Category Archives: Community

What the Sunrise Will Show

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the hives after the storms

A storm blew in late last night, dropping trees and powerlines and sweeping the porch of all chairs, bowls, and benches. At 5 a.m. I took a short walk to take stock of the yard and barnyard areas before returning to my desk to type this post. Now, waiting for sunup to take full inventory of the damage seems to echo the world at large: we are all waiting with apprehension for what lies in the wake of the storms.

It is not often that this blog can be accused of prescience, but on February 1st I wrote this:

This past week, off the farm for work, I chanced into a conversation with a computer scientist experienced in modeling disease outbreaks. For a couple of hours, we parsed the data of the coronavirus, looked at his modeling of the numbers, discussed the true fragility of a global economy. He had, with the exception of his current trip, canceled all work-related travel for the next eight weeks. The system will be overloaded during that period, he predicted.

I found myself wondering if it was wrong to find a kernel of hope in the prospect of a global slowdown built on the bones of a possible pandemic. Ten years after the great recession brought housing expansion in our valley to a halt, the maw of our species is being stuffed once again as wooded lots are bulldozed and foundations laid. This frenzy too may end only with the close of the day. The sun sets on everything, eventually.

Little more than two months ago, this virus was something that was happening “over there.” In that short span of time, how much life has changed for most across the globe. Now it is here where we find the illness and the death. One of the casualties this week was Tom Waters. An old friend, Tom was a man who could wield a mean super-soaker in a water fight, but he was perhaps better known as a dedicated fighter for affordable housing in New York City. “Gone too soon,” as they say….

Meanwhile, here in rural America the medical impacts still seem far removed. The economic impacts, though, are immediate. As the economy has shut down, demand for my neighbor’s work as a handyman has largely dried up. Who wants a deck built when they are unemployed? The many small factories in the area have reduced staff or closed as the global supply chains that deliver parts are disrupted. My own off-the-farm job is shuttered for the time being, leading to speculation about the overall impact on bricks and mortar businesses. (Not that just-in-time shipping and parcel delivery seem a solid bet now that we have witnessed their real-time weaknesses.)

As the world at large careened down the tracks at high speed with clown conductors, I spent the past few weeks on the farm carrying on like so many others. Planting spring gardens, harvesting late winter greens, grazing the flocks, working the bees — from time to time, when the light hit just right, I caught the merest glimmer of what a saner world could be.

We are all, by necessity, spending less and driving less. We call neighbors and family more often. We consolidate our own grocery lists with shopping requests for older residents, dropping necessities off on front porches. Many of us are now living at a slower pace, a walking cadence that feels, in a pandemic, healthier.

This world may just have the chance to become both different and familiar: world-turned-upside-down different and familiar in that it becomes intimate, again. Death and disruption, and their accompanying fear and loss, have always been with us, but so has the opportunity for renewal and hope.

With the latter in mind, I will re-emerge in the wake of the storms and begin clearing the branches from the fencelines, repairing shed roofs, resolving this time to make a better farm and be a better neighbor. But like everyone, I’m still waiting for the light to clarify what needs to be done.

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Reading this week: Killing for the Republic: citizen soldiers and the Roman way of war (S. Brand)

Fig Nation Endures

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the gifted figs

These are tough times for Fig Nation, with social distancing mandates and other stresses. But yesterday as some fellow farmers “donated” some extra onion sets and we “gifted” them a used seeder/fertilizer spreader, it struck home that the seeds of cooperation are still there. We just need to work harder to keep them watered during this most unusual crisis. Here is the original post from the archives. Join today!

You just never know when good luck will turn on her high beams and hit you with some gifted produce or a home-brewed beer. We’ve been hard at what is best described as a homestead weekend on the farm. We’ve planted figs and blueberries, transitioned the summer to a fall garden, made mead and apple jelly, fed the bees…. Later today friends are coming over to donate an afternoon of converting logs to lumber.

Which makes me think of Fig Nation. A couple of years back, an elderly Slavic émigré visited the farm to buy a lamb for his freezer. A long conversation ensued (which seems to happen more often than not), during which he and I shared some of my homemade pear brandy (which also seems to happen more often than not). We walked about the fig orchard and got to talking about fig love and the joys and struggles of growing figs in the upper South. He mentioned a cold-hardy variety that he had had success growing in Blount County. The conversation and afternoon then drifted on to other topics.

A couple of weeks later, a mystery package arrived from an out-of-state nursery. It contained six small rootstocks of figs, a gift from the farm visitor. Since that time we’ve nurtured them along, first in pots in the house, then in the rich soil of the hoop-house. Finally, yesterday morning I dug them up and divided the rootstock of each into new plants. Two of each went into the orchard. The remaining figs were gifted to two more friends in the valley.

What took place here is an example of what I call “Fig Nation,” an informal farm economy and community based on producing, sharing, and enjoying. The concept of Fig Nation is simple: A few weeks back, my nephew and I harvested five pounds of elderberries. We cleaned, bagged, and tossed them in the freezer. Yesterday I pulled them out and combined them with water and honey to make an elderberry mead. Come winter, I’ll enjoy the mead with guests. Welcome to Fig Nation, where sharing brings pleasure and automatic membership.

Those friends coming over to help with the sawmill? While here, they also plan to use our cider mill for some perry from their pear crop. After milling lumber and pears, we will conclude the day with a glass or two of my newly bottled raspberry wine — members in good standing in Fig Nation must be prepared to produce, converse, work, and sip.

So you see, Fig Nation, in concept and in practice, isn’t difficult at all. Now, you may find the founding premise a bit too anarchistic, this making and giving and receiving. And, if you don’t comprehend, I’m not allowed to explain it in detail — except to say, it is not a bad way to spend your days and evenings and life.

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Reading this weekend: Farmer’s Glory (A.G. Street)

When It All Falls Away

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The sun rarely shines, these days. The rains have set into our valley and don’t know when to stop. Farming chores are carried out in quick bursts between downpours, and plantings are postponed until a day when the storms finally subside.

Something doesn’t fit, like a key in the wrong lock. We oversow our pastures with cool-weather grasses and legumes, then plan for another round next month with warm-weather seeds. We wait for the sun to assist, but it demurs. The sheep stand at the barn door and look longingly at pastures denied. “Have patience, girls. The sun surely will come out someday,” I tell them. They are not to be convinced with words.

I call some of our elderly neighbors to ask if we can get them anything at the grocery store, hoping to spare them the risk of exposure. It has been, shamefully, a year since I last spoke with most. “My wife has been diagnosed with lung cancer,” I am told by one, deepening my embarrassment and my fear for them. Cindy speaks with another couple, both in poor health. They are good neighbors who share a fenceline. The man, a farmer who has never stinted on labor or advice for these past 20 years, is in his 80s. Cindy promises to visit and extends the same offer of groceries and other supplies.

I use FaceTime with my aunt. She will turn 100 come July. She looks at the phone, at my face, turns to her caregiver and says, “Isn’t it amazing?” Locked down in assisted living, she recalls the stories told to her of the 1919 pandemic. She understands. My father will celebrate his 93rd birthday in a few weeks in reduced company; our annual crawfish boil, with the extended family in happy attendance, has been canceled until better times. I wonder, is reducing the risk really worth the sacrifice of touch and companionship?

Friends and colleagues are furloughed, giving me more time than I have had in years to farm and garden. Yet what should bring me joy merely makes me sad. There is hope, I know. But there is also an awareness that what has been squandered lies rusted on the ground and what has been shattered doesn’t fit back together the same, if at all.

These are the cycles of history. Just as our generations no longer grieve at past horrors recorded in seldom-read books, in a hundred years hence, only the bore or the academic will find interest in this age when our little drama all fell away.

Still, with hope, I wait for seeds to sprout.

A Farming Guide to the Political Season (revisited)

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Hard to believe that four years have passed since I wrote this piece. And, as in March 2016, I spent the day oversowing pastures and thinking about the political season. How little has changed. Both parties are chasing growth and both are still ignoring rural America.

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.

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.

A Peace and Ponce Christmas

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The annual Winged Elm holiday gathering was last night, and the event was notable for its complete lack of politics. Nary a divisive comment heard nor nasty post tweeted. Progress. Even the field of plate-and-bottle debris was modest when compared to years past. Still, like a glacial moraine deposited across a Vermont landscape, the remains could last for eons, all depending on our energy level in the coming day.

The spread of food was fairly pork centered. Among the evening’s meaty delights, a mound of home-cured ham (prosciutto), slices of ponce (a stuffed and smoked pork stomach), various salamis (some home-cured, some store bought), prosciutto-wrapped dates and cream cheese, a homemade potted ham (pâté), and a tray of boudin that lay forgotten in the refrigerator (ignored in the pre-party rush). There were also platters of cheese and cheese balls, relish trays, endless homemade dips, cookies enough to induce a diabetic coma for the entire valley, and, to provide the merest illusion of balance, fresh veggies (with the ubiquitous ranch dressing).

To wash down the massive amounts of food presented, our nearly 40 guests imbibed a proportionally massive quantity of wine, beer, hot mulled cider, soft drinks…. (Fortunately, my gifts from a guest — two bottles of outstanding home-distilled products, one a grape brandy aged in French oak and the other a corn whiskey aged in American oak — survived the evening intact and undetected in their hiding place.)

At the gathering was to be found a good mix of farmers and gardeners, beekeepers, horse people, and cattlewomen, small farm and small town, rural and urban. Halfway through the evening, a fellow farmer caught my eye across the room. Her arm extended and a grimace on her face, she twinkled her fingers as if searching for something. A mislaid lamb, perhaps. An earnest group of listeners surrounded her, all nodding. “I’ve been there,” I imagined them saying, but I couldn’t hear anything over the din.

The beekeepers took over the kitchen at one point, confabbing, I suspect, over the latest method of treating varroa mites. Although it may simply have been the homemade cinnamon ice cream one of them doled out parsimoniously that kept the colony near. Or, maybe it was their hive instinct that caused them to remain clustered on a cold East Tennessee evening.

In the front room, our Charlie Brown Christmas tree was on display. A scraggly cedar cut from the farm, then dressed up with special ornaments acquired over the years, it anchored the corner next to the crowded deacon’s bench. Underneath, among assorted presents, were jars of freshly rendered lard, gifts for our departing guests. Each one sported a label designed by Cindy, with the tagline, “Good lard, it’s tasty!”

The evening came to a close past our usual bedtime, but not before a late-night trek by guests to the hoop-house for bouquets of turnip greens for the deserving. We tidied up (It really wasn’t that bad considering the number of guests, food, and drink) and retired upstairs to read for a while before enjoying some well-earned rest. I dreamed of a breakfast of fresh scones with double cream and lemon curd left for us by a friend, and slept soundly.