Tag: homestead

Mysterious Seeds Sprout and Destroy Peace and Quite on Homestead

~ sanebishop ~ 18 Comments

[Weeks ago, mysterious seed packets from an unknown Chinese source started showing up in mailboxes. Admittedly, most recipients wondered if this could be invasive seed warfare. Most were too afraid to plant the seeds—most, but not all. The following entries were recovered from a homesteader’s diary.]

7/15/2020

Garden is doing well, but crabgrass, ugh. Weeding is the worst part about homesteading, if you ask me. I planted one of those strange pumpkin-like seeds in the garden, just to see what comes up. Maybe it will be an exotic vegetable, like a spaghetti squash.

7/18/2020

My heirloom tomatoes are nearly ripe, and cucumber vines are spreading. The mysterious seed has germinated! It has the largest cotyledons that I’ve ever seen on any garden plant, though I’m by no means a gardening expert yet. I’m still not sure what species it is—perhaps it will be a leaf crop like bok choy.

7/26/2020

I’m pleased to report, after diligent watering over two weeks, I now have a vine growing straight up to the clouds, or nearly so—it’s already thirty-feet high! By the looks of it, it should be stout enough to climb in a few days. The vine has the hairy mane of poison ivy, giant thorns like railroad spikes, and elongated trumpet-like flowers that exude the aroma of a rotting whale carcass. The huge tarp-like leaves provide ample shade and, at night, a soft green glow. Needless to say, the plant has the growth habit of a magic beanstalk, though I do suspect my focus on healing the land and increasing soil fertility has played a part. If only this plant was a magic beanstalk, but likely it’s a long-lost species from prehistoric times!

7/29/2020

We’ve had ample rainfall, including several substantial thunderstorms. I dumped a half inch out of the rain gauge yesterday. I’ve noticed the vine has been struck by lightning on several occasions and appears to have experienced no adverse effects, though the plant has the curious habit of now zapping dead all creatures that come within forty feet of the garden, including a whole deer herd. The manner in which it does this is something like a Tesla coil. This is becoming slightly problematic because I must now wear bulky rubber rainboots to tend the garden. Plus, the buzzards are starting to pile up.

8/1/2020

I have decided not to climb the vine, as it was beginning to move on its own accord. Absolutely no wind at all, and it’s whipping around like a giant out-of-control water hose and smashing pickup trucks. My neighbors are starting to show concern and have requested the governor call in the National Guard. Though I have reservations about chemical use for weed control, I believe a small dousing of Roundup delivered by a fix-winged aircraft should easily solve the problem.

8/2/2020

The situation is dire. The vine appears to be resistant to Roundup and napalm. It is now hurling large pods full of the pumpkin-like seeds in all directions. Scientists believe it’s not a magic beanstalk or prehistoric species, but instead a genetically-modified species—who would’ve thought?

8/2/2020 PM

Just got a cell phone alert from Emergency Management—nuclear blast is imminent to contain vine’s spread. Must leave all possessions behind and seek shelter immediately, underground if possible. Once out of cellar, I will contact real estate agent to list property. Homesteading is not for me.

How to Handle a Ruined Crop (or pass the pipe wrench)

~ sanebishop ~ 12 Comments

There was a time in my life when I liked to discover stuff. Hate to say it, I’d actually get excited to learn new things. But as a farmer, I’ve become completely anti-discovery–and for good reason. Last year, for instance, I was driving down the road, eyes straight ahead, diligently trying not to discover anything, when I noticed something shadowy in the periphery. “Good gosh,” I thought, “what now?” I tried to resist, knowing that, generally speaking, shadowy things are bad, but my willpower failed me once again: I turned my head to look. 

“Holy smokes,” I said, “my whole field is black.” If only I hadn’t looked, my crop would still be green and vigorously growing, like it had been days earlier.

Most of what’s written on this blog should be taken with a big block of red mineral salt, but you can absolutely trust the following piece of farming advice: if your crop suddenly turns black, something is wrong, bad wrong. 

Amnesia: Ruined-Crop Cure All

The best solution for a suddenly black crop is either a stout pipe wrench to the head or bottle of hard liquor down the hatch. Either one, when applied quickly enough, can cause a bout of amnesia that erases the discovery of the ruined crop, allowing you to reawaken in the blissful state of prediscovery. Hopefully, you scribbled a warning on your arm for when you reawaken, or else you’re likely to go right back and rediscover the ruined crop, which can lead to a repeating pattern of pipe wrenches to the head and a severe headache.

And hopefully said warning wasn’t something specific like, “Don’t check milo crop because millions of sugarcane aphids are sucking the life out of it.” Discovering a statement like that scribbled on your forearm can cause shock and leave you convulsing on the floor. Thus, with warning notes scribbled on your personage, it’s better to be rather vague and nonchalant. For instance, a sufficient warning written across the forearm might read, “No need to check milo crop. All is well. Everything green (If by chance you do check, keep pipe wrench handy).” 

P.S.: another useful bit of farming advice: If you write the warning on your forehead, remember to write backwards so you can read it in a mirror. Also, if you want to grow a great pollinator plot, plant a field of milo for grain, let sugarcane aphids infest it, and every known species of stinging insect will descend on the field to suck up the honeydew. 

Crows, the Old Field General, and Garden Warfare

~ sanebishop ~ 9 Comments

A small garden, ha! What a punchline! I laugh every time I hear it, and I’ve heard it a lot. My wife’s poppaw Lowry is quite fond of the joke that precedes this punchline.

To do the joke justice, he starts out by pronouncing the fact that he’s downsizing his garden. In early spring, he may only plant a few rows of potatoes to really sell the setup. But by mid- June he’s wielding a hoe on a much larger battlefield, a certain glint in his eye as he fights once again with his mortal enemy, crabgrass. At this point, he says, “I’m getting too old for this” and then proclaims, “Next year I’m just planting a small garden.”

And it’s at this point where I laugh and say, “A small garden, ha!” Though I’ve heard that joke many times before–in fact, I hear it every year–I laugh, knowing next year his garden will be even larger. 

Older and Wiser

Lowry and Me

Lowry is now eighty-four. He has an old lawn chair that he sits in and looks out over his “small garden” like a field general. Field is an appropriate term because every year his garden grows in square-footage, to the point that his garden now encompasses a small field. The term general is also fitting because lately he’s been sitting in his chair with a shotgun.

His old foe, the crow, has been pillaging his rows of freshly-sowed purple hull peas, unearthing pea seed with precision beak strikes. But so far he’s been unsuccessful in repelling the crows. Over the years the crows around here have evolved and adapted their garden warfare tactics. The crows post lookouts in the trees near the garden and are long gone by the time Lowry shows up with his anti-aerial shotgun.

To be honest, I’ve started to worry about Lowry. Despite his big garden, he seems to have lost his fighting spirit. In years gone by, he would have concocted some elaborate crow-hunting blind to hide in and ambush his enemy. But now he’s just sitting around in the open for all the crows to see. I suspect the crows are probably ridiculing him in caws. Yesterday, I even walked up on him asleep in the lawn chair–shotgun across his lap. Not wanting to suddenly startle him while he was armed and dreaming, I just walked away and let him slumber. 

About thirty-minutes later, however, I heard a shotgun blast from the general direction of the garden. To be honest, I feared the worst: What if he had been having a nightmare, woke up confused, and blasted a watermelon? But when I got back to the garden, Lowry was grinning from ear to ear, a shotgun in one hand and crow in another. “I thought you were asleep,” I said.

His response: “And so did the crow.”

For another post on Lowry’s propensity for shooting, check out There’s a New Sheriff in Town. Also, here’s a funny story from the Small Farmer’s Journal on Lowry and my other farming neighbor called The Crowder Pea Peace Process.

There’s No Ain’t in Paint

~ sanebishop ~ 12 Comments

Applying new paint is now only slightly more fun than scraping old paint. Painting used to be a blast, back when you had paint fumes for entertainment. But in their old age, paint manufacturers have become sticks-in-the-mud (rumor has it, Sherwin Williams never cracks a smile now, and Benjamin Moore has become a stoic philosopher) and now only sell low-fume paints so you can’t get high off your house siding. Without fumes, painting is officially a joyless activity that takes you to some pretty dark places. Yesterday, sun glaring, I was standing on a ladder painting the gables and started thinking about water, which strangely led me to think about water-boarding. I found myself wondering, Why didn’t the CIA just give enemy combatants old farmhouses to scrape and paint? 

My general philosophy is to let paint flake off the house naturally before repainting, but my wife says that’s unsightly. Built in 1897, our farmhouse has so many layers of lead paint adhered that I’m pretty sure it’s bulletproof. I’ve yet to see a bullet hole in our house, and I’ve inspected every square-inch of it with a paint scraper. Repainting the house is my goal this summer, which is why I’m completely against my wife setting goals. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried diligently to get out of painting, but she just repeats her new slogan whenever I approach and open my mouth. 

“I ain’t feeling too…” I’ll start to say, but before I can finish telling her about my feelings, she just says, “There’s no ain’t in paint.” This is only slightly more empathetic than her previous slogan: “You can’t spell paint without pain.” 

Of course, I’ve already tried the Tom Sawyer bit. But children these days are more streetwise than Mark Twain’s time. You’d think climbing a twenty-foot ladder with a sharp paint scraper would appeal to adventurous kids, but so far none of the neighborhood children have wanted to paint my house. They just stay inside and play video games. It’s sad really, the work ethic of children these days. 

Pretty close to an enhanced interrogation technique if you ask me.

What’s your least favorite farm activity or chore?

How to Communicate with Loggers

~ sanebishop ~ 5 Comments

Farmers and loggers have long been rivals. As a government soil conservationist, I’ve been trained for effective communication with both groups. With loggers, I communicate in plain speech, with simple questions like, “Hey, buddy, you been sleeping on the job?” Sometimes they don’t understand, just glare and shake their head.

Despite limited comprehension, loggers always strike me as some of the most thoughtful and cerebral storytellers around. There’s often a lot of math in their stories, particularly concerning the angle of a leaning tree, the tree’s rate of descent once severed, and the top speed of a soil conservationist in steel-toe boots. Occasionally, they also get philosophical with quips like, “If a tree falls on a government employee’s truck and no one’s around to hear the horn, does the truck make a sound?”

Loggers love nature and tell lots of stories about snakes, hornets’ nests, and cornered wildcats. One logger told me about the time he put a large and beautiful specimen of copperhead in the county forest ranger’s truck. He never saw the forest ranger in the forest again, but he did run into him once at a bar, where the forest ranger picked up his tab, but hardly said a word otherwise. This shouldn’t reinforce the old stereotype that loggers are heavy drinkers; usually loggers just stumble upon liquor stills in the woods and feel duty-bound to dispose of the liquid contraband.

My grandfather was a logger, and I remember building forts out of logging debris, the smell of pine sap on my hands, and the sound of the skidder rumbling while I played blissfully in the woods nearby. Sadly, when I wax poetic about our common experiences, loggers always hurry back to work sharpening their chainsaws. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for a logger to dull a chain on a nail or piece of barb-wire embedded in a tree. Nails show up so commonly on logging sites that on several occasions I’ve left a logging site only to soon thereafter hear a loud clunking noise and to find a nail in a tire’s sidewall. Being a government truck, it takes an act of congress to change the tire, and sometimes I’m forced to walk back to the logging site where the loggers welcome me with open arms, though sometimes the closed-fisted slaps on the back are rather rough for my liking. Still, boys will be boys, and it feels good to be included by loggers; not everyone is as kind to government employees. 

government employee deterrent.