Category: farm

Three Farming Poems

~ sanebishop ~ 5 Comments

THE GARDEN SPOT

That patch of land beside the road,

below the old barn, is Kendrick land—

those terraces thrown up by a Kendrick man,

long lost the art of nine up, three down,

moving dirt by plow,

gone the cotton boll and wagon road.

All that’s left is hayland, cut by another,

and vegetables, worked and watered.

NEW FARMER

I wonder what the sight of it all

(the ground as hard as the fact of drought,

the corn so pitiful

and tasseled out at two-feet tall)

means for him who hasn’t seen

drought, flood, weevil, and wrath of God,

and if his corn is cause for doubt. 

THE BLACKBERRY ROWS

The men and women of the blackberry rows

work long: a long, long way from somewhere.

Some still have shirts draped over head, though

the moon is kinder than the sun, kinder but queer,

people picking blackberries at night, ghosts  

flowing in and out of flood lights, fingers

stained from blood or blackberries or both,

(those are no thornless canes, I assure you)  

with no sound but the electric hum

of generated light and the loud silence 

of men and women a long, long way from home. 

Buttermilk Biscuits

~ sanebishop ~ 1 Comment

Bread is one of my biggest weaknesses, and that weakness can be narrowed down to buttermilk biscuits. Amazingly, the same set of ingredients can be used to turn out many different styles of buttermilk biscuit! Each biscuit maker I know has a slightly different style to baking, which results in a different tastes and textures. My mom rolls her dough and makes thin, crispy biscuits. My mother-in-law hand forms her biscuits and shoots for dark, golden tops.

I make my biscuits like my great-mommaw Ruth–I do hand formed biscuits. (I’ve never mastered using a rolling pin, probably because I like a stickier biscuit dough.) I’ve been told that our biscuits are similar in taste and texture.

I like to start with the basics: buttermilk, flour, baking powder, salt, and crisco. I know crisco is sometimes considered a food no-no, but I’ve tried the original recipe which uses lard and it just makes too dense of a biscuit for me.

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I start with 2 cups of flour in my bowl. I add a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of baking powder. If you are using self rising flour, the baking powder can be optional – unless you want a really fluffy biscuit. Add 1/2 cup of crisco, pinched apart into small pieces. Blend all ingredients together with a fork or pastry cutter.

I have seen the recipe where the lard/crisco is replaced with butter. I have not tried this version before – but I think I’ll try it out next week just to see what happens.

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After the dry ingredients and fat are well blended, add in 1 cup of buttermilk. I like to use whole buttermilk, but low fat works just as well. Stir dough until sticky and all of the flour is worked in. Don’t over stir the dough or you’ll end up with biscuits that are dense instead of flaky.

Take an extra hand full of flour and put it in a bowl – be sure to dust your hands and the top of the biscuit dough. As you form each biscuit, re-dust your hands in the extra flour – this will keep the dough from getting stuck on your hands.

To hand form your biscuits, pick up a small blob of dough. I usually go with a blob that is slightly larger than a golf ball. I like to lightly pat my dough into a basic biscuit shape, then lay it out on the pan.

I like to finish off my biscuits with a dab of buttermilk on the tops. It adds a little extra flavor and it keeps the tops from getting too brown (I like really light biscuits the best). I’m not sure how common adding buttermilk to the tops is. Its just something that I picked up from my mom, and she picked it up from my dad’s mom.

Pop them in the oven on 450 for about 11 or 12 minutes – then you are good to go!

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Buttermilk Biscuit Recipe:

2 cups flour
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup crisco
1 tbs baking powder
pinch of salt

Oven – 450
Time- 11 – 12 minutes

Dreaming of a Cold Christmas

~ sanebishop ~ Leave a comment

This has been a year of extreme weather—a summer of severe drought, then the wettest November on record, and now the second warmest December on record. On a farm, weather is always simultaneously helping or hurting something. The severe drought this summer wasn’t very good for growing field crops, but vegetable producers (who nearly all irrigate) did alright. Lack of rain means less disease pressure for them.

The oddly warm weather we’re having this Christmas means some strange things are happening here on our little farm. First, we have some strawberry plants that are already blooming. They aren’t supposed to bloom till early spring.

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Strawberry in bloom on December, 20th

It’s almost January, and the apple trees are still clinging to their leaves. The oats and crimson clover are almost a foot high.

I tried to take a photo of the bees entering their hive, but they all turned out blurry. This time of year, bees would typically be huddled inside the hive to stay warm and conserve energy. No need to do that this year. Some were actually bringing in orange pollen.

All this warm weather is nice for a few days, but it can really mess things up if it persists. Instead of going dormant to survive winter, things will start ramping up for spring. Bees will begin using more energy and eating their stored honey. Strawberries will bloom in earnest. Then a cold snap will arrive and slaughter everything. So even if I don’t particularly like cold weather (I’d rather be hot than cold), I’m still dreaming of a cold Christmas, just like the ones I used to know…