"Well, Dang"

Even on bright sunny days, in November we seriously need day-brighteners -- especially on the first day of adult firearm deer-hunting season when we are NOT heading to the woods for fresh air and communion with nature -- and while on the road in Gasconade County with neighbor Terri in search of a good German meal (we found it at Stone Hill Winery in Hermann) we saw this, and because we don't see pink tractors very often, we said, "Well, dang." That got me thinking what else we say that conveys disbelief:

• Well, I'll be.
• Well, slap my a-- and call me Sally.
• Well, I'll be darned.
• Well, I'll be dipped in s---.
• Well, dog my cats.
• Well, I swan (or "I swannee").
• Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit.
• Well, melt me down.
• Well, knock me down and steal my teeth.

It's better 'n' a sharp stick in the eye.

Ride Through a Lifetime

An antique car stirs hearts like nothing else. While Dwight drove us around in his grandfather's Chevrolet 3100 "Thriftmaster" half-ton pickup truck, bought new in December 1948 for about $1000, we stopped at a light and an older man in a car beside us stared in wonder and then, teary-eyed, rolled down his window and said he remembered Ford pickups just like it. This one hauled grain, about 45 bushels per load, and silage, and everything else on Dwight's family's Kansas farm. It's always been garaged. The original's cracked engine block was replaced in the 1960s with the engine from a '53 or '54 Chevrolet. The truck was spiffed up in the 1970s, with yellow-orange shag carpeting beneath the pedals placed by Dwight's brother. Not long ago a man saw it in Dwight's driveway, stopped, and offered to trade his Cadillac Escalade for it. Dwight refused. He shared the truck's photo on Facebook and I was so delighted I asked for a ride, and hopped in to find no seatbelts, the driver using hand signals to turn left, a Kansas plate that says "Antique," a four-on-the-floor that is nothing but a stick in the floor, and a roaring engine. This bulbous old dark-green machine had personality, charisma. People stared and pointed. See how you like it (12 seconds):
Dwight said his very frugal Mennonite grandfather would never have ordered the custom cab with opera windows; it was likely the last pickup truck on the lot for that model year and Grandpa wangled a deal. Years later, the family let Dwight use it to go to college; a bookish boy lacking the the ability to fix things, essential for farming, he left the farm for the city, made it big, and his family was skeptical when years later he said he wanted the truck.

I just had to show you and let you hear its horn. The only thing hard to believe about it was that carpet.

Memory Lane

One day I walked a little farther and turned onto a one-lane road I hadn't walked before although I've lived in the area 12 years, and was steamrolled by almost prehistoric memories: It looks like Ashland County, WI as it was more than 50 years ago, the place where my love for the country began, on trips to my uncle's dairy farm where I slept in a room that got very cold in the morning. Stony fields no good for crops, only cows and hay; the electrical poles, mere logs set upright into the ground, holding up a single wire to perfection; second-growth timber, and chicory weeds, all very quiet, and every half-mile a fire hydrant at the roadside, cast-iron thickly painted red; here, with lettering: CHATTA TENN 1963.

Simply hadn't seen the turnoff to this road, a memory lane, or maybe it magically appeared, a new road just when I needed it, and I walked thinking how we always visited my uncle in August, and August in northern WI is like mid-September here: breezes tepid and then cold, dealt out edgewise like playing cards; dry grass; woodpiles; understated sunlight. An excellent fitness walk because of its hills, rising 283 feet total from the starting point to its highest. Three miles into it I hadn't reached the end, and turned around, but next time I'll walk farther and see what's at the end of Memory Lane.

Farm Scenery

Some of the best scenery here is in hilly country where the road is two lanes with drop-offs on each side and I can't get out to take a photo. So I haven't shown you very many pictures of the genuine farms that remain here in the valleys and floodplains: dairy cows, corn, soy, sod, hay (pictured), and almost a pig farm. The neighbors organized because the proposed 200-acre pig farm was partly in the LaBarque Creek watershed, and the pig farmer decided to settle elsewhere.

Farm Heritage Days, Labadie, MO

The ad said, "Labadie Station Antique Tractor Farm Heritage Days, April 28 & 29, 2012. Antique and vintage tractors and implements of ALL makes, models and conditions to be displayed and demonstrated." Well, resistance was futile. These things, like old cars, make me happy; they were thoughtfully designed and made to last, pure love-letters of American engineering, and my dad built Case tractors on their assembly line. Sunday in the little town of Labadie I saw mostly FarmAlls, but some John Deeres and one Allis-Chalmers, and the gas-powered 8-inch diaphragm water pump (view it in action) and the 1870s freight wagon, plus I watched the blacksmith at his forge. What you see above is a 1953 FarmAll B, a two-seater. Also displayed were several FarmAll Cubs with single seats, and a stunning bright-yellow FarmAll, 1946. The bluegrass band was kickin' out some John Denver and Woody Guthrie despite the cloudy chilly day. The little girl was put in the 1957 FarmAll tractor seat by her grandaddy. Ain't she a punkin?

Brown Eggs with Value Added

Saw this pickup today where Bald Pate Road meets the highway. Never saw it before. Turned around, pulled over and trotted up saying, “How much for brown eggs?”

The tall thin older man, wearing flannel and a farm cap (more squarish than a ball cap), extended a very dry, cold and toughened hand. “H'are you today?” he asked. (In the country you don’t run up and demand to do business right away. You greet the person. You look into their eyes and get to know them. And you give value-added. City habits still plague me.)

I said, “Your hens laying already?” (I know they start laying in earnest very early in the year.)

“Mine do year round,” he said. “These eggs yesterday morning and the day before. Three dollars for one dozen.” His egg cartons were a miscellany from all sorts of places and there weren’t many left. He opened a carton and showed me the eggs. I wanted only one carton. But I got my value-added. “What you do with these,” said the farmer, holding the carton and demonstrating, “is turn ‘em upside down and leave ‘em that way every seven days, if you remember to do it, and the eggs stay fresh for 30 days same as now.”

“I never heard that,” I said, appreciatively.

 “I grew up on a farm,” he said, “and my mother and me went to seminars, and if you listen,” he said, tapping an ear, “you learn somethin. Don’t hard-boil these. You’ll never get the shell off.” (That’s true when an egg is too fresh.)

He thanked me for my $3 and wished a Merry Christmas to me and my family, and I wished him a Happy New Year.

I Join The Local-Produce Co-op

The Current newspaper announced that the local-produce co-op, Community Helpings Co-op, was going to add Pacific to its list of every-two-weeks delivery points, and it needed 26 orders to make Pacific a regular stop. I've always wanted to join and support a co-op and local farms, so I signed up and paid online -- except I made a mistake. Instead of just one basket I ordered two "baskets" of produce by accident, and couldn't figure out how to cancel the extra order, so I got my new neighbor Sally to agree to take the extra bag off my hands for free.

So on a hot afternoon the refrigerated truck drives up to the picnic shelter and starts unloading, and people start distributing what ends up to be about 45 pounds of produce per order. Each order -- far bigger than any "basket" I've ever seen -- contained (contents differ with the seasons): 1 fresh pineapple, 3 big round red onions, 2 garlic heads, 6 huge peaches, broccoli head, plums and lemons galore, many fat homegrown tomatoes, a huge melon (I just measured mine: circumference 23 inches), 3 LARGE yellow summer squash, 1 large romaine head, buncha celery, 3 cucumbers, 6 kiwis, 7 ears fresh corn.

I'd brought just two small bags. I got some boxes for the overflow and people ("Why, that bag is just 'bout as big as yew are!") helped me stow it in my car.

When I got home I dragged one bag over to my neighbor: the "mistake" bag. She has a big family; she can use it.

I had also ordered from the co-op two optional items, just for me: dozen mangoes (beautiful!) and locally-made thin-pizza shells, thinking to make pizzas with produce and eat them for days. When I get into the house the phone rings. It is the co-op lady telling me I left one of my bags at the park and a kindly couple was coming to my address to bring it to me. I did not have time to say, "But wait; I think I got all my produce," because, omg, there they were pulling up at the house, dragging out yet another loaded blue co-cop bag. I gave them a bottle of port for their trouble, but now I had produce on every horizontal surface in my fridge, kitchen, dining room, and knee deep on the floor. Fortunately I have friends, and whatever they didn't take and I couldn't possibly use I set in a box down by the highway, and marked the box "FREE." Gone within minutes.

Wow, now I want to do that again! If you live in the area, check it out. If you don't, maybe there is a co-op near you.

Late Summer Blues

Sorry to see this beautiful summer go -- along with my hummingbirds, who left Sept. 12 -- I am looking for beauty wherever I can -- in this case in a floodplain. Farming, like fishing, is about hope...

Autumn Postcard

Dear Reader: I took this today, down the road a ways. Thought of you, and wished you were here. Love, Divinebunbun.

Sprang Chickens

Ready to buy? $2.19 apiece at Dickey Bub's. They sell them every spring, for one week. Well fed and warm under a big light they were peeping like it's goin out of style. The initials stand for chicken breeds: RIR = Rhode Island Red; BO = Buff Orpington; RSL = Red Sex Link; click on the link if you think I'm funnin' you. Also called Red Stars. What is it in my brain always makes me so happy to see baby birds, fawns, kittens -- any kind of babies? "Heavy Breed" means they're good for both eggs and meat.