Keeping Her Place

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Each ewe marked with a blue crayon streak down her back holds a membership among the select. One day last week we moved the marked group of seven ewes into a separate pen before turning the rest of the flock out onto the summer grass. Later that afternoon we took the chosen seven to a graded sheep auction in Athens, Tennessee. At auction, they might be sold to another sheep farmer or someone looking to start their own flock. Then again, they might be bought as part of a larger lot and head to a processor. You never know who will be buying on any given day.

Ginger

Ewes are culled for practical reasons. Some are at the end of their productive life, others have given birth to lambs that grew out unsatisfactorily, and some have proven to be unthrifty or especially susceptible to parasites. Every ewe culled has been known to us and valued, and the vast majority have been born on this land.

Farming livestock involves a daily exertion of power over life and death. A flock of chickens only needs so many roosters, with the excess going into the pot. The cock that rules the roost remains for a couple of years, at which time he makes way for a younger, more virile replacement and becomes the flavoring for a savory gumbo. A sow that doesn’t produce satisfactorily becomes whole hog sausage. Her weanlings grow and grow and are then loaded in a trailer and sent to the butcher. Extra bull calves are banded and fattened as steers—again, whatever the livestock, one male only is needed for breeding.

Our Red Wattle sow, named Ginger for her coloring, had been chosen for culling. Her date with Morgan’s Meat Processing was booked and noted on the calendar. I bought Ginger in remote Hancock County, a rural county nestled right against the Kentucky border, at a homestead set back in a deep no-light “holler” in the spring of last year. She is a very personable, very docile sow, a lovely specimen of her heritage breed.

Ginger had her first litter in January—a disappointing four piglets, of which only two survived. We would have been content with six but prefer 8-12. We decided to give her another chance and breed her once again to a Berkshire boar. When the farrowing date at the first of August passed with no piglets, it was with real sadness that we scheduled her slaughter. That she would make that final trip with her two market-weight offspring was of no comfort.

On a small farm we have some latitude for keeping animals. Because ours is a modest economic model of a peculiarly non-industrial bent, choices are often made as much for personal reasons as for financial. Still, keeping a two-time loser on the payroll truly doesn’t make sense. We are not that kind of place, neither a petting zoo nor an animal rescue. Ours is a working, producing farm, and here everything is expected to earn its keep.

Yet … last week we were at our friends’ farm picking up three weanling piglets to grow out for ourselves and customers. They were from the same litter that we had helped castrate just a couple of weeks earlier, and we were buying them now because Ginger’s failure to farrow had left us with a gap in our pork production schedule (not to mention that a 500-pound non-producing hog eats the same massive amount of feed that a 500-pound producing hog requires).

While it is still not certain if the failure to farrow was the fault of our sow, when our friend mentioned while loading the barrows that she would be happy to help us artificially inseminate Ginger, I did an uncharacteristic clutch at the offer. I wanted Ginger to work out, did not want to take her to market, at least before she had lived out her productive life.

For those who don’t farm, my attitude towards culling may strike you as callous and unfeeling. Practical decisions often do. Which is why so many tough decisions in life are “farmed out” to others. But, not here on our farm, while livestock is in our care, we treat them well; we give them plenty of room, feed, and attention. Yet there is an end, as indeed there is for each of us.

However, when I fed Ginger last evening—watching her tuck into her trough, then galumph around the pasture—I felt at peace with this very uneconomic decision to give her another chance and allow her to keep her place.

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My book, Kayaking with Lambs, is now available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble (as well as Front Porch Republic Books).

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Reading this past week: both Tom Sawyer and Life on the Mississippi (M. Twain) and select essays from The Burden of Southern History (C.V. Woodward).

It’s a Book!

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Dear Reader,

It is finally a book…kind of. I received my “presentation” copies this past week. And Kayaking with Lambs is now available for pre-order from the publisher. The title officially comes out on October 1. I have been advised that it takes anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks to populate in the various distribution networks (Amazon, Ingram, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, etc.). But please feel free to pre-order a copy or five by following the link at Front Porch Republic.

A small publishing imprint, like FPR, is limited on the marketing that they can do. So, when you do get your copy, and read it, please take the time to rate and review it on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. etc. It helps.

I do so appreciate your encouragement over the years at this little blog. And I plan to resume normal posting next week. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go get my baler ready to bale hay.

Cheers,

Brian

PS Here is some advance praise for Kayaking. 

This is a beautifully sensual account of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and emotions entailed in daily life on a Tennessee farm, very lovingly rendered with gratitude for being in a place worth caring about.

—James Howard Kunstler, author of the World Made By Hand novels.

I’ve long been an admirer of Brian Miller’s writing, and I hope this delightful book will find him many new readers. With perfect authorial control, it combines lyricism, self-deprecating humor, a grounding in place, political wisdom that’s all the more powerful for its understatement, and deep practical knowledge from a life on the land. A book to be read and enjoyed, but also—more unusually—to be acted upon.

 —Chris Smaje, author of Saying No to a Farm-Free Future

What a beautiful and inspiring book!  Brian Miller has given us a wonderful meditation on the glories and difficulties of life on his well-ordered East Tennessee farm.  Chronicled according to the liturgy of the hours, Miller reminds us of the importance of learning “to walk and not run though the seasons.” It is rich in both literary allusion and sober practical advice.  Kayaking with Lambs is a celebration of the archaic arts, the joy of duty, and the rich rewards of the habit of attention.

_ Scott H. Moore, author of How to Burn a Goat: farming with the philosophers

From the taste of a fat blackberry on a warm afternoon to ‘the sound of the moon rising’ to the sweet smell of lamb poop, Brian Miller conveys the small joys, alongside the modern perplexities, of shepherding a small farm. His attention to the cycles of life, of the seasons, and of each day transforms his ‘farm notes’ into a form of poetry.  –

Allan Carlson, author of The New Agrarian Mind

Good books about farm life and rural community are rare to say the least. Great books are rarer still. In Kayaking with Lambs, Brian Miller has accomplished the latter. Arranged as daily mediations, Miller takes readers on a delightful journey of his working farm, baring his heart and soul in the process. Along the way, we meet a menagerie of farm animals, as well as his best and sometimes not-so-good neighbors. A fantastic read.

Donald E. Davis, author of Where There Are Mountains: An Environmental History of the Southern Appalachians.

 

 

The Things We Do Before the Things We Do

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Storm damage

It’s one of those metaphysical questions of the angels dancing on the head of a pin variety. Did my recent purchase of a deluxe 17 horsepower DK chipper in some way precipitate the arrival and resultant destruction a few weeks ago of three intense storms?

I ponder this useless intellectual speculation as I operate three chainsaws (but not at the same time) in conjunction with the above-referenced chipper. The question, like that of the sound of the tree falling in the forest, is just a way to amuse myself while tackling the vast amount of work I haven’t made time for amidst my other mountains of farm work still needing to be done. Its role in bringing on the storms aside, the chipper is useful in clearing the driveway of fallen limbs and reducing them to a hefty pile of woodchips. As for why I need three chainsaws? Only someone who has never used a chainsaw and is therefore unfamiliar with its temperamental ways would have to ask.

As I drive the pickup back up the gravel driveway after one of my several chipping, cutting, mulching, sweating excursions, I glance over to the front of the barn, where through the foot-high pigweed I spy an ancient manure spreader buried in the overgrowth. Someday, someday soon, I think.

I’ve been thinking this same thought for a few months now, that I’ll be needing the manure spreader when I do the annual barn cleaning. The plan is to hitch the piece of equipment to the big Kubota, employ the bucket on the smaller Kubota to clean out the barn and dump the manure and bedding into the spreader, and then use the larger tractor pulling the spreader to scatter the load across the fields as a fertilizer.

Straightforward in conception if not execution. When I pulled out the spreader from where it is kept parked in the sawmill yard, one of the two massive tires shredded into dry-rotted clumps of rubber. Considering that these were original tires on a piece of equipment as old as I am, well, let’s just say I’m not surprised. I backed the spreader under an overhang attached to the barn, got the jack, and removed the tire. A couple of weeks later and $450 poorer, we brought home a new tire on the old rim, which I then mounted onto the manure spreader … and left it right where it was and returned to tackling all those other things to do on the farm.

There it sat all summer until late July, when on one rare sunny afternoon sandwiched between endless days of gloom, wind, and rain, I backed the truck up to the spreader, hooked it up, and pulled it to the side of the barn to service. That is when I noticed the other tire was flat. Ten minutes later, with the air compressor (the one that needs a nut to hold the axle bolt in place—another item on the list of things I never seem to get around to repairing), I filled the tire … which just as quickly wheezed all the air out through the rotted inner tube around the valve stem.

I won’t burden you with all the details of the next stage, but suffice to say it took another two weeks to complete and involved the following:

  1. Getting on the schedule of the tire department at the farmers co-op, in the middle of one of the service’s chronic “we all quit” cycles, not once but twice.
  2. Having the tire rim returned because it was too rusted to support a tube.
  3. Sanding and scraping the rim back into shape so it would hold the tube without puncturing it.
  4. Searching for and ordering a new replacement tire, at a savings of $100 over the co-op’s price.
  5. Bringing the tire and the rim back to the co-op, and shelling out another $50 to have the tire mounted.
  6. Bringing the new tire and tube on the old rim back to the farm.
  7. Putting the tire back on the manure spreader.
  8. Moving the spreader to the front of the barn, ready for action.

Which is where it sits. Because last week we were blessed with a string of beautiful cool and dry days, so I took advantage and spent each day catching up on the mowing and weed-eating around the farm. Now, thanks to all of that work, I can see clearly the spreader and also my new, hefty pile of wood chips. But alas, it is now hay cutting season. Perhaps I’ll be cleaning the barn in October?

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Reading this week: On The Border With Crook (J. Bourke). The Seven Ranges: ground zero for the staging of America (W. Hoyt)

A Day at the Flea Market

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Loading Day

The two Mexican kids are doing it right, faces buried in big fat ripe peaches with the juice running down their chins, hands, and arms. Yellow jackets be damned, there is only one way to eat some foods, and eating a real sweet peach correctly means ignoring, yes, embracing, the runoff. The two kids trail on down the lane, juices dripping in their wake, past my truck. They follow their parents, who are both eating cotton candy with one hand and dangling a rooster from the other.

It is a Saturday morning at the Crossville flea market an hour away, and I’m here to try and unload old roosters and a small flock of Pilgrim geese. Mr. Kyle, my elderly neighbor, has joined me for the trip. The memory is from twenty years ago, so I’m sure things have changed. I have always meant to go back, but in some ways perhaps it is best to leave that morning as a memory. For all I know, the flea market may even be gone now, like my neighbor.

The roosters sell quickly to the rooster-and-cotton candy couple, who clearly come from a culture that is not afraid to be hands-on, up close and personal, with the next meal. I appreciate that. I also like that they use birds with some heft and age, that they know that age means more flavor in the pot.

For the first half-hour after we arrive, I settle back and try to coax a handful of tire-kickers to buy the Pilgrims. Mr. Kyle meanwhile has wandered off down the tree-lined road that disappears around a curve. He is on a mission to find the sock stall. As a canny farmer, who’ll be worth a bundle when he dies, he does not spend money needlessly. On this day he is wearing his usual tattered shirt and pants stained with the past week’s work on his farm.

Over the years he has always been a generous and helpful friend and neighbor. Oh, and did I mention shrewd? One day he and I were discussing the purchase of some of his cattle for our farm. We’d been talking over the price when he began, “Well, I’m not smart and I don’t have a college education like you, Brian….” I held up my hands. “Mr. Kyle,” I said, “When you start talking like that, I know I’d better grab onto my wallet with both hands, because you are coming for it.” He grinned big—he liked that—because we both knew it was true.

After another half-hour of sitting on the tailgate of my pickup, I watch as a couple comes around the bend in the lane. They had stopped earlier to look at the geese. The Pilgrim is an American heritage breed that can be sexed easily at birth. The ganders are white and the geese gray. I have six for sale, all under a year of age. The man and woman walk over to where I sit. We chat about the cost. I’m asking $20 each (which is a bargain), but I’m getting restless. I want to be done with selling and take in the rest of the market. We settle on a $100 for the six. The woman counts over the cash, and I stick it in my pocket. The three of us each grab a goose and carry it to the couple’s truck, put the three in a pen, then return for the rest. I say goodbye and wander off in search of Mr. Kyle.

The permanent part of the flea market unfolds before me like a medieval fair. The lane twists and curves among oak trees. Each side of the path has wooden shacks open to the lane, each one offering a different line of goods. Tools, logging chains of all sorts, more than a few clothes—something for everyone. There are shops selling candles, candy in old-fashioned bushel baskets, and seasonal fruit (those juicy peaches). The Mennonites from Muddy Pond are doing a brisk business in jars of last year’s sorghum.

And there, finally, on my right, is a stall devoted to just socks. That’s where I find my neighbor negotiating the cost downward on a bundle of white tube socks. Whether they are of legitimate origin or have fallen off a truck does not affect the outcome. The owner of the little store, growing weary, does not stand a chance: Mr. Kyle always get his discount.

Packet of socks in one hand and walking cane in the other, Mr. Kyle accompanies me as I browse the many stalls, but he buys nothing else. We head back to my truck. On the way out of town we stop at Cracker Barrel for a late breakfast. He buys both of our meals, then we head down the plateau toward home.

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Reading this weekend: Last Stands, why men fight when all else is lost (M. Walsh). And County Highway, a new journal that is designed as a newspaper.

Remembering the Old Ones

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Mutton

They gave me an old metal bucket full of whole corn kernels and stood me out near the front yard in a big corral. One of the men yelled a long high-pitched call. Then he called again, head cocked and listening, looking out towards the woods. “Here they come,” he said. “When they get close, empty that bucket on the ground and walk over here.” I don’t recall being afraid, just fascinated, as at least fifty grown hogs came out of the woods at a run. Those pigs ran right past a two-acre corn patch, enclosed by another wooden fence, and up to where I had dumped the corn. They snorted and pushed each other around while the men who had gathered closed up the gates for the night. Nearby was a cluster of horned Cracker cattle grazing. They had the full access to about a hundred acres of woods and the homestead, as did the hogs.

Sitting in a ten-acre clearing was the farm’s house, two shotguns covered by one roof, each side with a room leading directly into the next, separated by ten feet of an open breezeway and built off the ground. Across the front of the conjoined buildings was a front porch. The breezeway led to the kitchen, a large room that could be entered from either side of the house. The roof was of tin and shaded by two massive pecan trees in the front and a giant pear tree in the back. In the shadow of the pear was a large wooden cistern that collected rainwater. I don’t remember a well, although I’m sure there was one.

It was my first visit with my family to the farm of my soon-to-be stepmother’s great-grandparents in North Louisiana. Both were in their late nineties. The year was around 1967, which means they had to have been born soon after the Civil War.

The house was full of her family at the time of this visit. There was no running water or electricity. Come evening, I recall, the rooms were illuminated by kerosene lanterns, which cast an orange glow that flickered into shadows and on the faces of all the kin congregated in the kitchen. As the evening turned to night, we kids were brought in one at a time, naked, to take a bath in a galvanized washtub placed on the floor in the middle of the gathering. It was one of those old-fashioned kinds in which even as a skinny kid of four I had to cross my legs to fit inside. The adults had emptied a couple of buckets of rainwater into the tub. I was too young to be embarrassed, but my older brother still remembers being so.

Around the farm there were a number of low-slung outbuildings made of stacked logs. An old corn crib, built off the ground to keep rats out, sat off to the back of the house. The outhouse was close to the back door for obvious reasons. Chickens were everywhere pecking in the dust. The elders died soon after, and on subsequent trips the animals were gone, the dirt was covered over by brush, and the woods were getting closer to the homestead. My father would mow through thick overgrown grass outside the house with an old beast of a Yazoo mower.

On one visit we collected pears from the backyard tree, and each May for several years we would drive up there to pick blackberries. We’d bring a Rattlesnake watermelon, a thirty-pounder that we’d eat on the porch steps after lunch, spitting the seeds into the dirt. One year, after some of the timber had been sold, we drove from Lake Charles just to put a metal tag on each stump with a number. The loggers had been given permission to cut just so much, and my father was a careful sort who trusted but verified. On another trip he brought a shotgun. He and my stepmother took turns target shooting as the other tossed the clay pigeons in the air. My younger sister Kathryn, who was maybe a year old, would hold her hands over her ears and cry.

By around 1972 we had stopped visiting the old farm altogether. The last memory I have of it is that the house had been torn down or moved and now there was just an opening in a clearing. More siblings were born, and our large family had other things to do than make a four-hour drive north for blackberries. Thinking back, it is hard for me to say with certainty, but I’m fairly sure that my glimpse of the old people and the old ways, before all was swept away, shaped some of my outlook and even the life I lead today.

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Reading this weekend: Saying No! to a Farm Free Future (C. Smaje), a smart and articulate defense of small diverse farming and agrarian-localism. And, King’s Day (T.E. Porter), a lovely and brutal novella about hog killing day on a Florida farm.