The Surly Farmer – Page 3 – Marginalia, Trivialities & Suchlike

Coop de Grace

April 26, 2020

I think I mentioned earlier that a while ago Dr. Evil came home one Saturday with a half dozen chicks in tow, without having mentioned it to me as a possibility. We were able to house them in the decrepit coop left to us by Safti and Zeyda, but it was far from ideal.

Fast forward a couple years and a suboptimal presidential election, plus a global pandemic, and the In-Laws decided now would be a good time to get back into the chicken business. I never objected to raining chickens, I just wanted to provide a safe coop for them. Dedicated followers of the Surly Farmer will remember that skunks and raccoons have periodically murdered our poor hens. It’s a Cold War-like struggle and if you’re ever convinced that you are winning, you are lost.

Anyway, at the outset of this Corona confucktion, S&Z bought a couple dozen chicks, and they are ready for a new home. Over the past few days I’ve been laboring to build a new, strong home for our avian friends. I don’t even want to calculate the price of each egg relative to the cost of materials, but on the other hand, I don’t really care; eggs are good, and I’m happy to take care of, and protect the small creatures.

Framing has begun and installation will follow. Pictures will follow upon demand. I hope you are all well.

Whew

April 9, 2020

We had our first possible encounter with covid this week. The oldest kid, who is in an “essential” worker category, and thus has continued to work outside the house through all this, reported to us on Sunday that after experiencing a number of covid symptoms (notably not including a fever), she sought and obtained a test. She was told the results would be back in 3-7 days, so we commenced to worrying immediamente! I am happy to tell you that the results came back quicker than expected, and she tested negative. *whew*

She’s a science nerd, so she was quick to not the high incident of false negatives, so I guess we’re still one edge for the next seven days or so, but I think we’re good.

I hope everyone out there is doing well, and may this be our only brush with this particular disaster.

Photos

April 3, 2020

Couple of requests for photos, so here’s a sampling over time:

Sorry for the small image size, our upload speed here is absurdly slow.

Update From Ft. Bountiful

March 31, 2020

Strange to think that a few days ago I got sunburned working on Ft. Bountiful, because yesterday and today it was borderline frigid

That said, today we did a final till on half of the garden, and planted half of that. So as of today we have sown rows of: mangel (beets), red beets, diakon, collards, lettuce, and kale. Coming soon: corn and other stuff Zeyda tells me to plant.

So now we wait and watch.

Enclosure

March 30, 2020

Fort Bountiful is now completely enclosed—eight feet of deer discouraging fence, mounted to 4×4 posts sunk 2+ feet in the earth.

Tomorrow we will till the soil. Zeyda gave it a preliminary plowing with the tractor-mounted tiller, and tomorrow we’ll give it a more precise tilling with the walk behind, then planting begins later this week.

The Fort looks good, but it may have strained relations between the generations. The fact is, Zeyda and I are long accustomed to working alone and doing things our own way, and this has been a sudden crash of grumpy, opinionated old men. We’ll recover of course, but it’s an interesting circumstance to note.

It’s been really windy for the past couple of days, so windy that the hens didn’t even lay a single egg today. They truly do not like windy days. Little do they know that a new, (presumably eager) generation is closing in on them. I can’t recall if I mentioned this previously, but at the outset of this coronavirus panic, Safti and Zeyda decided that now would be the time to get back into the chicken business, so while others were out buying toilet tissue and beans (that they don’t know how to cook), they bought twenty chicks, which will soon take residence on this side of county road 35. As an aside, we heard a story on the radio this morning that chick breeders were sold out of product owing to the concordance of Easter and the coronavirus panic. I foresee an surge in feral chickens in the near future.

The Elephant Cage Is Complete

March 27, 2020

We sunk the last four poles for the frame of Ft. Bountiful this morning before the rain set in. Well, not totally before the rain set in, but close enough. It remains now to hang the livestock panels and cut a gate into the perimeter somewhere. As I look at the skeleton this evening, it occurs to me that we will probably need to add some structure between the poles, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it, I reckon.

In other pandemic news, I was finally able to order some bread flour, and even a thermometer. I’m embarrassed that we didn’t have a thermometer already, but I guess that crises provide clarity for where we’ve been slacking. We’re having trouble keeping beer in stock (I suspect Puck has been pilfering after we’ve gone to bed), and I am somewhat wary of eating raw fresh vegetables, so it would seem we’ve eaten our last greens salad for a while. Farewell, arugula!

While we were taking a break from our labors yesterday, and drinking a lovely cup of Tanzanian coffee, Zeyda wondered aloud how much—or little—Tanzanian (or any other) coffee might be enroute to these United States. I roast my own coffee, so I have some degree of insulation from the swings in the commodity market, but then I wondered how long any supply interruptions might last. Long story short: whereas I normally order 15 pounds of green coffee every couple of months, I now have 40 pounds of beans headed my way. If the virus takes us, at least we won’t be drinking shitty coffee when it happens.

I managed to get a curbside pickup appointment from Kroger (five days from now, but whatever), so if you’d like me to grab something for you, lemme know.

Day, um, 4? of the Compound Build

March 26, 2020

We’ve established the two long sides of Ft. Bountiful, and tilled the ground in between, leaving the two short ends to enclose. Opinions were shared on how exactly to accomplish this. Turns out there are two high opinionated, used-to-working-alone men working on this project. Some sample exchanges: “Well, if you know the answer you’re looking for, why are you asking me?” “It’s a compromise.” “Well, no wonder I didn’t recognize it.”

Kidding aside, it’s going well. Yesterday, all the holes went to the water table, and inherent clingly clay on the diggers. Today, we encountered a layer of sandstone, but that was far more workable.

The forecast calls for rain tomorrow, so that will probably put the brakes on construction, but seeds are started, the ground is warming, and no one has stroked out yet.

Biggest coronavirus debate: will I make a grocery run tomorrow? Stay tuned. And wash your hands.

The Compound

March 25, 2020

Back in the Time of Plenty, we often joked about building a family compound centered on the property Dr. Evil’s parents own in southeast Ohio. Mostly, it was a comical reaction to public idiots such as antivaxers, III percenters, and Tea Partiers. Then came Trump.

But the line was not quite that straight. Dr. Evil’s folks—whom I suppose I’ll have to name, now that they are characters in this play—so we’ll call them what their grandkids call them: Safti and Zeyda—were among the back-to-the-landers who descended upon West Virginia in the late 60’s to early 70’s, hoping to . . . . well, if you want to know about that, just ask, and I’ll be happy to send lots of links to scholarly articles. Point being, West Virginia (and lots of other rural areas) became a refuge for many hoping to escape the pressures and ideologies of the Vietnam War era.

Safti and Zeyda landed in southeast Ohio when Safti accepted a position with a local university, and they built a house on a few acres in a sparsely populated county. They later added more acreage, and built a new house more suitable for their age. This was when Dr. Evil and I took over the small farm (the “tall house,” as opposed to the “flat house” in local parlance). Does two houses a compound make? Well, we have neither ramparts nor palisades surrounding us, and a county road bisects the property, so probably not technically.

The coronavirus has prompted a surge in survival instincts, however. We’re not hoarding toilet paper or anything (although we do have a whole case of brown bread, but that’s another story), but what we have done is start building what I’m calling Fort Bountiful. Zeyda has been a gardener for decades, and when we moved to this house, we took over his garden (the “hoop garden” because it was basically a quonset hut made of arcing livestock panels.

But we found that setup unworkable and gave it up after two seasons. We also planted an open garden, but it was decimated by hooved rats, aka: white tail deer.

Enter: Fort Bountiful. It will be a protected garden measuring about 50 feet by 32 feet, with tall posts all around, upon which will hang 8 1/2 feet of livestock panels. Seeds are on order and construction began yesterday.

I’ll keep you posted. Get it? Posted.

Watch This Space

March 22, 2020

There are some exciting new developments coming to the farm. Growth! Expansion! Many other synonyms!

Stay tuned!

Adventures in Shopping, Covid 19 Edition

March 20, 2020

I did my Friday shop on Thursday this week, knowing I would not be able to purchase pastries for Saturday morning, so why not shift it up a day?

Notes: No fresh baked goods, but lots of fresh boxed stuff, What’s the diff?

Butcher counter closed, but fresh meat in the coolers. What’s the diff?

Dried bean section scoured. Like all those non-spice using so and so’s know how to fix beans.

Oatmeal section ravaged. As if you Cheerio-eating dunderheads appreciate steel cut oatmeal.

They weren’t even bothering to unpack the toilet paper, just dropping the boxes adjacent to the TP section, then counting on the Morlocks to take it from there.

I thought about buying some popcorn, but apparently, everyone else thought of that too. Once back home, I checked Amazon for availability of Orville Redenbacher’s, and they did have it in stock . . . for $11.44, up from $4.37 a month ago. I look forward to Bezos injecting some of his Covid riches back into society.

Interesting times indeed.