Tag Archives: P.G.Wodehouse

Genesis: A Farmer’s Day

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1 In the morning of the first hour the room was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the sleeping. And the farmer awoke and went downstairs in the dark and flipping the switch said, Let there be light. And seeing the light he said, This is not good, and turned it off, making the sacred bean drink in that dark, which was then separate from the light. Taking a sip he said that it was good, and he turned the light back on.

2 After staring without expression over a bowl of cereal for most of the second hour he rose and spread the previous night’s waters on a convenient bush outside and called this irrigation.

3 He then walked among the gardens and diverted other waters, calling some cistern-waters and others well-waters. And in so doing he nourished the plants called brassicas and the others he called weeds.

4 The porch light was still on, dividing the night from the day; and it was made diminished by the larger light rising in the east. The kitchen light, now aglow, showed the awakened presence of she who rules both night and day. And it was good that he was outside.

5 Now the fowl, that only fly with great awkwardness, were loosed from their coop. They were given two charges: pursue the small bothersome creatures that no one cares for and rapidly craft nourishing eggs. Then the lambs that bleat endlessly continued to do so without letting up: and it was not good; so he commanded them to cease; and they did not, making the farmer reconsider his decision to release these creatures upon the land. This was the fifth hour, and already he tired from his labors.

6 Yet he continued, by taking pictures of his likeness and also that of she who rules the night and day, posting them to the Cloud. Laboring still more in this realm he “liked,” “smiled,” and “angry-faced” the remainder of this time to its completion. And he said, This is merely okay good and not really useful to my day or the many things that I ignore.

7 In the seventh hour he decided that this was enough, so he called to her, Let us lie down and take a short nap before we enjoy more of the refreshing sacred bean drink. And they did, and it was a good use of their time. Whereupon they rose and piddled around for many hours doing this and that before they lay down yet again and withdrew into darkness.

And that was very good.

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Reading this weekend: Nothing Serious (Wodehouse). 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die (Mustich)

Gimme Three Steps (Three Hopeful Steps to Feeding the Planet by Feeding Yourself)

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Raise and grow what you like to eat. This may seem obvious. Perhaps it is the lazy Southerner in me, but too often would-be farmers are focused on the business and not the pleasures gained from working the land. They visit our farm and I hear the schemes with numbers and data. Slow down, I tell them. What do you like to eat each night, I ask? For special occasions? Focus on that. Give yourself the goal of feeding yourself and your family. Then see if you can turn a profit. But make the profit the byproduct.

And, you don’t have to live in the country to produce a significant part of your diet or at least add to your table. We all know someone in the city who has a magnificent garden, even keeps hens or bees. I have a niece in Oregon who, with her fiancé, raises crawfish in a mini-aquaculture system next to the garage. If you have even a small parcel and are willing to work, Mother Nature can be a wonderful partner.

Eat what you grow and raise. The rural French, God love ‘em, have an elevated peasant cuisine. All cultures have a cuisine of want, born of the land, hard work, and frugality. But country French cuisine makes a special art of not only not wasting but also turning the cast-off into something special and memorable. Take your inner French peasant out for a stroll, and use what you have raised and grown and use it all. Learn to make stocks out of bones, pâtés out of organ meat, delicious terrines out of a hog’s head. Save the tough stems of asparagus for soups, the zucchini as big as a bat for savory pancakes. And learn to compost. It is not hard; nature knows how to rot.

Celebrate what you grow and raise with friends and family at the table. Use what you have raised to rekindle family ties and build community. Put the phone away, log out of Instagram and Facebook, and prepare a meal that is as much from your land as is possible. Experience real joy in that act of preparation. Make that your goal for every meal. When dining alone or with your loved one, be mindful of the food. Make each meal a Thanksgiving. And as often as you can, invite others to share in that act.

Yesterday we had a full day of work on the farm. But we found time last night to have four guests join us for a dinner on the front porch. The night before, I had braised one of our pork shoulders, then minced and rolled it with various herbs from the garden. The ultimate dish began with a potful of grits cooked with raw milk from a nearby farm; next came a large mess of freshly picked turnip greens, cooked in homemade chicken stock and homegrown garlic. The minced pork was fried in medallions and served atop the greens and grits.

It was a mindful celebration of eating and drinking wine with good friends that paid homage to the work we do. A sharing of that bounty that rewards us for the sore backs and the stress of maintaining the farm. No scheme, no data, just a simple conviction that producing, eating with love, and sharing with neighbors just might help feed the world.

(This is one from the archives. And it still is, I say modestly, relevant.)

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Reading this weekend: a history of Beaujolais, some Wodehouse, and A River Runs Through It (Maclean). The latter is one of my favorite books that I reread every year or two.

A Nice Fall Day

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I awoke yesterday morning at my usual time. Everyone has his internal clock, and an hour before sunrise mine goes off. Always has. Checking the temperature, I saw that we had dropped for the first time this fall into the low 40s. The wind was up, blowing the wind chimes as I made coffee. The cold front continued to move into our valley and blew hard all day.

I compulsively checked email and wrote a few letters before waking Cindy up. A lot of small to medium tasks on our to-do list: working on hog fencing, washing clothes, baking bread, checking the bees, doing the usual chores, putting up siding on the new hay barn, laying down fresh bedding for the sheep.Early October on the farm 021

By 8:30 Caleb had shown up from his home down the hill. He and I gathered our tools and headed to the hog paddock. The paddock is a wooded area of about two acres. It runs at a 25 degree slope from east to west. Over the years, the hogs have rooted away the eastern edge along the fenceline, leaving gaps in some places of as much as 12 inches at the bottom of the fence. Our task was to lower each hog panel to ground level and reset the electric wire to about six inches above the ground. It was a straightforward task that Caleb and I were able to complete by noon.

The whole time we were working, with the cold wind seeping into the valley, I kept thinking about catfish. As a kid I lived for those moments to run my trotlines, getting up every two hours throughout the night, checking the lines, removing the fish and rebaiting hooks. ‘Long about sunup, I’d spend an hour or two cleaning the catfish hung on the old oak tree in the backyard. Having dumped the heads and entrails back into the pond, I’d head into the house to breakfast. With those thoughts in mind, I headed in for lunch of a couple of lamb chops and winter squash soup from the night before, leaving Caleb to put away the tools.

Cindy, meanwhile, had been busy through the morning with washing and hanging clothes out to dry, baking bread, prepping winter squash for freezing and checking the bees. After lunch, our friend Susan showed up bearing homemade preserves: pear butter, fresh cider vinegar and candied jalapenos. She was also picking up a quarter-beef. After she departed, I went for a nice walk and smoked a cigar. A cool fall afternoon is the perfect time for a smoke and reflective walk. An hour later, I was back at the house, where Cindy and I enjoyed coffee and fresh baked bread with some of Susan’s pear butter.

After coffee, we headed back outside and spent a couple of hours putting siding up on the barn, milled from our new sawmill. Cindy has been doing most of the work putting it up, but now I have done my bit and can rightfully claim that it was a mutual project. Right?

Back inside for a rare co-produced dinner, a rooster simmered with herbs and onions from the garden for a few hours by me, then further seasoned by Cindy and the stock topped with her homemade dumplings. Chicken and dumplings as the mercury dips to 35 degrees—now that is the way to complete a great day.

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Reading this weekend: Galahad at Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse. Hard to be disgruntled with the state of the world when Wodehouse is at hand.

Piggy Love

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Lord Emsworth and Lady Constance (Clarence and Connie to their friends) followed me this evening into their new paddock. They had been living in the spring garden paddock, snacking on cowpeas, tomatoes, pepper and eggplants. I opened the walk-through gate and they trundled after me, noses to the ground sniffing and snarfling, reaching out to nibble on volunteer turnips, pumpkin and squash vines and the other remains of the summer garden.

Clarence and Connie, our Berkshire boar and sow, were ushered into their private matrimonial quarters a few weeks ago after he began to show interest in consummating this arranged marriage. He’d sidle up to her and place both forelegs across her mid-section, standing at a right angle to her body. She’d continue eating, which we took to be a sign of at least mild interest, assuming that if she wasn’t interested she would bite him.

She would reciprocate by pushing her haunches against him as he walked by, he’d keep going. He’d stop an hour later, take a look at her, drool running down his jowls. She’d ignore him.

We figure some night soon the combination of emerging sexual maturity; hormones and timing will culminate in a mating. Meanwhile, I watch as Connie is body blocked by a snarling Clarence from nabbing a 7-top turnip. Porcine chivalry is still apparently in its Viking phase.