boats at his father’s marina. The advice either way remains the same: Look for the person who learned a work ethic early and applied it often. The person who growing up wasn’t given the choice of whether to pull his or her weight is the one you want.

Incoming storm over the barn

Many have been the paid youth and volunteers to have worked on the farm. (Oh, Good Lord! springs most readily to mind.) The current Kid lives on a nearby farm and reports here every Saturday at 8:30 sharp. As part of our routine I always ask him how his week has been, how his morning has been. The latter is something that isn’t typically relevant except to the farm kid. On any given Saturday, this Kid has already been out weeding in the family garden, feeding the livestock, helping his older brother load a hog for market, all before showing up here to work some more.

Countless are the tasks that make it onto the average farm’s daily to-do list —a list, I should add, that isn’t constrained by hours in an eight-hour workday. Likewise, I ask as the Kid is leaving, what does he have on tap for the rest of the day? More often than not, his post-work chores includes mowing the yard, cleaning the barn stalls, inspecting his bee colonies….

The ethic of the farm-raised youth came to mind recently as I waited for the Kid to show up to work. Historically, you would have grown up in a farm community and most of your peers would have had a similar work background. But today, when kids are coddled at home well into and past adulthood, what is it like for our Kid to get on the school bus and find common ground? When his list of chores to complete morning and evening run up against the latest video game or Tik Tok distraction of his peers, what goes through his mind?

So, I asked him what his friends thought of his farm life. He had at first little to say (not unusual: we were in the midst of tearing out overgrown brambles from a fence line). But after lunch, as we cleaned and put away our tools, he replied by relating a story from when he was much younger than his current age of 15:

When I was 8 a neighbor offered my dad half shares on his square bales if we’d pick them up in the field and store them in his barn. I couldn’t pick them up [They can weigh 50-75 pounds], so I rolled them down the hill to my brothers. It took us all day. The neighbor had two sons who were 16 and 18, and they never came out of the house to help. He said he couldn’t ever get them to work. I thought that was odd. But I felt pretty good to be able to do something they couldn’t.

Clearly, there is a difference between “a farm kid” and “a kid raised on a farm.” And so, my readers, my advice remains the same, “Hire the farm kid.” And if you have the opportunity, raise a farm kid.

………………………………………………………………………….

Reading this weekend: The End of the World Is Just the Beginning, mapping the collapse of globalization (P. Zeihan)

Changing of the Seasons

Posted on by
6

The leaves begin to thin imperceptibly at the start of October, the pace quickening as the month passes, until one powerful storm, often the first week or two of November, scatters all to the ground. In their leaving, stark shapes out of myth and folklore will walk the forest, stand as watchful sentinels in the middle of a pasture. It is a beautiful transformation.

While each month is an ending, in fall and winter it is felt most keenly. Spring and summer, by contrast, are seasons of abundance, filled with work that is characterized by restraining the energies of nature, channeling it for productive needs that we desire. They are a time of growth, wild and teenaged, that without pruning (and sometimes with) overwhelms. Days are filled with hours of mowing and harvesting, sowing and planting. Sunlight lingers deep into the evening, long after the will to do more has flagged.

Then the seasons turn. Starting with the falling of the leaves, the farm shifts to maintaining and maintenance. There is new life, still — garlic and onions planted in October, lambing midwinter, greens in the hoop house, potatoes sown in February. But the time has come for clearing fence rows, cutting back old-growth vines and spent plants, repairing hay barns and other outbuildings.

Now begins the practical time of the year, less driven by the need to simply keep up and more molded by catching up. Which is perhaps why farmers traditionally speak of fall and winter as slower. The workload doesn’t lessen, but the character of the labor changes fundamentally. It is more structural, both literally and figuratively; with hands to the saw and mind released from the routine and endless sunlight, one can focus more on the process and life.

That my father passed away three weeks ago, and my stepmother joined him last night, finds me a bit more introspective than usual this season. Farming has shifted my appreciation and understanding of the cycles of life; it also, hopefully, has made me more accepting of certain inevitable changes that life brings to us all. It has, and I hope this is understood, made me appreciate more deeply the devoted care that my sisters Kathryn and Laura gave to both parents over the past eight years. To my way of thinking, they husbanded well their charges, with attention and love, then let them go graciously when the time arrived.

That both parents departed as summer ended and fall began is a gift to use. One that can shape the work to come: help me mend what I have and prepare for the new life that while already growing dormant is also readying for rebirth.

………………………………………………..

Reading this weekend: The Shepherd’s Calendar (J. Clare), which might simply be the most beautiful poem by one who knew. And for the second time, The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien), because I am in need of a journey and a heroic saga.

Sounds of My Father

Posted on by
12

William H. Miller, aged 94, passed away yesterday evening at his home in the company of two of his daughters. For the past two weeks, as he said goodbye to this life, he had a steady stream of family to keep him company. When I left him on Thursday, of last week, he wished me safe travels. That was my father to the end, uncomplaining and concerned about others.

Dad holding his youngest grandson. The big lad on the right, next to me, is his oldest grandson (with his son in front).

It takes a lifetime to understand and appreciate one’s father, a journey that is far from complete. But for now, this morning, I’ll leave it at these three remembrances.

 

The first:

The wind was out of the northwest, the temperature hovering in the low forties, as I hoed the potato beds for a spring planting. A weak March sun broke through often enough to bring out the ruddy freckles of my hands, hands that were the mirror image of my father’s.

At the end of the row, I stopped and put the hoe away and went inside to begin packing to head home to Louisiana to visit my dad in the hospital. My father is just shy of his 89th birthday and has always enjoyed good health, but he had had a stroke and was now recovering in a rehabilitation unit. With good care and the attention of my sisters, he was in good spirits and improving ahead of expectations.

A couple of days later I was at the hospital, helping him tear open a packet of crackers as we caught up on his progress. Earlier that morning, while he was busy with rehab, I had gone to the parish documents office to get a copy of my birth certificate.

Staring down at the record before me, I was struck by the inheritance that came with being the son of William H. Miller of Lake Charles, Louisiana: Fifty-three years earlier, I had been born in the same hospital where my father now recovered. It was the same hospital where all eight of his children were born. The same hospital where my mother and older sister had died, and a younger brother had passed away a few days after his birth. The same hospital where my dad recalled carrying me as he walked up and down the hallway when I was sick as a child.

My cousin from Texas showed up for a visit just as my dad was eating lunch, part of a steady stream of well-wishers who stopped by throughout the noon hour and into the early afternoon — an appropriate testament to a man who for nearly eight decades has been an active part of a community, a man who has lent his hands, as it were, over the years to whatever has been needed. 

That involvement in the community was a lifelong occupation of my father’s generation. Countless hours each week, often on the heels of working all day, were spent in service. Years ago, as a child, I found a handwritten list from my dad’s boyhood, a list of items he deemed essential to a good life. Top of the list was to do a good deed each day without the person on the receiving end being aware of it. No chest-thumping, no look-at-me, just a hidden hand helping others up.

As I prepared to say goodbye and return to Tennessee, I recalled an evening when my older brother and I had sat around the kitchen table with other family members. We both had our hands resting on the table’s surface in front of us. My niece, my brother’s daughter, looked across the table and said in surprise, “You both have the same hands!” I laughed and pointed at our father, who was sitting in a similar pose: “Well, there is the template for those hands.”

It was those hands I shook as I said goodbye, aware that my inheritance is both a privilege and a responsibility.

 

The second:

It is dawn out on the Gulf of Mexico, 1974. The throttle is hard down on the 22-foot open Wellcraft as the first waves check our smooth progress, sharply marking the passage from inside South Louisiana’s protective Mermentau River jetties to open water. With an hour till full sunrise, the air is still cool and we have 10 miles to go before the inner line of oil rigs. I eat a mustard and liverwurst sandwich, sitting on the bow, legs dangling over the side, as we begin to plane out over the crest of the waves.

The fog is lifting when we pass the first rigs, and we both see and hear them, each with its own distinctive horn. The skies are clear, the winds calm, so we head farther into to gulf to the rigs 20 miles offshore in search of red snapper.

Once we’re beyond the first belt of rigs, we drop the trolling lines, looking to get some king mackerel. We find instead that the Spanish mackerel have started their runs in the northern gulf. We quickly begin to get some strikes. Before long we have a dozen seven-pounders in the ice chests, thumping around in the well running down the center of the boat.

By 10 a.m. we are pulling up to the next grouping of rigs. Dad slows the boat and circles the platform so we can tie up and fish. Standing on the bow with the rig hook, a 10-foot-long aluminum shaft with an over-large shepherd’s crook on one end, I wait. The rig hook has a rope attached with a rubber tensioner tied in the middle, and each oil rig is composed of two-foot-diameter pipes. My job is to reach out and hook the rig, then secure the rope.

Modest three-to-four-foot swells are coming in under the bow, and with the boat nosed under the platform, the up and down motion is significant. Balancing, waiting for the boat to rise, I reach out and make the hook. Dad throttles back to about 30 feet from the rig, and I tie us off. My brother Keith and I break out the tackle, bait our hooks with pogies, and drop our lines. The depth at 20 miles off the Cameron Parish coastline is only 20-30 feet.

We stay put for a couple of hours, adding more sheepshead than red snapper to the cooler. The waves start to shift direction, so we move on. We troll for another hour without much success. Keith gets one sensational strike from what is probably a ling, but the large fish throws the lure in an acrobatic leap out of the water.

Thunderstorms are beginning to build to the east and west, so Dad turns our boat northward and begins a fast run to the jetties. Other than a few waterspouts at 10 miles distance, the return trip is uneventful. The water is smooth on the Mermentau, and we head the final four miles to the dock at Grand Chenier. With our boat safely trailered, we stop by the Tarpon Freezo for a malt in the one-blinking-light town of Creole. We’re delayed at the drawbridge by heavy barge traffic on the intercoastal, but we’re finally back home around 5.

Having cleaned the boat and hosed the salt from the tackle, the three of us stand in the backyard cleaning and gutting for the next couple of hours. I dump the heads and guts to the waiting turtles in our five-acre pond. The fish are packed in Guth milk cartons and stacked in the freezer. Exhausted but satisfied, we polish our shoes for church in the morning and call it a day.

 

The third:

It always seemed cold out on the Louisiana marsh as a boy. On Thanksgiving eve my father and I would head out to the hunting camp, a ramshackle building under centuries-old live oaks. At dinner we’d sit down at a long communal table and enjoy hearty bowls of duck gumbo. The dozen or more men would talk, and we the sons would keep quiet, seen but not heard. The morning smell of bacon and eggs served as an early alarm. And by 4:30 we were climbing into mud-boats and heading off across the marsh. At regular intervals a father and son would disembark into a wooden pirogue and push off into the darkness, usually arriving at a duck blind an hour before sunrise. Our hunt would begin with my father calling the ducks, enticing them to circle and land.

At the end of the hunt in late morning, we’d head home, pulling into the drive around noon. Thanksgiving preparations inside were well underway, pies lined up on the counter. I’d cast an anxious gaze to determine that a favored sweet potato pie was among them, then off for a shower and a change to clean clothes. The table was set and dinner typically eaten in mid-afternoon; afterward, the calls would begin from distant relatives.

Today, as a grown man, my rituals have changed. I’m now the relative calling across the distance of a time zone and seven hundred miles. Instead of a duck hunt early Thanksgiving, my morning is filled with chores: feeding pigs, sheep, cattle and chickens, stacking wood for the woodstove. Busy, but still time will be made later for a woodland walk on our farm. We eat late, so no need to rush dinner preparations. Some years we are graced by the company of friends, and other years we dine alone. This year, Cindy travels and I will dine by myself or with a couple of friends.

I’ll prepare a roast duck in memory of those boyhood hunts with my father. And I’ll regret the absence from the table of a sweet potato pie. But since it is Thanksgiving, I’ll be grateful for reasonable health, a loving partner, a satisfying life, a full library; that my father is still with us, as is a large abundance of siblings and other kin. I’ll also be thankful for what is absent in my life, namely, the darkness of war and the dislocation from hearth and home of the refugee.

As I step out on the porch before sunrise Thanksgiving morning, the air will smell of smoke from a dozen farmhouses in our valley. It will be cold on our farm here in the hills of East Tennessee. The cattle will begin to bawl. But over their din, if I listen well, I will hear the sound of my father calling the wild ducks out on the marsh.

 

Gumbo Filé

Posted on by
1

The sassafras tree is easy to spot, with its three different leaf patterns (unlobed oval, bilobed (mitten-shaped), and trilobed (three-pronged). It’s commonly seen anywhere east of the Mississippi basin. As kids we would dig up the roots to make sassafras tea. The roots, as most people know, were also the original flavor for root beer, that is, before being banned in 1960 as a possible carcinogen.

When I was growing up in Louisiana, a purchased powder of the leaves (safe for culinary use) was on our kitchen table any night we had gumbo, added as a sprinkled garnish to each bowl.

When I moved to Tennessee in 1984, gumbo filé (FEE-lay) was initially hard to find on the grocery shelf. I would pick up a bottle anytime I visited the motherland. Each jar of the fine powder — which imparts an earthy flavor that some compare to thyme — lasted me a couple of years before growing stale or being used up completely. Since 1999, after moving to the farm, that changed. Here, we have plenty of sassafras trees, so providing my own filé has become an easy option. And, of course, the commercial product is now easily found at any grocery store.

Making filé is straightforward and simple. It’s one of those perfect homestead projects that allow you to step outside of the stream of commerce, for a moment anyway, and provide for yourself. The process is as easy as harvesting the leaves, drying them, and then pulverizing into a powder.

Last weekend I took to the woods a large container that had held a 100-pound protein tub for sheep. In the work of 10 minutes, I filled the tub with leaves and returned to the barn. Taking a plastic kiddie pool (which we had used as a water source for a flock of ducks), I spread out the leaves to dry in the sun. Today I’ll strip the stems, crush the leaves, and then jar the powder. That full tub will yield only a few ounces of filé. Still, it will be more than enough to enhance a couple of winters’ worth of chicken gumbo.

…………………………………………………………………..

Reading this weekend: Hogs Are Up, stories of the land, with digressions (Wes Jackson).

Notes From My Other Home

Posted on by
Reply

Good morning,

I am off the farm and spending time with family in Louisiana where my father is observing his 94th birthday. He still has a handshake that will make you wince and his appetite for boiled crawfish, I am happy to report, is undiminished. Sitting around with family and eating the good food of this region has left me both stuffed and content. Or, as my maternal grandmother taught me to say, I have had a sufficiency. Here is a post from the archives about both the sufficient and the gourmandizing tendencies of this son of this soil.

My father, nephew Cody with his son Eli.

Blog note: I’ll catch up on my country wine posts next weekend.   

What We Share

Sitting down with kith and kin at my dad’s 91st birthday, I was reminded that we learn to eat as children. The table last Saturday was weighed down with more than 150 pounds of crawfish and accompanying bags of spicy boiled corn and potatoes. Homemade jambalaya my sister Laura made. And, for the vegan niece, some sort of weird processed “hotdog.” We variously stood and sat as we talked and listened. Food, family, friends, and lots of conversation.

The role food played last week was the same role it played in my childhood, and still does in my adulthood, that of bringing people together. From the crawfish and crab boils to grand Sunday dinners and church picnics; from duck and chicken-and-sausage gumbos to BBQ and fried catfish, links of boudin, and platters of dirty rice; from running trotlines, fishing 30 miles out in the gulf, and hauling up shrimp nets or oyster tongs to shooting ducks and geese and harvesting deer, the end goal was always the same: food that you could share.

TV and computers were not part of our world. No screen time, head down, eyes staring. You left the table only after you asked to be excused and were given permission. Weeknights were family dinners and catching up. Weekends and holidays were gatherings of the larger group of friends and family. And always set to the backdrop of food, meat, seafood, game, vegetables, and the ubiquitous dish of rice.

Sunday was the time for the big dinner of the week. It was frequently an occasion for serving up some fish or seafood we had caught — red snapper in butter and lemon, mackerel balls fried with a cornmeal dusting, platters of oysters, mounds of fried catfish, all accompanied by coils of the spicy local sausages, warmed on the grill. The family would often be joined by guests, perhaps a couple of youth from Boys Town or a new minister and his family.

During one such dinner, with a new pastor from Oklahoma, we received a call from an elderly neighbor. Upon coming downstairs that fine spring morning, she found an alligator in her parlor. It had strolled in through an open door and made itself at home. Dad used a ski rope to make a noose, slipped it over the beast’s head, and dragged it back out to the bayou, no doubt confirming in the new minister’s mind his worst fears about where he had relocated his family.

That is me (on the right) with my youngest nephew, Finn. We just finished having breakfast at K.D.’s

Some Sundays after service we headed to the Piccadilly. Dining at the small-town Southern restaurant was reminiscent of the Lyle Lovett song, “Church.” If your preacher became a bit long-winded, you might just find yourself waiting in line behind the First Baptists, or, God forbid, the Methodists.

From a kid’s perspective, Fridays were hopeful evenings. My parents were active in a supper club and a bridge club. Supper club in the house meant hovering near the kitchen to snag plates of oysters Rockefeller fresh from the oven, bridge club loading up on shrimp broiled in butter and spices.

Annually, there were the church picnics, feasts of such epic proportions they required each of us to be heroes of the plate and fork. Whole tables were devoted to fried chicken and banana puddings, the memory of which would still be a siren’s call onto the rocks of gluttony, except for the fact that underpinning all the food was the fellowship of friends and family.

A bowl of goodness at a roadside diner in Mermantau.

So today, on our farm, with freezers full and gardens gathering steam, we ask the weekly question, What do we have to share and who can we invite to join in the bounty — neighbors in the valley, friends from town or city, longer-distance guests?

Last night six friends helped us devour bowls of creamy grits topped with cooked-down collard greens and fried slices from a terrine of braised pork. We dined outside, sitting late into the evening as the full moon rose high in the sky. Good friends, conversation, and a bottle of elderberry mead helped us keep the faith with who we are as a people and the traditions we carry forward from childhood.

………………………………………………….

Reading this weekend: Essays from The Gift of Good Land (W. Berry)