The Brothers Arnold

~ sanebishop ~ 1 Comment

Somehow the Brothers Arnold, two poultry farmers in the upper end of Cleveland County, seemed impervious from the slipstream emanating from the fan–a large industrial fan at the end of a long poultry house.

“You get used to it,” Dennis chuckled, as his brother Steve nodded solemnly in agreement.

I hid a polite smile behind my fist as I coughed. So far, I have never gotten used to standing that close to a poultry house’s fan.

In addition to their six poultry houses, they had nearly a hundred momma cows in the acreage surrounding the poultry houses on the hill. I was there to sign the brothers up for a cost-share program that helps pay for a well and watering tanks for their pastures. From what I could gather, it was Steve who had sketched out the plan for the watering tanks, but it was Dennis who was doing the communicating, waving Steve’s hand drawn map.

“Why don’t we walk through the pastures and take a look,” I said. The farm was bucolic in a visual sense, with a thick stand of fescue covering terraced hills and a willow-lined farm pond. “Beautiful place, you got here.”

“Yeah, we think so…” said Dennis. “Poultry farming ain’t a glamorous way to make a living, but it provides a steady paycheck. You can’t depend on the cattle market. In a year like this, a man can do alright on cows, but the bottom will drop out eventually.”

As part of the cost-share agreement, we required the brothers to fence the cows out of the pond, which, judging by the rutted cow trails leading down the bank, was currently their preferred spot for drinking, bathing, and general relaxation.

“How’s the fishing?” I asked.

“Couldn’t tell you,” said Dennis, “I can’t remember the last time I had a chance to get down here with a fishing pole.” Steve commiserated with a nod. We then looked back uphill toward the poultry houses.

“Why don’t we cut through the fence there,” said Dennis, suggesting a shortcut. He was already huffing and puffing from the trek downhill.

Instead of walking all the way around through the system of gates, we headed toward an interior three strand electric fence splitting the pasture. With a much slimmer frame, Steve went first, throwing one leg over the middle wire and ducking under the top wire, all in one swooping motion. He then reached in his pocket and pulled out a black plastic comb which he used to pull down the middle wire to give his bigger brother more clearance.

For a big man, Dennis swooped gracefully enough, as Steve continued to hold the wire down for me. I have never been much of a graceful fence swooper, and even with the extra clearance afforded by Steve, I somehow managed to graze my back on the top wire.

“You alright?” Dennis asked, after I recoiled down to the ground from the shock.

“Good gosh! How many volts you got running to that fence?” I asked.

“Enough to keep a two thousand pound bull away from a cow in heat,” Dennis chuckled. Steve nodded solemnly.

Memories in a Box

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Cleaning out the storage closet at the office seemed to be a task that generations of government employees had somehow managed to avoid, meaning obsolete equipment and general GSA junk had metastasized. So one morning, I made it my task to declutter the closet, and despite my best intentions, it was a task I also managed not to accomplish because I got distracted when I found a box of old farming photos on a shelf.

“Look at these neat photos,” I said to one of my coworkers. Admittedly, she didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could create a book with these?” I continued.

“Sure, you do that,” she said. And so my moment of inspiration to clean out the closet became a two year project to create a book, the proceeds from which would benefit the Cleveland County Farmland Preservation Program.

In the process of creating the book, we had members of the general public bring in old farming photos as well, so we could document their stories about farming in the county. Meanwhile, I did my best to study up on the local farming history, digging through Census of Agriculture statistics and old newspapers articles to write the forward and captions for the book.

Dale brought in several old photos from his family’s old dairy farm. I had gotten to know Dale pretty well in my time working at the agriculture office. He was the type of farmer who would go out of his way to help somebody else, and he had helped me on several occasions, once helping chase down some loose pigs and once helping me doctor on a sick cow. The knock on Dale was that he was always two months behind, and it was easy to understand why because he was always helping other people instead of prioritizing his own crops.

“This here is on the old dairy silo on Bethlehem Rd,” Dale said. He was missing most of his pointer finger, but he used the stub to point out things nonetheless.

“This here is from our first harvest of milo,” he said. “For a few years, a lot of folks planted it instead of corn, but then the grain mill that was buying it closed up.”

“This here is our old silage cutter.”

After he got done pointing out features in his own photos, I slid the box I found in the closet across the desk. A grin spread across his face as he opened the box and started flipping through photos he had never seen before. At one point, Dale leaned back in his seat a little and looked down. He started to tear up. If you would have given a million tries to predict who would ever tear up in my office, I would have never predicted Dale.

“This here is a photo of my Uncle Randle on his old Massy. I still have that tractor,” he said, wiping the corner of one eye. Then he grinned again and started thumbing through more pictures.

“This here…” he just kept saying.

As he examined those pictures, it dawned on me that Dale was an expert in local farming knowledge, not because he had studied it, but because he had lived it. Nobody would have said he was the most successful farmer around–if anything it seemed like he was just scraping by, always two months behind–but he had somehow survived when a lot of other farms and farmers had been relegated to memories in a box. In many ways, he was a living embodiment of the past, and one of the kindest men I’ve ever met.

A Small Price To Pay

~ sanebishop ~ 6 Comments

If a family member ever calls us before 7:30 in the morning, I know one of two things: either someone in the family has had a medical emergency or one of our animals is on the loose. Thankfully, when Natalie’s phone rang at 7 AM on Tuesday, it was just the latter.

“A cow is in the middle of Mawmaw’s backyard,” Natalie’s cousin Ashley called to say. Usually, weekday mornings are already chaotic getting everyone ready and out the door, but this turned the mad rush into a five alarm fire.

“A cow is out!” Natalie shouted.

“A cow is out! A cow is out!” Thomas chanted.

“Where is it?” I said.

“Mawmaw’s backyard.” Natalie relayed.

“Oh, lord,” I gulped.

Mawmaw, who lives next door to us, is 87 and nothing seems to rejuvenate her more than when one of my cows gets out and eats her shrubbery. Over the years, I’ve had to replace several high dollar Japanese maples that cows or goats have defoliated, which really eats into my already non-existent profit margins.

Sure enough, a cow was lolling underneath a dogwood tree, in the middle of her backyard. As a testament to my vast experience handling escaped livestock, I had the cow lured with a feed bucket back into the pasture within five minutes. Better yet, Mawmaw had yet to open the blinds of her windows for the day. Best yet, all her shrubbery appeared intact.

“Shew,” I thought, “she’ll never even know the cow got out.”

After a brief investigation, I quickly solved the mystery of how the cow got out. Apparently, I had forgotten to plug the energizer back up when I was working on the fence a few weeks ago. Having the cow back in and the fence back on, I then proceeded back to the mad rush that is getting Thomas and Natalie off to school and myself off to work. I thought I had escaped, unscathed.

It was not to be. Later that evening, when I got home for work and was getting ready to cut the grass, I saw Mawmaw walking determinedly through the yard, toward me. For a woman who rarely leaves her house, this could only mean one thing.

“Stephen, did a cow get out?” she asked.

“Yes, mam, it got out somehow this morning,” I said, “but I got it put right back in. I didn’t think it had a chance to eat any shrubs.”

“No, it didn’t bother the shrubs,” she said, “but I knew one had gotten out.”

“Did Ashley call you, too?” I asked, now truly curious to know how she knew the cow had gotten out.

“No,” she said. “I knew it had gotten out because there is a cow patty on my patio.”

I went to get a shovel and breathed a sigh of relief. Scooping up a cow patty was a small price to pay compared to replacing shrubbery.

The offending party.

All Those Yesterdays

~ sanebishop ~ 4 Comments

On Saturday, Thomas and I decided to go to the park, so he could practice riding his bike on a flat surface. We loaded into my little four-cylinder Toyota pickup, and he proceeded to crank down the window. He rode down the road with his arm resting in the window.  It seemed like just yesterday that I was doing the same thing in my grandma’s old four-cylinder Toyota pickup, but it wasn’t yesterday–it was nearly forty years ago. 

When we got to the park, a bazillion people were already there. To my surprise, the park was hosting a statewide soccer tournament this week. Never have I seen so many people at the park, and it was hard for me to comprehend a rural North Carolina county hosting such a tournament. But times have changed. When I was growing up, soccer was played in cow pastures and hayfields because the good fields were devoted to football. But this whole park was now devoted solely to soccer. After Thomas played on the playground, which was swamped with kids, he wanted to go watch some soccer games. 

Soon his “watching” turned into playing with other kids on the bleachers, but I took it as a chance to watch some games. I was taken aback by how good these middle school age kids were. At that age, I was obsessed with soccer, but not nearly that good, and I was considered one of the best players on my rural team. Times have changed. We departed at halftime of a 0-0 game, and secretly I wanted to stay to see who would win, but Thomas’s patience was running thin and we needed to get back home. But watching those kids, it felt like just yesterday that I was one of them, but it was nearly thirty years ago. 

At a major intersection on the way home, a silver minivan pulled up beside us. A middle-age man was driving it, and emanating from the van were the most indecipherable lyrics in all of music. Instantly, it felt like just yesterday, when I was blasting Eddie Vedder singing “Yellow Ledbetter” from my own car. But it was over twenty-five years ago. 

“What’s that man saying?” Thomas asked, listening to the music coming from the van. 

“Good question. Nobody knows,” I said, smiling. 

The next day, for Mother’s day, I helped Natalie hang her grandpa’s old porch swing. When he passed away, the family sold his house, but she saved it as a memento from all those times she used to swing on it with him. It has been sitting under a shed at our house for many years, as she waited for me to finally get around to hanging it. I finally did. Thomas then proceeded to lay down and take a nap in it.

“It seems like just yesterday that that used to be me,” she said. 

“I know the feeling,” I said.

Swarm Season

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Staying ahead of your bees is essential to swarm control. This year, I have diligently worked my production hives every week leading up to our main nectar flow, balancing, equalizing, and more or less pestering my bees into staying put. My general strategy is to confuse the bees so much they can’t make adequate preparations to relocate. So far, it has seemed to work, although it has been a lot of work, hence my sore back. 

Last year, I got behind my bees and could never get caught back up. It seemed like a daily mass migration of bees left my bee yard, only stopping long enough in a tree top to say goodbye, before they sailed off into the horizon in search for a new land of nectar and honey. 

So this year, I have redoubled my efforts to stay ahead of my bees and it seems to be paying dividends. Supers are filling up, despite the severe drought we’re currently in. Honestly, so far, I think the drought has actually been good for the honey crop because there has been no rain or storms to wash out and demolish the fragile poplar blooms. But if the drought persists it will no doubt cut the nectar flow short, so I’m still hoping for some rain. 

Here is a picture of Thomas in his bee suit. He got to be my helper on Saturday, and he did a good job working the smoker. Then he contented himself with making wax balls and wax worms out of fresh burr comb. Apparently, beeswax is nature’s Play-Doh. 

Despite the drought, and the craziness of swarm season, these are good times.