Tag: Farm

The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea

~ sanebishop ~ Leave a comment

Before I daydreamed about making a living from the land, I daydreamed about making a living from the sea. My maritime dream took several iterations, and I can’t remember in what order they originated. At one point, I wanted to be a professional skimboarder. If you have never heard of a professional skimboarder, that is likely because the only place a professional skimboarder has ever existed is in my daydream.

A skimboard, however, is an actual object known to reality; it is basically a small surfboard-type conveyance, albeit one that is flat and without fins, that a juvenile runs and jumps on in the spilling and retreating suds atop a beach. The skimboard carries its rider for five seconds–five long seconds of pure fun–before it runs aground in the sand and catapults the rider. I believe the only people who have ever made a living off of skimboards are orthopedic surgeons. 

At another point in time I wanted to own a shrimp boat, one with big nets and outriggers and possibly a cannon for pirating in my spare time. My decision to discard this dream was likely providential–later in life I would develop a severe allergic reaction to shrimp and would have had to resort to full-time piracy, for which a shrimp boat with one cannon would have hardly been conducive. 

At another point, I hoped to become a charter boat captain. I planned to start small by charging five dollars for a half-day trip on my grandma’s pond. The aluminum jon boat wasn’t the fastest boat in the local fleet, especially after about five minutes of rowing against the wind, but you gotta start somewhere. Out of all my maritime ideas, this one probably had the best odds for success, but then the pond sprung a leak one summer and went dry, which ended my charter boat empire before I ever had my first charter. 

Somewhere along the lines my dreams turned more terrestrial in nature, and I shifted to wanting to make a living from the land. Many of these dreams I actually pursued, to varying degrees of failure, and I learned that dreams to work the ground aren’t the same as grounded dreams.

In hindsight, any dream containing the term “make a living” is probably doomed to disappoint because the dream itself is a corruption–whatever fancy spawned the dream to begin with is suddenly bound to the anchor of pecuniary pressure and is destined to sink into reality. For an idealist whose natural realm is the clouds, it’s probably better to earn your funds elsewhere and let them float your dreams, than to sink them. 

That said, I look back on those failures with a strange sense of nostalgia, maybe not as much nostalgia as my boyhood seafaring dreams, but nostalgia nonetheless. I have jettisoned the profit-motive for farming (except for tax purposes) in favor of the breakeven motive, which is somewhat more attainable, at least in a good year. Maybe one day pigweed will become a cash crop, at which point I will be strongly positioned to achieve my prior dream. 

In any event, sometimes it’s nice to remember your dreams (and to remember to dream). Running aground is inevitable, but it is better than living in a sea of regret. 

a fishing boat on the sea sea

The Ebb and Flow of Honeybee Governance

~ sanebishop ~ 8 Comments

Nobody has ever accused me of being an expert in economics or modes of government, or really anything for that matter, but the best I can tell is that, with communism, everybody is miserable, but with capitalism at least 1% are filthy rich (and presumably happy)–and that gives the rest of us 99% hope that we could be the 1%. And hope is a wonderful thing. It could be a little misplaced in scratch off tickets or the dream of becoming filthy rich by beekeeping, but I’m a firm believer that hope is better than no hope. 

Sometimes I wonder if honeybees hope. They do odd things from time to time, like sail over the horizon in October (strangely I caught a swarm a few weeks ago), that make it appear as if they are sometimes influenced by some sort of delusional hope, much like the pilgrims sailing over the horizon in hopes of a new society. What discontent must have been brewing in that hive for those bees to swarm in October, to take their chances on the hope that new environs would be more conducive for their happiness. It is not their genetic instinct to swarm in October. Maybe a rabble rousing and inspiring bee instilled hope in her sisters. Maybe they decided to pack up and go on a voyage to flee an oppressive and tyrannical system of governance. 

People have often been curious about the governing structure of honeybees. Aristotle thought bees were a monarchy ruled by a king bee (Matt Phillpot at Honey Histories has some good posts on the king bee theory). Then other folks came along and said I’m pretty sure that the king bee just laid an egg, at which point, people believed that bees were a monarchy ruled by a queen (and that Aristotle should have stuck to metaphysics). Then Charles Darwin came along and pointed out that the queen is really just a figurehead used for breeding purposes, that the monarchy is just performative, kind of like the current British monarchy (though both get perks like a lot of royal jam and jelly). Darwin basically posited that, underneath the facade of monarchy, bees were communists at heart, made up of individuals who work for the good of the group, not for personal gain. Then Cornell Professor Tom Seeley came along a few years ago and posited that, underneath the facade of monarchy and underneath the sub-facade of communism, bees are actually red-bloodied, freedom loving bugs who prefer democratic self-governance. You’re darn tootin’.

But who the heck really knows. My theory is that bees’ form of government ebbs and flows over time. Maybe at the time when Aristotle was writing about king bees, the bees really were governed by a series of kings, many of which were named Henry, who turned out to be pretty murderous fellas, so they decided to let a couple of queens have a go at governing, only to find them slightly less murderous, so they tried a new system of government led by bolshevik bees, only to find that job opportunities were pretty limited in scope: you were either an abdomen-licking attendant bee to the Supreme Leader, a peasant worker bee, or a drone who got murdered in the winter. Then the bees experimented with democracy for about 250 years, only to find its great strength–hope–was also its ultimate downfall. A huckster drone, peddling authoritarianism disguised as hope, coalesced a large following of bees, disillusioned by the price of eggs, to vote for him again, at which point he started doing a lot of fun authoritarian things, like rounding up non-native bees, deploying national guard bees on the citizenry, and accepting lots of untraceable foreign honey for meme crypto tokens.

Of course, this pretty much brings us to the present day, so time will only tell what happens next–but here’s hoping the bees can get their act together, before they go back to square one and replace hope and freedom with a system of oppressive and tyrannical king bees.

Is it a king, queen, president, or orange authoritarian? Time will only tell.

Immersion in a Second Language

~ sanebishop ~ 1 Comment

I have always envied people who can speak more than one language. In high school, I took Spanish, and all I have to show for it are recurring nightmares about my butchering of Spanish pronunciations in front of the class. In college, I tried to soothe my subconscious by taking four semesters of Biblical Greek, a dead language that requires no conversational proficiency. In hindsight, that was also a bad decision for my subconscious. It is never good for Jesus to be able to directly communicate with your subconscious, without you as the interpreter. 

JESUS: ἀγαπᾶτε τοὺς ἐχθροὺς

ME: [acting as interpreter] Jesus said it’s okay to ridicule your enemies, just a little bit.  

SUBCONSCIOUS: No, he didn’t. I know Biblical Greek. He said, “Love Your Enemies.”

After college, I gave up all studies of foreign languages, in hopes of circumventing my subconscious, only to buy an old farmhouse with a chatty vent pipe. Learning the meaning of the various gurgles and hiccups emanating from the vent pipe or toilet or bathtub is vital for surviving in an old farmhouse. 

For instance, a gurgle bordering on a dry persistent cough, could be indicative that your well has run dry. If this is indeed the case, prepare for a long and drawn out process to reprime the well pump. The steps are as follows: (1) Scratch your head and try to remember the correct process for repriming the pump. (2) Call your wife’s Poppaw to see if he can remember. (3) Meet your wife’s Poppaw at the well pump to see if physical proximity to the pump jogs any enlightening memories. (4) Fiddle with valves and switches to see if anything miraculous happens. (5) Out of sheer befuddlement, yank on the tiny hose connecting the pump to the pressure switch. (6) Wave and enjoy the scenery from atop the geyser spurting from the nozzle to the pressure switch. 

Misdiagnoses like a dry well for a clogged nozzle are common among folks who are not yet proficient at the nuances of conversational gurgles. Personally, I should have used context clues to realize that we were not in a drought, so that gurgle, in that context, must have meant a clogged nozzle, not a dry well. But I can’t be too hard on myself because it takes years of immersion in a second-language to become truly proficient–plus, it was mostly my wife’s Poppaw who got immersed in the geyser. 

That’s not to say that I have escaped immersion. There was the time the drain pipe from the kitchen sink got clogged and then burst during winter. Although I only heard a soft gurgle bubbling up in the backyard, the stench alone was context enough to diagnose the problem. The process for replacing the drain pipe was prolonged by the fact it took many hours wandering the hardware store to find the correct fitting–it is hard to find help in a big box hardware store these days, especially when you smell like the inside of a putrid pipe. 

Be glad you can’t smell what is seeping out of this busted clean-out valve.

Perhaps, subconsciously, I wanted to linger–sauntering through a hardware store in muddy jeans and boots while emanating the scent of hard work is possibly a man’s proudest moment, especially for an over-educated man proficient in an antiquated language. 

Gossip and Gravy Biscuits

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There is a saying in the country, “Put on clean underwear in case you’re in a car wreck.” The idea behind this saying is that it might be embarrassing if first responders caught you wearing dirty drawers. 

I suppose the other idea implicit in this saying is that first responders are, well, are prone to gossip and might spread that tidbit of information throughout the countryside, which may be why Congress passed the HIPAA privacy law. First responders are now legally bound not to divulge information about your dirty underpants, unless you consent for them to do so–so be careful what forms you sign. 

Some first responders circumvent this law by also being farmers. It is a gray area to be sure, but it has generally been understood in this country that farmers are allowed to gossip with impunity, especially if the gossip takes place at a gas station grill in the morning, while all the farmers are strategizing and coordinating their daily movements and activities. Thus, if I ever need to know what is going on in the county, I always call one of my neighbors, Jimmy, who happens to be a first responder, farmer, and daily patron of Beam’s Country Corner, the best place for a breakfast biscuit in the whole county. Beam’s also carries 100% non-ethanol gas, so you don’t have to worry about clogging up a carburetor, though clogging an artery might still be a concern, especially if you’re fond of gravy biscuits. 

 You will always hear Jimmy, before you see him–he usually sits in the rickety booth at the back of Beam’s Country Corner, the booth closest to the coffee pot. Some farmers at Beam’s refer to Jimmy endearingly as the Mouth of the South (a throwback to Jimmy Hart, who coined the moniker as Hulk Hogan’s ring manager), but I consider that an insult since Jimmy is an important source of information beyond just a local and regional reach.

I’ve never met a man who knows as many people (their families and family histories and family secrets) or as many politicians (their benefactors and supporters and political secrets) or as many cattle (their sires and pedigrees and possibly their secrets, though cows tend to hold their cards pretty close to the vest). He knows everybody, two-legged and four-legged in the county. 

In my opinion, every community needs someone like Jimmy. For one, with phonebooks now a thing of the past, if you need a cell phone number for someone, you just call Jimmy and he will give it to you. He will also give you a treatise on that person’s life, so if you’re in a hurry, it’s better to text him. Second, if you need to know if your cows are on the loose and roaming the roadside, you can call Jimmy and he’ll confirm whether it’s your cows, plus he will give you the latest information on their movements and whereabouts. 

In short, Jimmy is an invaluable resource. Hopefully, you know someone like Jimmy, but even if you don’t, you can rest assured he knows you.

A Fair in Foul Weather

~ sanebishop ~ 10 Comments

It has been a year since Helene. The storm came up from the gulf and stalled over western North Carolina. It rained and the wind blew, harder than any of us expected. In our county, it was mostly a generational windstorm that snapped trees and downed power lines, but further west it was a biblical rainstorm, washing away life and mountainsides. We were without power for seven days, which is not a long time unless you’re a modern American without power, at which point it feels like seven years. 

One place in the county that did not lose power, or at least regained it quickly, was the Cleveland County Fair, which was ongoing at the time. While the countryside looked apocalyptic, people somehow navigated obstructed roadways and went to the fair, lots and lots of people. Having lived here now for nearly fifteen years, I believe going to the fair in late September is an innate migratory instinct for longtime residents of the county. 

The Cleveland County Fair is the largest county fair in North Carolina. It has been since its inception in 1924. I won’t bore you with the details of its illustrious history, but it is not a rinky dink carnival in a parking lot. It is a proper agricultural fair, with livestock shows and blue-ribbon pumpkins, with vinegar fries and funnel cakes and roasted corn and endless avenues of transportable and purportedly safe thrill rides–and pig races, my favorite part. It is, in short, just the place you want to be when the world around you is falling down, literally or figuratively. 

Last year, we didn’t know quite how badly the world had fallen down, or washed down the mountain. With the power out and roads impassable, reports of the cataclysmic damage further west were slow to reach us, so people did what they had been doing for generations and went to the fair, almost as an act of defiance against Mother Nature. Also, since the power was out everywhere else in the county, there was nothing better to do.

In a matter of days, our fairgrounds as well as other fairgrounds across western North Carolina would transform into staging grounds for volunteers and supplies, as the reality of the devastation came to light. There was something better to do, and the outpouring of community support that descended on our region was truly remarkable. For many, the recovery is still ongoing; for others, what was lost will never truly be recovered. 

A year later, the Cleveland County Fair is back again for its 101st year. I am happy to report that residents are once again flocking to the fairgrounds on their annual migration. No matter how foul the weather is, over us or the nation or the world itself, it’s comforting to have a fair. Here’s hoping you have a fair in your neck of the woods.

Thomas’s first trip to fair in 2022.