Geronimo!

Since I was five years old, my routine has included buying school clothes and supplies in the fall, anticipating Christmas break, praying for snow, and counting the days until school ended.  First as a student and then as a teacher.  Now I am retiring.

What I will miss most is the energy that being with young people generates.  Their complete engagement in the life they are living.  Their smiles, their tears, their laughter, their ah-hahs!  It's been such a privilege to share in my students' whimsical, unpredictable growth.  So, considering whether to retire from something I love so much soaked up much thought and prayer time.

In three days, I will no longer have a classroom.  I’ve always believed that everything has a season and I’ve had this feeling for a while that my season of daily teaching was drawing to a close.  I don’t know what God has in store for me as I move into the next phase of my life.  I know I would like to be a published children’s author.  I don’t want to be self-published, I want an agent and a publishing contract and I am very aware of what a difficult dream that will be to achieve.  There's a greater than average chance that I will fail.  But, I could succeed.   So, I am stepping off of the structured platform of predictable  chunks of time regulated by bells and lessons into the thin air of unstructured time and days marked only by the rising and setting of the sun.   Thank goodness I practiced all of this letting go when I went zip-lining with my sister.  When I talked to her about retirement, she counseled me that whatever I choose to do,  I should do  it with gusto.  She's right, so here I go. Geronimo!

Feeding Time on the Farm

Where are the peepers?  Usually this time of year is “looking forward to spring” time because I’ve heard the peepers and seen the robins and red-winged blackbirds.  But, spring seems to be on vacation.  Perhaps she’s stuck on one of the Carnival Cruise ships.  Instead of peepers and robins, we have sleet and snow.  That means that we are still spending a lot of time feeding cows.

 So what does all this feeding entail?  Well, when Joe is feeding round bales he just lifts them with the tractor forks and loads them onto the truck.  But, when he’s trying to clean some square bales out of the barn, he lifts and loads his wife.

 My age has made getting into the bed of the truck more complicated than it used to be.  I grab my right knee with both hands and lift.  It takes three or four tries before I am successful in planting my foot on the bumper.  I bounce a few times,but  I can’t pull myself up , so Joe helps me by placing a hand under my rear and lifting.  In our early days, I would have considered this move flirty, but now I just consider it necessary. Then, it’s my turn to give him a hand up so he can climb into the mow and begin throwing hay down into the truck bed.  The bales hit the truck with a thud and I make sure I’m out of the way.  Not because I don’t want to be hit, but because this barn sheltered a very large group of cats this winter.  Each bale that bounces down brings a shower of dried cat poop. 

On our second load, I threw the bales down so Joe could dodge cat poop!

There’s an art to placing the bales so that they will stay on as we rattle over the frozen ruts.  This is a time when my age is an advantage.  I’ve done this enough to know the pattern and I’ve also learned how to use the physics of leverage and momentum to get the bales onto the top stack.  Finally, the truck is loaded and I crawl off the back, open the gate, and climb back up into the bed.  Joe puts the truck into low gear and I get ready to cut strings and scatter bales. 

Thirty bales loaded and ready to be fed.

The steers hear the truck and come running.   I love this part.  We inch along and the bales fall with a soft swish to the ground, making a road of hay. 

Dropping hay for hungry cows

 

 

 When we finish, we head back to the barn to load up again for the next field, where we keep our cows and calves.  Joe counts heads as he drives along and discovers that a calf is missing, so when all the bales have been dropped, we drive across the river and scan the fields.  The calf is hidden among some brush and dried grass.  Joe positions the truck so the calf can’t see him sneaking up.  With tagger and bander in hand, he captures the little bull baby and gives him a new numbered  earring and a band on his little balls. 

 

Mama cow, who is two fields away, hears his loud cry and comes running.  Her udders bounce and sway as she gallops across the frozen field.  By the time she reaches us, it’s all over and Joe  has released the calf.  In his hurry to get back to mom, the calf sticks his head through the fence rather than going around, so Joe has to free him and lift him over.  No wonder my husband has some back issues.

 

     Now that the cows have their supper, it’s time for us to get ours.  We turn and head for home.  As I look back, the baby bull is getting his supper, too. 

Move Over Dorothy

     When Hurricane Sandy blew through on Monday, all of us here in the mountains were laughing about the huge amount of hype the storm had received. We were under a blizzard warning and hadn’t seen more than a few flakes of snow. The predicted high winds had also not materialized. So, Joe and I went to bed, and although the winds were beginning to pick up, we had weathered a lot worse than what we were hearing outside the bedroom. The house wasn’t even shaking.
     At midnight, the phone rang. Joe answered sleepily and then bolted upright. What?” he said. I could only hear his end of the conversation. He was saying things like, “You’re kidding me.” And “I never expected that.” Then he said, “We’ll talk about it in the morning,” and hung up. Here’s the next part of our conversation:

Me: Who was that?

Joe: It was Justin.

Me: Is everything all right?

Joe: Yeah, but the roof just blew off of his house.

At this point Joe had rolled back over to go to sleep and I was sitting bolt upright.

Me: What? Which part? Is it the part he’s under? Is he going to be all right? What if the house falls in on top of him? Did you tell him to come up here for the night?

Joe: (rolling his eyes) He’ll be fine. It’s over his bedroom, but there’s another floor and an attic between him and the roof. It’s not even raining or snowing.

Me: Yes, but the wind is still blowing. What if it pushes all the walls in? Now that the roof isn’t there to hold it together anymore, the whole house might fall in.

Joe finally realized that I  had no grasp of how a house is put together, so he explained that the rafters were still on, it was just the tin that had peeled back and blown off into the river.His explanation didn’t soothe my jangled nerves. Like the robot on the old TV series, “Lost in Space” my brain was waving its neurons wildly and screaming, “WARNING, WARNING, DANGER, DANGER.” This was, after all, my baby, my first born, my son and he obviously needed more attention than he’d been given by his dad. I picked up the phone and dialed.

Justin: What mom?

Me: How did you know it was me?

Justin: Just an experienced guess.

Me: Are you all right?

Justin: Yes, mom!

Me: Should you come up here?

Justin: No mom. I’m fine.

Me: What if the house falls in?

Justin: Mom, the house isn’t going to fall in. I just called Dad to see if there was anything I should do. I’m going out and move my truck out of the way in case more of the roof blows off.

Me: Call me when you get back in. The tin blowing around out there might cut your head off.

Justin: (sighing) I’ll call.

To give my son credit, he did call and assured me that he would be fine until morning. That’s when I started praying for the wind to die down, and it did shortly thereafter, so I went back to sleep. If the two people who knew the most about the situation weren’t worried, then perhaps I shouldn’t be either.

The next morning, Joe called our local roofer and then we rode down to the farmhouse to see the damage. Justin was just getting dressed when we got there and he admitted sheepishly to me that he hadn't slept well. Then he and his dad pow-wowed about how to secure the roof until it could be re-tinned.

Since I was sure I couldn’t add anything useful to that conversation and maybe my hyper-worried state would cause me to ask too many annoying questions (after all, I’m the one who was sure the whole house would cave in) I walked down to the general store to see how everyone else in the county had fared.

The power had gone off in the night so Patsy, the store owner, had a generator fired up out in the parking lot. Everyone from our side of the mountain was gathered around the one functioning coffee pot in the whole county discussing the news. Although we had been spared the worst of the weather, and no one but my family had lost a roof, the western side of the county and the mountains beyond had experienced the forecast blizzard and apparently that’s why we were all without power.

Full of news, I bought a honey-bun for my son and walked back down the road to the farm. The men were now on the roof with several tarps and a bucket of roofing nails. Diddle, our roofer, had showed up and proposed this temporary solution until he could get enough tin and help lined up to complete the job. By the time they got everything under cover, my worry button had stopped beeping and my practical husband had found a silver lining. As we were driving home he mused. “Well, I was going to paint that roof this summer. Now, at least, I won’t have to do that section.”

Don't Eat the Freezie Pops

 Mothers do a lot of things out of love.  Currently, I am storing poop-sicles in my freezer, for my son Scott.  You read that right.  Why in the world would I have little bags of frozen cow shit tucked in the frosty nether regions of my deep freeze?  Well, apparently poop is very fragile.  At least its fragile in the sense of how long it will maintain the phosphorous load it carries.  Scott is gathering data for a phosphorous and soils study being conducted by researchers at Virginia Tech.  His job is to contact area farmers, visit their farms and collect soil samples, hay samples, grass samples and manure samples.  The first three are fairly easy to obtain, but the manure samples require that he follow a cow around the field in question and scoop up a freshly plopped pile.  So, Scott has spent more than one afternoon trailing a herd of cows as he waits for one to raise her tail.  As soon as the warm dung is deposited, he rushes in and scoops up a small sample which he tucks into a tubular bag.  Each sample is labeled as to point of origin.  When he has enough samples he rushes them back to the freezer where they are held until he has enough to send on to the lab.  The results of the study will be used to determine the impact  that farm feeds and hay production practices have on the watershed. 

    Before you come to eat dinner at my house, you need to know that the bags are stored in a box and are not in contact with any of the food in my freezer.  So, there is no cross contamination.  But, if you decide you’re hot and want a popsicle, let me warn you, there’s no such thing as a chocolate freezie pop.

Cooking with the Pizza Love Queen

    

      This past weekend, I was blessed by a visit from two very dear friends, Cheryl and Terry.  We only see each other once a year, and we had a lot of talking to catch up on.  So we talked while we hiked. We talked while we sat on the front porch listening for owls.  We talked while we soaked in the Jefferson Pools at Warm Springs (only we had to use our whisper voices there, because we were afraid of the big lady who handed out towels).  We talked while we painted rocks and we talked while we made pizza.  Oh and I forgot to mention, while we were talking, we were also laughing and giggling and guffawing and snorting.  Friendship warms the heart with laughter.

    We laughed while we made pizza with our beloved Pizza Love Queen, Cheryl, as she taught us how to make the perfect dough.

1)       Use cold water when making dough.  It takes longer to rise, but it also gives it a deeper flavor.  The longer rising time also gives the dough more time to develop gluten which means less work will be needed for kneading.  So, don’t be in a hurry. Make the sponge with cold water in the morning, then go out for a hike and a soak. 

2)      Don’t measure.  That’s too time consuming.  Eyeball estimates are close enough.  People who tell you to use specific amounts of ingredients have no imagination.  In dough, close is close enough.  So a bowl about half full of water, enough flour to make it like thick pancake batter, a package of yeast and some salt.

3)      You need salt in your dough.  Salt keeps the yeast in check.  Otherwise it would go into a feeding frenzy and die an early death.  Cheryl put about 3 TBS in the bowl which worked with one pack of yeast and almost five pounds of flour.

4)      Stir up the sponge.  Work at this because the more you work the flour the more you awaken the gluten.  Then when it is fully awake, go do something else.  For a long time.  Left undisturbed, the yeast will become happy and bubble away.  When you come back the dough will be waiting and ready, all without interference from you. Cheryl once showed up at my house with a pot full of pizza dough sponge in her trunk.  She made it in the morning and it travelled through DC traffic and over the mountains to my house where it rested until suppertime.  All that travel does wear one out.

5)      Add flour until the sponge is less gooey.  You’ll know when it’s done: it will just feel right.  A little tacky but firm and limber.

6)      Knead in the bowl.  No need to make any more mess than necessary. 

7)      Let the dough rise and then oil your surface and lay out some mounds of dough about the size you want for your pizzas (we did personal size pizzas on the grill).  Again, be patient.  Let the dough rest.  Drink a glass of wine and put your feet up.  When you come back the dough will be ready to yield to your hand. 

8)      Put your leftover dough in the fridge.  It will keep there for a couple of days.  Just pull out a mound the size you want and let it rest on your oiled surface until it is fully awake and pliable.  Form and bake.

    These are the Pizza Love Queen’s words of wisdom about dough.  I think there’s some advice that applies to life in there, too.  Relax.  Work when you need to, rest when you can.  Spend some time alone and undisturbed so your yeasty thoughts can develop.  Don’t use two bowls if one will do. Sometimes you just need to walk away and things will take care of themselves.

Gumption and Elbow Grease

     In a world where so many jobs get easier and less physically demanding, it is awe inspiring to see a farm family take on a new, labor-intensive enterprise.  Kari and Michael, a young married couple who have spent all of their unmarried lives raising and dealing with livestock and poultry, decided two years ago, shortly after their marriage, to try something new.  They took out a long term rental on seven acres near their house and began planning for a truck garden.  We neighbors listened as they described attending classes to learn about raising bees (to pollinate), raising a green house (to start seedlings) raising rows of dirt into straight beds (to plant) and raising vegetables and fruit to sell.  I admit some of us shook our heads and said, “There’s no way they can do it.  They both already work full time jobs.  Where will they find the time?”  But find the time they did.  Kari stayed up late nights cutting up what must have been two tons of seed potatoes until her fingernails were stained black.  Michael plowed and laid irrigation lines by tractor light.  Both could be found early mornings and late, late evenings tending to tender young plants. 

photo of 7 acres courtesy Church Hill Produce

  They spent every extra hour at the vegetable patch.  And, their hard work is bearing fruit (pun definitely intended).  The strawberries are in and they are abundant, juicy and sweet. 

  I feel so lucky to have a commercial berry patch just a half a mile down the road.  I have stopped almost every evening on my way home to pick.  We’ve had strawberry jam, strawberry shortcake, strawberry pie, chocolate dipped strawberries, strawberry fruit salad and handfuls of strawberries to eat fresh.  All because these two newlyweds are willing to work hard for a dream. 

   Soon there will be fresh lettuce and new peas followed by tender cukes, crisp beans, and yellow corn.  So here’s to the energy of a young couple determined to deliver fresh fruits and vegetables.  All across the country crop farmers are working just as hard to put food on our tables.  It’s been quite an education to see the extensive, exhausting work close at hand.

If you come to the mountains of Virginia, stop by and pick up dinner.  It's worth the drive.

For more information or to see the progress of the plants follow this link:

Churchill Produce

It's a Dirty Job

     Women rearrange their houses, shifting furniture from one room to another in search of the perfect placement.  Farmers rearrange their livestock, shifting sheep and cows from one pasture to another in search of perfect forage.  So, on Saturday, I wasn't surprised when Joe asked me to help him move some sheep. I was particularly glad to move them off of this pasture because it's where my secret asparagus patch is. The sheep keep it gnawed into the dirt until we move them.  But, Joe wasn't interested in growing asparagus, he was interested in growing hay.

   I dressed in my oldest pants and my farm boots and we headed out to the meadow, where the grass was almost knee high.  Joe filled a bucket with grain and commenced to hollering for the sheep.

But, the sheep found the grass on their side of the fence pretty green, and ignored his calls.

  So, Joe and I walked out to them.  He took the low side of the pasture, shaking the bucket and yodeling  "Shi-i-i-i-i-i-rpy," while I walked the upper side, ready to force the sheep to turn and follow him if necessary.  But, as soon as she heard Joe, this ewe ran to the bucket.  The other sheep followed behind and before long we had all of them around the barn.

The next job was to pen the sheep so we could move them onto the trailer.  The plan was to put half of the flock on the trailer, dope them (which means to give them worm medicine) and then transport them to the new pasture.  Then return and repeat.  The first group loaded well.

Joe moved among them administering 12 cc of wormer while I followed along behind, marking the sheep with a blue marker.  This helps us keep track of who has been wormed.  The sheep were shitty (sorry there's no pretty word for the condition of their rear ends after a month of green grass) and my other job was to plant my knee in between their back legs to hold them.  Joe slipped the tip of the automatic syringe into the side of their mouths and then squirted the medicine in.  It must taste awful, because the sheep backed away from him every time,grinding their gooey green rears into my bracing thigh.  When we finished the trailer load, all the ewes had blue stripes decorating their wooly backs and I had a deep chocolate brown line decorating my pants.

Then we stepped out of the trailer and hopped in the truck.  Six miles down the road, there's a pasture just waiting for sheep.  There are cows already grazing there, but sheep and cows are great companion grazers.  What the cows won't eat, the sheep will, giving the pasture a tidy trim in the process.

     Joe counted the sheep as they jumped out.  I tried to help, but I have a terrible time keeping numbers in my head.  Nevertheless, he counted lambs and I counted ewes and then he counted ewes to check my count.  

     The sheep were a little reluctant to enter the new pasture so Joe shooed them along.

Then we headed back down the road for our second group.  These sheep didn't load as smoothly.  One lamb slipped between the trailer and the edge of the fence, so we chased it around the barn for about fifteen minutes before Joe snatched it mid-jump and hauled it back to the trailer.  The little white-faced lamb in the back was exhausted from that panicky search for his mama.

   In spite of the fact that Joe did most of the work, I was wearing most of the dirt.

It doesn't show up so well here, but trust me, those brown stains were pungent.  Still, helping on the farm is one of my favorite ways to spend time with my hubby. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.  I'm glad it's me.