This is our twentieth year on the farm. These journal entries are meant to give you a sense of the tasks, people, and goings on that fill and populate our lives.
2009
January 2: Spent a quiet New Year’s Day. Left the farm once. Drove by the giant ash spill at Swan Pond. TVA had boats with booms collecting spilled ash up and down the river. Looked like an invading army. What a mess.
January 10: Preparing beef burgundy for dinner, Cindy is making homemade noodles. Had dinner last night at J & A’s. Our newly vegetarian friends served roasted root vegetables and an asparagus tart.
March 22: Began annual barn cleaning on Friday. Spread 6-8 tons on manure/compost on lower field. Note: get more diesel.
April 5: Cattle moved this morning to back pastures. Fencing weak in a few areas, schedule workday to repair. Pastures up 5-6 inches, hay in 30 days? Service tractors and get ready! Hydraulic hose needs replacing and oil and lubricant on Kubota.
May 9: Woke up late, 7:30. Overcast and raining. Stayed in and read a collection of authors on W. Berry. Left me feeling inadequate in my understanding of and involvement with both the wider and local world.
Moved another round bale near pig paddock and forked over the fence the hay for bedding. After all the rain what a mess.
June 25: Driving into town to purchase hog meal, I found three horses loose and in a neighbor’s yard. They belong to the new owners of the old Henry place. Mr. K calls them “the Milker’s”, because he says they milk the system to keep from working. Since he is disfigured and disabled by cancer and still works every single day on his farm like a mule, I guess he has the right to call them what he wants.
Spent most of the day trying to get the horses secured. New neighbors out of town. Meanwhile, while I’m trying to get the horses corralled, Donald came out of his house and broke into tears, telling me the bank was going to seize his house for non-payment. Then he told me he had the money. I said, pay them. He said, I’m not going to give the bastards anything. Crazy Town.
September 3: Donald told me, “I’d be just as happy or sad if I lived in the Taj Mahal.” Not bad for a dying and paranoid old git. (Donald was quite the character, now deceased. If you want to read one of my favorite recollections of him, then try this one.)
Roast pork, turnip greens and sugar pie pumpkin for dinner.
December 13: November was a tough month, my back was out and had the flu. Haven’t got anything done on the farm. My sister and her family are coming to stay for a couple of weeks to bow hunt and visit before Christmas. Looking forward to seeing them.
To do this weekend:
- Fill up hog feeders with 1 ton of meal.
- Set up divider fence to keep weanling pigs out of 2nd
- Set posts for boar pen.
- Prune grapevines.
- Cindy makes cheese
- Complete 2nd hoop shelter for hogs.
Forecast is a high of 30 both days with light snow.
2010
January 10: 10th day below freezing, forecast for tomorrow is upper 30’s. A thaw?
January 30: Snow yesterday, 2 inches of rain last night followed by freezing rain this morning, power off. 5 hogs due to processor Monday morning.
May 1: Two batches of chicks hatched. Spent morning repairing fence in upper fields, Gabe helped. Moved Connie back in with Clarence, he bred her four times within the hour. Dinner of CFS (country fried steak for the uninitiated), mashed potatoes and turnip greens.
August 16: “Unless many people live and work in the intimate relationship of community life there can never emerge a truly unified nation, or a community of mankind.” Arthur E. Morgan, The Small Community (first director of TVA)
November 16: Work bees and install new supers, dormant oil on orchard, move yearling lamb to barn and butcher this evening, caulk windows in potting shed, drop off feed barrels, rack perry into new fermenters.
December 26: snow still falling, 24 degrees. Two inches of snow on Christmas Day. Cindy did not get home from Florida until 8pm last night. Cancelled flights and a diversion to Huntsville, AL. She drove in snow from there in what must have been the last rental car. Dinner of stuffed goose, salad, potatoes, glazed carrots, all from the farm. Opened gifts just before midnight.
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Reading this weekend: The Story of Gardening (Wright)
Ah, I remember the 2010 Christmas (too) well. Milkers, eh?
I know, right. I have no recollection of him describing those neighbors in that fashion. But there was a long account of that day in the journal.
Keeping such a journal is a fine idea. And not just for the reminisces. From the 2009 March 22 entry you noted spreading some manure/compost on the lower field. Any idea how many acres received this bounty (with a view to figuring tons per acre)? Any recollection of whether a noticeable difference in the lower field resulted?? Not asking as a scientific agronomist (though that part of me is indeed curious too) but what sort of learning did Mr Miller gain from it? Over the next season or two do you recall any difference between treated and untreated parts of the lower field?
With different species of animals being fed out have you considered spreading manure from one specie – say the sheep – into pasture used for something else (hogs or cattle)? This is beyond my experience, but I’m wondering if parasites in dung can survive and thus barn manure should be rotated among paddocks.
Well, Clem, you have seen our farm. I had elaborate plans for spreading manure in a rotating pattern. But essentially, every year I dump it on the same field. It is just too much of a headache (not to mention dangerous) to haul that manure spreader out onto some of the hill pastures. The past two years I have reserved the annual barn cleaning residue for the gardens. But it is time to revisit adding it to the lower field. Keeping the journal, while not winning me any literary prizes, has been helpful: Just when did we build the well house, stone wall, potting shed, lose Robbie, sell our Beef Devons…?