Category Archives: Farm Work

A Slug, a Spider, a Cave Cricket

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There was a lot to laugh at. After all, making fun of young adults is a legitimate sport that offers plenty of excellent targets. And long after they left, we continued to find humor in their manner of leaving. Still, perhaps I should offer some mild applause for their determination, albeit short-lived, to give farming a try.

But before I recount their story, let us roll back the clock to the beginning of last week, when we reached out to a farm volunteer from NYC who was due to arrive this past Wednesday for a weeklong stint. The young biochemistry major had contacted us some time ago through WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and had seemed enthused about our host profile and posted expectations.

Come last Sunday, I emailed him a detailed list of projects he would either assist with or complete himself. (Setting down tasks is what I do; it helps me map out the best use of my time and that of the volunteer.) No reply. I texted him, still nothing. Wednesday came and went and no volunteer. We’d been ghosted.

This turned out to be a good thing. Thursday afternoon Cindy received an email from a young couple from Chicago: “We’ve had a problem with our car and will not arrive until around 10 p.m. tonight.” Who? What? WTF! A quick check of the WWOOF site showed a detailed chain of emails from a couple of months back with this same couple. The chain clearly spelled out that they were to arrive on the 5th for a 10-day stay, and that we had agreed to the dates. Thank goodness WWOOFer No. 1 had ghosted us — the tiny apartment we offer to volunteers and other guests would have been a little too cozy for three.

We sprang into action. I hustled to clean the apartment while Cindy laundered the linens. Within a couple of hours, we were ready for WWOOFers No. 2. The apartment itself is in a separate building. It consists of one room and a bath, with no kitchen. The walls are painted; the concrete floor is not. It is equipped with a double bed and dresser, a window AC, and an overhead fan. The place is not rustic (many hosts simply offer space for a tent or a loft in the haybarn in the way of accommodations), but neither is it plush. Everyone who has stayed in it has done so without complaint. Satisfied guests even include the volunteer who, while sitting on the toilet, watched as a black rat snake poked its head out under the vanity doors. (He mentioned it casually, much later, as if he had spotted a beloved pet on the loose.)

Around 10:30 Thursday night the couple from Chicago arrived on the farm. I was outside, waiting by the beehives, to meet and greet. Once I had them situated in their home-away-from-home, having told them I’d see them at breakfast in the morning, I left them to get settled in.

The young man was typical in both build and appearance, dressed casually in T-shirt and jeans. The young woman, on the other hand, had an impossibly neat coif and was smartly dressed. Walking back to the house, I already had misgivings. Ten days of trying to give directions to this city gal was going to be a challenge. Time would tell, I thought. I didn’t yet know just how little time would be needed for their story to unfold.

Friday morning I arose around 5:30 and walked down the driveway to close the gates before letting the dogs out. You know how you can drive by a house and sense that it’s unoccupied, how a vacant house has a vibe different than one where people reside? The apartment had that feel. It was a good hundred yards away, and I could hear the AC still running. In the early morning darkness, I could not see if the car was parked in front of the door. Yet I could sense a change.

Back at the house, coffee in hand, I checked email before sitting down to read a book. A middle of the night missive from the young couple as they began their long trek back to Chicago was in my inbox:

“The accommodations just weren’t what we were expecting. We probably seem like stuck up city dwellers, but we just couldn’t handle the spiders, the slug outside the door, and the cave cricket in the bathroom. The farm is gorgeous, and we regret to inform you of our early departure, but after killing everything, we still just felt too uncomfortable there. Thank you again for considering us for the opportunity. We apologize for the inconveniences we’ve caused. We wish y’all well.”

I can’t help but wonder what they’d have done if they had seen “Reggie” the black rat snake!

Sometimes things do turn out for the best. Ten days of asking the squeamish to squish potato bugs and check for freeloading ticks before sitting down to breakfast, beat back fencerows of briars to earn the right to a lovely dinner, shovel barnfuls of manure before settling in for a good night’s rest — none of it was meant to be if they couldn’t first deal with a cave cricket.

Farming is not for sissies, and we work the volunteers hard. But if one is so disengaged from the natural world as to fear a slug, a spider, and a cave cricket, then best to retreat to the cloistered urban tower. While doing so, though, offer up some prayers that the economy always stays strong, growth is eternal, and others will do the necessary work of interacting for you with the world outside, putting food on your table while you dine in your bug-free condo.

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Reading this week: The Seven Ranges (W. Hoyt) and The Coldest Case (M. Walker). The latter is a weak addition to the Bruno mystery series.

 

A Weekend Farm Update

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garlic curing

Buster stands hypnotized as our aged cat, Chip, gingerly crosses the porch. It is 5 a.m. and the rat terrier is on high alert: “If I squint just right that could be a rat.” I call his name and the spell is broken. We —dogs, cat, and me — resume our predawn reverie in peace. A little drizzle is just beginning to fall in what is forecast to be a rainy Sunday. Which reminds me that I never did clean the gutters. It’s a task best remembered when the rainwater is overflowing along the whole of the roof’s little canal.

I came outside with my coffee hoping to be favored with the pulsing din of the cicadas. In spring and summer of 2004, we sat out most evenings until late into the night, not talking, letting the deafening chorus envelop us. But this morning, like last evening, like all season, it is quiet. Friends report the emergence of Brood X in Blount, two counties away. Here in Roane, there are only the usual sounds of birds, crickets, a few echoing roosters up and down the valley, and the bass of a bullfrog setting the rhythm in the backyard pond.

Beyond today’s gutter cleaning, my mental list of what needs doing is short. Depending on the rain, I need to finish the garlic harvest. Yesterday I pulled up all the red onions and half the garlic (200 and 100, respectively); I then laid them out on tables in the barn to cure before storing under the stairs inside for future use. I also finished cutting up two felled trees, tossing the logs into the bed of the old farm truck, where they’ll stay until the truck is required for something else. Later in the morning, the Kid and I walked up and down hills disassembling the electric fence and restringing it elsewhere, a task we do each Saturday.

The Kid continues to work out well. He tackles the farm chores if not with finesse, with gusto. Other than hand weeding, that is. It is a fact universally acknowledged that a 13-year-old boy doesn’t want the piddly tasks. Experience (and I speak here with authority gleaned from dim personal recollection) has taught that they want the sweaty, testosterone-pumping, tear into it, get ‘er done kind of work. Great for us, because we always have that work to do on the farm. Yesterday the Kid and I tore into it and got ‘er done, which today leaves me in an exertion avoidance mode.

Maybe some kraut or kimchi making is in the pipeline for this afternoon? The garden is loaded with cabbages. It is time to use them or feed them to the pigs, the snails, and the fluttering cabbage whites. Everyone gets to eat on this farm.

Yesterday morning I was in the gardens by 6 a.m., feeling giddy at the start of the day. I had that goofy, grin-on-the-face feeling that all is right with the world if one lives in East Tennessee on a small farm with a full day ahead. Many days are like that, most even. That the day ended with us sitting on the back deck gorging on steaks, salad, new blue potatoes, and grilled asparagus and spring onions solidified my first impression. The only thing that could have improved a perfect day was for the sun to have set to the accompaniment of serenading cicadas seeking love.

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Reading this weekend: The Bookseller of Florence: the story of the manuscripts that illuminated the Renaissance (R.King). A fascinating peak into the bookselling world pre-Gutenberg. 

Twenty-One Years, by the Numbers

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Cleaning up some debris yesterday in the hoop house prior to planting peppers, I was struck by just how much we have accomplished in 21 years — 7,929 days — on the farm. We bought the property in September of 1999. At that time, the 70 acres possessed an ancient and broken perimeter fence, an industrial-size white metal barn, and a three-car garage. Partly in an effort to avoid more work, and also in a self-congratulatory mode, I sat down this morning and pulled together some numbers that reflect the time and effort we’ve invested to date.

  • 16,480 feet (3.1 miles) of perimeter fencing installed, all of which required removing the intertwined old fencing, trees, brambles and vines.
  • 8,240 feet (1.6 miles) of permanent cross-fencing added.
  • 1,648 T-posts set.
  • 248 wooden post holes dug and set three feet deep.
  • 98,880 feet (18.7 miles) of barbed wire unspooled, stretched, and attached to the posts.
  • 6,600 feet (1.5 miles) of Red Brand field fence installed.
  • 1,022 feet of hog panels erected for a 1.5-acre hog paddock in the woods.
  • 6 tractors bought, most of them long since sold.
  • 7 pickups owned.
  • 420 chickens butchered.
  • 165 pigs raised for slaughter.
  • 1,000 lambs reared.
  • 100 cattle raised.
  • 2 orchards planted.
  • 3 small grape plots planted.
  • 36 shade trees planted.
  • 23 ornamental shrubs planted.
  • 12 nut trees planted.
  • 37 farm gates hung.
  • 1 25×50’ hoop house built.
  • 5,000 garden plants set, tended, and harvested.
  • 2 farrowing huts built.
  • 6 permanent lambing stalls erected.
  • 2 hay barns constructed.
  • 1 sawmill shed built.
  • 1 wellhouse/smokehouse built.
  • 2 chicken coops built. The first and smallest now houses beekeeping and livestock health supplies.
  • 1 farm equipment shed constructed.
  • 1 potting shed built.
  • 1 workshop created.
  • 1 guest apartment created.
  • 1 house constructed.
  • 252 times that the gravel driveway (3/10 of a mile) has been graded.
  • 336 days spent bushhogging fields.
  • 126 days spent haying.
  • 3,360 hours spent working in the garden.
  • 7,929 sunrises and sunsets that have come and gone.
  • 283 full moons that have brightened the night.
  • 6 dinners enjoyed at the top of the hill.
  • 3,528 dinners eaten outside.
  • 1,126 times one of us has said to the other, “This is too much work.”
  • 7,929 times one of us has thought, What a lovely and a lucky way to live.

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Reading this weekend: the somewhat annual rereading of Beowulf (Seamus Heaney translation).

Two Signs of Life

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“It” happens

Trumpet vines: All plant life wants to survive. Some plants are tender and easily succumb. Then there are those that refuse to give up, never content with their one little corner of this world. They spend their days busily burying roots, parachuting fluttering seed helicopters, spitting out runners, throughout the landscape. The thick-trunked trumpet vine that covers our pergola and delights us come late summer with showy orange flowers is one of these. Its knotted roots have invaded our nearby asparagus bed, the red leafy sprigs shooting up among the spears, indicating a subterranean assault. Yesterday evening we spent an hour excising the vining roots from the heavily producing bed. We were not completely successful. We settled in the end for hacking off the main invasive root and plucking from the soil the numerous light-seeking tendrils. Yet it still lurks beneath the surface, biding its time, waiting for its next attack.

The new kid in town: Being a worthy farmhand requires not only an ability to work hard but also common sense, good observational skills, respect for tools, capacity for listening and working independently, and basic knowledge of equipment.

Most of our farm helpers have long since grown to manhood. One is in the Navy, and another is an electrician; others, like the “Oh, good Lord” kid, have simply disappeared into the background of the valley. Each, though, has played a part in building this farm. Since the last kid, two years back, decided he would rather play football than work under my tutelage, we have needed a new assistant. Hearing that a nearby farmer who raises pigs had a son at loose ends, we pounced and lined him up for a trial run yesterday.

At 13 going on 14 and already a strapping 5’8”, the newbie first helped me tackle pulling up a few hundred yards of electric fence. The two of us then carried the poles and spools of wire up our sloping hill pasture and reconfigured a new paddock for the ram and ram lambs. This introductory task was set up as a stamina challenge: trudging up and down the hill, putting in the step-in posts, stringing wire along the way. This kid performed all required with minimal instruction — did not even mind running down to the barn, finding a new spool of wire, then running back up the hill. (Ah, the exuberance of youth!)

For the next task, I put him to work for an hour with the weedeater, giving him a complicated series of directions of what needed attention. This kid did not miss a beat. He nailed everything I instructed, even put the equipment and gas can up without being asked. We then spent another hour cleaning out the winter bedding from the barn. Barn cleaning is a dirty and dusty job, one in which the assistant has to wield a big rake to pull hay and manure into the tractor bucket, helping me make sure each load is full before I back out and add the load to the growing manure pile in the outer corral.

When we were finished for the morning, this kid put up his tools, again, on his own, while we waited for his mom to drive over and pick him up. With a few minutes to kill, we then walked out to the gardens … where he took one glance at the rows in the hoop-house and offhandedly ID’d cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, and watermelon.

“Louis,” I thought, “this is the start of a beautiful partnership.”

This Farming Life

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Our farm occasions a lot of queries from observers drawn to what appears to be a bucolic lifestyle. We try to answer their questions dutifully, but since they don’t farm, they have difficulty articulating what they really need to ask. And we seldom tell them the full truth.

What I’d like to tell them, when what they are really asking is, “Is the farming life for me?” is this: that the simple reality of farming is work, hard physical work. It is work that can’t be put off, work that piles up in ever-increasing amounts, overwhelms, floods over every moment of your life, drowns you in endless to-do lists and endless to-dos.

Farming is 98 degrees in July, flat on your back under a piece of equipment in a back field, coated in grease, dry hay in your eyes and down your shirt, with the wrong tool a half-mile away as you try to fix something you knew was ready to break and put off because of all the other things you knew were ready to break and did get fixed, or at least patched together.

Farming is having the flu and a fever, puking, weak, and barely able to stand as you go through your rounds feeding, hauling water, no sick days, earning way below minimum wage just for the pleasure of it. It is throwing out your back or neck or elbow, spraining an ankle, splashing tractor oil in your eye, when you live 35 minutes from the nearest hospital. It is cutting your own firewood because the utility company hasn’t trimmed trees since the last ice storm and the forecast is always for weather you didn’t predict. Farming is serving as chief veterinary officer and surgeon because vets no longer make farm visits.

Farming is blood and mud so thick on your clothes and hands that you don’t know which is which and whether they are from you, the ground, or the dying animal you’ve been trying to save. Farming is 12 degrees in January with winds gusts of 20 mph and sleet stinging your face, as you try to get a chainsaw to start to cut up the tree that fell across the fence, allowing your herd of cattle to wander the countryside.

Farming is your neighbor’s barn burning down due to faulty wiring, which in turn causes you to bump repairing your own faulty barn wiring from No. 375 to No. 1 on the list of this year’s tasks to complete. It is a customer so obstinate, so dumb, so plain unthinking that you are tempted to give up the whole enterprise or the human race or maybe both as a bad investment.

But farming is also the intensity of a redbud in spring that stops you in your tracks while all the other miserable sods are trying to stay awake in the office or factory. So achingly beautiful it keeps you rooted in place and doing nothing for the next 20 minutes. Farming is a perfect cone-shaped swarm of honey bees hanging from your peach tree, a swarm that is then easily captured as it drops as a single clump into your waiting hive box.

Farming is the ripe tomato, the hand-milled apple cider, the cellar full of potatoes, the ham curing under the stairs, the cold midnight alone at the top of the hill. It is bees bearding on the front of the hive on a summer day, cutting hay on a Memorial Day weekend, admiring a newly erected fenceline and the work that went into building it.

Farming is a barn stacked with the hay you just baled, a garden bursting with produce. It is freshly baked bread slathered with the honey that you harvested, hamburgers off the grill courtesy of the lambs you raised on the hillside behind the house, a bowl of homemade yogurt topped with blueberries plucked from the backyard. Farming is the joy of lambing, the loveliness of a newborn calf, the hatching of chicks, the “grin” on the ram as he is released onto the flock. It is a randy romp of fecundity from spring through winter. Farming is the birds and the bees all day and all night.

Farming is the pleasure of doing for yourself, caring for the land, caring for your customers (even that one), providing for your family and countless others. Farming is not about you. It is about the vegetables you raise, the livestock you rear, the land you steward, the wildlife you provide shelter for, the satisfaction of being a good tenant on this good earth.

Farming is not a career, it is life.