The Surly Farmer

Dr. Evil and I spent our Wednesday doing our level best to bolster the economy, this time by purchasing a truck for the farm (okay, for me). We bought it from Carmax, and it’s been a fairly long process, in that the vehicle had to be shipped from another Carmax location to the one closest to us. Note that I say “closest” and not “close.” We had to go all the way up to Columbus to seal the deal. Going up was fine, we took some backroads and had a look around. Back was another story. Although I’ll never forget what rush hour looks like in actual metro areas, I had forced the memory into a cold, dark part of my brain. All you city dwellers, lord love you.

The overall Carmax experience wasn’t bad. They have no-haggle pricing, and the vehicle was fairly represented. They gave us an acceptable price on our trade-in, and the process was relatively painless, but there remains this nagging feeling when dealing with car dealerships: am I being hustled? I can’t find any areas where we may have been hustled, but the sense of it lingers in the air, like a sickly sweet air freshener.

Any car buying experiences you’d like to share? Meet me in the comments section.

You know how it is when you get your heart set on a certain something to eat and nothing else will satisfy? Well, that was us this week. Ohio may not be known for its barbecue, but there is a local establishment with a good reputation. Dr. Evil and I had a look at their menu online and we were lost from there, brother. It was going to be barbecue come hell or high water. We invited Dr. Evil’s folks to join us Wednesday, with a 6:30 dining time. Everyone was ready to get out of the house because it’s been raining for days now, and Wednesday was the first day with more clear skies than rain. We arrived at the appointed time to find the restaurant’s security gate halfway down and music blasting from the the back of the shop, telltale signs of a recently closed restaurant. Crushing. I walked casually to the entrance to find a sign “New Hours: 11-6PM.” We ended up at an alleged Cuban restaurant, and it was fine, but it wasn’t pulled pork, ya know?

Which brings us to Thursday. It turns out that I had lit quite a barbecue fire in Dr. Evil, because on Thursday morning when I asked her her thoughts on a farm project (more on that later) she wondered if that wasn’t a subject best discussed over barbecue. Cut to: Closing laptops, brushing of hair and teeth, the dust trail of a speeding car. We were barbecue bound, baby. We are still getting to know our way around here, so we were pretty proud of ourselves for remembering to approach the barbecue joint from the east to avoid a majority of traffic lights encountered when coming from the shorter western approach. Then it happened. The Sign. ROAD CLOSED AHEAD. We were a quarter mile from pig heaven and the damned road was closed. All that rain i mentioned? It drove the normally placid Hocking River from its banks and right onto State Street, our pathway to pork. Deflated but not defeated, we circled back to the western approach and found . . . you guessed it: flooded on that side too. Double crushed. This time we substituted burgers and local brews, and while it was tasty, it wasn’t brisket.

I’ll relieve the tension that each of you must be suffering by now—Will they? Won’t they? Did they? What else could go wrong?—and tell you that (after first calling to see if they were open) we had barbecue today. It was good. Very good, even. More importantly, though, it scratched that barbecue itch, and we are now free to obsess about something new. Maybe the weather.

In Charleston, we were located a few miles from the National Weather Service’s local office, so their radar image was our radar image, and we had up to the second accurate storm information.. Now we rely on a NWS radar in Cleveland, some 200 miles away. So last night, when a massive wind hit us just after dark, all of our scrambling for more information was pointless; Weather.com assured us that it was in the fifties with 9 MPH winds. Brother, these were 50 MPH gusts and 30-some sustained winds, or my name isn’t Surly. I don’t know why, but an hour into the vortex, after a dozen or so alarmed looks exchanged between me and the Doctor, I shined a flashlight out the window to check on the chickens and found that their coop had flown the . . . coop? (Gotta work on that one some, I think.) It was on its side about 15 feet from where it had been, and as the coop has no floor, this meant the chickens were free, free or blowing towards Columbus at highway speeds. Dr. Evil and I scurried out, flashlights in hand and found one, two, three, four . . . all six chickens huddled together where their house had once been. How does one feel such relief at discovering the safety of a creature too dumb to even so far figure out their coop has a second, sheltered floor? Well, one does, because I assure you we were quite happy to find them all safe. Having no desire to stand in the gale and try to repair a coop that was designed by high morons (morons who were high, not exulted morons), we secured the coop to the fence and brought the girls back into the basement, much to their very apparent relief. They got a treat of dried mealworms and bedded down in their childhood bedroom. We were able to repair the (stupid) coop today, but it looks like the girls are going old school soon. We are going to repair the rickety old coop on the property and build a new run for them, which I think will make for happier hens. Tireder Surly Farmer, but happier hens. I guess it’s a wash.

Want to know how strange farm life is? Dr. Evil willingly—HAPPILY—accompanied me yesterday to go look at mowers. It might be that she was seeking escape from a proposal she was working on, or maybe she wanted the comptroller’s eye out there with the checkbook. I can’t be sure. But look at mowers we did, and friends, they are not cheap. I have my heart set on a zero turn mower, having endured the frustrations of a normal riding mower a few mowers ago, and you cannot touch one for less than $2500, it would seem. It’s not quite a bait and switch, but the manufacturers who do produce less expensive models always throw in a couple of unacceptable points at the lower end, just so you’ll look at the next model and realize it’s “only” a couple hundred more, as is the next, and the next, and the next until soon enough, you’ve basically paid what you paid for your first “good” car back in the day. No mowers were purchased yesterday, but Dr. Evil insists it was not a failure, because we now have data. She’s an optimist, that one.

The chickens are transitioning to outdoor living beginning this week. All six have survived chicken childhood and seem to be thriving. One is a bit of a runt, but she doesn’t appear to be suffering at the hands (beaks?) of her big sisters. Another bird has different coloration from the rest. It’s hard to say if she’s a different breed or just, you know, an individual. She’s the only one with a name so far: Eleven.

In other animal news, Scout the Butthead took advantage of Dr. Evil’s good nature and slipped out of the meadow to gorge on the grass on the other side of the fence (it literally is greener), and evaded capture for a good long and nerve-racking while. This is what I know: dogs listen better than horses. They can’t pull a plow for shit, though.

We’re still pondering what to do with the old outbuilding, which is not helped when potential contractors don’t even return your calls. It’s a small job, but not a difficult one, I would think, and you’d think someone would jump at the opportunity. Not so far. “Just do it yourself . . . ” echoes the little dumb voice in my head. We’re getting closer to that being a reality, which would be a great thing for loyal Surly Farmer readers. You think I’m an idiot in day-to-day living? (Did I mention that I recently cut into a lithium polymer battery?) You should see when I flex my home improvement muscles! I learn, but seemingly ONLY from mistakes.

And with that, I close. It’s raining here, and promises to continue to rain for the remainder of the week. Keep your powder dry, friends, and I’ll be back to report on future Important Happenings as they occur.

P.S. Dr. Evil left Facebook last week, in case anyone was wondering, she’s fine, just done with Zuck. I told her she should have said something on her way out, which she said was an odd thought coming from an introvert. Look, I’m ill mannered, but I’m not rude.

I read an interesting piece from Marketplace entitled “It’s not easy being green when you’re poor” discussing how poor neighborhoods fear being left behind as Pittsburgh enjoys a surge in renewable energy home heating resources that accompanies the current local tech boom. While we are far from poor, the problem still resonated with me. The primary heat source in our house is electric, two heat pumps to be precise. While heat pumps have come a long way in the past few decades, they are still far from perfect and when it gets below 25 or so, we need to use the propane back-up to warm the house. I plan on using the wood stove more next year, but anyone who’s heated with wood knows the frustrations involved with that. This house is much tighter than our (literally) old house in Charleston, so the temperature is more stable. In Charleston, we ran on natural gas, and the temperature indoors, if graphed, would resemble a classic sine wave. But even in this relatively new, well-insulated house, compared to the in-laws’ house across the street, this place is a yo-yo. They installed a geothermal heating system, and it works wonderfully well, providing a steady, quiet heat. We don’t have solid numbers yet, because they moved in halfway through the heating season, but I’m betting that their electric costs will be dwarfed by ours, even though they seem to keep their house on the warm side of tropical.

We don’t plan on going anywhere, so we would of course love to install a geothermal system and would be prepared for a long term recoupment, it’s just that we don’t have $25k sitting around. We are considering installing some solar panels, but while they have gotten cheaper, they are still by no means cheap. And our moronic President is not helping anything, either, with his—and I hate to use the same word again so quickly, but it works so well with him—moronic policy of putting tariffs on foreign (Chinese) solar panels. A policy that means little to the Chinese, but a lot to US solar installers and maintainers, I might add. Here in Appalachia, solar energy seems to have done the impossible: bring the GOP around to the plight of the poor. Here, for example, Tyler White, the President of the Kentucky Coal Association, does some impressive concern trolling over how the “elite” are taking advantage of the poor by installing home solar systems. What a guy!

Naturally, I’d be pleased by a lower electricity bill, but that’s not my primary concern with wanting a more economical heating source, it just seems like the right thing to do. But how come the right thing is so expensive?

Oh, and happy spring! It’s snowing.

We had the pleasure of the company of BOTH girls over their spring break. We anticipated Kid Number Two, but Kid Number One’s presence was an added bonus. They came armed with dirty laundry, meal requests and appetites that would put locust to shame. They stayed in our guest room (holy crap, we have a whole room for guests! What kind of grown-up shit is that?), which adjoins the kitchen. It was around day two that I realized just how much this house is designed for two. Dr. Evil and I live in one large room on the second floor, which opens out to the living room on the first floor, so there are no doors or hallways or the like between us and the rest of the house. Not that we’re getting into anything wild upstairs, c’mon, we’re old, but if the stereo is playing downstairs, it’s playing upstairs. The kitchen is industrial style, with commercial fixtures, to include deep stainless steel sinks that resound like kettle drums when anything is gently placed into them, let alone the odd dropped spoon or bowl. Add to that the roar of the commercial coffee grinder I recently found on eBay and it’s tough going for anyone trying to sleep past 7:30. They were troopers, however, and we rarely saw them before 11 AM.

Kid Number One will be graduating from WVU this spring, so we helped her out buying her first car. It’s a reasonable first car: a used Ford Focus sedan with good safety ratings and solid milage figures. The dealership experience left much to be desired, however. I know there’s nothing new to say about the parasitic nature of car dealers, but man, I cannot understand why they won’t be better to their customers (especially young customers), if only out of self-preservation.

It would appear that Kid Number Two is staying in Morgantown over the summer. She and a friend are renting off-campus next year, so they are sub-leasing the unit until the start of next school year and hoping to find summer jobs to cover the rent. I didn’t tell her that jobs tend to dry up in college towns during the off months, but I guess we’ll see what we see. While she was here, I found her hunched over her computer and asked what she was working on. “I’m finding bus and train tickets to Pittsburgh and New York because I’m going to the Governors Ball. Oh. In New York, huh? Oh. Where do these adult children get the idea that they can just do things without permission and consultation? Did I mention that Kid Number One is headed for Spain after graduation? Oh, my aching worry bone.

Dr. Evil’s chickens are growing seemingly by the minute. She and the girls assembled a prefab “chicken tractor”¹ for the flock, and the birds are being introduced to it—and the outdoors in general—today.

We got an estimate on rehabbing an existing shop building here on the farm, turning it into a garage/farm implement storage area. Hahahahahahahahahaha. [Comes up for air.] Hahahahahahahahaha. The consensus is that the builder (who built this house twenty years ago, and also just built Dr. Evil’s parents’ new crib) didn’t actually want the contract, so he threw out an incredible number. It worked, he’s not getting the job. But here’s the latest twist, and the latest example of exactly how stupid I am: I got to looking at the building as it stands, then considered what we want to do with it, and said to myself, “Well hell, why not just do it yourself?” I do not learn.

¹ It’s no tractor at all, more of a trailer where the human is the tractor. Chicken trailer just doesn’t sound as good, I guess.

I didn’t hate Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, let me be clear about that. And I enjoyed much of the dialog, most of the acting and the idea of the story itself. But. It was not a great film. Its flaws are many and crippling. I am a big fan of Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell, and I enjoyed watching them all onscreen this time around, but were these really Oscar-level performances? Can great acting overcome a mediocre script? I’m dubious. Bearing in mind that awards often don’t age well (Dances With Wolves vs. Goodfellas, anyone? Shakespeare In Freaking Love vs. Saving Private Ryan?), I just don’t understand the gushing love for Three Billboards. Here are some of my complaints, in no particular order, and yes, there will be ***SPOILERS AHEAD***

• What’s with an entire police department full of station rats? No one likes a station rat; not supervisors, not other cops, yet everyone seemed cool with the whole shift dicking around the station all day . . . except when Officer Dixon (Rockwell) ventures out to the hinterlands one night to find the famed billboards being posted.
• Oh, but wait, there’s no night shift for Dixon to have been working! Remember? He goes to the station to pick up the gooshy letter after it has been closed for the day. Sure, there are departments that work daywork only, but, well, see above.
• Speaking of which, why are they doing the billboard work in the pitch black?
• Speaking of the billboard workers, isn’t it great that the two black people in all of Ebbing met because of the billboards and progressed quickly to dating? Awwwww  . . .
• Minor point, but why did the Chief’s wife have to have an odd, unexplained accent? South African? (Checks IMDB. Nope, Australian.)
• Does the team from Winter’s Bone get some acknowledgment for creating John Hawkes’ (Mildred’s ex(?)-husband Charlie) character? Because he was basically Uncle Teardrop without the meth.
• The state sends a replacement chief after Willoughby’s death. Wuh? What is this, high school, and we send a substitute teacher, er chief of police?
• And when said presto chief arrives to find Dixon in mid-civil rights violation-cum-malicious wounding, he sends him home? What happened, stranger chief, did you leave your handcuffs and arrest powers in substitute chiefs bullpen?
• And the rapey stranger who isn’t guilty, yet still feels the need to go threaten Mildred (and happens to know her name (thanks, Dr. Evil)), what about him? Why is he in Deer Crotch, MO when he lives in Bald Hump, Idaho? Oh yeah, the [begin deep reverb] Spooky Government Spook Operator Top Secret Dude Guy backstory. Oy.
• Pretty cool how Chief Willoughby’s message of love turns Dixon around so wholly and quickly, you know, until it’s time for a revenge cross country road trip. Double oy.

Why am I so critical? Because this could have been a really great film. It had all the makings of one, but lacked a critical outside eye during production, someone to point out the flaws before they were committed permanently to celluloid (digits, whatever). I wish I could attribute this, but I can’t remember who said it: Three Billboards . . . is like a Coen brothers film, if someone left the catering staff in charge of making the film. Boom.

The music was good. (See, positive note.)

I started my day yesterday with a starling in the drainpipe. Euphemism, you ask? Alas, no. Early yesterday, we heard some kind of animal scrambling around on metal, and thought that a critter had gotten into the kitchen vent. I turned the fan on in an attempt to blast it out, but nothing happened, so I went outside to check on it. There, I found that the scratching was coming from the downspout, not the kitchen vent (**whew**). The bottom of the downspout was crushed by repeated mower collisions, so whatever was in there was stuck about eight inches above the ground. I fetched some snips and began cutting the metal away above the crush zone. As soon as I’d made a hole, a beak popped through and solved the mystery of “what kinda critter is stuck?” Mr. Bird was not cooperative with his rescue crew (me), and kept trying to squeeze through the hole I was slowly cutting—slowly, because I was trying  to not lop off dummy’s wing whilst “saving” him. It turned out the bird was a starling. Friends, I love the creatures, great and small, but I don’t have much patience for the starling. They are basically pests and they crowd out other bird species. It’s not their fault; they are an introduced species and probably would have been just as happy to have stayed in their native Europe.¹ I eventually freed the miserable bird, but not before he cut himself up on the jagged aluminum. He flew off on the wings of my ambivalence. I’ve since learned that starlings are nesting at this time of the year, and are prone to invading chimneys (and I guess downspouts).

In other bird news, we have red tailed hawks nesting at the corner of our property, and they often hunt in our meadows. (Heh, OUR meadows. I’m sure the hawks see them as THEIR meadows, right?) I doubt that I’ll get the access I had to our Charleston hawks a few years ago, but they are still wonderful to watch.

In other, other bird news, we have birds living in our basement. Six of them, in fact. And it’s intentional. Dr. Evil is officially a poultry keeper. She came home from Tractor Supply the other day with six pullets in tow. They are living the good life right now, luxuriating in a bed of wood chips in the basement, with a heat lamp over them 24/7. I wonder how they’ll handle the eventual eviction. Still, it shouldn’t be too much of a shock for them, as Dr. Evil purchased some sort of chicken condo for them. I can’t wait to see the condo board meetings.

That’s not the only thing living in our basement, though. During heavy rains, the basement tends to weep a bit. Okay, it cries. It bawls. After a particularly wet stretch, I found not one, but three salamanders along the perimeter. Not small ones, either, they were a good six inches long and as big around as a magic marker. How’d they get there? Beats me, but I’m beginning to understand the roots of our predecessors’ belief in spontaneous generation. I was able to get them back to nature, but I’m in the lookout now.

Both girls, plus one friend, came for a visit last weekend, so we’ve had our first family reunion at the farm. The girls have known this house since they were born, essentially, so they were immediately comfortable, and were surprisingly equanimous about our stuff being in their grandparent’s home. It is said that at least one kid will be spending spring break here as well, so that’s nice. I mean, who needs Cancun when you’ve got Albany, Ohio? The visiting friendkid was wearing Adidas Superstars, which I complimented her on, telling her they were THE shoe to have when I was ten years old or so. She informed me that they are “basic ho” shoes. The things you learn.

I did not watch the Oscars, but next time I’m going to unload on 3 Billboards . . . stay tuned.

¹ http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/01/opinion/100-years-of-the-starling.html?src=pm

This is Scout, and he’d like to know if you have any treats for him, and if you don’t, he’d like to know why the hell not. You see, Scout is a bit of an equine jerk. He’s bossy and throws temper tantrums when he doesn’t get his way. Mostly, he’s very bossy to this beleaguered fella:

This is Tug. Tug is very patient with Scout, even if Scout does not let him have his share of treats, even if Scout nudges and bugs him when he’s trying to sleep, even though he can’t get a drink of water in peace. All that said, they genuinely seem to enjoy each other’s company. They belong to Dr. Evil’s parents, but they are still living on this side of the road. And boy howdy, has Dr. Evil taken a shine to them. She visits with them every day (treats, yo), and managed to get a halter on Tug this afternoon. There is a colloquium and praxis scheduled for Sunday afternoon between Dr. Evil and her father. I’ll take photos for you, good readers, I owe you that much.

In case anyone thinks horses are dumb beasts, there’s this: They take great pleasure in standing by the fence outside our kitchen window when it’s raining, showing us just how sad, miserable and pathetic they are (they have a covered area available to them, so shut up, horses), as if we might invite them in. Hmm. I’d better just go ahead and tell Dr. Evil that she is not to invite them in. Just to be safe.

***DISCLAIMER: DR. EVIL INSISTS SHE WAS NOT TRYING TO KILL ME***

Know how you can tell we’re country now? We burn our trash. Well, some of it anyway. I’m still undecided on how I feel about this, but it’s not like we’re burning a rain forest or something, and trash pickup is not the simple matter it is in the ‘burbs. Mostly, we’ve been burning moving boxes—how’s that for setting your money on fire? Buy boxes in Charleston, unpack them in Ohio, then burn ’em. Oy.

Anyway, about a week after we arrived, we had a communal bonfire with Dr. Evil’s folks, who were also burning their moving detritus. It was a serious conflagration, and my inner 7-year-old firebug was delighted. By Saturday, we’d accumulated another bevy of boxes, along with various files and papers that we were dumb enough to haul all the way to Ohio before parting with. Included in this lot were a bunch of old greeting cards (Dr. Evil’s, not mine; I keep mine, like normal people do). About halfway through the burn, I was alarmed to hear strange noises coming from the burn pit. They sort of sounded like the Wicked Witch of the West, but on speed vernier. I chuckled, realizing the sound was coming from musical greeting cards, a few of which were in the mix. Then it wasn’t quite as amusing as the batteries in these cards began to explode, sounding like M80s and launching geysers of burning paper about a foot and a half high. Fortunately, the pit is bounded on three sides by concrete block and on the fourth side by a tall, moveable steel shroud, behind which I took cover from the Hallmark assault. Obviously, I lived to tell the tale, but I’m not the same man I was when I went to that burn pit; I’ve seen things, man.

Was she trying to kill me? I guess not, but I did recently introduce her to one of the most heartbreaking songs ever, which could have given her ideas.