Porch Sittin’, Part Two

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The floorboards are barely cool as I step off the stairs in the house. Sixty-five degrees outside, I guess. It is my little game, played each day, to predict the morning temperature based on the feel of the wood floors under my bare feet. I’m close: at 5 a.m. it is 64. Much too warm for an April morning, I think, as I take a seat in one of the rocking chairs on the front porch with my morning coffee. The dogs lie scattered around me, coats wet with dew from tracking an early morning rabbit trail.

Fresh goat cheese

Following Jefferson’s injunction to a nephew not to think during his daily afternoon walk, I sit without purpose. As when I’m on the tractor for hours, not thinking is when I do my best thinking. A warm breeze blows across the farm. Even I can predict a change coming without the foreknowledge of checking with the weather station.

Back in the house around 6:30, I hear the all-too-familiar ruckus of the dogs tussling on the porch. “Quiet!” I yell out the front door, disturbing only the peace of the predawn. They ignore me but do carry their disagreement out into the yard. I close the door, and both man and dogs claim victory.

A little later and drinking a second cup of coffee, I am once again sitting in the rocking chair. It is now light enough for me to make notes on the upcoming day. After some minutes the door opens and Cindy joins me. We both sit quietly at first—I finish my list of tasks, and the caffeine works its magic on Cindy’s morning frame of mind—then we spend half an hour or so discussing the upcoming day.

For the rest of the morning the porch is a waystation, a place to pull on and off boots, but come noon we are back in our rockers, looking out over the front lawn and the “new” orchard (now fifteen years old) and eating our lunch. Mine is a small plate of leftover collards, field peas, and a piece of sausage; hers is homemade goat cheese with dried fruit and olives.

Afterwards we retire upstairs for our daily siesta. We read a bit before taking a nap, and since most friends and neighbors know that the hours of 1-3 are our quiet time, we are left in peace.

The porch is back in use at afternoon coffee. The first of a wave of storms begins to wash away the too-warm-for-April day, and we watch until the rain drives us inside. In the living room, dogs at our feet, we wait out the arrival of the cold front from our easy chairs.

Less than an hour later strong winds are clearing the skies over the farm and blowing cooler air into the valley. We both head back out to the barn to feed and do a few late afternoon chores. Friends show up to help remove a tire that is stuck on the axle of our tiller. We try a host of techniques, none successful, when someone asks, “Why do you want this perfectly good tire off the tiller anyway?” More than a little sheepishly, I admit that it was for no other reason than that it was stuck. With that answer we decide to leave the wheel in place and all head to the house for a beer. The six of us scattered across the porch, we settle in to watch the sunset across the ridge. We invite the friends to stay for red beans and rice, but they have their own meal planned, so we say goodnight. We eat dinner in the back yard, seated in our weathered Adirondacks.

As I lie fast asleep just before midnight, in a reversal of my early morning routine Cindy takes her place on the front porch, in a rocking chair, without purpose, before joining me in slumber.

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Reading this past week: Pride and Prejudice (J. Austen). It has been a decade or two since I last read this novel, and having finished it, I think that Mr. Collins has become my favorite character. Also read, Love for the Land (B. Lamb), a fine addition to the agrarian shelf. Mr. Lamb writes of the collapse of an agricultural landscape in Tennessee and in particular how it impacts small and mid-size farms. And finally, summer must be around the corner, because I’m reading the latest John Sandford novel, a Lucas and Letty Davenport mystery/thriller. Sandford typically releases one novel approaching summer each year.

Stone Cold Love

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Of all the myriad ways in which the birds and the bees woo and attempt to do the ageless dance, this old boy had chosen the most ludicrous. Although the end result was never in doubt and he was getting the coldest of shoulders, I had to hand it to him for hanging in there in his efforts. Except for retiring nightly to a nearby creek, he did not leave the side of his beloved for a full week. Thanks to that high level of predictability, he provided us the opportunity to create and execute a plan to break up this “coitus unrequitus.”

A picture taken by a neighbor during the winter storm in January.

It began, as most things do on our farm that require compassion and nursing skills, with Cindy getting a call. This one was received at the college where she worked. A Muscovy hen and her ducklings living in a much-trafficked area were in danger of being flattened by speeding students. After assorted consultations with staff and faculty (and perhaps interminable committee meetings), Cindy volunteered to bring the ducks home and raise the ducklings out before returning them to the pond on campus. So it came to be that mother, babies, and even the father of the brood were captured, crated, and loaded into her car one sunny spring afternoon.

At the farm, we unloaded the cargo and placed the ducks in a seemingly secure pen. We watered and fed them, then stepped back to watch … and watched as the drake flew over the fence, sailed low across the bottom pasture, and disappeared to the south in a creek bottom. Geese mate for life. The ganders are remarkably loyal, and if either partner is indiscreet, we’ll never know: they keep it quiet within the domestic circle. With ducks, not so much. The drake, while his mate was home raising his offspring, was off in the wide world looking for new love like a sailor on liberty in port. This lad found an unlikely paramour a mile down the road.

As in the saga of the three little piggies, word went out in our community of the wayward drake. Sure enough, he was spotted within days in the front yard of a small clapboard house on a neighbor’s trip from town. The male of the Muscovy is significantly larger than the female and sports a head-to-neck crest of feathers. He is easy to identify in all of his warty glory. Once notified, we spied him under a large oak tree next to the gravel drive. There he stood, danced, preened, in fact used everything within his toolkit to drive his intended mad with lust. His object of desire paid him no attention.

And it would be a cold day in Hell before her love was reciprocated: this statuesque specimen was cast lovingly in concrete, and although apparently created to the highest standards of molded realism, she had the sexual desire of, well, a slab of cement, sand, and water.

But our wandering Lothario was nothing if not persistent. From sunup to sundown he stood by his newfound love, carrying on his one-sided conversations (no, ladies, do not look for parallels) and dancing around her unmoved and unmoving countenance, only leaving at night to return to the safety of the creek. Every morning he was back at the wooing, giving his all to break through that stony exterior. Knowing in his heart that the apple out of reach is the tastiest, he persevered for seven days.

In the end we managed after several attempts to catch him in a net, at which time we clipped his wings and returned him to his family. Over the next couple of weeks, restless and bored with his growing children and preoccupied partner, he paced the fence and gazed southwards, convinced that if he had just one more day, his stone-cold love’s resolve would have finally crumbled.

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Reading this weekend: The Unforseen Wilderness, an essay on Kentucky’s Red River Gorge (W. Berry and G. Meatyard)

224 Feet of Fencing

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On a recent podcast this question was asked of me: What would I suggest to a would-be farmer as a first project? I replied that a good fence, specifically a perimeter fence, would be an ideal first step. Because in the building of a fence much is accomplished, learned, and discovered.

The replaced fence on the left. The sheep are still on the winter paddock.

While it may be somewhat unfashionable—in these days when global elites forswear borders, loyalties, and cultural identities, and even West Point decides that asking cadets to take an oath to duty, honor, and country is potentially divisive and downright antiquated—to discuss and celebrate boundaries, truly, good fencing does make for good neighbors.

One December day back in 1999 we set a corner post three feet in the ground adjacent to our barn. From that original post would evolve the fencing system that spans our entire acreage. That very first line stretched 224 feet westward toward the road, bisecting the upper portion of what would become our lower pastures. From that post and the resulting western terminal post, other lines emerged, merged, and enclosed the boundaries of our irregularly shaped farm. All of that initial fencing took a few years to complete, and factoring in improvements and repairs it is a task that has continued to occupy our attentions each year since.

On that first line we used Red Brand field fence, a thirty-two-inch-tall roll of galvanized wire held together by interwoven four-by-four squares, then topped it with three strands of barbed wire for good measure. While the height was less than adequate, the fence has, even while sagging in places with age, held to its original mission of keeping cattle and sheep in their intended pastures—though, it should be noted, on occasion an errant bull, ram, or even ewe has leapt over for love to showcase the limits on man’s will over nature. (As one farmer cleverly put it, “Where there’s a willy there’s a way.”)

That early fence held, more or less, until last Sunday. That’s when a large yearling ewe who in a bid for greener grass got her head stuck in a stretched-out square. Upon finding herself in such a predicament, she followed the instinct of every prey animal and panicked. Predators though we are, we followed suit. In the ensuing farce—as we hollered at each other, at the ewe, at the gods—we managed in spite of her antics and our collective panic to cut away some of the fencing and release her back into the flock. We closed the gap with stockman’s wire much like a fisherman mends nets. It was only then that we noticed the bottom of the fence. It had with the passing of the years become buried and rusted in the ground and was now broken beyond fixing by the ewe’s efforts to free herself. In other words, it was time to replace this oldest stretch of wire.

Forgive what may sound like an immodest boast, but after twenty-five years of near-constant work, our toolkit of basic competencies is more than adequate for many if not all challenges. Ripping out and replacing fence is old hat. Over the next couple of days, we both, together and individually, working in spare moments during our farm day, removed fence staples and clips and separated the old wire from the fence line. On Tuesday evening while Cindy prepared dinner, I pulled the last of the fence free from the ground.

The following day, a Wednesday, with the help of the Kid (the current one is home-schooled and has a flexible schedule), we rolled up the old wire, unfurled a thirty-nine-inch-tall field fence, stretched it tight with a ratcheted come-along, and attached it to the T-posts and wooden posts (including the two we set twenty-five years ago).

Total time from removal of the old wire and installation of the new wire to cleanup was only four or five hours. Working together gave us a chance to reflect on when we had put in the original fence and other stories centered around the many projects we have tackled. The manual competencies we have gained from working with our hands brings a satisfaction to our lives, a tangible “we did this.” When I get the questions from wannabe farmers, it is these moments I struggle to convey, because the answer is personal. It gets to the character of a man’s internal life and identity, and only that individual can look into himself and answer the question: will the prospect of sweat and physical work bring contentment, even joy, or will it be viewed as menial drudgery best “farmed” out to others?

For both Cindy and myself, it is in the moment of completion that we know ourselves; that we know what we can accomplish with hands to a task, that by embracing our limits and boundaries we are given a sense of who we are. That is the something, that is the everything. That is our analog to the message that place does not matter.

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Reading this week: I knocked out the first three of the Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries (L. Block) in as many days. It has been close to thirty years since I read this series with some pleasure. The intervening years have done nothing to dim my appreciation. Think of a funny wisecracking version of Sam Spade, except as a Raffles-like burglar by night and rare book dealer by day, and you will get the flavor of Bernie. I’ve also started The Pursuit of Happiness, how classical writers on virtue inspired the lives of the founders and defined America (J. Rosen). I’m only two chapters in to the work but already am mentally placing this volume in my best-of-2024 list.

A Tale of Two Ewes

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Two stories, each with a death but one ending in hope.

Both accounts concern our role as caretakers in the nurturing of life and the inevitable taking of it that is ever-present on a farm. The stories are twinned together in this work, born in the blood and hope of birth before one day vanishing into decay and dust. There is no hiding from the harsh light of reality any more than we can avoid the reaper. For the farmer, no bureaucrat, politician, or soldier is on hand to shield him from weakness, standing ready to do his dirty work. No amount of ritual washing of hands while passing off decisions to a mob will absolve the choices made in his name. It is in the final accounting of what happens between those two events that matters for all living things. When, on some occasions, the “green fire” fades from an animal’s eyes, the farmer will have been on hand and watched it fade, perhaps having even been the agent of execution. Yet having been a good husband and shepherd to his charges, he will find his sad peace in it. And on better days (hopefully more often than not), through his care and nursing the light will flare back into eyes that had dimmed. Then faith and promise are renewed.

 

Killing a Ewe

No words. We both look at each other and nod agreement. I walk back to the house in the rain. This inescapable part of farming life seems never to occur on sunny days. Sad duties always require sad days for their completion.

Upstairs, next to the bed, leaning against the wall in a corner is a single-shot 16 gauge kept on hand for just these days. I pick it up and also grab a couple of shells of buckshot from a box. If an old shotgun sticks around long enough it eventually will accumulate an untold history of the most wretched uses. Killing a ewe is certainly among the most cheerless occupations for this instrument—and for the one who pulls the trigger.

I slog through the cold rain and muck back to the barn and the warm, steaming, false comfort inside. Cindy has shooed the rest of the flock out into the outer corral. Given that privacy I approach the pen where the ewe, who has lost both lambs and has prolapsed twice, stands in pain and already dying. I raise the gun, and she obligingly nuzzles the end of the barrel. I say goodbye out loud as I fire one blast, and she mercifully falls dead.

I eject the smoking shell and place the gun on a feed barrel. We each grab a leg and pull the dead ewe from the pen and down the alley of the working chute, a smear of blood marking the path on the gravel. We load the still-warm carcass into the waiting tractor bucket. We return to the barn and pick up two healthy just-born lambs, then coax their mother into a lambing pen where we can keep an eye on all three. The late afternoon becomes evening. We finish our late-day rounds of feeding and watering the sheep, hogs, cattle, chickens, and even the greens in the hoop house before I find the time to dispose of the dead ewe.

Throughout the night and into the predawn we will take turns checking on the flock of pregnant ewes and nursing ewes and their lambs.

 

Saving a Ewe

“Breech,” Cindy said.

One of our favorite ewes, Bunny (you can always know a favorite if she has been named) is in labor. She had shown signs of lambing earlier in the day, but it wasn’t until evening that the contractions began. After another hour of watchful waiting without any lambs born, Cindy makes an internal examination and discovers a large lamb in the birth canal. It is breeched, butt-end first and back legs folded under the lamb’s body. Further complicating the delivery, a second lamb is crammed head-first alongside the first—like double plugs in a drain. It’s clear that nothing will pass through without intervention.

Bunny is a seven-year-old ewe with a slightly swayed back from many multi-lamb pregnancies and a Holstein udder that swings close to the ground. She still has good teeth, though, so she can still graze, and she delivers healthy lambs, mostly twins and occasionally triplets, year after year and mothers them expertly. She clearly has grit, but it is also obvious that she is now in serious distress.

Fortunately for both of us, even after twenty-four years of raising sheep, cattle, and hogs, our experiences with difficult births remain minimal. Most of our ewes have been able to lamb easily, a trait we have selected for in our breeding program. The downside of this good providence is that our skills in dealing with a breech or other malpresentation remains rusty from lack of practice. At risk of losing both mother and lambs, we agree: it’s time to call in the vet.

An hour and half later, at 9:30 p.m., we are on the ground in the barn with our large-animal vet. (Having pulled him from his daughter’s first birthday celebration, we find that the eventual bill reflects the inconvenience.) By this time, the second lamb has somehow receded from the vaginal opening and the breeched lamb has been partially expelled by painful exertions. The vet pulls out the now-dead lamb. Its back end is cold; the front end is still warm in the birth canal. He lays it on the hay floor. Taking the very large, well-formed lamb in hand, I carry it from the barn with a plan to dispose of it in the morning.

The birth canal now clear, the vet pulls two live lambs from Bunny in quick succession. Each is exhausted and the third lamb, the smallest, is barely moving after the long-delayed entry into this world. The usual practice with delayed or difficult lambing is to rub the lamb vigorously, stick a straw in its nose to stimulate breathing, and, if needed, grab it by the legs and swing it gently to clear the airways of mucous—all of which we do.

After another few minutes both lambs are breathing and already struggling to get on their feet and nurse. The smaller third-born, a ewe lamb (the other is a large ram lamb), is unable to stand. Her back legs are splayed out and almost appear to be disjointed. Triplets are packed in the womb tight, and this one must have had her legs back for much of her time in the birth canal. We work throughout the night, taking turns during barn visits, to massage the legs until, at last, the little lamb can stand on her own. (Bunny also experienced temporary paralysis in her back end from the difficult labor and was unable initially to stand. The vet and I each grabbed a side and held her up for a few minutes. She stood, wobbly, but remained on her feet and got to the immediate job of cleaning the newborns. The vet gave her both a steroid injection for the pain and a preemptive antibacterial shot in case there were tears in the uterus from the delivery.) The farm vet—an hour after arriving, makes a quick exit, shouting over his shoulder, “I’ll send you the bill in the morning.”

Neither lamb is yet nursing; neither is standing well on its own. We prepare a substitute colostrum (the high-nutrient first milk) replacer, insert a tube down the throat and into the stomach of each lamb, and feed them. Cindy repeats this procedure twice between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. I arise at 4:30 and find a note on the coffee pot alerting me that the ram lamb is now nursing on his own. I tube-feed the smaller, wobbly ewe lamb in those early hours and again around 7.

By the time we get back out to do our morning chores, both lambs are up and walking around and both are nursing on their own. Later in the day, as well as the next, we continue to give poor Bunny a steroid shot to ease her pain. A couple of days more and she is fully recovered, albeit with some continued bleeding from the traumatic delivery. Her lambs are also fully recovered: they come to their mother when called and nurse frequently and vigorously like healthy lambs do.

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Reading this weekend: Down and Out in Paris and London (G. Orwell); A Voice Crying in the Wilderness: Notes from a Secret Journal (E. Abbey); and Great American Fishing Stories (ed. L. Underwood).

 

Porch Sittin’

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“Front or back?” “Front.”

I hold open the door to let her through, and she takes the rocking chair in the sun on this still-cool afternoon. This passes as a modest modern chivalric gesture on my part as I sit in the other still in the shade. Afternoon coffee ritual. She drinks from her autumn-themed Polish pottery cup; the one with bright cheerful flowers is reserved for the morning. I drink from a small white cup first used by a Flatwoods, West Virginia, hotel. (My sunrise coffee is sipped from a hefty cream-colored Lea’s Pies mug from Lecompte, Louisiana.) These details to our rituals are important, always.

Spring is coming (from another spring).

We laugh long and hard, tears streaming, over something neither of us recalls even thirty minutes later. A bluebird sits on the front gate, a mockingbird and a sparrow on the southern, side gate. The sun is now low enough to warm my chair. I tilt my cap down to keep the winter’s light out of my eyes.

We talk of the upcoming early evening projects, the before-dinner work that roots us to this farm. Modest in scope, each: reattaching a barn gutter for me and a stall gate the sheep managed to detach for her. After that, chores, supper (her night to fix dinner), and cleanup in the kitchen before retiring. We will both read. Nan Shepherd keeps her company past 11, while Vincent Starrett has me slumbering by 9:30.

But that is later. Now we just sit. The birds do the same. A pause in the day for all of us, until the sheep begin to bawl and the cows gather at the fence to stare us down. It’s feeding time. “I still have one more sip,” she says when I start to rise. It’s a daily ruse of sorts to keep me on the porch. She makes an elaborate gesture of savoring what is not there. Rituals satisfied, we stand in unison and move toward the porch steps. The sun also lingers on the horizon before heading to bed for the night.