Tag Archives: small farm

Stewards of the Decline

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Legs perched on handlebars, hands dangling by his sides; he steers by graceful childhood joy into the parking lot of Paul’s Market, as my truck moves past. Not for him any concern of past or future, no awareness of shuttered glances between parents and eloquent silences. These come later, in half remembered visions if he is lucky, or not at all if he is not.

For now, I wonder, does he have that unfocused pleasure in being young; a Tom Sawyer seeing Pirates and treasure among the general decline?

Who would spoil those few years by contributing to a flood of unwanted, un-blockable data: streams of image destroying commercials, internet porn, and mom’s new “Dad”? Is he able to construct a fort of fabrication, holding off barbarian hordes with dirt clods and sling shots. Or, are his friends already “cool”? Are there any gentle pleasures for him these last days of summer? Or, is his sister showing off her new tattoo?

I wish him a cone of oblivion to the present: A pig-wallow of false innocence to keep away the burning sunlight.

Out of sight from the rear view mirror, he has blended into the past. Already, he is too distant to benefit from the man he will become. No amount of rooftop shouting will reach his ear; all pleas to stand still and resist the flow of time are only whispers that sound like spokes rattling on his bicycle wheels.

There is Mr. Junior waving as I round the bend. Does he at 94 voicelessly shout to me, poised, as in the middle I am, to heed his advice and warnings of the road ahead?

The road winds on into the town of Sweetwater, avoiding the interstate, I travel Oakland Rd to downtown. Past the Farmer’s Co-op fertilizer storage, past the used car-lot, the old post-office, the three block downtown area revitalized with antiques shops selling a past we cannot have.

The closed textile mills, one with new life promising that we can “sell it for you on E-Bay”, a promise of deceit for a culture of conspicuous consumption that the crap bought today will bring riches tomorrow. And, I wonder do I hear a voice shouting from a rooftop?

I pass Richesin’s Feed and Seed: closed after 75 years by people who can’t be bothered to rearrange their shopping hours. The same people navigating by siren calls will close Archer’s Pharmacy in the next year as they ground in the breakwater at Walgreens.

And I hear the whispers as my wheels turn.

I leave town and pass a new home, two stories, incomplete, gradually falling in on its self. Outlasting as a ruin the relationship it now mirrors.

Pulling back onto our farm I survey all we have done in knowledge that all the work is as temporary as our tenure on this place. I hear Junior call from six miles away, “We are only stewards of the decline”.

Barn Jackets

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One cold morning a few months back the dogs were barking behind the house.I slung on my old barn jacket and trudged out to see what the excitement was all about: nothing, as expected. On the way back I couldn’t help smiling about the condition of the jacket.

It was made by Dickies, a brand similar to Carhartt. Originally a classic rust orange it is now faded to a light tan. The front is spattered with stains from butchering chickens in cold weather, delivering calves in the muck and rust stains from carrying damp mineral blocks to the cattle. Both sleeves are frayed from stringing barbed wire. Ten years of sweat, manure of all varieties and wet canvas give off a funk when in close contact regardless of how recently washed.

Get a new one? Possibly, but this one has a pedigree. Imagining going to the farmer’s co-op in a brand new jacket is to imagine the kid at a brand new school. “Newbie”, they would shout!

This jacket proclaims experience even if not deserved. It says sartorially: “Boy, with the price of fertilizer it’s getting so a farmer should pay for the privilege” or “give me a ton of hog meal, five mineral blocks and a couple of bags of layer pellets”. All tossed off without effort. But, a new jacket and I might come back from the co-op with a dozen frizzy-legged Cochin chickens or, God forbid, a mailbox that reads “See Rock City”!

King of the Southern Table

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“Mogul of appetite, lord of misrule, the king who must die”: John Thorne, a favorite quote from a favorite author. More pork is butchered each year per pound than beef, lamb, goats or chickens and any other competing livestock. That is more pork around the world. Scratch the billion plus Muslims, scratch the kosher adherents of Judaism, pork is still tops.

The pig has been our constant companion for over ten thousand years. A fellow omnivore, a perfect companion, a domestic vacuum cleaner or gleaner of all things left over. The pig converts food into pounds at a ratio of 33%; a sheep does the next best at 13%, and a steer at a measly 7%. The hog plunges out of the starting gate at a couple of pounds and ends the first year at an easy 300 pounds. Take that you squalling human infant!

I have no books on my shelves celebrating the sheep or goat (excluding the instructional), only one on the steer, a handful on chickens and an even two dozen celebrating the hog: Serious Pig, Pork and Sons, Pig: King of the Southern Table, The Whole Hog, Pig Perfect and Everything but the Squeal, to name but six.

Pig meat: nothing is more communal than a pig roast. Next to it beef is positively boring. Pig meat is accessible and democratic. We all eat “high on the hog” with pork because pork is easily raised by one and all. In Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson, she speaks of how little kids gather choice thistle and grasses during the day to feed to the family pig: A year-long family project to fatten the pig so that all could enjoy the sausage, flitches of bacon, salted hams, head cheese, chops, loin, blood puddings.

Pigs are the meat of choice for the sustainability crowd. We can survive, do for ourselves, a pig in a paddock proclaims. Pull up an overturned bucket, hunker down and watch a cow eat hay and you feel nothing. Watch a pig tuck into a trough of steamed zucchini, corn and stale bread and you shout Comrade!

Tonight we dined on what Cindy referred to as a keeper: Lacon Con Grelos, A Galician dinner that could be ripped from the pages of any decent Southern cookbook. We physically restrained ourselves from eating until sick. Fix this immediately and restore your soul, find a new center for well-being, toss out the yoga class, deliver up your Lipitor to the porcelain god. Better to check out a few years early than to squander those extra years deprived of good eats.

Lacon Con Grelos: as adapted from The Food and Wines of Spain by Penelope Casas.
• 1 ½ pounds of smoked or salted pork. We used left over smoked shoulder
• Salt and fresh ground pepper
• 1 pound collard greens, rinsed and roughly chopped
• ½ pound Andouille sausage or other piquant cased meat
• 4 new potatoes
Place pork in pot and cover with water. Add salt and pepper. Bring to boil, cover and simmer for one hour. Add greens and sausage and potatoes. Simmer for another hour. Serve.

This dish is so elemental that it blew us away in its complexity. Get thee to a pig!

Barn Swallows Vs. Man

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If I stand still and watch it come in on its flight plan it is almost impossible to not flinch and look away. This summer seems different. Perhaps you have experienced this before but we have not. It started about three weeks ago. Like Hitchcock’s The Birds, our barn swallows have become aggressive towards us.

Your first warning is the loud chirping in the distance swiftly coming towards you, a piercing cry near your ear and fading with an avian Doppler effect. Constant and covering a large area they patrol. Barn swallows fly with fascinating precision, swooping, stopping and attacking bugs…usually.

We now find ourselves sympathetic with the mockingbird who has engaged in a similar campaign of harassment to our cat. Now he finds himself on the other end. We have a mockingbird nesting in our Carolina jasmine. Each time he ventures out to bring food to the nest the swallows attack from all directions.

They have built a nest under the eaves of the house. Even as I sit in the backyard typing they dive on me every thirty seconds. But, it is when I’m walking they do their worst. A few line up in the middle distance, say 30 yards away. Taking a direct line on my path they fly directly at my face, squawking all the way. At the last moment when just a few feet away they veer away with a triumphant piercing cry as I flinch.

As a test stand still and watched the whole flight to your face. Honesty it took several tries before I could watch without flinching and looking away. I won. Won? What does it say about a grown man who feels the need to do battle with a barn swallow?

The farm kid and I, while working on a fence in the woods a few weeks back were slathering Off on to keep away the ticks. He mused, who is smarter, the humans spraying a toxin on themselves or the ticks who avoid it? Ticks, barn swallows or Brian, please don’t answer the question.

Farm Poetry

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Farm Poetry: There is a tradition in literature of setting out an agricultural calendar in a sort of poem. Hesiod’s “Work and Days” dates to around 725 BC. He advises you to hire a mature plowman of 40 years of age. A younger man plows ill while dreaming of his social life.

One of my favorites is Thomas Tusser’s “Hundred Points of Husbandry” (mentioned previously), farming advice set to rhyme was published in 1557: A truly wonderful and instructive text that was the basis of one of my favorite books “Lost Country Life”. The author, Dorothy Hartley, used the poem to explore medieval village and farming life.

Last week, while reading some of Wendell Berry’s poetry from his “Sabbath” collection I discovered his contribution to this form of literature: “The Farm”. An instructional walk through the year on his farm it contains some true gems. He tackles in one section one of the thorniest issues we deal with in our life on the farm, competition with predators.

…Or old Coyote may

Become your supper guest,

Unasked and without thanks;

He’ll just excerpt a lamb

And dine before you know it.

But don’t, because of that,

Make war against the world

And its wild appetites.

A guard dog or a donkey

Would be the proper answer;

Or use an electric fence.

For you must learn to live with neighbors never chosen

As with the ones you chose.

Coyote’s song at midnight

Says something for the world

The world wants said. And when

You know your flock is safe

You’ll like to wake and hear

That wild voice sing itself

Free in the dark, at home.

By Wendell Berry: from “The Farm”