Country Entertainment

     Last week two other couples joined us for a date night across the mountains. We travelled through the Shenandoah Valley on back roads past Mennonite farms with children playing ball in their front yards and women in kerchiefs and aprons forking hay out of the barns. We saw a man and his son washing and polishing three buggies in preparation for Sunday services and pants and dresses flapping from clothes-lines hooked high up on light poles. The air was soft with the last light of day and clouds piled up against the mountains that protected the wide valley. But, we didn’t drive fifty miles just to admire the scenery. We were on our way to a church supper. That’s what country folk do for fun.
     After a great tenderloin dinner, we stopped at Walmart before heading home because it’s an unwritten rule that any trip over the mountains ends with a trip to pick up milk or bread or blue jeans, or whatever else we’ve run out of in the last week or two. Finally, just as a light drizzle began to fall, we drove home to the beat of windshield wipers and the sound of stories. All three men in the van grew up together and they spent the hour long trip home outdoing one another with tales from their childhoods. I envy them this shared memory of people and places. While lots of stories made us laugh, my favorite stories had to do with a fellow the guys called Carly. One story was about Carly and his old sow. One day she came into heat, so Carly fashioned a box and attached it to the three point hitch on his tractor. Then he loaded up his hog and headed to his neighbor’s farm where there was a willing boar. On his way there, Carly stopped at a friend’s house and they had a few drinks. Then, Carly crawled back on his tractor and drove on to the farm. When, he pulled up to the pig lot where the boar was waiting to breed his sow, she was gone. She got tired of waiting for him to finish his beer and jumped out and trotted back home.
     Another Carly story was about the time Carly went hunting with friends. They were looking to kill a deer, but rather than bringing a rifle, Carly had brought along his old twelve gauge shotgun. One of his friends got to ribbing him about the shotgun and allowed as to how Carly couldn’t even hit the broad side of a barn with it. Carly laughed along with them and then told his friend to toss his cap in the air. The friend obliged, tossing his hat high in the air. All of the others watched expectantly as Carly pulled his gun up onto his shoulder and tracked the cap up into the sky. It reached the top of its arc and then began to fall. Carly tracked it all the way to the ground. Then he pulled the trigger and BLAM destroyed the cap where it lay. That was the last time his friends ever teased him about his gun.

By the time we finished laughing, we were safely home over the mountains.

The Last Biddy Battle

     

     Today as I chased Henrietta around my yard for about the zillionth time, I realized that I have created the perfect chicken trap.  I was sure I had sealed all the entrances through the fence, but Henrietta and a select group of friends keep finding their way inside.  The problem is that they won’t find their way back out.  So I huffed and puffed and circled behind the chickens trying to force them to escape via their secret path.  But, they just waddled ahead of me, necks stretched out, refusing to lead me to their hidden hole.   Finally, I gave in and opened the gate, chasing them back to the barnyard.  The chicken eating dog tried to help me, but when I caught him hauling one of the biddies around, I hollered and he dropped her.  Unperturbed, she strolled about the yard before finally climbing the steps to join the dog on my front porch. 

     My other activity today was sitting in a chair, taking money from tourists who came to sample pancakes, syrup and mountain hospitality.  I am always amazed that anyone would want to travel twenty winding miles over the mountains to stand in line for an hour or two so they could eat a meal easily prepared in the comfort of their own kitchens.  But, so many people told me that this is a yearly tradition for them.  Many folks told me that they had come to all four days of the festival.  So I started watching these families and friends as they were standing and waiting to be served.  I realized that syrup is only part of the reason they make the annual pilgrimage.  They were all laughing and telling stories both to their own friends and to new ones they’d made while they waited.  The Maple Festival is the first excuse of spring to take time away from the cares of daily living. Standing in line is not a chore, but a time of forced inactivity where the only thing to do is to talk to and enjoy each other.  I did not see any cell phones (no cell service here) or IPods plugged into ears or kids watching video on IPads.  What I did see was a lot of old fashioned fellowshipping and socializing. 

    Perhaps the chickens and I could learn to spend some happy time together as well.  I think I’ll take a lesson from the patient tourists and rather than working myself up, I'll invite the next chicken that climbs up on the porch, to set a spell (that pun was for you, Dad).  Hope you'll join us.

The Chicken Wars

     The cat and I sit on the patio conspiring.  Our enemy is gathering the troops, regrouping after our most recent battle, in which Tip and I ran around the house ten times while the chickens lapped us twice as they avoided capture.  The Chicken Chasing Cat is all for another frontal assault.  I’m considering enlisting the aid of the Chicken Eating Dog, but whenever he wins a battle, I lose another layer.  We must find a way to keep the chickens out of my yard without affecting egg production.

     Why did I want this white board fence?  When Joe and I first married and I was fresh from the suburbs, I insisted on a white board fence to surround our grassy half acre.  Board fences look so pretty from the road, I argued.  Normally, my pragmatic husband prevailed, but I won this round.  Not only did I win a white board fence, I also won a quarter acre more of grass to mow.  It seemed a sweet victory at the time. 

     White board fences are high maintenance.  They must be painted and repaired yearly.  They also have a huge flaw that never occurred to me when I was arguing against the more mundane wire fence.  White board fences do not keep out livestock very well.  Chickens, beagles and lambs can all get between the boards.  I thought I would have a white board fence lined with flowers.  What I have is a white board fence lined with ragged stubble, courtesy of the lambs.  I thought I would have a pristine green lawn, suitable for croquet. What I have is a green lawn, laced with dog poo land mines.  I thought I would have flower beds blanketed with mulch.  What I have is bare flower beds and mulch scattered across the entire half acre courtesy of the scratching hens.  In all fairness, I didn’t have the problem with the hens until I moved Henrietta up from the farm in McDowell.  If you recall, she was the chicken who spent most of her days exploring town.  Now she spends her days teaching the other chickens to sneak into my yard. 

     So, I decided to be proactive.  I bought forty-five dollars worth of chicken wire and stapled it to the bottom half of the fence where I thought the hens were sneaking through, but Henrietta keeps leading the troops along the barrier until they reach unprotected territory .  I’ve run out of chicken wire and I refuse to spend any more money, so I’m recycling some unused items.   The chickens snuck under the gate: I wired up a leftover piece of lattice work.  They followed the chicken wire to where it ran out behind the shed:  I draped an old volleyball net over that section of fence.  They tiptoed past the grill: I stapled up a recycled badminton net.  They power walked to the pasture:  I cut up a bird net and stapled it to the bottom boards.  I’ve covered holes with abandoned tomato cages, parts of an old tricycle, black plastic drain pipes and a piece of shower curtain I was using as a drop cloth. I realized that I was probably obsessing when I covered the last hole with a recycled pot rack.  But no matter, I won the war. 

     I finally succeeded in fencing out the chickens. Unfortunately, I can’t see my fence anymore.

Love is in the Air

     What’s black and white and stinks all over?  Around here it’s skunks.  And there are plenty of them to smell.  It’s skunk mating season and that nose tingling, eye-watering aroma is one of the sure signs that spring is just around the corner.

   Skunks are normally reclusive, but during mating season the males become very excitable.  When they wake from their half-hibernation, they run about lifting their tails and marking the boundaries of their territories.  Then they fight over females and in their frenzy to reproduce they also tend to spray random animals and humans.  My pastor friend Les once went for an early spring drive.  His truck window was rolled down to take advantage of the soft notes of birds and the warm breezes.  As he drove past an opening in the woods, a male skunk whirled and aimed.  Bulls-eye! The majority of his spray hit Les directly on his face and beard.  Although Les bathed in tomato juice and shaved off his beard, it was a month before those of us in the front pews could no longer smell him. 

     Female pole cats also perfume the air.  They do it to discourage unwanted advances. If an eager suitor goes too far, the female stomps her feet to warn him and then whirls around.  SQUIRT!  I can think of some times in my life when that would have come in handy.  Anyway, overwhelmed with grief, the rejected male apparently runs out to the road and commits suicide.  I drove over five flattened carcasses this week.  No wonder the morning air has been sulfurous with skunk pee.

     But then, this evening, on my way out to the back forty to feed the dogs, I smelled it.  That first ripe whiff of wet earth and spring mud.  Skunk love lingers on the morning mists, but the evening air heralds my love.  The smell of spring is in the air.  The piping notes of the peepers can’t be far behind.

Letting Go of the Oh Crap Strap

The sky bridge.

     

     “Warning, warning!  Danger, danger!”  The voice of reason reverberates from my head to my heart to my stomach.  I am staring at a sky bridge, strung from the ground to a platform two stories above my head.  I am belted, clipped and helmeted, but I am still not sure I can make the climb.  In fact the pounding rhythm of my heart belies the fact that this whole zip line thing was my idea.  It seemed like a good way to get beyond my fear of heights, but now I’m not so sure.  A crazily canted rope ladder to the sky is eroding my resolve one panicky heart beat at a time.

     I’ve come to  Banning Mills with my intrepid sister, Meg.  We are together for one of my favorite events of the year—our annual sister trip.  In past years we’ve kayaked the Ashley River, galloped along the white sands of Amelia Island and now here we are perched on the edge of certain death on the rim of a gorge south of Atlanta.

     Meg clips on…. “Transfer 1” Click!  “Transfer 2” Click!  Then she turns and starts up the wobbly stairway to the sky.  It is too late.  I have no choice but to follow her.  I transfer my clips to the overhead wire, my hands shaking so badly that I cannot close them properly.  My mouth is dry, my palms slick with sweat.  Keeping my eyes focused on Meg’s red jacket which is now rising to the heavens above me, I take my first step towards a new adventure. 

     It seems I’ve always been following two steps behind my big sis.  Shy when she was younger, Meg has since been scuba diving, high mountain skiing, and even at one time in her life rappelled down the side of a cliff.

     I finally reach the platform fifty feet above.  Our guide gives us a few more cautionary instructions and then we line up to step off into space.  I am the last to go.  I decide not to close my eyes and gripping my pulley and the “oh crap strap” I step off into thin air.  I soar through the forest canopy to the Hickory tree five hundred yards away.

Meg demonstrating good form- one hand on the pulley, one hand on the "Oh Crap Strap"

     By the third tree, my hands are dry and my heart is beating normally.  I am no longer hugging the tree as I stand on an aerial platform the size of a pizza box with eight other people waiting my turn for the next zip.  By the fifth tree I am picking up speed in my descent and learning the art of braking.  I venture a one-handed ride and practice my cannonball position.  By the ninth tree, I am sorry it has come to an end.   

  After our aerial adventure, Meg and I eat lunch on the porch.  Then we hike down into the gorge and sit on a rock mid-stream.   Zippers (Is that what you call people who ride zip-lines?)  soar through the trees.  We can hear their cables singing as they approach and then disappear over the ridge.  I keep pinching myself.  I can’t believe I actually did it.  When we first pulled up and I saw all those people zooming overhead, it made me so nervous that I refused to watch.  I was afraid that I would chicken out.  Now, the sigh of the pulleys and the quick flight of humans cannon-balling above pulls me into a peaceful trance.   I can’t wait to see what next year’s sister-adventure will be.

Fire in the Hole

     When we returned from our Sunday evening egg delivery, the house had cooled down, so I opened the damper on the back of the stove.  As the flames caught up, I heard a whoosh and then an intense crackling.  Joe stood for a moment listening and then announced, “I think the chimney’s on fire.”

     Twenty three years ago, the first time this happened, I grabbed the phone and began dialing the fire department.  Joe took  the phone from my hands,  closed up the back of the stove and sat down to have a beer while I ran around the house gathering up all my prized possessions in case we had to evacuate.  Apparently, chimney fires were a fairly common woodstove occurrence.  Before calling the volunteer firemen away from their mashed potatoes and gravy, country courtesy required that you try to put out the fire yourself. So, when the stove had cooled a bit we searched for something that Joe could use to knock down the smoldering creosote.  Lacking a long board, we settled on my horse lunge line and an old spade I’d inherited from my grandmother.  We tied the spade to the end of the rope and Joe climbed the ladder to dangle it down the chimney.  The blade swung around knocking creosote loose.  This worked pretty well until we melted the handle of the spade. 

     After twenty years of dealing with stopped up smoke holes I was surprised two years ago when Joe actually handed me the phone.   Flames and sparks were rising from the chimney and after singeing his eyebrows, he decided that it was too hot for us to deal with. All of the firemen are neighbors, so we chatted while they scrambled up and down their ladders.  Dressed in their heavy coats and smoke shields, they hauled up a heavy chain hooked to a steel punch and dropped it down into the fiery pit.  When they were finished, I served my local heroes coffee and cookies before they headed back to their farms.

     Although we clean our chimney every summer, about mid-winter, it usually stops up again. Joe has stood on our slick roof in fifty mile per hour winds, thunderstorms and blizzards.  He said tonight was a piece of cake.  After years of practice, my husband has perfected his technique.  He scrambled up the ladder and I handed him a  fifteen- foot long stick and a chimney sweep’s brush. After punching the stick into the smoking tunnel, Joe swooshed the brush up and down a few times while I shoveled out the hot creosote that clattered down to the clean out hole.  We actually meant to have Scott do this for us when he was home, but forgot to ask him.

     No matter.  The chimney is clean, the smoke is rising, and Joe finished in time to watch Virginia Tech beat Boston College.  

A Lot of Lambs and a Hardworking Man

     The moon is full and so are the barns.  That extra bit of moon-inspired gravity is hastening the lambing.  Fourteen ewes have dropped thirty-two lambs to the straw in the last week.   The barnyard is full of leggy lambs and Joe’s days are full of work.  He starts each morning with a trip to the lambing barn. That’s where the pregnant ewes spend their nights.  If there are new lambs, then Joe cleans out a stall, adds fresh hay for bedding, carries the lambs in, chases the mama in and then feeds some hay and grain. Sometimes there’s only one ewe nosing a lamb or two around in the straw, but other mornings there might be three ewes and six lambs all jumbled together.  They must be sorted out, but Joe has some tricks up his sleeve.  He pulls the similar looking lambs into separate areas of the barn.  The moms can identify their lambs by smell and sound, so they run around, sniffing and bleating until they’ve claimed their babies.  When all of the new families have been moved into stalls, the rest of the ewes are shooed out to the meadow where they are fed three gallons of grain and two bales of hay.  

      After his stint in the maternity ward, Joe visits the nursery.  Each stall in the bottom of our barn is divided in half to accommodate two sets of ewes and lambs.  He visits each stall, checking on the lambs and gathering up the black rubber water buckets.  After several trips to the water hydrant, all the mamas have fresh water.  Then Joe scoops up five gallons of grain and gives each ewe her breakfast.  If the lambs are new, he dips their umbilical cords in iodine to prevent bacterial infections.  If they are at least a day old and looking healthy, he bands their tails and testicles.  If they’ve been banded for at least a day, then each lamb is painted with a number to match mama’s ear tag. This makes it easier to sort them out later. 

       From the barn, Joe carries two five gallon buckets of grain out to the orchard lot.  That’s where the older lambs and ewes stay until they are turned out to pasture.  He dumps his buckets into the five sided feeders.  Then he fills a trough with water.  After that, Joe climbs into the hay mow and throws down six bales of hay.  When the ewes finish the last of the grain, they get two of the fifty pound bales.  If Joe is lucky, then that’s it for the sheep until suppertime, but more often than not, there’s a ewe in a stall who won’t nurse a lamb, so she must be tied and the lamb held in place to nurse.  Or there is a triplet whose mama didn’t have enough milk.  So Joe goes up to the house, mixes a bottle of milk replacer and then carries it back down to the barn for the hungry baby.

    All of these things happen before Joe goes off to the shop for the day.  They are repeated in the evening, after work, along with feeding all of the cows.  No wonder my husband spends most of his evening after supper napping in his chair.