Farm Journal Notes: 2023

Most enjoyable or interesting books read:

  • The Epistles of Horace (Horace)
  • A Short Walk in Hindu Kush (E. Newby)
  • Memories of Gascony (P. Koffman)
  • Social History of Bourbon (G. Carson)
  • True Grit (C. Portis)
  • King’s Day (T. E. Porter)
  • Burden of Southern History (C. V. Woodward)
  • Complete (3 volumes) Calvin and Hobbes (Waterson)
  • One Man’s Meat (E. B. White)
  • The Last Farmer (H. Kohn)

    2023 readings

It is the wind: Discovered evidence of a tornado down Ross. Rd, Stockton Valley, and Pond Creek. Dozens of shattered and splintered trees in a miles long path. Nothing reported by weather service.

Timing: Anxious to check on Ginger this morning, due to farrow. And…farrowed!

Farewell to a pet: January 30th. Chip is in in final stages of kidney failure. 19, which is quite old for an outdoor cat…. Chip died at 11 am, buried him in the garden.

Connections: Thinking about when we only had three news stations. There seemed to be much more common purpose. Less is more.

Over-sowing pastures: Rye, red and white clover, 7-top turnip sown in three sheep pastures.

The cold: 3-15-23. This is one of the coldest days in March (23 degrees). Although it doesn’t compare with April 7th, 2007 when the temps dropped to 18 degrees. 95% of the Tennessee apple crop was destroyed.

The cold, revisited: 3-19-23, 19 degrees at 7am.

Achieving the proper life balance: 3-30-23. Highs in the upper 70’s. Sitting on the back deck smoking a cigar, sipping an Old Fashioned.

Off the farm: Drove out to Overhill nursery. Cindy picked up some bog plants for the pond. Took a lovely drive over the mountain to Tellico Plains for lunch at the bakery.

Sheep: Picked up some Dorset-Hamp crosses. If we can keep them alive, they will mark a change in the direction of our flock. Larger and meatier.

Publisher: 6-25-23. Turned final manuscript into publisher.

Dorper ram: Butchered on the farm, (June 29th) the Dorper ram. 14 for dinner on July 2nd. Smoked the ram for 8 hours in the China box. Expected high of 96 was cooled down by t-storm to 72 degrees. Dined on front porch.

Chanterelles: July 5th, two pounds harvested.

A Good Daily Harvest: July 19th. 1.5 bushels of Golden Delicious, 50 pounds of potatoes, sweet corn, and collards to the kitchen. Fed three tubs of “old” greens to hogs.

It is the wind, again: August 7th. Wind storm. Power out for 24 hours. Neighbors were without for 48. Trees down everywhere. We lost 2 dozen oaks across the farm. Many were snapped off. Tornado? Spent August 8th with chainsaw removing the largest that had fallen across the drive.

August 15th: 5.25 inches of rain. (note: this was the last until late November)

Hog news: High in 90’s, no rain. Ginger is not bred. So, bought barrows from Mike and Sabine to feed out for customers.

Paying the idiot tax: Tractor wouldn’t start. Couldn’t quickly find the problem. In the middle of haying. No time. So, paid an “expert” to trouble shoot. Corroded battery cables. $320. What a chump.

Hog news: Small boar brought in to breed Ginger. He is intimidated and runs away from her. We may have to get him lifts if he is to do the job.

Politics: Democracy is increasingly a chance to play a role as an extra in a play written, directed, and acted by others.

Book news: October 1st. The book is finally published. Feeling ridiculously pleased with the effort.

Cooking schedule for the coming week: October 3rd. Chicken and dumplings, seafood gumbo, beans and cornbread, pork dish with greens, pasta carbonara.

Three rules for a good day: Express gratitude. Work well. Don’t buy anything unneeded.

Women and Men, the real differences: Cindy spent most of the morning doing laundry and the afternoon working on a new table in the workshop. I skipped farm work. And went out and had a burger and a couple of beers with Tim, followed by a long nap. Cindy fixed dinner.

Resilience: How resilient is our farm? It is a question that can’t be answered until the reasons for asking it becomes “active”.

Weather: Hard freeze expected (October 31st).

New Year’s Eve: Nasty cold. 25 meat birds to butcher. Ginger (three failed breedings) to finally be hauled to slaughter on January 4th. Happy New Year.

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Reading this weekend: A Bookseller’s Tale (M. Latham), a marvelous work about why we read. How to Focus, a monastic guide for an age of distraction (J. Cassian). This last is another of the Princeton reprints of classics, each given a modern title.

 

 

 

 

Partings and Reminders

The low winter sun is a trickster, part coyote. Freed from the confinements of summer’s leafy arbor, it shape-shifts across the horizon, always blinding the beholder no matter which direction he peers. Its glaring illumination finds me most days waving my hands in semaphore ballet simply to see where on the farm I am heading. Still, this morning I manage to glimpse a flicker of bright crimson in the perfect white light by angling my hands and spreading my fingers in deflection. It is a cardinal perched shoulder height in the hornbeam, plumped to substantial girth on this frozen January morning. I manage to outwit the sun and place him behind me, then take a few moments to stare at the red-robed fellow before me.

Folklore says seeing a cardinal is meant to remind us of those departed. If so, there is a lot of reminding going on on the farm. Pairs frequently nest in the muscadine vines, others favor the sweet gums, and at least one couple usually makes a home in the weigela at the southern edge of the yard next to the rusty wrought iron gate. This male appears to be by himself, which is not unusual, although it may be that his vivid plumage creates an impression of a bachelor life, while his mate, with her discreet browns, grays, and hints of red, remains present but hidden in plain sight. Then again, the pair won’t begin nesting until March, so he may simply be scouting, showing off, or spending some much-needed me time after the holidays. In any case, he finally flutters off and perches briefly on the livestock trailer parked to the north side of the house, before lighting in the top of the nearest winged elm. I cup my hands round my eyes so I can track his flight. Again, how did the sun shift directions?

My diversion ended, I approach the trailer and peer inside. It is full of fouled hay—first from accommodating twenty-two meat birds in the final days leading to their butchering, then from housing our still-unpregnant red wattle sow, Ginger, who spent her last night in the space—and it awaits cleaning.

Yesterday evening, gentle and trusting to the end, she followed me from her paddock into the trailer without question or falter. This morning, just after sunup, I walked her easily out of the trailer and into the pen at the slaughterhouse. I left her quietly waiting for the butcher to make his dramatic stop. Within minutes, I was sitting with a woman in the small cramped office discussing in practical terms how we wanted the carcass cut and packaged. It is a cruel world. But it can be kind, and sometimes both together. Ginger led a very good life—a sheltered stall with hay to burrow in; a large gravel lot and access to a grassy paddock; fresh produce, dairy, and mixed grains fed twice a day; plenty of scratches. She was never treated with anything but care and respect. She was given many more chances to succeed on our farm than those animals caught in the maw of the industrial farm system.

It is an old theme for us: that all of our actions have consequences, that even the most benign of actions, from hoeing the garden to shopping at the grocery, result in death. It is just that our modern world offers an all-too-convenient buffer, a spectator’s distance, that provides a camouflage, justifiable deniability for consequences. That is a position unavoidable in this farming life we lead: unwinding modernity one meal at a time.

After making a note in my pocket journal about cleaning the trailer, I head to the barn and finish my morning chores. Before arriving, my eye is once again caught by the familiar color. A quick fluttering of my own hands shields the light and reveals the cardinal, now flitting from branch to twig to branch in the nearby golden raintree, gentle and trusting in my presence.

Three Tales From the Farm

I Am a VIP

August haying

It is true, yes, that there are moments as a farmer when my status as a VIP is confirmed. After all, I am known to multitudes. That these moments happen only between me and my livestock makes them no less important. So, for any of you yearning for that most modern of currencies, celebrity, for those of you who desire to feel valued, follow along with me as I fill up a bucket of feed near the barn.

The ewes who have been let out of their pasture to graze among the buildings hasten to my side from all points of the compass at the clanging of the lid. They form a tight scrum around me, like bodyguards protecting a pop star. The ones behind keep nudging me to move faster, perhaps afraid that my time in the open may expose me to assault, while the ones on either side stay firm against my thighs. The lead ewes keep turning around, making sure I’m safe and with them still. We march in lockstep across the grass, through the gates, to their feed trough. Only as we approach do they cease to see me as someone to protect. Like Roman legionaries who have missed a payroll, they abandon their post and impatiently begin to jostle, demanding that I yield if not an autograph then at least the contents of my bucket. Celebrity is such a fickle mistress.

Fowl Pox

We both looked at the small blisters covering his face, the eyes that were milky white and unseeing. Two days earlier he had stood next to me in the equipment yard, shifting his weight from foot to foot, head tilted as he listened closely in what we now know was the posture of the blind. But even seeing I saw nothing. The next day he stayed in the coop, in a corner, unable to defend himself against the younger rooster. I noticed, vaguely aware that something was wrong, and continued my chores. On the third day I bent down and picked him up by the feet, avoiding the three-inch spurs with difficulty, and cupped his back with my hand. Cindy examined him and recognized the blisters and unseeing eyes. He had fowl pox and needed to be removed immediately from the flock. It was possible he could recover, but old age would be working against him. I continued holding him on his back with feet grasped and walked to the barn. From the rack over a work table I removed a hatchet. I laid him across a railroad timber outside, stretched his neck over the side, and lopped off his head. His head and body in a five-gallon bucket, I placed the remains in the back of the pickup truck.

Cowboys and Ranches Belong West of the Mississippi

When I think of the habits of emigrants from our Western states, I’m reminded—likewise frequently and comically—of zooming down a sidewalk on my bike as a kid, then tumbling over the handlebars when I reached a section pushed up by the roots of an oak: both bring me up short. So when I say that the big man wearing a cowboy hat, his brand new dark blue jeans tucked inside fancy cowboy boots, stopped me cold, I understate. That he was also wearing spurs that stuck out a good three inches prompted me to ask the ladies behind the counter at the farmers co-op, “Are they filming a Western nearby?” How he drove away in that jacked-up fully-loaded brand new Ford F-150 Lightning with those three-inch spurs on his boots … well, I still both wonder and admire. But he did.

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Reading this weekend: the children’s book A Wrinkle in Time (M. L’Engle) and One Man’s Meat (E. B. White). I never had read the first till now, and I found it charming. Regarding the second, I had only read White’s children’s books. His essays, written from his Maine saltwater farm, are warm and funny and perfect for these cold December nights.

 

Remembering with Christmas Cards

A few nights back, we sat at our kitchen table and wrote out our Christmas cards. Our house is still undecorated, as it is our personal tradition to put up a tree, decorations, and greenery the week before Christmas. Although, on the mantle, over the woodstove, there are a smattering of early arrival cards. Not entirely festive, yet. But it is in the air, you know.

This post, below, was published back in 2016. Since that date many of the older generation of friends and family have passed away. But we both have nieces and nephews who have moved out, married, and now have growing families of their own, since I wrote this piece. So, the list as we worked through it remained both familiar and new, a summary of the arc of life contained in an address list.

With Vince Guaraldi in the background, we wrote and addressed our annual Christmas cards last night. An old-fashioned exercise that echoes in our warm kitchen with news of the past year. Our modest notes convey best wishes, some with hopes to see more of this friend or that family member in the coming year. Inevitably there are deletions due to death, divorce, or the odd friend who drifted away.

Sending Christmas cards is a practice in the naming of the past, a remembrance of the history of our friendships and family ties. For myself, the ritual is carried out with little eloquence and appalling handwriting. Yet, each year I look forward to the occasion.

We sit amicably at the table for a few hours before a late dinner, occasionally commenting but mostly in silence. We jot down a few words to convey knowledge of intimate details. There are those to whom wishing joy seems misplaced: the friend whose only sibling collapsed this season after shoveling snow, a nephew and niece still feeling the loss of their mother, the friend facing his second Christmas as a widow after the unexpected death of his wife, my cousin.

There are friends and family far away that we visit with seldom except through letters or phone calls. The friend I met in an Asheville pub one evening who has a longstanding invitation to visit our farm from her village in England. Another in London whose annual Christmas Day call is a tradition of over 26 years. The friends in town and in our valley that we see often and would see more of if our lives were not so busy.

The act of signing the card becomes a bridge. Though the words are too short and not particularly profound, the underlying message is that there is a bond. That there is a connection across distance and time and in some cases through death that each card represents. It gives us a moment to reflect with gratitude on those who are part of our lives.

One Good Day: Part 1

A really good day on the farm slips its way into being, sly and unnoticed. The day is planned—only the how-it-will-turn-out remains uncertain.

Lake Bistineau, Louisiana, in draw down.

When I step out on the back porch at 5 a.m., coffee cup in hand, the morning star is locked in a tight embrace with the slim crescent moon. Staring at the heavens is a longtime practice of mine that informs even as it inspires. On this morning, once again, the sky is clear of clouds: rains are but a dim memory shared in travelers’ tales, September and October having left behind only dusty footprints at the doorstep of November.

With my gaze lost in the limitless depths above me, I sense nothing malevolent at the tail end of the bright night. Taking that as a sign of celestial goodwill, I leave the porch and walk to the barn, as is my wont at the beginning of each day. I grab the three-tine hay fork and a scoop of sweet feed. A shifting of heavy feet at the far end of the chute system indicates the presence of the Angus cow and her daughter, a Charolais cross. Hearing me, they let out a muted lowing. If you have been around cattle, you know the difference between that sound, one of contentment, and the more full-throated bellow for action that hurries a farmer’s steps.

These two had arrived at the farm a few nights earlier, delivered by friends paid with cash and a dinner of crawfish étouffée, who in turn repaid in conversation and good company. Having cattle return to our farm, even in this small way, after a four-year hiatus feels like a homecoming. The cow is bred and will deliver next May. The six-month-old heifer will be fattened for our freezer and friends’.

I pour a little feed into the cattle trough, winning me if not love then at least attention. As the cow and her calf busy themselves eating, I fork a half-dozen loads of fresh hay into the large manger inside the barn before scattering a couple of forkfuls on the floor to cover the overnight deposits. Out in the dark corral the sheep are sleeping islands. I navigate among them, listening, then check that they have plenty of water. (When sheep or cattle move to eating hay, their daily water intake increases.) I also make a mental note to bring them a fresh bale of hay later in the day. The extreme drought of our county has had us feeding hay 4-6 weeks earlier this year than usual.

Back in the barn’s breezeway, I seek out two five-gallon buckets near the feed barrels. The buckets are for the hogs. The first is for the three feeder pigs. It is filled halfway with hogmeal and topped off with the last bunch of overripe bananas. To the second I add a couple of large scoops of hogmeal destined for our sow, Ginger, and her latest beau, Jack. This mating is (and I mean it this time) her last chance to conceive.

As I feed, I watch with both appreciation and predatory interest as the three pigs destined for a January date with the grim reaper demolish their breakfast. When they are finished, I once again gaze skyward and find that the moon has moved away from her partner, the pas de deux having ended. In the time it took to complete the early morning chores, the dawn hours have closed in and the stars have begun to fade. Yet I am still in the dark when I return my buckets to their hooks before heading inside for another cup of coffee, a bit of reading, and breakfast in preparation for the coming day.

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Sorry for the late posting this week. I have been hanging out with my brothers, nephews, and great-nephews in Louisiana the past few days.