The Surly Farmer

Observation: Hummingbirds eat sugar water, also poop sugar water*.

* I presume it’s sugar water, but I haven’t actually tasted it.  Yet.

I’ve been long absent from the site, and I do apologize to all my raving fans, clicking refresh until blisters form on their poor fingertips.

It’s been busy around here. Mowing the grass is an every fourth day event for as long as it keeps raining once in a while, and I’m still scurrying over to Charleston when I can to work on/empty the old crib. Recently, though, I added a new skill: haymaking. You may be familiar with the large round bales of hay seen dotting fields around this time of year, but around these parts (between our property and that of Dr. Evil’s folks), we don’t do it that way, for round bales require round BALERS, of which we have none. No friends, we did it the old fashioned way. On Thursday, we used the tractor and a bushhog to cut down the grass in one part of one field, then left it to dry until Saturday. Come Saturday, my job was to trail the tractor driven by Dr. Evil’s father, as he raked the now-dried hay up, and to clean out the rake every 20 feet or so, then neaten up the resulting piles of hay. Lotsa walking, but not too bad. Then once all the hay had been raked, it was not my job to assist loading the hay piles onto a buck rake on the front of the tractor. Oh, wait, did I tell you it was 109 degrees out, in a still, shadeless field? Because it was. Oy. But, we got it collected and put up in the hay bay, plenty of fodder for the horses should this coming winter be harsh. They’ll get some, regardless, but I believe the key point is to have more than you may need.

Which brings us to the sad news. Zoë the Cat is gone. She had developed a new habit of arising very early (sometimes 4AM, sometimes somewhat later) and just howl, howl, howling. For those of you unfamiliar with the howling abilities of the Siamese cat, suffice to say, they are impressive. She demanded exit from our bed early this morning, then around 8:15 let out a pretty good string of cat obscenities from downstairs. We figured she was swearing at Napoleon, a pretty cool cat who “belongs” to Dr. Evil’s folks. Alas, that was not the case. We went to investigate and found her collapsed in front of the front door, unable to right herself. It was apparent that the end was near, and I feel strangely fortunate to have been there for her at her end. She lay between me and Dr. Evil for her last few minutes and surrendered around 8:30. I will take my cue from her and cuss the hell out of the Grim Reaper when he eventually comes for me.

I count myself as lucky to have been able—without the demands of commerce—to dig her a proper grave. It was square and even and well-placed, and she will rest within sight of the desk from which I now write.

Our house is now very empty. The girls have gone off to school and beyond. The pets are no more. This whole life thing, man. I just don’t know.

Take care of yourselves, your others, and your furry friends.

We moved onto the farm in January, months before it seemed reasonable to even think about anything growing from the ground, so we made some garden plans, but maybe not the most precise plans, what with being overwhelmed by boxes and, uh stuff. Dr. Evil’s father has planted various gardens all over the property over the 20-odd years they lived here, and his final iteration was a hoop garden directly in front of the house. The hoop garden is basically a shrunken Quonset hut made of hog fencing arching across a garden plot about ten feet wide. At its peak in the middle, the hoop rises about five feet above the ground. The purpose here is to deer-proof the garden. For those unwise to the ways of whitetail deer, they will eat anything, everything, most especially anything you do not want them to eat. They especially love tender, young shoots. It’s understandable, but infuriating.

We were dubious about working in a garden-cum-mineshaft, but went ahead and planted in the hoop garden. Long story short, Dr. Evil hated it, and we prevailed on her father, with his whizbang tractor, to till us a new plot elsewhere, sans hog fencing. Time-wise, we were coming in just under the wire for some of the stuff we were planting, but surely late was better than stooped.

This time, we decided to employ monofilament as deer-proofing. It seems many folks have had success surrounding their garden plots with several strands of fishing line stretched tight between fence posts. The reasoning is that deer will bump into the monofilament and retreat, having encountered something they can feel but not see.

IT WAS A SMASHING SUCCESS!! For the first couple weeks, that is. This morning, Dr. Evil discovered that a lone deer had entered the plot — without breaking any strands, meaning that it leapt over something it allegedly could not see (something deer are not supposed to do)—and devoured our tomato plants, peas, cucumbers and basically anything it could get its greedy lips on.

Where do we go from here? Kroger, maybe. I dunno.

I’ll start this post out by acknowledging that I am kooked. I am. Thankfully, my kookedness is mostly harmless, and mostly internal, but it’s there. Today’s instance: Labor.

I am pigheaded about not asking for assistance in physical labor, much to the dismay and disappointment of my various crushed vertebrae and herniated this-n-thats. I just can’t stand the idea of being helped, and the accompanying sense of obligation. I will acknowledge that when assistance is forced upon me (you know, by offers I couldn’t refuse), I am usually overcome by the wonder of human kindness, which is a very pleasant feeling. For example, our neighbor in Charleston has over the years been unflinchingly willing to assist in efforts large and small, and I’ve even taken him up on his offers a time or two—you know, when I couldn’t sneakily wrestle the 4,000 pound whozzit out of the back of my truck by myself unnoticed or something. A few weeks ago, I was hauling my “portable” backup generator up our ski slope of a driveway, and said neighbor (I’ll call him Ed, mostly because that’s his actual name, but also because he just seems like an Ed) was standing in front of his house talking with two other men about his age (~65). They noticed me totally not struggling with the elephantine chunk of metal and without hesitation hopped into action. Between the four of us, we were able to easily lift the generator into my truck bed. (Getting it back out? Whole other story for later) Ed introduced me to his friends, and I learned that they were all West Virginia boys who met up at the MEPS in Beckley, on their way to Vietnam back in the day. It turns out that I went to basic training the same place they did (housed in the same shitty WWII era barracks), and we had great fun letting our inner lower enlisteds out bitching about all things polished and painted. My point here is that sometimes letting people help you actually makes you feel good. Weird, innit?

On a related note, Dr. Evil and I have begun using Kroger’s online grocery ordering service for our weekly shopping. It’s convenient, and we end up spending less because we’re not tempted by impulse buys as we wander the aisles of Kroger, dodging retirees, the addled, madmen and the shopping dead. We can go have dinner somewhere prior to our scheduled pick up time and never have to set foot in the grocery store. Great, no? But. I break out into hives when we are waiting for the worker bee to bring our stuff out to the car. They ask that you neither assist nor tip the WB. I’m awful at small talk on a good day, and this interaction just kills me. I feel like I am some sort of Gilded Age asshole having someone do my chores for me. I’m guild, not gild, ya know? Dr. Evil alternately soothes and mocks me as we get through these long 8.7 minutes, and I guess I’ve got it coming. We’re paying a service fee to Kroger, and Kroger is paying the person who’s loading our Cheez-Its for us, so I should be cool with it, and maybe some day I will be.

Over the years, Dr. Evil and I have also discussed employing a cleaning service, nothing live-in or daily or anything, but someone to come in once or twice a month just to keep up with the drudgery of household cleaning. Now, when I say we’ve “discussed” it, what I mean is that Dr. Evil has looked to the heavens and dreamily said something to the effect of, “Boy, I’d like for someone to come once in a while to help with the housework,” and I’ve said something like, “Oh fuck that noise. I’d be working my ass off the day before they arrived so there’d be nothing to do when they got to our house,” and the discussion ends there. Fortunately, it has yet to occur to Dr. Evil that either of these scenarios would work out in her favor. (Hi, honey!)

We have yet to get the Charleston house on the market. I’ve been making weekly trips out there to do some repairs, some cleaning, and some throwing-out-of-crap-that-we-really-ought-to-have-tossed-ages-ago, so we’re slowly getting there. Since April, though, I’ve had to add to that mix cutting the grass. So: two hours to Charleston, two hours cutting grass, two hours returning home. It’s not a productive schedule, friends. I finally broke down and hired someone to take care of the grass. I struggled mightily with it (to quote Dr. Evil: Didja call the grass guy? Didja call the grass guy? Didja call the grass guy? Didja call the grass guy?), but finally gave in and did it. He came on Ed’s (remember Ed?) recommendation, and has been dependable, which is saying something for these parts. I feel weird about having someone else do “my” work, but we are compensating him fairly and not asking that he do actual landscaping, just maintenance. He has a full time job and cuts grass and does other odd jobs on the side; for a certain segment of our society, it’s been a gig economy since long before it was called the gig economy. I sent him a text this morning to confirm how much we owed him for the month, and I started the text by thanking him for keeping up with the grass. He responded with the amount owed, and provided a mailing address for the check (yes, an actual written check!). But what got me was how he began his reply to me: “Thank you for giving me the work.” Shit. This may just change my thinking about asking for help. People spend so much time complaining about their work, the grind, whatever, and here’s this guy thanking me for giving him work. I’ve got some thinking to do.

This weekend, Kid Number One graduated with great honors (summa cum laude, if I might have a moment of vicarious pride here) from WVU and has set about her job search with increased ferocity. I don’t know all the parameters, but she’s at least trying to stay somewhat close to home base. Kid Number Two, meanwhile, moved into her very first apartment. After a year of dorm life, she and a friend have taken an apartment in Morgantown. She’s actually subletting until their lease starts at the end of summer, but she was itching to get started. Eighteen-year-old me totally gets it, but old man me has to chuckle that she chose to pay rent instead of lounging and mooching here at the farm. She’ll come to see the error of her ways, I’m sure. I mean, it’ll be years from now, but whatever. She spent a week or so here with us, and maybe that was enough.

The chicken run is nearing completion, so the ladies will soon have more space overnight. They’re spending their days roaming the yard and garden, happily munching on bugs and various green matter, oh, and shitting everywhere.Everywhere.  I appreciate the fertilizer, ladies, but I’m not sure we need it on the porch. We had a wild turkey mistake the chickens for birds of a feather and land in the yard near where they were pecking and scratching. The error was quickly noted and the turkey quickly made its way into the tree line. I am here to report its avian flub, however. It’s what I do.

Asparagus harvesting continues apace, but I think we are nearing the point of surrender, and we’ll let the plants go wild very soon. I’m considering pickling a few jars of the purple spears, too.

We are now fully greened here, and that wonder of the brain has occurred again: I can’t really remember what it looked like when all the trees were bare. Weird, that.

“Anyway, like I was sayin’, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. There’s uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that’s about it.”

Well, that’s about where we are with asparagus right now. The house came with an established asparagus bed, and friends, it is bountiful. As with everything else around here, we are relying on a combination of local knowledge (Dr. Evil’s folks) and the internet to figure how to harvest the asparagus. Internet says to harvest every other day until the crop runs out, and we attempted that at first, but now we find ourselves harvesting daily. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine problem to have, but holy smokes.

We also got our garden in this week. It was a bit late, but I blame Amazon and their nebulous idea of what 2-Day Shipping really means. The chickens are fully grown now, and quite amusing, I might add. Kid Number Two, having finished her first year of college (!!), is visiting us for a while and enjoys running around like an idiot to make the chickens run behind her. Maybe after a couple more years of higher education she’ll be a leader of men, but for now, she’s a fine leader of hen(s).

We’ve spent a small fortune on material to built an enclosed chicken run, and at this point even I am sick of my “these are some expensive eggs” jokes, but as Dr. Evil’s Pop frames it, it’s not about saving money. Which is good, because we’re not.

And the verdict was: two spaces after the period is better.  It makes reading slightly easier.  Congratulations, Yale University professor Nicholas A. Christakis.  Sorry, Lifehacker.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/05/04/one-space-between-each-sentence-they-said-science-just-proved-them-wrong-2/

We were awakened this morning by what sounded like very timid knocking at the front door. We have no doorbell, so if anyone ever did visit us, they’d have to knock on the glass door. But it seemed unlikely that our first unannounced visitor would arrive just after dawn. Still though, I went down and checked, finding (thankfully) no one at the door. This was a relief, because what I was picturing in my head, based on the weak knocks coming at such an odd cadence, was some sort of zombie, severed at the midsection, having crawled up the porch steps and up to the door. Knocking half zombie made sense to my still sleeping brain; still does, actually. After returning upstairs, the knocking started again, so back down the stairs I went. This time I found the cause of the knocking: a robin. Specifically, a robin charging at the dining room window repeatedly, fighting his reflection in the glass. The sun rose at 6:44 this morning. It’s now 13 hours 20 minutes later, and that damned bird is still fighting his reflection. I’ve scared him off easily 100 times, only to have him return, moved stuff around to block the window, put a radio right against the window, put tape across the window to interrupt his reflection, and hung dazzlers in front of the window. Nothing. I was annoyed earlier, now I’m grudgingly impressed. I’m going to turn this into some kind of farm aphorism, maybe “That boy is as persistent as a robin in spring.” All suggestions appreciated.

On a somewhat related note, Tilex works to keep nesting starlings out of your bathroom exhaust vent. For a while.

One thing I miss about Facebook is the opportunity to share photos with people . I don’t have many followers on Twitter, so posting there is unfulfilling. Flickr seems to have petered out, so where does that leave us? Dunno. I’m just going to post this here.

Is it fish? Is it chicken? The labels fell off the boxes in the walk-in, so what’s in ’em is anyone’s guess. We’ll fry ’em up and let you figure it out . . . if you can.

We have hawks nesting in our woods, and crows roosting in the trees along one meadow. Woodpeckers tend to pound on our eaves, and you already know about the pesky starlings. There are also an alarming number of vultures cruising our skies, but this morning we saw the strangest sight yet:

What is it, you ask? That is a freakin’ helicopter trailing a COLUMN OF SPINNING CIRCULAR SAW BLADES! The power company has been trimming right-of-ways (rights-of-way?)since we arrived in January, and we were already pretty impressed by their trucks with huge circular saws mounted to extendable booms, then we saw this madness. Holy smokes. Here it is in action:

It’s going to be difficult to top this, but I’ll keep my eyes on the horizon.