Tag Archives: Work

Lazy, I want to be lazy

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I pulled on my third shirt just after 9:30 yesterday morning. The drought continues here in East Tennessee with the high heat and humidity punishing all efforts at productivity. We had spent the morning moving cattle, clearing brush from electric fencing and cleaning manure out of the barn. All of which left me drenched and guzzling water as fast as it leaked out of me. Some days it just seems too brutal to keep up with the workload.

A three-shirt morning

A three-shirt morning

Finally Caleb (my farm helper) and I wrapped up our workday a little after noon. We went into Sweetwater to pick up some supplies at the farmer’s co-op and ran into Tim. After a quick bite to eat at a local Mexican joint we headed back to the farm.

In the evening Tim came over and joined me and Don Davis, a friend of long standing, for dinner. I fixed a pot roast along with carrots, potatoes and a cabbage salad, always a favorite dish of mine and one Cindy dislikes. But since she was visiting family in Florida I could indulge in whatever I wanted to eat (along with a cigar).

Although it had probably been ten years since I had seen Don, like all good friends we were able to reconnect easily. He has written a number of books on Appalachian culture over the years and he brought us up to speed on the history of the American chestnut book he has been writing. He hopes to have a publisher in the coming months and the book in print within the year.

Now, after the sweat of yesterday, I find myself dawdling this morning. There is a full list of projects commanding my attention. But I just can’t bring myself to go back into the heat. This unmanly procrastination is only making matters worse as the mercury climbs into the eighties before 10am.

Yet here I sit.

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Reading this weekend: The Breakdown of Nations by Leopold Kohr, a timely read after the Brexit vote.

Waiting On Rain

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Waiting on rain. In my humble estimation, it’s all about reciprocity. After all, I’ve done the hard work of getting the gardens ready, dozens of new trees planted, the manure spread, and the grass seed scattered. Now it is up to the old man to simply cut loose and let it pour. But nothing falls from the sky this dry spring — we are already down 75 percent for the year — leaving me to wonder if it is time to channel our inner Assyrian and slaughter a goat.Sunday 4-10-16 005

Instead of tackling the endless to-do list and fretting about no rain, yesterday we headed to town in the truck. The master gardeners of Roane County had their annual plant sale, and we went as much for the fellowship as for the plants.

Several hours later, good conversations with friends (Tim, Russ, Summer, and Maureen) under our belts and a handful of ornamentals in the truck bed, we headed for home. When we crossed over the Tennessee River, we reentered our side of the county, South of the River. Winding down Highway 72, we pulled off on a gravel drive in Paint Rock at Aaron and Michelle’s small farm, a tidy place with goats, pigs, chickens, and gardens. Aaron broke from hoeing his garden long enough to give me a flat of heirloom pipe and cigar tobacco plants he had successfully started. I’m anxious to try my hand at curing my own blend this fall.

As we said our goodbyes, a few hopeful raindrops fell onto the pollen-coated truck windows. Here it comes, I pronounced as the skies darkened. We drove toward the farm, winding down and around the curves of Sweetwater Road as fast as the old truck would safely carry us. We arrived just as a steady drizzle began to fall … and then stopped.

A few hours later, after a few more fits and starts, we had accumulated a tenth of an inch of rain. Now, I’m a man to appreciate the small things in life as well as the big. But, come on….

So it was, that as late-afternoon guests pulled up the drive, I was in the midst of dragging the goat toward the sacrificial altar. Considering this a sign from a higher power for a temporary pardon, I postponed my attempt to appease the gods for a little while longer. We greeted and conducted our visitors on a tour of the farm for a couple of hours, a fairly common experience for us and, we hope, enjoyable and educational for them.

After their departure it was time for chores and dinner. Cindy fed the livestock, and I prepared a chicken paprikash with an old rooster, accompanied by a simple tomato tart and a cucumber salad. We read until bedtime, when the rains finally began to fall.

A little more than an inch fell overnight. And this morning the smell of burnt offerings is scarcely noticeable in our valley.

Time To Get To It

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Barn 008

Spring lambs, spring grass

It is still a couple of hours before sunrise, the birds are chattering in the crape myrtle as the sky begins to lighten over the eastern ridge. Our rooster has been offering up his dawn greeting for at least two hours. And Becky just killed a large raccoon at the garbage can. In other words it is another morning on our farm in east Tennessee.

We have a full couple of days ahead planting grapevines, a new nut orchard, adding to the pawpaw grove, finishing the new raised beds for the strawberries and stretching a hundred yards of new fence. There will be a hard freeze tonight and preparations will be needed to protect the figs which are fruiting. And I am smoking a whole lamb today for a few friends who will dine with us this evening.

The work load on the farm at this time of year is over the top. In addition to all of the usual chores and ongoing infrastructure projects the seasonal tasks of mowing, gardening, mulching, pasture renovations and the annual barn cleaning just keep stacking up. Just the prospect of getting off the farm for an hour sends us in to a tail spin, feeling that we just got that much further behind.

But for all that work and the carping about it, we love this life. Mostly, the sheer loveliness of spring in Tennessee, the excitement of waiting for Petunia to farrow and being able to share with friends the bounty of the farm are ample compensations.

Time to get to it.

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Reading this weekend: The Dream of the Earth, by Thomas Berry

A Farming Guide to the Political Season

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Monday night we spent a couple of hours loading yearling wethers. They were destined for the slaughter the following morning. A fairly straightforward operation, Cindy pointed and I grabbed, hoisting the hundred-pound castrated ram lambs off their feet, the two of us then carrying them out of the barn. A better chute system would help, but we work with what we have today.

Wednesday night, in a rain just above freezing and a mud just below boot tops, we loaded a hog also earmarked for slaughter. We slid and stumbled in the muck, cursed and shot accusatory looks, then laughed with relief when she finally walked onto the trailer unassisted.

Thursday night, during a late season arctic blast, our newest sow farrowed 11 healthy piglets. We provided her an ample bedding of hay in an improvised stall in an open shed, adding a sheet of plywood to block the brutal north wind and a heat lamp for warmth, and, beyond providence, we trusted in the maternal instincts of an experienced mother to keep the newborns comfortable and well fed.Peggy 010

By Saturday the late-winter chill had begun to abate, and we were gifted with a rare sunny day and highs around 50 degrees. I spent the day crossing the smaller lamb paddocks on foot, oversowing a mix of oats, rye, and turnip seed that will hopefully provide some fast-growing early-spring forage for the sheep.

Early afternoon I took a break to help Cindy welcome 20 guests from the area Master Gardeners club. They were on hand to conduct a pruning practice in our half-acre orchard, which had been seriously neglected since the last big pruning two years ago — a pruning that is needed annually. In a short couple of hours, armed with pruning knives, loppers, and tree saws, the crew had cut away the deadwood, the water sprouts, and a host of unwanted branches.

Pruning crew gone, we retired to the front porch for a beer with friends, who afterward pitched in and helped with chores, then we all caravanned to another farm and joined in unloading some newly arrived weanling pigs.

I find that as the years go by, the rhetoric of conservatism and liberalism mean less and less to the life we live. Rhetoric aside, no candidate or party speaks for the rural farms or communities. Left or right the language is of the city: eternal growth and happy days (past, present, or future).

As a farmer I know a couple of truths. First, that the manure I sling has real value. Second, that growth is a part of a larger cycle and is never eternally sustained; that the wheel turns and winter always follows spring, summer, and fall.  

So, green grass must be carefully harvested and stored. Orchards must be pruned of deadwood, a diseased peach tree ruthlessly cut down and burned. Lambs serve a purpose and must be sold and eaten when that day comes. Sows will farrow, cute piglets will grow to 300 pounds before being butchered, and gardens will be tilled, planted, harvested, and prepared for the fallow months.

Manure needs to be conserved and used with care. Seed must be sown in order to grow. Resources must be nurtured. Infrastructure must be repaired and improved. And it is partnership and cooperation, not partisanship, that sustain connections in a rural community and on a farm.

And if adequately prepared for, the winter is traversed relatively unscathed into spring.

I’ve Done It Again

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Time for a confession. Do not trust me with your pocket knife, for I have lost another one. It was a handy little French grafting knife from Opinel. Easily replaced and inexpensive. But it replaced a more expensive Le Theirs pocket knife, which replaced a German pocket knife, which replaced another in a long line of perfectly good knives….

Pocket knives

Pocket knives I have lost

Try an exciting thought experiment: Put yourself in the shoes of this farmer. Or make that a pair of rubber Wellingtons because it is raining or snowing or icing. You are driving the tractor. It is sliding this way and then that as you make your way up the hill pasture. Ahead the cattle are bawling, waiting for fresh hay.

In preparation for dropping off the hay, you first have to remove the baling string surrounding the round bale. You climb off the tractor, in the rain or whatever, and pull out your pocket knife, where it has been nestled securely in an overall pocket, under a barn jacket, under a raincoat. Reaching up, you cut the strings on the bale. And here is where it happens.

In the rain or whatever, as the cattle gather round impatiently, you do the following: Once you’ve pulled the various cut strings off the bale, you place the knife on the fender well of the tractor and you simply get back on the tractor and drive off. You will find this an extraordinarily effective means of losing a knife.

Then there’s a second option (my personal favorite). In this scenario, you fold up your knife and slide it into the raincoat pocket. And your knife vanishes immediately and forever. Because every farm raincoat has two fake pockets. These are the slits that allowed you to reach inside your raincoat, under your barn jacket, to access the overall pocket and remove the knife in the first place. By returning the knife to the raincoat pocket-slit, you have conveniently deposited it directly into the muck, snow, or whatever for eternal safekeeping.

You never notice its absence immediately. You assume it is in another coat, in a different pair of jeans, on the kitchen counter. But after days turn into weeks, the reality becomes clear: “I’ve done it again.”

Anyone want to loan me their knife?

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Reading this weekend: The Classical Tradition in Western European Farming by G. E. Fussell. A dry but interesting work on the impact of classical farming literature on actual Medieval farming practices. Books create innovation!