Tag Archives: community

We Can’t Do Anything Anymore

Posted on by
7

The cilantro, planted last spring, is up and thriving this year.

There is a squiggly digital line that cuts across our valley marking the boundaries between congressional districts. My district is a gerrymander’s dream that has more bends and elbows than a high school basketball game. Which means that not only am I hard pressed to identify the congressman for Tennessee District 3 (and one can be damn sure he doesn’t know me), but that to this day I still get confused about which district actually owns me. In each election cycle, I’m bombarded by circulars from the candidates of two different districts, the apparent strategy being to blanket every mailbox in a desperate bid to snag a live one.

Likewise, a command for me to appear for jury duty in an adjoining county periodically appears in the mailbox. The law, in all its majesty, then makes it incumbent upon me to show up at a “foreign” courthouse to verify that I do not live in the jurisdiction to which I was summoned, having pulled together my property tax records once again to prove it, and stand humbly before the ignorant. It is not in the job description of either the judge or the courthouse clerks to know who resides in their county. Their job is simply to send out blanket orders, based on who-knows-what criteria, then let God and the citizens sort it out.

Is it any wonder, in a country that mailed who-knows-how-many Covid-related stimulus checks to Nigeria, that some of its citizens lack confidence in the integrity of their votes? Sadly, the basic responsibilities of a smooth-running system, like knowing the voter list and the jury pool, require a level of competence that appears no longer in our grasp.

Because, to paraphrase James McMurtry, we just can’t do anything anymore.

Even ancient Sumer knew to the last iota of grain what was in the granaries and how many people lived in each province. But for us, having an actual count of the number of vaccines administered, warehoused in search of an arm, or lost and forgotten is beyond the ken of the nation who put men on the moon with slide rules and duct tape and beat Hitler and Hirohito in just under four years.

Recently, I called the Tennessee Department of Health helpline to try to find out where Covid vaccinations were being offered in my area. A pleasant enough woman with a toddler babbling in the background answered:

“I’m having trouble with the state’s online vaccination site,” I said. “Can you help me figure out my nearest location for getting vaccinated?”

“Sure. What is your zip code, sir?” she said.

“It’s 37846.”

“Got it. Please hold for a minute.” Pause. “There is one very close to you. It’s in Greeneville.”

“Greeneville is two and half hours away from me.”

“Well, it shows on my list that it’s only 10 minutes from you.”

“It’s not. Like I said, it’s two and half hours away.”

“Hmmm. What is your zip code again?”

“37846.”

“Ah, okay. Here’s one that’s very close by. It’s in Ashland City.”

I did a quick search for Ashland City on my computer. “That is not close at all. It’s three hours from me.”

“Well, my list shows it’s very close to you. Tell me your zip code once more.”

And so it went, until 25 minutes later I said I’d just call back another time. I didn’t, of course. Instead, I stopped by my local drugstore and asked if they were giving vaccinations. They promised they’d contact me when I became eligible.

Which leaves us, a year later, in this, the most current crisis of our enfeebled land, masked and isolated, but still believing the illusion of our invincibility simply because we can stream Netflix. Unaware that as a society, we can no longer execute the routine acts of governance or citizenry. We might not be able to keep you alive, let alone identify what county you live or vote in, yet we do know this: That blue extra-large oxford shirt will look nice on you. And we know there is free shipping.

We just can’t do anything anymore.

…………………………………………………………………………………

Reading this weekend: The Raw and the Cooked (J. Harrison)

A Farmer’s Guide to the Senses

Posted on by
4

Hearing: When the fog comes into the valley, the cattle bawl a fearful alarm at the loss of any horizon. It’s a sound that raises an ancient fear of the husbandman worried for his stock. You cock your head, desperate to locate the sound. Is this the bawl of your own cattle, now escaped and on the highway? An experience lived once stays forever.

Red Poll Cattle

Red Poll Cattle

Smell: Walking out at midnight among the cattle on a hot night, you take in the sweet rich aroma of sweat and foraged dung rising from the earth. Not unlike the smell of yeast and dough working together in a bowl under a heavy cloth. Both are promises in the dark, a womb-like gift of fertility for those capable of interpreting and understanding their uses.

Touch: While the ewe is still expelling the afterbirth, you cradle her newborn lamb. That gaze, that softness, delivers in an instant the totality of life, what the world offers. This, a mere moment between birth and death, for the joy and the living, for all of us.

Sight: The blood will come quickly, more than you expect. With a merciful cut across the jugular, the yearling ram-lamb will bleed bright on the winter grass. You carry his dead weight across the barnyard and hoist him up by the gambrel tendons to a singletree dangling from the front end loader. You execute the evisceration quickly, then place the carcass in the cooler.

Taste: You place a bit of smoked pork in your mouth. The fruit of your land, it is simply seasoned with salt and pepper, stuffed with garlic from the garden. The fat is rendered out during a long summer day spent in the smoker, then the meat is pulled, chopped, and doused with a vinegar sauce. You serve it on a plate alongside crowder pea salad. You wash it down with homemade mead and wine, sitting around the long table with friends as the day becomes evening. This is farming.

…………………………………………………………..

Re-reading this weekend: The Localization Reader: adapting to the coming downshift. A collection of essays, this is the designated reading over the next six months for our farmer’s reading group.

A Convivial Life

Posted on by
2

In what was a convivial happenstance, the weather turned cold last night for our annual Christmas/Solstice gathering, and we spent several very pleasant hours with good friends from town and country here on the farm. This morning damage was confined to a few bags of trash and a full slop bucket for the pigs. So different from the parties of our younger days, but maturity comes in time to us all.

Wandering through the house during the evening, I heard snippets of conversation: a fellow farmer on a sow’s first-time farrowing, a librarian on the decline of library patronage, a native of Chicago on where Emma Goldman is buried (Waldheim cemetery), Cindy with an explanation of our hoop-house to be built in the spring.

As the energy ebbed into the night, I walked with a few friends in the bright moonlight past the orchard to admire a new barn, a fresh stack of lumber, and a massive oak log — the standards of entertainment being quite high here in the rural hinterlands. Our guests extended appropriate gestures of appreciation, then we made our way back to the warmth of the farmhouse for more wassail.

With the last guests leaving by 11, we turned in after a little cleanup before midnight. We slumbered deeply until Teddy began barking savagely around 2 a.m. After a few ignored shouts from me to shut up and no move from Cindy to deal with the problem, I got up. Funny that, the domestic politics of pretending to be so deep in sleep that your partner is forced out into the cold house and even colder night.

The mercury hovering in the mid-20s, I stomped around in boxers and T-shirt on the frosty ground, as Teddy continued to respond as if slaughter awaited in the darkness. I played the flashlight among the trees, but saw nothing but a cold and beautiful star-filled night. Teddy’s coat still bristled when I finally put him on the back porch.

Imminent death by serial murderers be damned, I then headed back upstairs. Sliding back under the quilts, Cindy still feigning deep sleep, I drifted off again until the morning’s light.

 

 

An Evening of Conviviality and Community

Posted on by
2

The festive season has arrived and not a moment too soon. Last night, sprigs of holly and cedar garlands hung throughout the house, we hosted our annual Christmas/Solstice/Saturnalia gathering (trying for inclusiveness here). Joined by a band of friends from the city, the mountains and nearby valleys, we spent the evening feasting and making merry. A large pot filled with steaming perry, well spiced and fruits bobbing, served as our nod to a wassail.

Holly sprigs in the kitchen window

Holly sprigs in the kitchen window

The richness of dishes brought by our guests helped line our stomachs for the deluge of spirituous libations. The fir tree was ablaze with brightly colored lights, gifts brought by kind guests placed underneath. A beret was forced upon the head of Good Sport Tim, who played the part of a sailor from Marseilles (sorry, no idea why that happened). The 16 very pregnant ewes received routine visits through the course of the evening–fat and pregnant ewes being what passes as entertainment in the country. Overall, it was a most satisfying gathering of some of our favorite good people.

As we go about our tasks this Sunday, less than two weeks before the wheel turns again, we feel “blessed,” in whatever way you wish to parse the meaning of the word.

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Reading this weekend: Honor: a history by James Bowman and Ancient Iraq by Georges Roux

Geegaw Nation

Posted on by
3

’Tis the season: for plastic, for wrapping, for quantity, for abundance. It is a funny word, abundance. My 1901 dictionary defines it as “ample sufficiency.” Today’s Webster’s defines it as “more than sufficient quantity.” The former points to an appreciation of what we have; the latter speaks to our current state of overconsumption. The former indicates an abundance secured against future want; the latter, merely a quantity in excess of what is needed for the present, just stuff, all of it the same.tacky-christmas-decorations

Our local discussion group is reading the wonderful book Larding the Lean Earth by Steven Stoll. Stoll discusses at some length a topic that has troubled me for years. Has the sheer abundance of our continent ultimately conspired to corrupt our better angels? Or were we doomed by some inner corruption, some genetic predisposition to be the bipedal locusts hoovering up all in their path?

Has this abundance destroyed our sense of wonder and beauty? William Cobbett in his curious and judgmental work The American Gardener (1817) wrote of assessing the morality of a man by how he kept his garden. George Marsh (congressman from Vermont), when he took the floor in 1848 to argue against the Mexican War, made the unusual argument that what we already had was enough for any civilization, that to grasp for more, we would risk losing the sense of what was best about where we lived. It’s an argument that seems out of place with where we journeyed and where we have ended up.

Where we have ended up is as the spoiled kid on Christmas morning, surrounded by new geegaws and already bored. Why take care of the presents when he’s been given so much and expects more? Our consumer ethic, molded by abundance, has stunted our hearts: why take care of a home when it is only a “starter” home, a spouse, land, or neighbors when they can so easily be replaced?

Cursed by an abundance of land and resources, we have fouled our nest and moved on so often that our internal landscape now mirrors our external. The sheer ugliness of our daily landscape has a corrosive effect on our spiritual and political selves. Do all the geegaws we purchase this holiday season give us any more sense of well-being?

Maybe the true act of love for our planet, our home, is to repaint, tidy the garden, repair the torn pants, patch the jacket, sweep the sidewalk, bake some bread and give it to the neighbors. Maybe less can still be more. Maybe less is still abundance.