Tag Archives: Farm Journal

Farm Journal Notes: 2023

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Most enjoyable or interesting books read:

  • The Epistles of Horace (Horace)
  • A Short Walk in Hindu Kush (E. Newby)
  • Memories of Gascony (P. Koffman)
  • Social History of Bourbon (G. Carson)
  • True Grit (C. Portis)
  • King’s Day (T. E. Porter)
  • Burden of Southern History (C. V. Woodward)
  • Complete (3 volumes) Calvin and Hobbes (Waterson)
  • One Man’s Meat (E. B. White)
  • The Last Farmer (H. Kohn)

    2023 readings

It is the wind: Discovered evidence of a tornado down Ross. Rd, Stockton Valley, and Pond Creek. Dozens of shattered and splintered trees in a miles long path. Nothing reported by weather service.

Timing: Anxious to check on Ginger this morning, due to farrow. And…farrowed!

Farewell to a pet: January 30th. Chip is in in final stages of kidney failure. 19, which is quite old for an outdoor cat…. Chip died at 11 am, buried him in the garden.

Connections: Thinking about when we only had three news stations. There seemed to be much more common purpose. Less is more.

Over-sowing pastures: Rye, red and white clover, 7-top turnip sown in three sheep pastures.

The cold: 3-15-23. This is one of the coldest days in March (23 degrees). Although it doesn’t compare with April 7th, 2007 when the temps dropped to 18 degrees. 95% of the Tennessee apple crop was destroyed.

The cold, revisited: 3-19-23, 19 degrees at 7am.

Achieving the proper life balance: 3-30-23. Highs in the upper 70’s. Sitting on the back deck smoking a cigar, sipping an Old Fashioned.

Off the farm: Drove out to Overhill nursery. Cindy picked up some bog plants for the pond. Took a lovely drive over the mountain to Tellico Plains for lunch at the bakery.

Sheep: Picked up some Dorset-Hamp crosses. If we can keep them alive, they will mark a change in the direction of our flock. Larger and meatier.

Publisher: 6-25-23. Turned final manuscript into publisher.

Dorper ram: Butchered on the farm, (June 29th) the Dorper ram. 14 for dinner on July 2nd. Smoked the ram for 8 hours in the China box. Expected high of 96 was cooled down by t-storm to 72 degrees. Dined on front porch.

Chanterelles: July 5th, two pounds harvested.

A Good Daily Harvest: July 19th. 1.5 bushels of Golden Delicious, 50 pounds of potatoes, sweet corn, and collards to the kitchen. Fed three tubs of “old” greens to hogs.

It is the wind, again: August 7th. Wind storm. Power out for 24 hours. Neighbors were without for 48. Trees down everywhere. We lost 2 dozen oaks across the farm. Many were snapped off. Tornado? Spent August 8th with chainsaw removing the largest that had fallen across the drive.

August 15th: 5.25 inches of rain. (note: this was the last until late November)

Hog news: High in 90’s, no rain. Ginger is not bred. So, bought barrows from Mike and Sabine to feed out for customers.

Paying the idiot tax: Tractor wouldn’t start. Couldn’t quickly find the problem. In the middle of haying. No time. So, paid an “expert” to trouble shoot. Corroded battery cables. $320. What a chump.

Hog news: Small boar brought in to breed Ginger. He is intimidated and runs away from her. We may have to get him lifts if he is to do the job.

Politics: Democracy is increasingly a chance to play a role as an extra in a play written, directed, and acted by others.

Book news: October 1st. The book is finally published. Feeling ridiculously pleased with the effort.

Cooking schedule for the coming week: October 3rd. Chicken and dumplings, seafood gumbo, beans and cornbread, pork dish with greens, pasta carbonara.

Three rules for a good day: Express gratitude. Work well. Don’t buy anything unneeded.

Women and Men, the real differences: Cindy spent most of the morning doing laundry and the afternoon working on a new table in the workshop. I skipped farm work. And went out and had a burger and a couple of beers with Tim, followed by a long nap. Cindy fixed dinner.

Resilience: How resilient is our farm? It is a question that can’t be answered until the reasons for asking it becomes “active”.

Weather: Hard freeze expected (October 31st).

New Year’s Eve: Nasty cold. 25 meat birds to butcher. Ginger (three failed breedings) to finally be hauled to slaughter on January 4th. Happy New Year.

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

Reading this weekend: A Bookseller’s Tale (M. Latham), a marvelous work about why we read. How to Focus, a monastic guide for an age of distraction (J. Cassian). This last is another of the Princeton reprints of classics, each given a modern title.

 

 

 

 

2022 Journal Notes

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A few “highlights” from the farm journal this past year.

Best Books Read (out of 64):

  • The Solace of Open Places (G. Ehrlich). 
  • The Last Bookseller (G. Goodman)
  • John MacNab (J. Buchan) 
  • Galloway, notes from a vanishing landscape (P. Laurie)
  • In Praise of Good Bookstores (Deutsch)
  • The Southern Tradition (R.M. Weaver)
  • The End of the World is Just the Beginning (P. Zeihan)
  • The Narrative (DeVasca)
  • Narrowboat (LTC Rolt)
  • Cottage Economy (W. Cobbett)
  • The Sea of Grass (C. Richter)
  • Shantyboat (H. Hubbard)

Best Advice: Stop Buying Stuff!!! Except books, must buy more books.

Do not trust this weatherman (me): January 1st, it looks like we will have a warm month. January 11th, just had our fourth snow, looks like it will be a snowy winter. March 8th, winter warming trend seems locked in now. March 13th, low of 14 with seven inches of snow.

It is the heat: June 1st, 93 degrees at 4pm. The trend continued all last week. Doing all chores and work projects between 5:30-10am. Tim and Ali processed 25 chickens on our equipment yesterday as the temps hit 99 degrees.

Best observation: Cindy threw me a surprise birthday party for my 60th. The last one she did was for my 30th. I’ll be using a walker for the next (at 90).

Second best observation: September 11th, these are the beautiful late summer days that make June and July worth enduring.

More weather: September 30th, fourth day of a strong drying wind. High pressure continues to prevent the remains of Hurricane Ian from dropping much needed rain.

Best menu note: Fixed last night. Pork chops with tomato gravy. Winter squash stuffed with pecans and brown sugar. Okra fritters. Field peas with tasso.

Best condescending remark: We had Julia and David as guests for dinner (gumbo) last night. She was a former WWOOF volunteer. Surprisingly intelligent and well read for a young couple.

Most maudlin note: November 22nd, 25 degrees at 6:45am. I took the ham out of the salt today. How many hogs, how many pairs of brown eyes, have ended up as joints of meat curing under the stairs?

You can take the boy out of Louisiana…: December 6th. Proposed Christmas dinner. Roast goose, roast potatoes in goose fat, Brussel sprouts in a peanut butter vinaigrette, creamed collard greens, and sweet potato pie.

Farming and Weather: December 31st, 53 degrees at 7am. Continued clean-up after the deep freeze last week. Lambing begins in four weeks. Ginger should farrow around the 11th. The geese should begin laying in the nests any day. Looking forward to our 24th year on the farm.

Farm Journal: Select entries 2011

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We have been at Winged Elm Farm since 1999. This ongoing series of journal entries is meant to give you a sense of the tasks, people, and goings-on that fill our lives. Follow the two links to read the blog posts on the events referenced.

2011

Spot: a favorite ewe, just lambed big twins. 16# each at one week.

January 13: Six inches of snow on the ground. The mercury has not been above 32 degrees in four days. The truck and the car are both stuck at the bottom of the drive.

January 14: Projected high of 41. Heat wave.

January 19: Six hogs taken to H&R for slaughter.

February 6: Unrest in Middle East and farm diesel is now over $3. I really need to set up a diesel tank on the farm.

February 12: Planted lettuce, spinach, turnips, beets, onions in hoop house gardens.

March 7: Snowflake began farrowing overnight.

March 11: Put Snowflake down with the 30-30. What a disaster. Hauled her carcass up to the back forty.

April 24: Till garden/plant tomatoes/make lye soap. Judy Fiene to visit us.

July 17: A little quiet time before sunrise on the front porch. Temps in the low 60s. What shall I do today? Hmm, I bet it will start with a list (Long list followed).

August 24: Muscadine harvest begins. Fixed savory crepes with parsley and chives and grilled shrimp.

October 1: Stopped in Ellijay, Georgia, at Johnson’s Nursery for additional fruit trees.

November 11: The challenge in any relationship is to stay engaged, refusing to see one’s partner as either a comfortable blanket or irritating hair shirt. Either assigns a role that is unchanging.

November 12: Two steers to Morgan’s for slaughter.

November 20: 53 degrees at 7 a.m. Completed annual tractor maintenance on Kubota M4900. Left it a little late this year. Customers coming out later for beef.

Christmas Day: Ouch, what a headache. Neighbor Adrienne paid her usual Christmas Eve visit last night. She looked smashing in her green sweater. We drank the usual bottle of her gluhwein … and drank some more, ate some good food, and had a nice conversation before she toddled home and I toddled off to bed.

Spoke with Cindy earlier. She is off to the airport in Florida. Looking forward to having her back home tonight.

Fed the bees this warm morning. One girl was royally pissed at being disturbed and followed me into the house. Managed to catch her and put her back outside.

Time to make some family calls, then cut some cedar posts and feed the cattle. But otherwise, the plan is to take it easy until our Christmas dinner tonight (capon, roasted Brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy, and creamed kale).

December 31: Worked on the farm plan for 2012 until mid-morning. Completed enclosing the upper 11-acre field in the back forty this afternoon with field fence. Over our afternoon coffee, we joked that we will walk to the top of the hill and see the new year in tonight. But we both know that I, anyway, will be asleep by 10:30.