A Small Price To Pay

May 19, 2026May 19, 2026 ~ sanebishop ~ Leave a comment

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.

All Those Yesterdays

May 11, 2026May 11, 2026 ~ 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

April 14, 2026April 14, 2026 ~ sanebishop ~ 5 Comments

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.

Carburetor Chronicles Part II: A Linkage in Time

March 24, 2026March 24, 2026 ~ sanebishop ~ 6 Comments

Last week, I fixed my chainsaw by fixing a carburetor that didn’t need fixing, so this week I decided to level up by fixing a truly broken carburetor on an old push lawnmower. Sounds simple, but add in a five year old orbiting, playing with your tools, while you’re trying to fiddle with tiny screws and delicate linkages, and it is the equivalent of a psychological experiment.

“Dad, I’m going to hammer some nails.”

“Great.”

“Dad, can I play with this spark plug?”

“No.”

“Dad, we need to put some gas in the tank?

“No we don’t.”

“Dad, I’m going to pull this rope” [pulls starter rope]

“Stop!”

The good news is I got the new carburetor on and the lawnmower running again. The bad news is I apparently mixed up the two linkages on the throttle, so the lawn mower was surging. I am not sure why I was even trying to fix this old lawn mower–maybe for nostalgia’s sake?–as it had been sitting in the barn unused for ten years or more, in the same place it’s been since it quit running. When Natalie and I first started renting the old farmhouse from her grandparents, I actually pushed our yard because we couldn’t afford a riding lawn mower. Back then, Fitbits and fitness trackers weren’t really a thing yet, but I’d love to know how many steps I took on a weekly basis cutting grass. All I know is I look a lot slimmer in pictures from that time.

“Dad, why does it sound funny?”

“I don’t know. I think I did something wrong.”

“Why did you do something wrong?

“That is a good question.”

“Well, how do you fix it?”

“That’s another good question.”

Of course, I had to take the new carburetor all the way back off, but Thomas came in handy this go round as he was able to find a tiny screw I dropped in the grass. Once we got the carburetor back on with linkages connected correctly, the lawnmower revved and ran like old times.

“Dad, can I push it?

“Maybe one day,” I said, “maybe one day.”

My General Life Philosophy: Just Blame the Carburetor

March 16, 2026March 16, 2026 ~ sanebishop ~ 8 Comments

When I was in college, my parents bought me a chainsaw for my birthday. I was going through my Thoreau phase when I wanted to be an enlightened lumberjack. That didn’t pan out exactly, but the chainsaw–an Echo CS-400–has served me well throughout the years. It has started and run reliably and hasn’t cut off any appendages, which is really all you can ask for in a good chainsaw.

Last year, after Hurricane Helene, I had to run the chainsaw hard. We had several massive oaks blown down, snapped like twigs by the wind, and the chainsaw, limb by limb, dismembered the oaks, slowly and steadily chewing through them. The chainsaw revved and roared until it developed a bad habit on the very last tree. It would run for about twenty minutes at a time, then reliably bog down and stall, after which you couldn’t get it to start again until you let it sit for an hour or so. And it has been that way ever since.

Thankfully, I haven’t had much need to cut up anything major since Helene, so twenty minute run-time has always been adequate for the minor jobs that have needed doing around the farm. But it has been on my to-do list to fix the chainsaw, and this past weekend I finally got around to doing it. I’m proud to say it only took me all day.

I’m no expert on small engine repair, but I know enough to know that old men who know a thing or two about engines always blame the carburetor. If you ever need a scapegoat, just blame the “carburetor.” At the very least, it makes you sound smart and mechanically inclined and is a generally plausible excuse for all sorts of predicaments.

SCENARIO 1:

COP: You were going 65 in a 55 zone.

DRIVER: Sorry, sir, I think the carburetor was running a little lean.

SCENARIO 2:

WIFE: Did you hear what I said?

HUSBAND: Sorry, I was listening to the idle. I think the carb needs adjusting.

SCENARIO 3:

ANNOYING COWORKER: You want to hang out this weekend?

EMPLOYEE: Sorry, I’ve got an appointment to get my carburetor cleaned.

Surprisingly, I was able to get the old carburetor off and the new carburetor on without too much trouble (or too many leftover pieces). Much to my surprise, the chainsaw fired right up. This time, however, it ran for about twenty seconds before stalling, which I took to mean the new carburetor needed adjusting. The idle was running lean at first and the throttle was running rich (or maybe it was vice versa–who the heck really knows what rich and lean mean anyway?). In any event, the engine kept flooding, and I’d have to remove the sparkplug to unflood it, and sometimes I’d just have to let it sit for an hour before I could start it, but finally I got it running good and purring like a kitten, until it bogged down again at twenty minutes—ARRRGGGG!!!!

So after scouring YouTube, I finally figured out what was wrong with the chainsaw in the first place–the gas tank vent was completely clogged. The clog would cause some sort of vacuum in the tank to form at around the twenty-minute mark that prevented gas from flowing to the engine. The good news is it was a three-dollar plastic piece that took me all of ten minutes to switch out, and now the saw runs like a charm. The bad news is it took me all day to fix a carburetor that didn’t need fixing in the first place.