Monthly Archives: April 2024

Note to Self: If I Get Some Time Today

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If I get some time today, I could spread that ag lime on the two sheep paddocks. I’ve been meaning to buy some lime. I should do that. Which reminds me that I will need to replace that tire on the Ezee-Flow spreader that dry-rotted over winter. I’ll call over to the farmers co-op and see if they have a replacement. Maybe they have my tiller wheel ready. If they do, I can till in the potato patch that I forgot to mulch or weed and is now buried in lush non-potato growth. Then I’ll replant the area with beans.

Big and beefy 8-10 week old ram lamb, a Texel-Katahdin cross.

But first, if I’m going to plant beans, I’ll need to go cut some poles to use as a trellis. So today, if I have time, I should clean last winter’s gas out of the chainsaws and hope that the carburetors are not fouled with shellacked fuel. And the chains also need to be resharpened. Note: I really should keep that bow saw in better condition—it could be of use when the chainsaws are not working. I think I lent it to someone. Who did I lend it to? I know Tim still has that Orwell book. Maybe he also has the saw? I could go over today and check, maybe stop at the Kyles’ farm store and pick up a few sausages for dinner. Then I can check and see if they sold any copies of my book.

How many personal copies do I have left? I should check today, maybe before I go take a nap. After the nap, though, I really need to finish pruning the muscadines and the privet. That damn privet takes over everything. Wonder if grapevines can be used to smoke meat. If I had the sausages, I could smoke them over muscadine vines and serve them with some of my kraut. I think I’ll go check and see how my cabbages are coming along. If they are ready I can make some kraut today, and next weekend it could be ready. So, I’ll pass on the sausages and pruning today. The Kid can do the pruning in the vines next weekend.

It looks like rain, so I’d better get that feed out of the back of the truck. I’ll need to put the boom pole back on the tractor to lift the barrels. That yard box will need to come off. But first I’ll grade the drive—it is a mess since the last rain. So, first things first. I’ll go get some diesel for the big tractor, since it’s on empty.

Running on empty … who sang that? Oh, yeah, Jackson Browne. Which reminds me, before the trip to town, it might be good to change out the CDs in the truck. That John Denver CD is getting pretty stale. Maybe some Alan Jackson. I’ll need to remember to stop at Wil-Sav for my prescription. Except I remember now that I forgot to call it in. So I’ll call them and see if they can call my doctor for a refill. I’m betting it will be ready in a couple of days. I still need the diesel.

But I could use this time before the trip to get diesel to put up the kayaks. They’ve been laying out by the hay barn all winter and spring. Note to self: This would be a great time of the year to go out on the water and just enjoy floating around. I should do that before I store the boats. Now where are those boat cushions? I think they were being used as supports for the guest cot when my nephew stayed with us in February. I wonder how he is getting along this spring down in that Louisiana heat? I’ll call him if I get time today.

Well, the temperature is supposed to get up to 80 here tomorrow. I really should just go out now, while I have time, and roll up the sides on the hoop house and open the windows. Those cabbage moths will be out soon. If I put some diatomaceous earth out today to protect the cole crops I’ll be ahead of the pests. Better call Cindy and have her pick some up while she is in town. Pretty sure all of it was used last year.

DE is my default weapon against bugs, but I know there are other organic options. Note: Spend a little time later today flipping through some of those dozens of books on my shelf about pests in the garden.

Also, finish reading the book on solitude. Then write Moore a followup and let him know my thoughts. The first page has been really engaging. I just need to find some time to myself to focus. Why are the sheep out in the yard? Note: Check the electric current on the fence later today. There may be a branch down on the wire. Hopefully the pigs haven’t discovered it.

Note: Instead of buying that sausage, I could just make some. I have plenty of ground pork and the stuffer.

Note: Order more hog casings. If they come in next week, I can make the sausages when the kraut is done fermenting.

Note: If I get some time today….

Porch Sittin’, Part Two

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The floorboards are barely cool as I step off the stairs in the house. Sixty-five degrees outside, I guess. It is my little game, played each day, to predict the morning temperature based on the feel of the wood floors under my bare feet. I’m close: at 5 a.m. it is 64. Much too warm for an April morning, I think, as I take a seat in one of the rocking chairs on the front porch with my morning coffee. The dogs lie scattered around me, coats wet with dew from tracking an early morning rabbit trail.

Fresh goat cheese

Following Jefferson’s injunction to a nephew not to think during his daily afternoon walk, I sit without purpose. As when I’m on the tractor for hours, not thinking is when I do my best thinking. A warm breeze blows across the farm. Even I can predict a change coming without the foreknowledge of checking with the weather station.

Back in the house around 6:30, I hear the all-too-familiar ruckus of the dogs tussling on the porch. “Quiet!” I yell out the front door, disturbing only the peace of the predawn. They ignore me but do carry their disagreement out into the yard. I close the door, and both man and dogs claim victory.

A little later and drinking a second cup of coffee, I am once again sitting in the rocking chair. It is now light enough for me to make notes on the upcoming day. After some minutes the door opens and Cindy joins me. We both sit quietly at first—I finish my list of tasks, and the caffeine works its magic on Cindy’s morning frame of mind—then we spend half an hour or so discussing the upcoming day.

For the rest of the morning the porch is a waystation, a place to pull on and off boots, but come noon we are back in our rockers, looking out over the front lawn and the “new” orchard (now fifteen years old) and eating our lunch. Mine is a small plate of leftover collards, field peas, and a piece of sausage; hers is homemade goat cheese with dried fruit and olives.

Afterwards we retire upstairs for our daily siesta. We read a bit before taking a nap, and since most friends and neighbors know that the hours of 1-3 are our quiet time, we are left in peace.

The porch is back in use at afternoon coffee. The first of a wave of storms begins to wash away the too-warm-for-April day, and we watch until the rain drives us inside. In the living room, dogs at our feet, we wait out the arrival of the cold front from our easy chairs.

Less than an hour later strong winds are clearing the skies over the farm and blowing cooler air into the valley. We both head back out to the barn to feed and do a few late afternoon chores. Friends show up to help remove a tire that is stuck on the axle of our tiller. We try a host of techniques, none successful, when someone asks, “Why do you want this perfectly good tire off the tiller anyway?” More than a little sheepishly, I admit that it was for no other reason than that it was stuck. With that answer we decide to leave the wheel in place and all head to the house for a beer. The six of us scattered across the porch, we settle in to watch the sunset across the ridge. We invite the friends to stay for red beans and rice, but they have their own meal planned, so we say goodnight. We eat dinner in the back yard, seated in our weathered Adirondacks.

As I lie fast asleep just before midnight, in a reversal of my early morning routine Cindy takes her place on the front porch, in a rocking chair, without purpose, before joining me in slumber.

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Reading this past week: Pride and Prejudice (J. Austen). It has been a decade or two since I last read this novel, and having finished it, I think that Mr. Collins has become my favorite character. Also read, Love for the Land (B. Lamb), a fine addition to the agrarian shelf. Mr. Lamb writes of the collapse of an agricultural landscape in Tennessee and in particular how it impacts small and mid-size farms. And finally, summer must be around the corner, because I’m reading the latest John Sandford novel, a Lucas and Letty Davenport mystery/thriller. Sandford typically releases one novel approaching summer each year.

Stone Cold Love

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Of all the myriad ways in which the birds and the bees woo and attempt to do the ageless dance, this old boy had chosen the most ludicrous. Although the end result was never in doubt and he was getting the coldest of shoulders, I had to hand it to him for hanging in there in his efforts. Except for retiring nightly to a nearby creek, he did not leave the side of his beloved for a full week. Thanks to that high level of predictability, he provided us the opportunity to create and execute a plan to break up this “coitus unrequitus.”

A picture taken by a neighbor during the winter storm in January.

It began, as most things do on our farm that require compassion and nursing skills, with Cindy getting a call. This one was received at the college where she worked. A Muscovy hen and her ducklings living in a much-trafficked area were in danger of being flattened by speeding students. After assorted consultations with staff and faculty (and perhaps interminable committee meetings), Cindy volunteered to bring the ducks home and raise the ducklings out before returning them to the pond on campus. So it came to be that mother, babies, and even the father of the brood were captured, crated, and loaded into her car one sunny spring afternoon.

At the farm, we unloaded the cargo and placed the ducks in a seemingly secure pen. We watered and fed them, then stepped back to watch … and watched as the drake flew over the fence, sailed low across the bottom pasture, and disappeared to the south in a creek bottom. Geese mate for life. The ganders are remarkably loyal, and if either partner is indiscreet, we’ll never know: they keep it quiet within the domestic circle. With ducks, not so much. The drake, while his mate was home raising his offspring, was off in the wide world looking for new love like a sailor on liberty in port. This lad found an unlikely paramour a mile down the road.

As in the saga of the three little piggies, word went out in our community of the wayward drake. Sure enough, he was spotted within days in the front yard of a small clapboard house on a neighbor’s trip from town. The male of the Muscovy is significantly larger than the female and sports a head-to-neck crest of feathers. He is easy to identify in all of his warty glory. Once notified, we spied him under a large oak tree next to the gravel drive. There he stood, danced, preened, in fact used everything within his toolkit to drive his intended mad with lust. His object of desire paid him no attention.

And it would be a cold day in Hell before her love was reciprocated: this statuesque specimen was cast lovingly in concrete, and although apparently created to the highest standards of molded realism, she had the sexual desire of, well, a slab of cement, sand, and water.

But our wandering Lothario was nothing if not persistent. From sunup to sundown he stood by his newfound love, carrying on his one-sided conversations (no, ladies, do not look for parallels) and dancing around her unmoved and unmoving countenance, only leaving at night to return to the safety of the creek. Every morning he was back at the wooing, giving his all to break through that stony exterior. Knowing in his heart that the apple out of reach is the tastiest, he persevered for seven days.

In the end we managed after several attempts to catch him in a net, at which time we clipped his wings and returned him to his family. Over the next couple of weeks, restless and bored with his growing children and preoccupied partner, he paced the fence and gazed southwards, convinced that if he had just one more day, his stone-cold love’s resolve would have finally crumbled.

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Reading this weekend: The Unforseen Wilderness, an essay on Kentucky’s Red River Gorge (W. Berry and G. Meatyard)