Our new herd sire, a Texel ram

As my friend Russ likes to say, “Everything grows in Tennessee. Just nothing grows particularly well.” For me, that’s one of those statements like, “If you don’t like the weather around here, just wait five minutes”: I have heard it voiced from Maine (where it is true) to Arizona (where it most certainly is not). Utterances of universality are meant to convey a winking nod to some truth, and if there is any to be found in that assessment of gardening in this area, it boils down to the simple fact that ours is a mild climate, interspersed with extremes, with long growing seasons. Our climate allows the cultivation of both cool- and warm-weather plants, all of which in our equal opportunity environment are plagued by heat and humidity and cold and ice, accompanied at strategic times by voracious assaults by insects and pestilential diseases.

The real bottom line is this: Producing a vegetable garden in our valley, one that even the curmudgeon William Cobbett would admire, is not terribly difficult, provided you can overlook the occasional pigweed and its ilk. The main limitations are those sudden swings in the mood of Mother Nature, such as the 4-5 days of single digits in December that blasted the cole crops into withered submission, wherein what should have been a hoop house full of greens to bless our table until this spring became instead a flash-freezing method that Clarence Birdseye would have approved … except that what remained was no longer edible.

All of this and more has been on my mind these past weeks, as February unfolded, soaked to the bone but much warmer than normal. Just in time for March’s mid-week entrance, the hoop house is now replanted, mainly with greens. The seed potatoes are spread out in the barn and starting to sprout. With just a few days of dry weather, the spuds should be ready to plant in the south garden. The garlic shoots are six inches high — planted last fall, the cloves stand at attention in three neat 40-foot rows — and I’ve taken to spending my evenings at the kitchen table with my garden journal and seed bin, sketching out improbable planting timetables.

Beyond the gardens, the pastures are greening up at least two months earlier than last year. Yet, once again, we missed this past fall’s liming schedule. One of our area farmers co-ops is backed up on deliveries until next year. The fault is, of course, laid at the well-heeled feet of all those ex-pat Californians and New Yorkers demanding even more from our limited services (here I am kidding, yet, sadly I am not). So this spring we try and balance whether to oversow expensive grass seed onto pastures whose nutrients may be locked up by a pH imbalance with whether the temps will remain moderately warm for germination and growth.

We’ve decided to split the difference. First, we will redo our out-of-date soil testing. Then we will get back on the schedule for liming in the fall with the Loudon Co-op, at which point a driver will (unless we’re bumped to 2028) show up with a massive dump truck and drive over our most butt-clenching terrain spreading ag lime. This is done in our area in the fall simply because it’s the season of the driest months. It also takes about six months for the lime to break down and moderate the pH in the soil. If all goes as planned, spring 2024 we will reseed the limed pastures, a critical task that has been on our to-do list since well before the pandemic. Meanwhile, in the spirit of throwing good money after bad, I will go ahead now and oversow the smaller sheep paddocks with a mix of clovers, annual rye, and turnip seeds (yes, sheep love turnip greens) in hopes of adding at least some additional spring forage and nutritional benefits to the soil.

And there I have it distilled, after all these years, that the most essential elements in this farming life are an ample store of hope for the future and the luck of good timing.

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Reading this weekend: Captain Blood (R. Sabatini), suggested by a nephew (good one, Andy). Holy Smoke (G. Infante), a Marxist  — Groucho, not Karl — interpretation of the pleasures of cigars. Why? Well I made a New Year’s resolution to smoke more cigars, and reading this fun house mirror of a work helps remind me to keep that resolution. Also, The Social History of Bourbon (G. Carson), the classic and so-fun-to-reread history of our most essential contribution to world civilization.

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