Category Archives: Farm Blogs

Country Wines and the Top Ten List

Posted on by
10

Over the years I have written a variety of annual series on different topics: the farm breviary, the farmer’s alphabet, and a farm toolbox spring most readily to mind. There have also been a few aborted series, possibly to be returned to later. And, in all honesty, most have been done simply to help me with the process of filling out the fifty-two posts each year. Although I do hope they give value.

Fall wines: perry and crabapple.

This coming year and next I’m starting a new series on country wines. There will be twelve posts this year on using ingredients from the farm or field to create a wine (parsnip sherry, anyone?) And then next year there will be a short post each month on tasting the previous year’s creation and answering important questions. Such as, just how did that parsley wine hold up? And what should one serve with their carrot wine?

Of course, there will be the usual weekly posts on whatever else strikes my fancy or has a burr under my saddle. But please, for now, contain your excitement. Because today is my somewhat annual top ten summary of posts from last year.

This little blog, in 2020, garnered a little over 10,000 views, with 341 of those posts written over the years being reread at least once. Which, as I sit at my desk with a rooster crowing outside the window, is encouraging in that annoying Sally Fields type of fashion.

About the South Roane Agrarian and the Farm Breviary remain the top two viewed posts. But since they are separate pages on the site, I’ll discard them from the top ten.

This year’s top ten list contains a few older posts (although, God only knows, why “beef cheek pastrami” keeps showing up). But the rest are from this year.

Top ten posts from 2020

  1. Unsolicited Advice to a Nephew on Starting a Farm (2020)
  2. Neither Past Nor Future (2020)
  3. A Farm Toolbox: the pocketknife (2014)
  4. Using the Odd-bits: beef cheek pastrami (2016)
  5. A Great Divide (2017)
  6. What the Sunrise Will Show (2020)
  7. When It All Falls Away (2020)
  8. Waiting On the Egg Man (2020)
  9. Fatigue (2020)
  10. Hurricane Laura, Eight Weeks Later (2020)

And, an honorable mention, just because I’m delighted this one still shows up on the list.

  1. The Steen’s Syrup Republic (2017)

Next week? I try my hand at making a fig and muscadine raisin wine!

…………………………………………………………………………

Reading this weekend: Convivial Dickens: the drinks of Dickens and his times (Hewett and Axton). And, Durable Trades: family-centered economies that have stood the test of time (R. Groves). The latter was published by Front Porch Republic.

Readings in a Pandemic

Posted on by
9

The world can best be seen at 5 or 6 in the morning, with a cup of coffee at hand and a book just closed in my lap. Staring ahead without focus, as words and ideas float about the waters, bumping against the vessel of the coming day. It is a private time for me, before the work on the farm begins, not to be found at any other.

With Old Man 2020 now limping off the stage, it is hard to go back to that moment in January when the year ahead seemed fixed in a mold much like any other, with the steady march of months and a ritual rhythm of farm and career. I voyaged with Adam Nicolson those first few days, around the wild coasts of the British Isles, in Seamanship. Then Wendell Berry kept me company with Andy Catlett: Early Travels, A World Lost, and a perennial rereading of The Farm. I joined Sacha Carnegie as he discovered the pleasures of learning to keep pigs in post-war Scotland, in Pigs I Have Known, and Shaun Bythell was my guide to being a rude, obnoxious, and downright funny Wigtown, Scotland, bookstore owner in Confessions of a Bookseller.

As the year picked up steam and “coronavirus” and “COVID-19” became part of the daily lexicon, Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hines, in Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto, provided a flicker of light — “[T]ogether, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us” — even if it had to be got by striking flint to steel. More Berry followed, as did the fun fare of John Sandford and the embarrassingly addictive S. M. Stirling.

When the lockdown began to imprison the land, I retreated into reading A. J. Liebling’s The Earl of Louisiana, a nostalgic treat. (His Between Meals essays of dining in France in the 1930s also fueled some mighty and heroic meals for our table.) I read, loved, and suggested to all who could hear me shout from the front porch String Too Short to Be Saved by Donald Hall. Add it to your own must-read list and seek out a copy, if you haven’t already.

The summer months opened with false optimism that the curve had flattened and the worst was behind. The COVID Victory Garden provided for our table, and then provided some more, and the farm phone rang with pleas to be put on the schedule for meat. Meanwhile, my 5 a.m. readings turned toward the classics. I worked my way through Robert Fagles’s translations of both “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey,” epic poems that inspire humility, forgiveness, love, and, most important, a renewed belief in kicking ass where needed.

When the summer neared its end, I nursed a sneaking suspicion that we had been snookered in a game for which the rules had yet to be written: mask or no mask; transmission by surface, sneeze, or stare, for seconds, minutes, or weeks; devoted follower of the Ministry of Silly Bombast or of the Judge Advocate for Fearful Cowering.

As the world beyond the farm devolved into juvenile bickering, I retreated a century into the past and gained fundamental lessons in neighborliness by reading The Country of the Pointed Firs (Sarah Orne Jewett), before then plunging Into the Heart of Borneo jungles (Redmond O’Hanlon) and learning how to remove leeches from uncomfortable, most-private places.

October and November, truly the months of greatest change and of dying on the farm, were perfect for another go-round with The Lessons of History (Will and Ariel Durant) and a meditative reading of Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer. Thankfully, before slicing open a vein after hearing yet one more tweet inspired by Q-Anon or seeing one more monument toppled by iPhone-toting Talibanistas, I discovered Jason Peters’s The Culinary Plagiarist. It’s the kind of book that had me writing a fan letter and taking the much-needed opportunity to shout “Comrade!” into the chill fall air.

Which brings this reading year almost full circle, to early December, where once again we are in retreat, each of us standing masked, silent, isolated from family and friends when we need them most, and where what and whom we’ve lost is still being tallied.

Time to close any news browser remaining open and pick up another book. For me, I think it will be the Library of America’s collection of stories by Ambrose Bierce, with one more chance to stand on the bridge overlooking Owl Creek, hoping for a different outcome. Which, some say, is the definition of insanity and which I proclaim is just the opposite.

The Complete List of 2020 Readings

  • Seamanship: A Voyage Along the Wild Coasts of the British Isles (Nicolson)
  • Andy Catlett: Early Travels (Berry)
  • A World Lost (Berry)
  • The Farm (Berry)
  • Pigs I Have Known (Carnegie)
  • The Third Plate (Barber)
  • How to Burn a Goat (Moore)
  • Confessions of a Bookseller (Bythell)
  • A Place on Earth (Berry)
  • Farmer’s Glory (Street)
  • Killing for the Republic (Brand)
  • Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto (Kingsnorth and Hine)
  • Masked Prey (Sandford)
  • The Sky-Blue Wolves (Stirling)
  • The Drowned World (Ballard)
  • Think Little (Berry)
  • The Earl of Louisiana (Liebling)
  • Between Meals (Liebling)
  • Living in the Long Emergency (Kunstler)
  • String Too Short to Be Saved (Hall)
  • Giving Up the Gun (Perrin)
  • Lycurgus & Pompilius (Plutarch)
  • Seasons at Eagle Pond (Hall)
  • “The Iliad” (Homer)
  • “The Odyssey” (Homer)
  • Into the Heart of Borneo (O’Hanlon)
  • The Shooting at Chateau Rock (Walker)
  • The Lessons of History (Durant)
  • The Country of the Pointed Firs (Jewett)
  • Corduroy (Bell)
  • Silver Ley (Bell)
  • Breaking Bread with the Dead (Jacobs)
  • English Pastoral: An Inheritance (Rebanks)
  • The Culinary Plagiarist (Peters)
  • What’s Wrong With the World (Chesterton)
  • The Moviegoer (Percy)
  • The Illustrated Herdwick Shepherd (Rebanks)
  • The Night Fire (Connelly)
  • J. R. R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth (Grotta)
  • The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class (Kotkin)
  • Eastern Approaches (Maclean)
  • Stop Reading the News (Dobelli)
  • The Long Tomorrow (Brackett)

Happy New Year: it’s a list!

Posted on by
11

Weekly pic: Buster, a Dexter Rat Terrier

This little blog registered just over 9000 readers last year. A couple of the top posts for 2019 were from previous years (the Great Divide and Using the Odd Bits). That latter one is a bit of a mystery. It clearly shows up somewhere on the internet and gets at least one or two daily viewings (it was #12 on the all-time list).

Overall, I’m pleased to see some of my favorites from last year were read and presumably enjoyed. And the same can be said for the list covering “all time” top posts.

Thank you all for sticking with me and the varied topics that strike my interest.

Happy New Year!

2019 Top Posts

  1. The Readings Gone By
  2. Walking Away From Facebook
  3. The Memory Keeper
  4. Using The Odd Bits: Beef Cheek Pastrami
  5. A Great Divide
  6. I’m Sorry for Your Loss
  7. Treading Water
  8. A Peace and Ponce Christmas
  9. Saying Grace
  10. Would-Be Farmers: A Few Things to Know

 

Top Posts of All Time

  1. A Great Divide
  2. Small Town Resilience
  3. The Steen’s Syrup Republic
  4. Speaking of Death Speaks of Us
  5. The Life Before Dawn
  6. The Farm Breviary
  7. The Readings Gone By
  8. Thoughts of a Modern-day Slaveholder
  9. Walking Away From Facebook
  10. The Memory Keeper

 

Worst Received Posts of All Time

  1. Jack Frost
  2. Husbandry
  3. Drought, Rain and Death: a normal week on the farm
  4. A Fall Update
  5. The Junk Drawer

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Reading this weekend: Seamanship: a voyage along the wild coasts of the British Isles (Nicolson)

Farm Journal: Select Entries 2002-2004

Posted on by
5

We have lived on this land and farmed it since September 1999. In 2002 I began keeping a journal of tasks to be tackled or completed, observations of weather or people, and general reflections. The entries don’t cover every day; indeed, sometimes a month or more may pass before I take pen in hand and again make more notes. Often the journal contains long lists of things to do or of seeds planted. What follows is a small selection of entries that gives a sense of our day-to-day life.

This is the first in a short series that looks back at what we did (and what I thought) at various times over the past two decades. As my old boss once said, “If you want to predict the future, look at the past.” That future apparently has mending fences and broken equipment apportioned in equal measures. Yee-haw!

2002

July: Squash, Costata romanesco, very prolific. Did well until mid-July; some problems with pale white beetles. But honestly, I essentially just got tired of harvesting. (Some friendly jerk left a bag of zucchini on our porch! I wonder if it is the one I left them?). Tomato transplants did not go in until July. Only Yellow Bell produced, tasted lousy. Too much rain?

October: Using garden to fatten holiday geese. They have effectively eaten down the grass and weeds.

2003

March: Need to plant the four new fig trees. This is our third go in trying to get them established. All sources report that any idiot can grow figs.… Need. to. Find. Idiot. Garlic, planted in fall, coming up nicely; need to get it mulched, again.

June: Received call from Knoxville Zoo. Would we like a registered, full-grown Milking Devon bull? Yes!

Zoo delivered Art (Milking Devon) last Saturday. They told us he was “a bit of an escape artist.” I woke up this morning to find that he had lifted three gates off the hinges [with his horns] and was grazing in the front yard. Spent the day reversing gate hinges.

August: Art spends more time visiting neighbors than servicing our herd.

December 27: Mulling over buying a new tractor (Kubota M4900). Tired of spending my limited time keeping the Ford 800 and 4000 operating. They both seem to call in sick more than work. Finishing up the equipment shed, put tin on back side. Chopped wood, butchered chickens.

December 29: Sold Ford 800; sad to see it go. Sold Ford 4000; glad to see it go.

December 31: New tractor bought and delivered.

2004

February 22: Up at 6 a.m. — still can’t find missing steer. Met a somewhat infamous neighbor. No luck with steer. Breakfast listening to Charles Osgood. An hour spent cutting cedars out of fencerows. Lowell [a neighbor] came over with his dump truck and helped me load up old construction materials before he hauled them away. Visited Mr. Kyle [another neighbor], bought some feed, talked politics. Headed into town in the evening for dinner with Jack and Deb.

June 12: My much younger brother (19), Daniel, is visiting. Each day I leave him an intensive to-do list and go to work. Each day at 5 we come home from work and find him clearly just getting started. That boy can sleep!

August 27: I seemed to be unfocused with the day-to-day, easily frustrated. The new (used) disc mower has a hydraulic coupling that doesn’t fit my Kubota. Instead of solving the problem, I did little bits and drabs of other jobs, none completed! My back health has me worried.

August 28: Picked up a replacement coupling and finally began hay cutting. Disc mower worked like a dream … until I started the second row. Bearings burned up in spectacular fashion and started a minor brush fire in grass. Hurt my back, again, kicking goddamn machinery.

October 23: Butchered chickens in the early morning. Followed with a big country breakfast. Squirrel hunting in late morning. Cleaned and froze a half-dozen; put four more in a marinade for dinner. Spent the afternoon pruning fruit trees.

October 29: Drove to Kansas and picked up two Devon bull calves from Mr. Fells. Drove straight back and got home at 3 a.m. The boys from Mulberry Gap came over and bought one of the calves.

December 31: Still reading Epictetus daily. If nothing else, it helps me keep my temper in check.

……………………………………………………………………………

Reading a lot of easy mysteries this summer by Georges Simenon (Maigret). 

Engagement

Posted on by
12

Free Advice, Enjoy the Methodical       

One challenge I give myself each year, dutifully written down in my new year’s resolutions, is to enjoy the methodical; those tasks we hurry through or avoid altogether, simply to get to the free time that we then squander. Whether it is washing dishes, shoveling out a stall, splitting or stacking wood, there is a fulfillment to be found in a slow physical and repetitive work. But, the act of slowing down is at odds with the demands of our frenetic modern world. Which, in its turn, spawns a desperate populace of chasers after an elusive serenity, roaming our streets.

An afternoon spent with a manure pile might just provide the corrective spiritual focus. Hold that pitchfork and who knows where the thought currents might take one.

“Like” vs. Writing Letters

Here is a confession, I no longer write letters. For most of my adult life I typed out letters, put them in an envelope, and sent them off. Then, over the past fifteen years, I completely embraced the email format. Although I don’t get the satisfaction of finding the reply letter in the physical mailbox, the essential pleasures are still observed; me and a friend taking time to share thoughts and experiences.

But, by entering the world of social media three years ago, most of that fell away. I now have more interactions but less contact. It is analogous to walking down a busy street and saying hello to friends and nodding at acquaintances, hearing arguments and avoiding fights, without engaging in a proper discussion.

I’d like to get off that busy street. Perhaps turn off into that leafy park, sit on a bench and continue/begin that longer conversation with a friend.

Last One to Read, Turn Out the Lights

I’ve alluded to my off the farm job in the past. A job that occasions some flying. Over the past twenty years I’ve observed the gradual darkening of the planes. Years ago, most passengers, upon sitting down, pulled out newspapers, magazines and books. They kept the window shade up. Now, the first thing passengers do is close the shade. And, then the next two hours are spent sitting in the dark (except for a few lone lights marking the outposts of those who still read), playing video games and watching movies. This seems a sad surrender.

This Blog

This blog is an act of engagement, my effort to keep the lights on. You may “like it” and I will appreciate that acknowledgement. But, taking the time to sit on this bench and share a written reply is also welcome.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Reading this weekend: the short stories of Ernie Hemingway.