Cleaning the Shed

After two days of piddlin’ work and lots of beer, the tractor shed is clean and easy to access. The place was a source of embarrassment since it looked like the aftermath of a tornado. I got to the point where I couldn’t find anything. I looked for the small sledge for an hour before I cleaned the place. I found the sledge. It was exactly where I left it, under the fertilizer spreader. All the tools are where they should be, the tractor attachments are properly placed for easy use, and all those things for which I used to search are at my fingertips. And, as an added benefit, I have discovered “bucket sitting”. After the work is done and the sun is going down, there is nothing finer than to sit on a turned-over five gallon bucket and enjoy some cold suds. The only thing missing is some music. So, tomorrow my plan is to wire into the chicken house electricity and run a line to the tractor shed. Once installed, I think I will run some white, twinkly lights in the shed. How redneck is that? It is hard to beat a hot Southern summer night and some sunset songs.

A Fowl Day

It has been a day for the birds. Cardinals, house finches, bluebirds, a heron and chickens. A couple of cardinals are making a nest in one of the oak trees by the driveway. I watched them argue about building materials, stick arrangements and morning and evening views. It was difficult to tell who had the upper hand but he did seem to work hard. That suggests that when it comes to hearth and home, a man is mostly labor. The fourth hatching of finches is happening in the same nest in the rafters of the front porch. Last year, there were two broods. This year there were also two. The young ones scream as all infants when mom or dad approaches with nourishment. It is fun to hear. Last spring I placed two bluebird houses without serious thought that any would take up residence. I was wrong. Both houses, about three hundred meters apart, are full to capacity. Adults move in and out of the secure houses, safe from the ardent attention of my pride of cats. When I get close to both houses, I can hear the young behaving as typical youngsters. This fall, I will clean out the houses in preparation for next year’s residents. I like the thought of bluebirds sitting near their winter fires and talking about where to spend the summer. “Say, honey, I really liked that place we stayed last year in Alabama.” If only bluebirds could fill out customer satisfaction surveys. Then there is the heron. The one now visiting the lake was likely to have been the one born there last year. Maybe he is visiting his home place on his way to bigger lakes where all the pretty girl herons are flocking. It is good to assume that herons have a sentimental streak. And, finally, the chickens. As I was putting everybody to bed last night, I discovered one of my old hens had passed on to the golden hen house in the sky. I was a little tired and figured I would give her an appropriate burial this morning. So, when I approached the chicken yard with shovel in hand, I could not find the body. I felt a pain of guilt that I did not take the time to do my duty last night and that the result was that she left this world as dinner for a critter. It was one of many lessons the chickens have taught me. From now on, I am not going to put off for tomorrow what should be done today.

The rational world

We exist in a rational world. Nature is ordered. It is a complex and often difficult to understand arrangement but it is predictable. Nature has cause and effect. We humans exist in the web of these assured outcomes but we have creativity and imagination. As a result, we live irrational lives. Either we are too arrogant to admit that we are specks of insignificant matter floating in the universal soup or we place our bets on probability. If the former, we would be faced with the utter futility of life. If the later, we might be semi-irrational, given that the riskier the behavior the greater the return. How else can you explain smoking cigarettes? Or, drinking excessively? Or, eating cheeseburgers as a staple in a diet? I speak with some experience in all three since, as embarrassing as it is to admit, I have done them all and so much more. I think that if we lived rational lives, most of what we know and love would disappear. Our politics would be mechanical. The advantage of that would be that none of us would have heard of Joe Biden. Newspapers and talk radio would have no audiences. Sitcoms and reality TV would disappear. In fact, most of what makes us human and severely irrational would vanish. It is our irrationality that makes living the crap shoot that it is. I gleaned these ideas from my farm. My cabbages never give a thought to rolling a number and cranking up the Grateful Dead. Rather, they bask in the Alabama sunshine and await with patience the day that I behead them. Never a whimper, never a regret. My chickens don’t seem to learn any lessons except the noises and movements that are associated with feeding. If they ever thought through their situation, I might well be mobbed by pissed off hens who work hard to lay eggs, only to have me steal them on a daily basis. Even the gorgeous flowers that are now abundant in the garden grow and blossom for no greater reason than to produce seed for next year’s crop. Wonder what they think when I cut them for ornamentation in my house? Do you think that makes them fret, why did I work so hard to grow only to wind up in a glass of water on some fool’s coffee table? I see no evidence that it matters to them. The cabbage, the chickens and the flowers live by a different set of rules. In their world, things are simple. If you get the right amount of nutrients, the right amount of rain, the right amount of sunlight, you will fulfill your destiny. If you don’t, you won’t. We humans make achieving our destiny considerably more problematic. We complicate the journey with emotions and desires and aspirations. We want more than our lot. We want more than the rational universe affords. It is our creativity and imagination that determines how we play out our hands. Nothing is predictable. It is completely luck. And, it is absolutely irrational.

Cucumber Salad

After 130-something posts, I got my first request to re-run something. What a treat! Just when you think all you are doing is throwing bottles with messages into the ocean, somebody actually says “howdy.” I am not going to complain that the request was for a recipe, rather than some of my sharp social commentary. A request is a request. And here it is. Here is what I am doing with the bumper crop of cucumbers this year. I picked up this recipe from Mollie Katzen’s, Moosewood Cookbook. The book was a gift from The Deb and I have worn it into a dog-eared, page-stained treasure. Balkan Cucumber Salad 4 medium cucumbers ¾ c sour cream ¾ c yogurt 2 cloves crushed garlic 4 fresh mint leaves, minced ½ c very thinly sliced red onion (Don’t use any other kind of onion. Red is the only kind that works raw this way.) ¼ c very finely chopped parsley ¼ c minced scallion greens 1 tsp salt Lots of black pepper 1 Tbsp freshly chopped dill 1 c toasted walnuts (I use sunflower kernels) Peel and slice the cucumbers (unless they are home-grown and unwaxed, in which case, don’t peel them). Combine all ingredients except walnuts (or sunflower kernels). Chill thoroughly and serve on a bed of fresh, crisp greens, with walnuts (or sunflower kernels) on top. Garnish lavishly with hard cooked egg slices or tomato wedges, chopped black olives, or carrot slices, or all four. Enjoy. Keep those cards and letters coming.

Hard to dismiss factoids

Two factoids in the news this week have been on my mind. The first is that median family wealth has declined 39% since President O’Bama took office. The second is that there are 4.6 million fewer jobs in the private sector now than three years ago. In my world, that spells lights out for O’Bama. Ronald Reagan trounced Jimmy Carter in 1980 by asking the simple question, are you better off now than you were four years ago? If I were advising Mitt Romney, I would tell him to pose that same question. Then, once put forth, sit down and let the community organizer explain why it was all Bush’s fault or why we are in trouble because of Europe or why we are turning the economy around, it just takes time. He has used all three so far. Only fools believe him. I was in a meeting today of the State Food Policy Council. One of our members is the head of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly food stamps). She told the group that 912,000 Alabamians are enrolled in her program. That is a quarter of the population of the State. One quarter. It is the highest rate of food assistance in the State’s history. And, our experience here is repeated in practically every state. Ironically, Wisconsin where the evil Scott Walker beheaded the state’s public sector unions, did not raise taxes and did not fire a single public employee, a quarter of the Wisconsin is not on SNAP. But he was hauled up on a recall that fell on its face. Seems rational thought still exists somewhere. I am a little surprised it was in Wisconsin. The 4.6 million private sector jobs contrasts with a decline of 400,000 public sector jobs. Yet, O’Bama tells us that the private sector is doing fine while we need to pump up the number of public sector jobs. He is living on another planet. I have concluded that to ask someone to do a job for which that person has no ability is cruel. The most humane thing we can do for the President is to retire him to a life of community activism. To expect him to execute the duties and responsibilities of President is cruel. It is like expecting me to pitch in a World Series or kick a winning field goal in the Auburn-Alabama game. It is not true that you can do anything you can dream. That is rubbish. And, we have perpetrated a crime against mediocre people. We have to sober up. This self-indulgent, new-age horse-shit that passes for societal assumptions has to be challenged. I am sure some enthusiastic guidance counselor told young O’Bama that he could be President one day. What a crime. Instead, that well-intended melon-head should have reminded him of the words of Dirty Harry: “a man has to know his limitations.”

Some Days

Some days are better than others. Today was one of the good ones. Couple of good things happened with my little group of sustainable farmers. I was happy to be a part of it. These type of days makes the bad ones fade. Like a good golf shot. All it takes to bring you back to the links is one good shot. As soon as the ball leaves the blade of the club, and you know it is going to go as far as you had hoped and will land right where you hoped, well, it makes you forget the dozens of muffs and scalps and shanks. That one good shot brings you back to play again. Today renews my energy and my spirit and makes me look forward to tomorrow. I have to be careful writing about good things because it makes me think that things are good when, I know, we are all doomed and it is only a matter of time until the sky falls. I am happy to report that The End is forestalled for at least one day. Today was a good one. So much so that getting up tomorrow now makes sense. You would think that as we get older, life would become simpler, easier to navigate. After all, few things happen that you have not seen before. Problem is that now I see all the ramifications that will follow events. So, I know that as good as today was, there will be a balancing day that will be perfectly dreadful. That is the good-bad, black-white, in-out, the ying-yang of life. All you can really hope for is a balance, what some have called the golden mean. All that really means is that life is essentially mediocre. The logical way to approach good and bad days is with a casual indifference so as not to be disappointed. I admit that I have a hard time with that approach. I really love the highs you get from great days. Likewise, I wallow in the blues on the days that are down. Chemicals might help. I only have the courage to use beer, sometimes Scotch, to even out living. But even those wonder drugs have limits. Even after a bender, there is life. You can run, but you cannot escape. So, enjoy the good ones, endure the bad ones. And, hope that occasionally you have one that will bring you back.

Talk Radio

After arriving home after a long trip, I had to drive to Birmingham to man the ASAN (Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network) booth at a festival. It went well. Made several new friends. Rain is coming this evening but that did not discourage me from smoking half a chicken. I need the protein since next week’s schedule calls for more travel and more meetings. Montgomery on Monday, Birmingham on Tuesday, Montgomery again on Wednesday. The garden is weeping from my neglect although the pinto beans and the butterbeans look good. The nut grass loves my travel schedule. It riots. My new opening line in talking to farmers is, so, what do you do about nut grass? It is now my favorite conversation starter. Prior to the nut grass opening, I used, so, what varieties of tomatoes are you growing? That one is a time-tested conversation starter, especially in the South where sliced tomatoes are next to being sacred. Being confined in the cab of my truck these last few days, I have received a political education on events transpiring around the country. Talk radio is something. I delighted, for instance, in the defeat of public sector unions in Wisconsin. Nothing offends me more than public servants unions. They got their asses kicked in Wisconsin and in San Diego and in San Jose. Good. All three are blows for freedom. The President’s announcement that the private sector is doing just fine economically confirms my belief that this joker doesn’t have a clue about how this country operates. After thinking about O’Bama’s comments, I concluded that he, like Clinton, really believes what he says when he says it, even when it is outrageous. Then it occurred to me that O’Bama’s idea of the private sector is Hollywood and the fashion industry. They both seem to be doing well. Thus, his conclusion that things are just fine there. It seems almost like picking on the weak when you remind El Presidente that the unemployment rate tops 8%. I know this is only June but my prediction is that Romney will win by a landslide. I consider it a correction of the 2008 election when America went off the rails and voted for a community organizer as president. We were trying to prove that we were not racists. So, we sacrificed the country to ease our egos. The results have come home to roost and it is not pretty. There is nothing wrong with being a one-term president. I have considerable admiration for Jimmy Carter. I don’t think O’Bama has the same stuff as a Carter but he will be entertaining in retirement. As far as Romney, he will be fine. The country needs a yeoman CEO for a while. Times are hard and we face issues that rock stars are incapable of understanding. O’Bama will be a better former president than a president. He’ll be a good fund-raiser for the Democrats and a popular speaker. Just as long as you don’t listen too carefully to what he is saying. I do like his Al Green impression. Pretty cool.

Daisy, The Wonder Dog

I arrived home late last night and was greeted with a gift from Daisy, The Wonder Dog. There, lying on the porch, exactly in front of the door, was the carcass of a rabbit. It is hard for me to believe that Daisy, The Wonder Dog, chased it down and ended its life. More likely, one of the cats did the dirty work. But, since I was not around to witness the act, TWD took the credit and laid it out for me as a welcome home present. She was proud of the offering. What was striking was that Daisy seemed to treat the rabbit as if he/she was a pup. She nuzzled it. She slept next to it. This morning, the rabbit was gone. But, mid-afternoon, TWD strolled across the front yard with the poor rabbit in her mouth. I watched as she laid it down in the cool, freshly mown grass, and protected it as if it were her own. My inclination was to take the rabbit and bury it but TWD would dig it up. Daisy keeps her toys close. She has a yellow ball that has been around here for years. She leaves it and always manages to find it. Once I found the yellow ball floating in the lake. The yellow ball is instructive. Could be that Daisy wants the poor little rabbit to feel a little love as it exits this world. Maybe Daisy is dreaming that one day, she and the rabbit will run in the fields together. Or, else, she’ll eat it and confirm that she is, in fact, a dog.