Tag Archives: Pawpaw

Ten Reasons I’m Thankful This Thanksgiving

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A few cisterns in happier times

I’m thankful this Thanksgiving that …

  • The severe drought has made us grateful for the water we have stored in our cisterns and has made us more thoughtful about our usage and plans for conservation.
  • Several years of culling to improve our flock of sheep has paid off. The market wethers are fat and healthy. The ewes are pregnant and lambing season is still a couple of months away.
  • Our hoop house is complete, loaded with greens, and warm on a cold day.
  • Cindy, as my partner, continues to inspire me with her energy, skills, and willingness to share this life.
  • My father, after suffering a stroke this year, is still with us at 89. He continues to find the time to volunteer each week at a local church helping feed the needy.
  • My mother’s eldest sister is still alive and well at 96, the last surviving stalk of that line. She reminds me through her continuing penchant for reading that one’s intellect is a gift to keep and nourish.
  • The Republic still stands even as those on the right and the left trumpet its demise.
  • My blogging friend Clem, with his insufferable positive outlook, reminds me to not herald the end of the world, just yet.
  • My friend Rayna harvested enough pawpaw fruit this year for Cindy to make pawpaw crème brûlée for Thanksgiving dinner.
  • My brothers and I (and a brother-in-law) managed to find the time for a recent get-together. A weekend in the north Louisiana woods eating good food and sitting by a fire is a wonderful tonic for the soul.

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Reading this week: Southern Hunting in Black and White: nature, history and ritual in a Carolina community. By Stuart A. Marks.

A Sabbath Walk

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A fast moving cold front left us with three inches of rain Saturday and a wonderfully cool morning today. So I laced up my boots, grabbed my walking stick and a cup of coffee and took off into the woods for a morning stroll. A nice ramble with no particular destination is always a great way to greet a new day, week or year.

Large dew covered spider webs graced the fence over the pig paddock. I looked carefully while passing but discerned no noticeable message to this farmer in the weaving. Opening the gates leading from the orchard to the pastures I strolled along a fence line separating the barn field from the upper field as Becky joined me. The cattle lumbered down from the top of the hill towards me with an expectant air that went unfulfilled. We strolled on into the woods.

Entering the woods we walked across the wet weather stream that issued from the hillside further up. We followed the meandering forest road that wends for over a quarter of a mile up to our back pastures. The sunlight was just starting to cascade over the ridge spilling into the woods. Shafts of light layered above my head like rock strata, or like a cathedral window carefully positioned to optimize sunlight. It was beautiful.

Becky startled a doe from her morning repose and treed a squirrel. The sunlight was penetrating deeper into the woods creating minor eclipses as a tulip poplar or white oak slid across the face of the sun. We walked on up the hill towards our back pastures. Standing at the edge for a moment, balanced between light and shade, we turned back into the coolness of the woods.

I was keeping my eye out for a pawpaw tree. Last night we dined at a friend’s cabin on the edge of the Cherokee forest. While walking the creek before dinner we feasted on wild pawpaws. A first for me, the pawpaw is our only native temperate tropical fruit, tasting of a cross between bananas and mangoes. We left that evening having secured permission to transplant several small seedlings. But I had hoped to find some on our land.

With no success we turned our feet towards home. Back down the forest road, across the stream and up into the barn pasture I walked with Becky by my side. Arriving at the barnyard I did the morning chores and headed back into the house. Cindy had a bowl of oatmeal waiting for me.