A Trip to the Woodshed

     My husband had a conversation with a newcomer to the mountains the other day.  The newcomer was commenting on the beauty of the place and how his wife loved her view.  Since they were looking at chainsaws, the talk soon turned to cutting wood for the winter.  The newcomer shared the enormous amount of wood he'd already cut and then said, "but my wife gave me specific directions about where the pile could be.  She didn't want it to block her view, so I've put it behind an outbuilding."  Joe then said to him, "Yes, my wife felt the same way when she first moved here.  Two winters of hauling wood cured her of that notion."  He's right.  Here's my woodshed.

It's pretty far from my house, but in good weather I don't mind rolling the wheelbarrow out there to bring in a load.  It's good exercise and the driveway makes it an easy trip.   But in snow, the wheelbarrow doesn't roll as well.  That's when I'm grateful for this stack.

As you can see, it's right beside the house; an easy distance to tote. 

I'm fairly certain the newcomer's wife will one day appreciate a stack by the door, too.  

Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Misery....

     Farmers are superheros.  Illness doesn’t stop them.  There are no sick days when the cattle are standing out in the weather and the only thing that keeps them warm is a constant meal of hay.  There is no one to call when a farmer feels just like the piles of crap dotting the fields where he must, with a fever of a hundred and one, go out and throw hay off the truck in the cold rain.

     This is a short post because I just wanted to give a shout out to my husband and sons, who do what needs to be done even when the doing is pure misery.  I am proud to be a farmer’s wife and the mother of two more.  My men have the kind of grit it took to settle the wilds of America.  They have the kind of determination and stubbornness that gets the job done, personal discomfort be damned. 

I hope the animals appreciate them as much as I do. 

The Grass is Just as Brown...

      I wish that someone would tell those rascally calves.  I know that they are young, so they don’t have much experience to go on, but it’s winter.  The grass on the other side of the fence is just as brown as the grass on their side.  It doesn’t matter.  They keep busting out anyway. 

     My husband and I have chased these two calves down the edges of the road, to an open gate, at least ten times in the last four days.  In the pasture, where the rest of their friends seem content to hang out, they have access to fresh hay and to calf pellets, delivered daily.  There is a fine source of fresh water, so they are not thirsty.  But, still these two roam and we can’t figure out their escape route or their reasons for escape.

     It happened again this morning.  The phone rang just as the sun came up.  “Your two calves are in the road again,” a neighbor said.  We pulled on clothes, coats and boots and fired up the truck.  A mile away the calves trotted into a neighbor’s front yard and put down their heads to graze on dead grass.  It must taste better than the dead grass on their side of the fence.  It must.  Otherwise, why would they insist on escape?

     The calves have gotten used to our herding them back down the road.  They aren’t scared of us anymore.  They sashay, stopping to grab another bite of dead grass.  They halt and consider the clouds racing across the sky. They pause to ponder, they stop to stare.  Finally, they trot back through the gate and Joe and I walk the fence-line once again, looking for gaps.  He hammers in a few loose staples and we study the grass looking for signs of escape.  We should see footprints or bent grass, but we don’t so we go back to the house.

     I have just placed a couple of pieces of bacon in the pan and turned up the heat when the phone rings.  “Your calves are out in the road again,” the caller reports.

     I have come to the conclusion that these calves are going through puberty. They are seeking to assert their independence.  I’ve read that in Rio de Janeiro adolescent boys, and some girls, get their kicks by hopping on to the tops of speeding trains as they roll down the track.  These thrill seekers stand, with arms outstretched- surfing, as the trains rumble down the mountain.  Despite the fact that over 600 kids a year are killed or severely injured riding the rails this way, the young Brazilians continue to flirt with danger.

     When I chase the calves down the road, back to the safety of their paddock, they exhibit this same “devil-may-care” attitude.  They are not afraid of failure.  My only consolation as I once again corral my boisterous beeves is the fact that my four-legged adolescents aren’t surfing the tops of trains for thrills.  Maybe I can train them to hop on top of cattle trucks as they lumber by.  

     

     Then they could get their adrenaline fix and I wouldn’t have to pay to get them to market.

The Hawk

That

Damn

Hawk

sits in bare branches

considering which

of my

hens to eat next

while I sit at

the window

considering how long it will be

before I get arrested,

if I shoot him.

Then

 the wind shifts

and the hawk

extends

elegant wings

to rise in silent circles

sunward

and I decide to let him live

just because

he is so

Beautiful.

Free Range Fricassee

    

 If someone had told me thirty years ago that I would one day kill a chicken and giggle while doing it, I would have scoffed.  Yesterday, Joe and I beheaded four of our roosters-who-should-have-been-hens.  I didn't think I could ever find any humor in death, but my husband looked so silly with specks of blood and feathers on his face that I did it.  I giggled.

     Joe was kind enough to do the beheading while I boiled water over on the other side of the fence, so I guess I can’t claim to be a total farm girl, yet.  My father says his grandmother used to chase the chickens down, grab them up by their necks, give each neck a quick twirl, and bring the old girls in for the stewing.  Our process was a bit more complicated.

     First, I read a book about how to butcher chickens.  Joe humored me in this, but thirty pages later I decided it might be easier to just listen to him.  He had, after all, done this before with his mother and had the chopping block and ax to prove it.  So, he gathered up four of our overdose of roosters and guided me through the process.

    After head removal, the roosters were tossed into a bucket to bleed out.  They shuddered and shook as rigor-mortise set in, but my book assured me that this was the dance of the dead.  Then we dipped the carcasses in 160 degree water.  The feathers came off pretty easily and in forty minutes, we had four headless, featherless birds ready for phase two.

     Phase two was to singe the long hairs off of the body.  Joe’s mom had always done this with a rolled up newspaper which she lit and passed over the bodies, but after almost setting the kitchen, the porch and the yard on fire, we decided to use a blow torch instead.    When the roosters were as slick-skinned as body-builders, they were dropped into the sink for phase three.

     Phase three made me appreciate my underdeveloped sense of smell.  We made a slit in the skin around the crop and removed it, cut off the feet and then worked to carefully remove the intestines without any spillage into the body cavity.  We were mostly successful at this, but since Joe’s mom had always done the innard removal, we had to experiment a little and consult the book (which frustratingly had no pictures).  By the fourth bird, we had mostly figured it out.

    The four boys, which at this point actually looked like store bought chickens only skinnier, were placed in water for a cold soak to remove the rest of the body heat.  Then they were placed in the fridge for storage and aging.

  The final step was the easiest.  We watched a video on You-tube of Joel Salatin butchering.  He had lots of fancy equipment and completed four hens in ten minutes.  He recommended using a knife as little as possible, tearing the skin open instead, to save meat.  He said every ounce of meat was worth fifteen cents, which made his chickens worth $2.40 a pound.

   Tonight we are having $4.80 worth of chicken fricassee.  But what we are really having is a farm-raised, free-range, antibiotic free, cleanly slaughtered supper.  That's worth more than any fat, overfed, cage-raised hen that money can buy.

    

    

Manna and Tomatoes

     Having a garden is a marvel.  I step out the door, walk twenty steps and palm a ripe red tomato or I wander the rows eating tender green beans like candy as I admire the beauty of all those growing things.  In July, the seeds I planted in May are showing a promise of abundance.  I run to the house, first tomato in hand to share with Joe, and we slice it reverently to eat with just a little salt and pepper.  Or we strip the silk from those early ears of corn and drop them into the pot that’s already boiling and stand over it drooling in anticipation.  

     But in September, my humble garden has morphed into an an overachiever.  It used to offer tomatoes shyly, nestled below green leaves.  Now it dangles them brazenly in the sun.  It hammers me with abundance.   “Come gather beans now!” it screams whenever I step into the yard.  And the flighty corn, so vibrant in its youth, is now pale and whining about the load of ears it carries.   

     We eat tomatoes for breakfast, tomatoes for lunch and tomatoes for supper.  I’m even tempted to hide them in dessert.  I have made and canned tomato juice, whole tomatoes, tomato ketchup, tomato soup, pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce and salsa.  I have gathered, de-silked , shucked and cut five buckets of corn.  I have pulled and dried a bushel of onions.  I have picked, snapped and canned twenty quarts of beans and still the garden throws vegetables at me in reckless abandon.

     I always feel overwhelmed at the end of the growing season.  Longing for the garden to cease and desist.  But then, I notice that there are no more green tomatoes on the vines.  There are no more bean blossoms.  There are no more baby cucumbers.  The corn rustles dryly in the wind. The garden is shutting down.  And, I after longing for such a moment am sad.

     When the Israelites wandered in the dessert, they cried out for food and God gave them manna.  They ate it three times a day for forty years.  I ate tomatoes three times a day for a month and whined about it.  Children in Africa would eat them gladly for as long as they could get them.  I have much to learn about gratitude and abundance.

Spring Cleaning

     With fall fast approaching I find that I am feeling rushed to complete my spring cleaning.  “What?” you ask.  “You haven’t finished your spring cleaning?  Spring is long past.”  You’re right spring is long past and I haven’t even started my spring cleaning.  There, I’ve said it out loud.  I am a spring cleaning drop out. 

     Over the years, I’ve tried to get excited about moving all the furniture out of a room, cleaning it side to side and top to bottom, and then putting it all back.  After all, Livvie Walton and the girls certainly seem to have a lot of fun when they do it on TV Land.  My problem is that when I start something, it usually brings to mind something else that I need to do. 

     For example:   To start my spring cleaning, I  prepare to move the  blanket chest in the living room out to the porch, but realize it’s really heavy,  so I open it to see if there’s anything I should remove.  As I am sorting through the contents, I find a blanket that would look really nice on my couch, so I pull it out and drape it over the back.  But now a quilt, that’s folded in a basket, doesn’t match so I carry it upstairs to put on the shelf with the other quilts, which are stacked beneath a coat that needs some buttons.  Hmm… It won’t take me but a minute to sew those on.

     So, I get the coat and the buttons, but the blue thread is not in my sewing box.  I walk downstairs to look next to my chair and notice a great magazine article about spring cleaning, so I sit down to read that.  Maybe I can get some tips that will make me more efficient.  When I finish the article, I find the thread and head back upstairs.  Once the buttons are attached, I take the coat in to my child’s room, which is really dusty.  I can’t leave it like that.

     Back down the steps I head to get a dust rag and some dusting spray.  Might as well dust the whole downstairs while I’m at it.  Downstairs dusted, I climb back up and dust the upstairs.  Then I notice that the screen to Scott’s window has fallen out onto the porch roof, so I squeeze through the window to retrieve it and, while I’m there, I see that the chickens are in my garden.

     I run down the steps, out the door and through the yard, waving my arms and hollering at the renegade hens until they fly over the fence and hot foot it back to the hen house.  On my trip back to the house, I notice that the lawn really needs to be mowed, so I get the lawnmower, gas it up and trim up the yard. 

     When I finish that chore, I’m thirsty so I head to the kitchen for a glass of water.  The clean glasses are all in the dishwasher which I unload.  As I’m unloading, I notice how messy the cabinet where I keep my plastic-ware has become.  I sit on the floor and sort through all the different size bowls, trying to match them up with lids and discovering that I have 40 lids that no longer have mates.  I toss those, which fills the trash can, so I take it out and dump it.

     I stand for a moment admiring the beautiful spring flowers and that’s when I remember.  I am supposed to be spring cleaning my house.  But, now it’s supper time.  I’ll finish tomorrow. 

     After supper, I sit down in my chair.  Why am I so tired?   I didn’t get a bit of spring cleaning done.  The trunk in the living room is still standing open and, as I reach over to close it, I notice a stack of pictures that need to be sorted and placed in albums.  I’ll do that as soon as I finish my spring cleaning.  Which I might finish this fall…if I don’t open that trunk again.