It Might As Well Be Spring

"I'm as restless as a willow in a windstorm

I'm as jumpy as puppet on a string

I'd say that I had spring fever

But I know it isn't spring...."

No.

Its January.

Which means it must be time to get coverings on the greenhouses that still need new plastic to both survive the gales of March and let the sunshine in to grow the blooms of April.  If there are three still hours we leap into action like firemen responding to the sirens.

Its January.  Time to clean up last year's paperwork and print more for the tax man.  Josh is fetching the 

W-2s as they emerge from the printer.  January is the month we build the scaffolding of spreadsheets that hold the key to the spring's business.

The spreadsheets can't lie, don't fudge....out there in March there will be at least 100,000 little plants a week shipped to our door in boxes that will need to be transplanted during that seven day period before the next multitude arrives.  The season progresses in an inexorable, nearly Biblical progression:  "February has its thousands, but March has its ten thousands".

Takes your breath away.  Gives you nervous chills.  I know that sounds a little over  the top. But that's how it feels.

Just one greenhouse open these days, heaters hissing blue flame, propane rushing out of the tank and steam dissipating futilely into the frigid out of doors.  One greenhouse with HID lights glowing late into the night, fooling 8000 rootless geraniums into thinking March is around the corner.

 

The earliest pansies with their dainty scalloped leaves arrive nestled against moist pads in their cardboard cartons.  Those most hopeful and fragrant of March posies wear monikers like 'Blueberry Thrill' and 'Fizzy Lemonberry'.  What could be more contagiously springy than those?

The plugs are as dewy and pert as when they were packed in Colorado. We can't say enough good things about Kevin, the driver who usually delivers our FedEx plants.  Unlike other drivers, he never leaves packages on Lee's front porch, my back porch (neither heated, I might add), the middle of the driveway, or the garage.  He sends texts and hands us a calendar each month with his days off.  We always hope he takes his vacations in the fall :) .

The unrooted geraniums cuttings are bagged, tagged, packed to keep cool, not warm.  One batch came from Guatemala and the other from Ethiopia.  Geranium propagation is clearly high risk and rife with potential problems.  Several years back we got a batch of diseased cuttings and had to destroy a number of plants and sanitize the whole house.  The repercussions were widespread and costly for greenhouses over the entire East, South and Midwest.  In other years, rooting stations have come and gone in places like China and Mexico.  We too keep a weather eye on our infant geraniums..

January is too cold, but also too dark for some of the beloved tropicals that find summer porches so hospitable here in the Midwest.  We tried to grow ferns in December and January one year, but they shrunk down into their baskets and sent up nary a frond.  The only thing that grew in those baskets during the dark months were the most opportunistic of nasty greenhouse weeds.  They flourished. We decided not to fight Mother Nature and let our ferns, crotons, and palms spend their Christmas and New Year's down in Florida.

More boxes.  And a family unpacking party.  Everybody joins in.

And that volume of green is sufficient to drive away the blues of winter, the gloom of heating bills and  

bring on the fever for spring...

I haven't seen a crocus or a rosebud

Or a robin on the wing.

But I feel so gay,

In a melancholy way,

That it might as well be spring,

It might as well be spring.

 (from State Fair...Rodgers and Hammerstein)

What Does the Farmer Eat?

 

It was a happening, ranking somewhere between hosting your kid's future inlaws and Airforce One landing at the Gould Petersen airport on the bottom just east of Tarkio on the terror and anticipation scale.  CNN was coming to our farm....the same CNN that every home in the US tuned to for coverage of Desert Storm.  But this time, the reporter, the tech guys, were going to film our farm, a feel good seasonal story about a family farm during the golden days of harvest back in 1991.

The pictures in the field we all call "Dad's Big Bottom" could have been taken any year...and it was the perfect location for a long sweeping iconic panorama shot of combines rumbling through the mile long rows as the tractors with auger wagons brought the corn up to the trucks.

  Just Because Farmers Grow it....

I don't know why the Smithsonian article I linked to above brought the CNN episode to mind.  Perhaps it was the references to the hectic hum of harvest, the eating on the road, the irregular hours, the long days. Perhaps it was the odd presumption that farmers are still somehow at a subsistence level, living off the seasonal bounty of the land rather than taking their products to market, to the elevator, to the auction, to the gin, to the mill, to the rail head, to the packer, to the processor.

Or perhaps I connected this brief article about farmers and their meals with the fixation the guys from CNN had with our family's daily bread more than two decades ago.  What does the farmer eat? And when and how?  The CNN guys stuck their cameras right down into the eggs and sausage I cooked that morning for Blake to catch the sizzle and pop of grease and heat...even though the kids waiting for the bus had long since finished their cereal and milk.

The CNN guys were also quite adamant that we eat dinner out in the field because they thought that's what real farmers would do.  At least farmers they would show to the public.  Fair enough. Some dinners are eaten on a tailgate, but when the tailgate is long gone, a hood will do. 

 I don't remember what we prepared that day, but I do recollect feeling quite self conscious about the paper products threatening to fly away and become litter.  As you can see, harvest days may be warm, or cold, but they are always windy.  So sometimes the farmer will opt for shelter of the family SUV... 

or the pickup cab.

The crew at CNN filmed a good long segment in the front yard of Millie and Charlie's house, a bucolic setting beneath the two big pines.  The whole family gathered for noon meal and I am positive as I can be that we had Millie's homemade potato salad and sweet corn and beef from our freezer. 'Cause that's what the farmers eat.  

This is Sunday dinner Hurst harvest style 2013.  Two combines, a tender truck, the tractors and auger wagons, several semis, and fourteen other family vehicles.  The CNN crew would have had a hay day with this event.

We rural cooks do have disadvantages.  I can't always get the ingredients at my local store necessary for more esoteric or complex recipes.  That type of dish requires planning, not just a quick run by the HyVee after work for mushrooms or sour cream.  On the other hand, if I want to grill steak anytime during the six months of the year I can cook outdoors, I can...

 Making pasta or chili is just a matter of beans and pasta in the pantry and walking down the stairs.

 Even though its January, there are a few good apples from this past fall...time to bake them up though!

It may be simple fare but we farmers find plenty to eat during the cold months of wintertime..probably more than we need to fuel up during the cold days....

But  in summertime, living off the land really gets easy.

So, despite rumors that we all rush from a slab of cold Casey's pizza to potato chips to a hearty repast of York Peppermint Patties, the folks that provide your daily bread appreciate fresh, hot, tasty, and home grown meals themselves.  Whether putting the crop in or taking it out,

at daybreak

or after the sun has gone down....

there's only one more thing you have to know....

The farmer will always choose home made ice cream....

Whither Thou Goest, I Will Go.....on a Sentimental Journey

This is a love story, a classic tale of boy meets girl.

In this case, a boy who listened to eight track tapes of Charlie Rich and Charley Pride.....

And a girl raised with the classics with a stack of LPs of folksy pop songwriters the likes of Paul Simon and Billy Joel ......before they lost their hair.

He was pretty darn smart...

aleck and well read and not at all boring....

She learned the lyrics to 'Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain' and 'Shotgun Willie', 'Good Hearted Woman', and 'Wurlitzer Prize'. 

Whoopin' and hollerin' and raising you know what in the balcony of Stephens College, peering through the smoke at a Jerry Jeff concert in the '70s, singing Cadillac Cowboy or Railroad Lady could give new meaning to the title ''Ridin'High". Jerry Jeff was hardly mainstream, even by Outlaw standards....

But when it was time to dance close, time for swing a little to a melody, there was only one tune back in '77 for this guy and gal.  All through a long summer apart she heard it nightly on the radio while she wrote letter after letter back to Missouri.  Waylon looked rough, but his voice was mellow and warm as a summer night.

Take a listen and walk back in time....

 

With that as a theme song, why wouldn't Luckenbach get a big blue star on the Texas road map, population 3 or not?

Lone Star beer.. Bob Wills music. And, yeah, we got the kids t-shirts and tacky refrigerator magnets.  

Two coffees and a Pearl beer....still early in Luckenbach...

Lookin'good in that hat...

'Whither thou goest, I will go....'

 And to elaborate on the kind of partnership, if not complete harmony, two music lovers can aspire to....
your music will be my music....whether all that jazz is Asleep at the Wheel's Western Swing... 

San Antonio Rose

Or a night on the town at Bohanan's, where steaks and white linens are followed by mellow cornet and sidemen of Jim Cullum's Jazz Band...

A little Jazz Me Blues...and Irish coffee

 Bandana hangin' on the mirror

Still wet from ear to ear

Well I guess it's true then

What the wise men say

When you ride your last one

Make sure he's a fast one

Jump while he's movin'

Keep your hat boys and walk away

 (Cadillac Cowboy....Jerry Jeff Walker)

Chorus

Turn up that radio

Don't think about a rodeo

Don't think about a roundup

Out in old Cheyenne

It's a crazy circuit

But still you work it

Turn down that sound boys

Let's get up and check the scan

Thanks, Texas, for this musical memory...

  

The Truth about Small Places....

"Be present at our table, Lord.

Be here and everywhere adored.

These mercies bless and grant that we

may feast (dwell) in paradise with Thee."

When our family gathers, it is for three reasons:

1. For a birthday
2. For a holiday.
3. For a meal.
4. Any combination of 1 or 2, but always 3.

And when we gather, we pray. Often Blake's dad says the grace.  This is the man who calls his sons regularly during the long winter days to complain about Democrats, calls during baseball or football games to castigate coaches and managers: he is rock solid in conviction and integrity, a man who eased into flexibility late in life, coincident with the birth of his grand and great grand children .But when he closes his eyes to say a blessing, his voice is husky with emotion; when Charlie thanks his Creator for this family, this land, this work, this season of harvest, his gratitude wells up from deep within.  The amens around the table, or in a corn field, or around the Christmas tree or before fireworks are serious, heartfelt, and unanimous.

This is ground zero for our family farm. Blake's mom and dad, their three sons and daughters in law, and now a host of grandchildren, all farm together here in Atchison county, Missouri, not the western most outpost of the Corn Belt, but certainly on the fringe.  Folks irrigate on the Missouri River bottoms and 100 miles west of us, the productive lands soak up their moisture from the underground river surrounding the Platte. That is Nebraska.  One hundred miles north, the summer fronts stall and drop their beneficial rains on corn that is never more than 6 feet tall and never yields less than 200 bushel per acre.  That is Iowa.  But here in north west Missouri, our prairie soils  do their best work in the summertime, gathering the quarter inch, one third inch and one half inch rains and metering them out to the corn and soybeans wrapping the hills in ribbons of contoured rows.  In the tradeoff between soil and moisture, we have advantage soil, but its a rare year we live through a cropping season without a six week hiatus from rainfall, wishing for a monsoon in New Mexico or a hurricane in the Gulf to break the meteorological spell.  

Some farmers are born; some farmers are made.  Blake is a scion of a scion of a man and woman who survived the dirty thirties without knowing they were survivors; starting from nothing...again...was not unusual for that generation.  Sturdy, stubborn, hard working but also  frugal, clever and forward thinking: Blake's grandfather and mother and then father and mother grew their farms and their families with one eye on the future and another on their bank accounts.  Experience can be a brutal teacher.  Exuberance is not to be trusted.  Optimism should be relegated to baseball.  Blake and his brothers lived and breathed the family ties: the hierarchy, the expectations, the responsibilities, the fables and stories and oral history of the community, as well as the wet spots, rocky slopes, sandy points and gumbo of the land.

And this is the real reason our country needs small places. I am reminded of this every holiday, every turn of the calendar to a new year, every Memorial Day that my neighbors show up for planter boxes of flowers to set out at the county cemeteries.  'For when two or three are gathered', the talk will turn to relationships 'unto the third and fourth generation'.   I did not learn this at my mother's knee, but I began my apprenticeship thirty seven years ago in a similar bitter cold Christmas season in the dining room of my future in-laws.  The room was paneled with a walnut chair rail of lumber salvaged from the previous house on the same site; the conversation was peppered with references to families resurrected from farms and homesteads with occasional interjections and clarifications about who married whom, or what year they graduated, or where they were buried. I learned a mighty lesson that day: that time is a perennial in farm country, dormant perhaps, but long lived.

We have lots of family nearby, but still plenty of out of towners and young people old enough to hunger for their past.  Christmastime at Blake's aunt and uncle's is a jolly affair with the little kids shedding their church program finery for fleecy footie jammies and wishing the old folks would move on so Santa can make his stops.  Years past, we'd shed our coats as we passed the threshold of Grandma Nelson's house, tossing them on the immense mound on her bed, making our way to the kitchen where carrots and dip, chips and Mogen David, cheese and crackers accompanied the jokes and reminiscences. Memories are never far from the surface; this night we piece together a mental quilt of Grandma's yard...the cistern, the goose, the front yard swing,the name of her Doberman (Tilly) and now-what-was-the-dog's-sister's-name? (Mary Ann had her....)

Tradition sends us to the next stop on our Christmas Eve rounds; here the Yule log scents the room. We need pliers to pin our Christmas wish close enough to the crackling wood without scalding our fingers..mine slides off but incinerates into dust instantly.  This has always been a house with lots of children at the holidays and still is; they are well past the footie jammie age though. Someone is getting an immense copy of an 1882  Atchison county map for Christmas; I am drawn to maps like the Yule sparks fly up the chimney.  We gather around, pointing out the locations of our current farmsteads along the non existent roads of 19th century Atchison county, noting the now phantom railroads linking the communities they brought into being, and keenly aware of the ephemeral nature of man upon this prairie.

On Christmas Day, Blake's mom hands him a heavy volume in his stocking....its a book with a note listing two pages and "the back cover". He says, 'whoa, you need to help me figure what I should recognize on this back cover..' , a collage of black and white snapshots from the 1930s, 40s, and early 50s. Turns out not to be much of a problem; the dark haired young lady riding a goat between a young man in a uniform and an older gent in cap and dungarees has got to be one of Blake's aunts and before long we figure out it is aunt Lyllis.  Lyllis and Millie have each contributed a tale to Lye Soap and Sad Irons, a book of pictures and stories by the people who grew up in northwest Missouri; it is a treasure, living history at the most immediate and elemental level. To leaf through this volume is just like sitting around the table Christmas Eve at aunt Debbie's or drinking coffee on a winter morning at Millie and Charlie's.

And this is the truth about small towns, the little farming communities with speed limits that scarcely make you slow down, the blasts from a past when what necessities you didn't raise yourself could be had at the intersections of two lettered roads.  Sure, these days the bounty of the land provides food, fiber,exports, etc., etc., etc., to places far flung from flyover country. Yes, we denizens of farm country are breathing evidence that nothing stays the same, like it or not.  But the people of the land, the rooted ones, the hangers on, the folks with mailboxes that match their headstones: these are remnants of our national nature, the institutional repository of knowledge so arcane, it may as well be the Biblical 'begats'.  We need them; we need to know this part of our historical culture is still out here, to realize that all the satellite news, social media, technology micro- and mega- has not completely erased nor replaced the "deep geography"of our rural past.

Read a weekly newspaper.....you'll see.