Snow Day

Wethers dining in the snow

The wind is gusting in a low whistle outside my study, blowing snow on the front porch. The mercury reads 15 and it’s still a couple of hours until sunrise. Today’s to-do list has been written: Deliver hay and carry out the usual farm chores. Set up heaters in the livestock watering tanks. Castrate and vaccinate calves, then move cattle to their winter pasture up in the back forty. Dig postholes for the new hog enclosure and set posts in concrete. And, of course, attend to any newborn lambs that may have been born overnight.

As a boy I loved the idea of winter. The beauty of deep snow, the struggle for survival, the sleigh rides down empty back roads; marching along snow-covered trails, trapping rabbits with carefully made snares…. In short, a knowledge about winter gained from Jack London and his ilk by a youth who grew up south of Interstate 10 in Louisiana.

Books of my childhood filled my head with the romance of knee-deep snow, temperatures so cold that lakes froze, the struggle to build a fire and the penalty of failure. So when this Louisiana boy moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, and a few weeks later — January 21, 1985 — the temperature plunged to minus 24 degrees, with about 12 inches of snow to add to the joy, I thought I was living my dream. The city seemed liberated from the demands of the day-to-day. Of course, there was no real struggle. We could always retreat into our drafty old apartments in Fort Sanders to escape the worst of weather. But there was plenty of room to let the inner kid out to play.

That joy and wonder has been tempered since we moved to the farm in 1999. We have had plenty of gorgeous snows and any number of brutal cold snaps. We have had ice storms and been unable to leave the property for a week. But now, when I look at the forecast and see that it will not be above freezing for 4-7 days, that there might be an inch or a dozen of snow, I clap a hand over my inner child’s mouth. Because I know what the data mean now. And I know that no boss is going to call me and say “we are closed today.” The farm doesn’t get a snow day.

Winter on the farm means breaking ice, hauling hay in slick mud and snow, loading hogs in finger-numbing cold, fixing the burst pipe in the workshop because I forgot to turn off the water. It means carrying the rock bar up to the back forty to bust the ice on the pond so the cattle can drink. It means that instead of sitting in my chair reading about Shackleton, I have to get out in the goddamned weather and be Shackleton … even if only for a few hours.

Yet, still this morning, as I wait for the predawn light, the kid who loved Jack London is awake and waiting to see the beauty of a snow-covered world. Possibly, when the temperature rises above 20, there will be a walk across the farm. I’ll go down a wooded path with the trees frosted in white blankets, listening to the muted world of the snowy valley.

But for now, I think I’ll postpone the walk and the non-essentials of the to-do list, and instead sit wrapped in a blanket and read about Shackleton on the Endurance.

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Reading this weekend: A Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

The Small Moments of the Early Morning

peggy-15It is a cool 48 degrees as I step off the back porch. The sun is below the eastern ridge, a heavy dew hangs on the grass, and a light mist floats in the orchard. The crabapple, looking like a carefully decorated Christmas tree, is heavy with fruit. There are still figs ripening on the fig trees, and as I bring feed to Peggy, I part the curtains of leaves and look for fruit, flicking softly each ripened fig to dislodge other guests. I pop a soft plum-colored fig into my mouth, then open the gate to feed our sow.

Peggy is up quickly, a sure sign that after a difficult week her appetite has returned. She follows me to the feeding trough, submitting to a quick back scratch as I present her grain-and-slop breakfast. Her piglets burrow down in the hay awaiting her return.

The farrowing began the previous Sunday evening with one piglet and then a long, anxious hour of nothing. Around 5:30, we hit the panic button and called the vet. Nearly four hours later, our sow (and vet) had delivered 15 active piglets. In the ensuing days, Peggy lost a few by crushing them. Typically a very careful mother, the pain and swelling from the prolonged assisted delivery undoubtedly made her less attentive.

I exit the side gate next to the newly erected greenhouse. It is only 7:30 a.m. and the winds are still quiet. In just a few hours a group of friends will arrive to help stretch the plastic over the metal-and-wood skeleton. The completed 24-by-50-foot high tunnel is earmarked to house our winter crops, and soon I’ll be hustling to get the ground prepared and greens planted for fall.

Entering the inner corral, I open another gate. It squeaks too loudly and alerts the inhabitants of the barn of my arrival. Out pours our flock of sheep, all 18 ewes and offspring, and one very jealous ram. The ram’s recent arrival has made what was formerly a peaceful walk among the flock an occasion for high drama. He emerges from the barn like a gunslinger, to face me down on the dusty barnyard. His head shakes, he grunts, and he takes a few quick steps in my direction. Sidestepping, I slip past him and hurriedly fling open the gate to the pasture.

The cattle catch sight from the lower fields, and their bellows echo off the surrounding hills. Taking the racket as its cue, the sun emerges over the ridge and illumines all of the valley. I turn and walk back to the barn and fill up a bucket of feed for the cattle. It is not needed, but feeding them every few days keeps them docile and eager to come when called. A measure of control that will be rewarded should they ever escape onto our busy highway.

A gesture to Grainger and he jumps in the truck for the ride down the drive. With four muddy feet, he plants his mark across the entire span of the truck seat. At the gate to the lower pasture, I climb out, bucket in hand. Opening the gate is always a bit of a trick, with 1,500-pound cows crowding ‘round on the other side. I manage to squeeze through and fill the trough with feed, spending a few minutes watching the calves dart in for milk while moms are otherwise engaged.

Back in the truck and up the long drive, I pull up to the barn. Grainger tumbles gracelessly out in all of his late-puppy glory. The chickens, meanwhile, have come off the roosts, so I toss them some scratch. The newly hatched chicks are huddled under the heat lamp and barely acknowledge my presence.

One last chore, I walk out to the woods and fill more buckets of feed for the waiting market hogs. They average 225 pounds now and have another six weeks before slaughter. But I do not speak of such things as I turn the buckets into the trough. And they seem unconcerned that their desire to eat until stuffed might impact the course of their lives.

I leave them fat and content and go back to the house to join Cindy in a cup of coffee. We discuss the upcoming day, and, after feeding myself, I head back outside.greenhouse-011

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Reading this weekend: Guilds In The Middle Ages, by Georges Renard.

Farm Mornings: The tasks before the tasks

January, in theory, should be a slower month on the farm. So forgive my pique this Saturday morning when the rooster — who should be sleeping in on these post-solstice, light-deprived days —begins crowing before dawn. Opening my eyes for a squint, I read the red glow of the clock at 5:58. I close my eyes and try to drift back off to sleep. After what seems many more minutes, I chance another glance: 6:02.

Resigned, I drag myself from under the covers, gather up my overalls, and feel my way downstairs in the darkness to start the morning coffee. The 6 o’clock hour is my natural wakeup time without an alarm clock, regardless, so nothing lost.

Over coffee I contemplate the to-do list of the day, then dress and head out into the cold. Of late, our morning chores seem to have expanded. Currently we have pigs in three different paddocks. Water needs to be checked, feed delivered, bedding inspected, back scratches administered. Caesar, the draft horse, needs hay, his fresh manure shoveled and added to a growing compost pile, and the gate opened to his pasture, which in mid-January has little grass, yet still manages to absorb him all day in the search.

The hens take the least time in the morning: simply open the gate of the chicken run to the outside world, scatter a bit of grain, and let them do what they do best — chase cold-hardy bugs and get chased in return by the amorous rooster. We collect eggs in the evening, what little there are in these short winter days, saving that extra step in the morning.

In the sequence of chores, I usually check on the sheep, but this morning I decide to first feed the cattle, who get fed every other day. That requires fueling, then warming up the tractor, scooping out a bucket of grain, and putting hay spears on the front and back of the tractor. The bucket of grain is just an enticement, a path to the bovine heart, as it is for all God’s creatures.

The cattle are in the back forty, a half-mile’s journey through the woods. They meet me at the gate leading to the upper pastures. After a bit of jockeying so the tractor can get through (a nod of thanks to Becky, our English shepherd), I continue up the hill to the feed trough. I toss the grain in, count heads, and drive to another field, where I roll back a tarp to uncover a stack of round bales, then pick up a bale with the front spear, turn the tractor around, and lance another on the back hay spear.

Bales fore and aft, I head back across the fields to the cattle. While they are busy licking the trough, I roll out a hay bale across 50 yards of pasture. This allows them to eat as if grazing, and fertilizes along the path in the process.

Cattle counted, fed, and content, I climb back on the tractor and head back through the woods to the lower portion of the farm.  I arrive to find our weekend helper, armed with a to-do list from Cindy, busy loading hay in the barn to carry to the pigs in the woods. An arctic blast is coming, and we need to make sure they have plenty of hay in which to burrow down.

lambs 007

Two ewe-lambs born the next morning.

Our helper greets me by asking if I have seen the new twin lambs. I had not. Two beautiful ram lambs, the first of, we hope, 20 or more, are busy nursing their mom — a wondrous sight, no matter how often witnessed.

Although it is now just 9 a.m. and we have plenty to do the rest of the morning, I feel as if the day is done on our small farm. I turn back from the barn and walk up to the house to catch up with Cindy. She had been busy separating and attending to the new mom and lambs, but I find her inside, just hanging up the phone. She is off to another farm to collect a gilt (a young female pig) who’s been with a neighbor’s boar the past few days. I grab another cup of coffee and go back outside, to begin anew a slow January farm day.

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Reading this weekend: rereading selections from In Your Stride by A.B. Austin, a guide to walking England written in 1931