Monthly Archives: February 2014

Where Do We Go?

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Some thirty years after their passing, I visited the hometown of my grandparents. The Crowley, Louisiana, of my childhood was a bustling, thriving small town. It served as a hub of a rich agricultural landscape of rice farms. The Crowley I visited a decade ago was much as any other small town in America—it seemed to have lost its coherence, its reason for being.

A blighted and empty downtown, even as the rice warehouse district still appeared to be functioning. Housing stock that had disintegrated. A certain pride had vanished. The traffic arteries into town were littered with strip mall architecture. And with all such building, much was abandoned after ten years of use: what do you do with an old Hardees?

We sacrificed our communities and the social cohesion of small towns as farmers left the land. The small businesses supporting those families were shuttered or replaced by big box retail. We moved nationally from a citizen-producer society to a “folks”(as in quaint and harmless)-consumer culture.

The Secretary of Agriculture under Nixon, Earl Butz, had a message to farmers, “Get Big or Get Out.” And American farmers got out. Our modern policies on agriculture, to be fair to Mr. Butz, have always been thus inclined. As a nation we see value in the production of agricultural goods and pride ourselves in the amount produced. But we’ve never valued the farmer and the small town around the farm.

As a consequence of bad policies and decisions, these communities have been eviscerated of any real living core. The principal businesses of the small towns in our East Tennessee valley are check cashing, title loans, pawn shops, tattoo parlors and antique shops—businesses that either suck away the individual’s ability to squeak from one check to the next, help him hide from himself, or sell him a phantom of a past he will never reach.

We have approximately 750,000 farmers in the U.S. Compare that to more than 14 million in a comparable-size area being farmed in Europe. Is it just a coincidence that Europe’s village culture remains more intact than ours? Whatever the reasons, it is clear that various factors have conspired to preserve that European tradition, and to the benefit of a livable landscape and community.

When you can’t or won’t get big and you get out … where do you go? Where do we go?

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Reading this weekend: Paper: an elegy by Ian Sansom

Two Dog Tales

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It’s how you say it, not what you say

Dogs listen more to your tone than to your words. It was in the low thirties and Caleb and I had been clearing a couple hundred yards of trees and brush with the chainsaw. Hard work on a steep slope, made more fatiguing by the cold. We had been at it for several hours while Becky and Katie, our two English Shepherds stayed close by my side.

Further down that hill slope, through a screen of woods was Caleb’s house. They have a collection of what I refer to as “Yappers,” dogs of no determinable breed but all weighing fewer than twenty pounds. A Napoleon complex acted out on a canine stage, these yappers provided a background of steady barking and growling to the crisp winter morning. The house they were protecting was a good fifty yards away from where we worked.  But it was clear they saw us as a threat.

My dogs ignored them other than to give the occasional irritated glance. As we neared completion of the project, Katie (daughter of Becky) ran down the slope towards the fence line. Fearing a rumble and its aftermath I barked a sharp guttural, “KATIE!” To your average kid it would be interpreted that your dad was pissed and you better stop what you are doing. And Katie did stop. Becky on the other hand heard the tone and translated it into “GET-EM!”  She exploded into action and covered the fifty yards before the “yappers” could bark an “Oh, shit.”

She rolled through and over them in a fight I could only glimpse through the screen of woods. Caleb and I are both yelling for her to return. Caleb’s stepdad is out on the porch yelling. And it occurs to me, finally, that to Becky it probably sounds like encouragement. With us as stand-ins for Roman citizens at the Coliseum, screaming for more blood, Becky was determined to entertain. She came back up the slope looking a bit smug from the fight. I yelled at her for good measure and we finished our work.

Old Meanness

Tip, our aged stockdog, was oblivious to the fight. Stone deaf and arthritic she misses all the excitement. But she still has a growl that chills the blood of certain men in the neighborhood. Is it wrong to chuckle at the memory of her pinning Caleb’s brother-in-law on the roof of his truck? I heard a plaintive call one day and went out to find Jay on the truck roof. Tip was using her growl and her stockdog eye to keep the interloper penned until she could consult with me.

A few months ago Cindy and I walked over the hill to visit with our neighbor at his barn. Tip insists on accompanying me anywhere on the farm. But with her arthritis it takes her three times as long to make the journey. We had been talking with Lowell for about fifteen minutes when Tip finally arrived. Lowell, who likes Tip and isn’t buffaloed by her growl, said affectionately, “well, here comes Old Meanness.”

We like that moniker.

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Reading this weekend: Dirt: the erosion of civilizations by David R. Montgomery. It is a fascinating history of the geologic record and role that the loss of soil has played in the decline of civilizations, a message we would do well to take seriously.

A Winged Elm Farm Scrapbook, With Soup!

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What Your Well-shod Farmer Is Wearing

On the farm I wear my steel-capped wellingtons 80% of the time.

Daily footwear

Daily footwear

For muck, and high wet grass and sheer ease to put on they can’t be beat. When working in the woods or going for a walk to check on the cattle, I reach for my Timberland work boots. And for fine warm afternoons in the garden, Birkenstocks are ideal.

I Got Your Polar Vortex Soup, Right Here

During one of our single digit nights I fixed this Scotch broth. A perfectly simple soup made better by using the “odd bits”.

2lbs. lamb neck or soup bones

2 tbsp. barley

½ cup of finely chopped carrots, turnips, onions, leeks, celery and parsley

Use a large Dutch oven and fill with two quarts of water. Add meat and bring to a boil, skim off any scum. Add barley, salt and pepper. Reduce to simmer, partially covered for an hour.

Add veggies, partially cover. Cook for one more hour. Remove the meat and let cool. Separate the meat from the bones. Add meat to soup. Season and serve.

The wind is up, the brush pile is large, give me some matches

An elderly neighbor stepped out his back door two weeks ago on a fine wild fire 016blustery day and burned his brush pile, then burned a couple of acres of his in-laws. Then to keep the fun rolling his fire burned another few acres of an adjoining property before being stopped just shy of a house. Having been stymied in that direction it took off and burned six acres of our winter pastures before our volunteer fire department in South Roane County arrived and put out the fire.