"Sell That Fine Pig"

Lily is wearing a sleeveless ruffled top with her shorts and cowboy boots. Her long red curls are tied back from her freckled face with two ribbons. She has walked into the sales ring at the Atchison County Fair from a Norman Rockwell painting. I cannot help but be charmed. But when the auctioneer reads her name, she bounds across the sand, with one finger beckoning to the shaggy lamb behind, who follows her, his leash trailing. This makes me clap my hands in delight and sing under my breath,

"Lily had a little lamb....."

And everywhere that Lily went,

The lamb was sure to go."

Surely this performance earned the young lady a couple more bids on the premium for her animal. The lamb knew Lily and Lily knew her lamb.

Jilli's sheep is tired by the time she is called to the sales ring. But Jilli isn't. With enthusiasm that is not entirely communicated to her animal, she somehow moves him to the center of the ring with her hands, rope, boots, and the sheer force of her personality and will. She is working so hard. The bidding takes a good long while, long enough that the reluctant sheep gives in, stands pat, and allows Jilli to mold it into the preferred stance. It may or may not matter at this sale, but her folks have impressed upon Jilli that she should never stop working until the job is done.

Because of the heat and humidity, the sale starts late this year. Whether its the hour, the temperature, or just the ongoing slow decline and consolidation of our county's business community, the stands are full of family members, but not as many buyers as one would wish for the number of exhibitors. Nonetheless, the bidding can be brisk; it is always good-natured; and whether the animal is a hog, a rabbit, a goat or a chicken, the kid will get a nice check and the buyer a round of appreciative applause.

When Lee and Ann and Ben showed animals for 4H and then FFA, the barns were full with up to 70 steers and one year, on top of 200 hogs. Six or seven Hurst cousins worth of cattle did contribute to the bounty. Today's show ring features a solid representation of pigs, a pampered lovely handful of steers, sheep, goats,and a rainbow's worth of rabbits and chickens in arms. Farms have changed in our county, but the faces of the parents watching from the barn, the fence, or the stands are ever the same: focused and intent, alert to the bidders and the auctioneer, poised to offer advice and encouragement to the showman in the ring.

Some of the bidders are the same too. It does my heart good to hear some of the self-same folks bidding that were buying animals at the fair almost thirty years ago when Lee and Ann first led a steer into the ring. Now Lee and Ryan and Ann and Matt are the ones reminding their kids when the pigs were born and how much they weighed and Aaron, Lizzie, Gabe and Abbie are the ones with whips and brushes, ever watching the judge, and stuffing ribbons in their jeans' pockets as they drive the pigs back to the pen.

"Sell that fine pig!" All the pigs are fine by the end of the evening as the stands thin and the buyers settle up. Every time the ring man raises his hand and calls,"Yup!", its a vote for tomorrow, a down payment on the success of the little girls with star spangled belts and boys with sweat running down their faces.

"Sell that fine pig!" and pay it forward for the kid whose pig peed on her boot or the kid run over by his animal in the alleyway. Raise your hand and you'll send a message in a bottle from the past to an unknown future where the lessons of responsibility and conscientiousness pay interest and more.

Sell that fine pig!" and record for posterity the common language of hard work between generations. Support your fair and vote for the heritage of blood and land and tradition personified in kids and pigs, moms and dads, goats or sheep, steers or chickens.

Posted with Blogsy

Restore and Renew...

"Every work of art starts out on the progressive path to destruction from the moment it is created. The artist can only hope to delay this time for as long as possible by the judicious choice of materials and their application with a sound technique. When the object passes from the artist's hands he can but pray it will be well looked after." Francis Kelly – 20th century restorer.

a restorer, courtesy Wall Street Journal

 It's that time of year again...time to celebrate ...but time to reflect.  Inexorable time leads me to another birthday and the inclination to hang blessings and losses in the galleries of memory...and the disinclination to do the math. 

 Inexorable: relentless, unstoppable, unavoidable, inescapable.

Young Woman in Blue Reading a Letter by Johannes Vermeer

I always visit the National Gallery of Art while in Washington, DC.  Strolling through the galleries is one way to restore balance, perspective.  Man has been creating art...objects of beauty, reverence, imagination...before time was measured.  And why?  What impulse informs the need to create beauty in whatever medium...glass or marble, paint, wood, ink, or flowers?  I'm no evolutionary biologist, so my answer is simple and worshipful:  our Creator put beauty in man's makeup because He wanted to us to notice this completely-non-bread-and-butter, non-essential-to-survival trait  and recognize it as a clue to His continuing presence and loving-kindness.

Niagra Falls by Frederic Church

In our fallen world, even perfect beauty decays. Our energy and the spark of creative fire can dim from birthday to birthday.  Walking back in time through the galleries from 20th century realists to pre-Renaissance and ancient art is an exercise not just in finding common humanity between centuries, continents, and cultures, but a reminder of how very fragile the thread is that maintains these ancient communications.

St. Paul by Rembrandt

I'm not as old as anything in the West Gallery (modern art is in the East Wing), but having another birthday is a good reason for restoration.  The first quote is as true of the human condition as of artworks: as perfect as we may have appeared to our excited parents, we were on the downhill course when we drew our first breath.  We can eat well, work hard, be loved and be happy, but even these "sound techniques"will but delay and never defeat the decay of time, hurt, and all the other burdens of our fallen lives.

Restored...

But the Psalmist offers another take on restoration and renewal.  And a birthday is the perfect time to sing that song to myself.  I don't expect to be better than new...I don't hope for a fountain of youth. Cleaning a painting makes it brighter, more vivid, and reveals hidden details invisible behind aged grime or botched rehabs.  Restoring an antique makes it whole again...but not new.  We won't regain our original shine...but an inward renewal is rewarded with a right spirit  and an increased appreciation for our day to day walk in our day by day world.

Spiderman says 'Keep Missouri Farming'

"With great power comes great responsibility".

This quote carries the weight of truth, whether you recognize the source as Voltaire....or Spiderman.  We bandy about words like "power", "rights" and "responsibility" like we are juggling beanbags, not the heavy cornerstones of society they represent.  We shouldn't use these words lightly; they are massive, weighty, burdened with meaning.

We farmers need to keep this quote in mind as we ask our neighbors across the state to vote  "yes" in a couple of weeks for Amendment 1, the Right to Farm amendment.  We are using the word "right", the same word we apply to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to worship; it is no small thing to ask for a right.

Why do farmers feel compelled to ask for this right?  Like the Founders who enumerated these privileges because they understood what it was to be without them, farmers are beginning to learn what it means to be denied the right to farm.  To people who have learned at their parents' knees that farming is synonymous with stewardship, that the future depends on the present, that  success is counted in generations, not just balance sheets, the  current climate of suspicion, distrust, and animosity comes as a complete shock.

I buy my food at my hometown grocery.  We buy beef from a nearby farmer and can as much of the garden's bounty each summer as we are able. When I am at home in Tarkio, I'm pretty much a locavore, buying my food within shouting distance. I neither know nor care whether my neighbors drive an hour to a different grocer (for variety), or a big box store (to save money), or to visit a truck farm or farmers' market   (because fresh or organic or knowing where the food originated is tops on their list).  I believe in the rights of my neighbors to buy the food they want to eat where they wish, based on the criteria important to their families. Our daily bread, in this rich rich country of ours, comes from a cornucopia of options.

Not everybody is satisfied with this situation.  Some people believe that people ought not to choose what they eat; they should eat only what is "good" for them..arbitrated by certain criteria, rather than the multi-faceted means our freedom affords us now.  Never mind deciding what to eat by speed or ease or proximity or economy, or any other way consumers vote with their food dollar. There is a narrow  moral component in this argument, a right and a wrong way to eat that goes against the grain of American individualism in a way that is at odds with the prevailing winds of this modern society.

The food police are not content to shout atop their soapboxes on the street corners of America.  No, they have carried this fight to the hinterlands where food is produced.  They sing a song of sixpence to moms at home and chefs in restaurants, a pocket full of scientific factoids and fear and a pie of nonsensical assurances if they just eat "right".  How do they plan to achieve "happily ever after?" The combined straitjackets of public opinion and regulation leave food producers gasping for air and wondering whether they are crazy...or the rest of the world is.

It is this battle that Missouri's Right to Farm joins.  On the side of agriculture are farms of all sizes, growing everything from acres of grain to beefsteaks and bacon on the hoof to wines for fine dining to perishable herbs and greens peddled hand to hand at farmers' markets.  A huge number of the farms you see sporting those orange and white Amendment 1 signs are like our farm....multi generational family businesses that not only work together but see each other at birthday parties, tball games, and church. Farms begun by a mom and a dad, who raised some kids there in mud and dust, good times and hard times.  Maybe some kids came back, to work the same land....and expand the business because that meant a good life for growing families and the communities they belonged to.  With hard work and good fortune, maybe this family farm was able to welcome grandkids...and great grandchildren as well.  The lettered roads of our state are home to many farms with the century sign in the yard and the legacy of success and sacrifice it represents. This agriculture is what I know, what our family represents, and what is threatened by nay sayers with the notion that they can not only predict the behavior of a business by its size, its practices and its business organization, but foresee what will be necessary to meet the future needs of a hungry planet.

Why does agriculture need this special protection?  Why not shoe stores or ice cream shops or body shops or hair dressers?  Because agriculture is so land dependent: what affects the land envelops agriculture like a blizzard. The threat could be a listing of a new endangered species; a change in water rights or the interpretation of a regulation; a decision about greenhouse gases.Or it might be a vote to outlaw GMO crops.

And agriculture employs such a small number of operators. We farmers hear ad nauseum the statistic that we are but 2 percent of the population of the US and that we feed the other 98 percent as well as ourselves.  This is asymmetry on steroids and we farmers know that even our best PR efforts are but a thumb in the dike of overweening ignorance, if not antagonism.  I wish I could take every skeptic to work with me for a day, to see how we live with, in, surrounded by and dependent upon the soil, sky, water, and people of our immediate environment.  My kids rolled in, dug in, and lost their boots in the earth and mud of our home place.  We drank the water from the wells in the midst of our crops...and still do.  Farmers do their best to avoid utter failure, but nothing can make growing plants and animals cookie cutter, turn key, or risk free. The pejorative use of the term "industrial'' cannot change the essential earthiness of  farming.  Successful agriculture is a business....but it is an "exceptional" business, surviving and thriving because it is family based.  A vocation in farming is a life of risk, rarity, and vitality.  It is not easy and no one prescription can ensure a food supply that will meet all needs, desires and avoid every newsworthy pitfall of the moment. We need flexibility to solve not just the problems of today, but those that lie in the unseen and unforeseeable future.

 
As a mom and now a grandmother, my experiences place me smack dab in the middle of five generations of rural life in Atchison county.  My husband's grandfather lost a farm in the Depression, shucked corn by hand, and finally drove an eight row combine until he could no longer climb the steps.  His son and wife raised three sons to plant it, weed it, feed it, and fix it yourself when it breaks.  We came back to this during some tough times, built greenhouses after hours, and now welcome another generation to work and raise their families.  This story is not unique; rather it is the chapter and verse of Missouri farming.  Amendment 1 cannot enshrine agriculture in a glass bubble, but it will assure Missouri farmers that they can hope and plan for the future of their farms and their families on the land they love.

Jam-Packed

Lizzie's Spring Bouquet

Lizzie's Summer Bouquets

"Grandma", says the little voice to my left and just behind me, "When I grow up,can I work here?"

She can't see me smile.

"Lizzie, I would LOVE to have you work here!" What grandma would answer in any other way?  

Lizzie's normal playmates, her cousins, are on vacation this week and Aaron is making a mum delivery to Omaha with Matt, so Lizzie and I are the lone rangers caring for the mum patches.  

Alone, but not lonely.  "Can I help?" "Can I do that?" Lizzie gets a tutorial on the push and turn of the hose bar and shutoff, then down the aisle on one side and back up the other with an eye out for wilted plants, leaders on the ground, weeds in the pots, weeds underneath the pot.  She is tireless in pulling weeds.  "How many weeds have you got?" "How come you have more?", like there's some kind of competition.  At the end of each row, she tosses her pile to the ground, just like me.  When we pass a plant smaller than its compatriots, she picks up the leader to see if it is dripping water, then nestles it right up to the base of the little plant.  "There you go", says the little mum nanny, like she's spoon feeding some magic elixir that will transform the 50 pound weakling into Superman.  I don't complicate her world view by telling her that mum probably needs LESS water, not MORE. That would be contradictory not only to the basic plant knowledge she has amassed in her young career, but also to her naturally tender heart.

weedy mum pot

Lizzie either runs between the three hoses we are using to water, or she slips her hand into mine and we walk, quickly, but companionably, from hose to hose.  Then...its her turn to change the line. One hand with its fashionably painted turquoise nails grips the black poly pipe: the other tries clockwise and then counterclockwise, until the water stops flowing through the brass shutoff...a mighty pull with accompanying grunt and.....pop!  Out comes the hose bar as Lizzie in her flippy black skirt and hot pink shorts tumbles backward into the dewy grass. Just doin' my job, ma'am...she's up in a sec, turning left, or is it right? until I gently remind her which way we are headed in order to water dry plants...

Watering the mums is work because it takes hours to finish and can't be rushed.  The main attraction of the day is still ahead and the reason her mommy says Lizzie LEAPT out of bed that morning:  we are going to make blackberry jam.  The blackberries in her aunt Lee's patches are thornless, so my only warning to Lizzie the day before was to wear something DARK, because working with berries...or working with Lizzie...is an invitation to dye oneself the glorious hues of nature.  In this case: purple

The berries are big, despite the dry weather, so after numerous eeks, squeaks, and discussion of the distinction between "ripe"and "squishy", we have nearly an ice cream bucket full.  Off to the kitchen where Lizzie takes to smashing the berries to pulp with great enthusiasm.  She's a natural.

Aaron is back and joins to help, measuring out the nine cups of sugar for the five cups of juice and pulp Lizzie has extracted.  Both kids are aghast at the thought of nine cups of sugar in anything; I reassure them that a piece of toast or a peanut butter sandwich with a generous helping of their homemade jam is a perfectly permissible dish for hard workin', hard playin' kids...and there's nothing wrong with a dollop of warm, not quite set blackberry jam on some vanilla ice cream either!!

Now we enter into the magic cauldron stage of the whole jam making process.  Double bubble toil and trouble, mumbles the concoction in the pot, while I stir and the onlookers help me discern the magic moment when the boil "can no longer be stirred down".  NOW!  Foam erupts up the sides to be overpowered by the avalanche of sugar and subside into an even deeper hue now with an intense fruity fragrance. I stir...and we talk about how very very hot this jam is, hotter than 212 degrees, Aaron figures.  The jars and jar lids clatter and jingle on the other two burners.  Just a few more seconds of the "just one minute" and its time to can.  

The familiar ritual is almost surgical....lift the jars, set the funnel, dip the cup and pour into the jar,remove the funnel, wipe the brim, grab a lid with the tongs, tighten the lid with the wash cloth.  Finally, into the canning rack until the last of the setting jam is scraped from the kettle.  It has cooled enough that Lizzie and Aaron get the last spoonfuls to savor.

When the jars come out of the boiling water bath, Lizzie has already chosen the jar they will take home; it is a pint jar with the band printed with colorful peaches.  When the lid pops and after it cools, she writes on it with her Sharpie :

BBlack

Bere

2013

The jar is still hot when she takes it home.  

As we were watering that morning, out of the blue, Lizzie says,"Grandma, when I am a Grandma, will you be in heaven?"  It is really more a statement of fact than a question and I tell her yes.  Whether or not Lizzie, or any of the other grandkids, follow up on their childhood wishes to "work here when I grow up', they will have grown up working here, alongside their moms, dads, siblings, cousins, and, yes, their grandmas and grandpas, too.   They will have days of sweat, dirt, pain, and frustration while they work with us, but they will have days like this one has been, too: a day that Grandma Lizzie will remember, I hope, and some day tell her little people about watering mums, picking berries, and making purple jam with her grandma years before.