On the farm
12/08/14 05:01
The rooster started crowing just afte 4 am this morning. I think that his personality is a bit like mine. He is up before daylight and it doesn’t sound like any of the other chickens are stirring yet. He just has to make a little noise to remind himself that he is not all alone.
My cousin’s daughter, her husband and her three children live in the house where my aunt and uncle raised their two boys. There have been a few changes to the house. The added on a large carport. The old detached garage isn’t big enough for much and these days garages house more than just a car. But, for the most part, the place looks very much like it did when I was a kid. The chicken coop is in the same place and the area fenced off for the chickens is roughly the same size. And they have a similar number of chickens. My aunt and uncle raised chickens for the eggs, like the present generation. My family, on the other hand, only had what we called “friers.” We got chicks in the spring and raised them for eating. One day in the fall they were all butchered, feathered and made ready for the freezer. That way we didn’t have chickens year round like my aunt and uncle. And our roosters never got old enough to discover their vocation as farmyard alarm clocks.
I don’t think anyone is paying any attention to the rooster this morning. I don’t hear folks stirring.
I’m camped next to the quonset that doubles as a shop for making repairs and a storage area for some of the equipment. Although there are granaries for most of the winter wheat storage behind the shop, the shop can double as a grain storage area in a good year. I am not around to participate in the process, but the farm is much more diverse now than it was when I was a kid. I don’t remember other crops than hard red winter wheat - the best kind for bread flour. There was a little alfalfa raised and some years a bit of barley, but that was about it. These days the farm rotates quite a few different crops and some are raised for the field, not combined, but plowed back into the soil to add nutrition to the farm. This year they have both winter and spring wheat. The spring wheat is durham - the strain that is used for making noodles. Bread and spaghetti - from the same farm. The durham is not ready to combine yet, but a week or so and they’ll be back on the combine. The diverse crops mean that they need to keep their own combine running. It just isn’t practical for custom cutters to come in to do the combining. And, compared to the big production farms around here the family operation isn’t very big at all. There is a place, not far from here, where the strips are 3 miles long. It has been a while since I worked summer fallow, but even with the monstrous tractors they use these days, I know that there mile strips make for a boring job working them. You get on the tractor and drive three miles, where you get to make two corners and then you drive three more miles - all day long. The big event is switching from one strip to the next one.
The rooster, of course, knows nothing of production farming. He doesn’t even know much of the work of the ranch. His domain is a little patch fenced off with chicken wire. He’s big stuff inside of that area, but that is pretty much all of his territory. Just look at a chicken some day. Not much room in that head for a brain.
I never was a fan of raising chickens. It’s just the way I am.
One thing that is different about the farm these days is the large vegetable garden. Three kids living at home means for ample labor to grow a lot of good food. When we were growing up the farm didn’t have a well. All of the water had to be hauled in and there was a large cistern with a pump to provide the domestic water. Nonetheless, water conservation was a big deal and other than a few house plants, there was no domestic garden.
These days the community has gone together to develop a water system and there is abundant water for all of the houses in the area and there is plenty of water for a large home garden.
There is a second rooster crowing now. I think he might be a bit younger. At least his sound isn’t as confident and clear as the first on that I heard.
I’m not a farmer. I was called to a different vocation for my life. But I have deep admiration for those who live and work much closer to the source of our food. I like knowing where my food is coming from and I like knowing that this farm has been in the business of producing food for others for more than a century. Through trial and error and no small amount of mistakes this corner of my family has figured out how to get to the sixth generation on this land.
According ot local lore, seven generations makes you a native instead of a newcomer. One more to go.
I am old enough to have watched some of those generations come and go. My uncle and aunt, who lived on the place all of their married lives, came to the end of their earthly lives years ago. Their two boys are now in their seventies. Their oldest grandchild is now twenty and will be moving to a city to continue her education at the end of this week. No one knows if there is someone in the next generation who will work the farm.
What we do know is that we are stewards of the land for a little while only. Our time is considerably longer than that of the chicken, but it is pretty short compared to the mountains on the horizon.
And while we are here it becomes our task to see what we can share with others. There will be plenty of hungry people in years to come. Raising food to fee folks will be a worthy occupation for generations to come.
My cousin’s daughter, her husband and her three children live in the house where my aunt and uncle raised their two boys. There have been a few changes to the house. The added on a large carport. The old detached garage isn’t big enough for much and these days garages house more than just a car. But, for the most part, the place looks very much like it did when I was a kid. The chicken coop is in the same place and the area fenced off for the chickens is roughly the same size. And they have a similar number of chickens. My aunt and uncle raised chickens for the eggs, like the present generation. My family, on the other hand, only had what we called “friers.” We got chicks in the spring and raised them for eating. One day in the fall they were all butchered, feathered and made ready for the freezer. That way we didn’t have chickens year round like my aunt and uncle. And our roosters never got old enough to discover their vocation as farmyard alarm clocks.
I don’t think anyone is paying any attention to the rooster this morning. I don’t hear folks stirring.
I’m camped next to the quonset that doubles as a shop for making repairs and a storage area for some of the equipment. Although there are granaries for most of the winter wheat storage behind the shop, the shop can double as a grain storage area in a good year. I am not around to participate in the process, but the farm is much more diverse now than it was when I was a kid. I don’t remember other crops than hard red winter wheat - the best kind for bread flour. There was a little alfalfa raised and some years a bit of barley, but that was about it. These days the farm rotates quite a few different crops and some are raised for the field, not combined, but plowed back into the soil to add nutrition to the farm. This year they have both winter and spring wheat. The spring wheat is durham - the strain that is used for making noodles. Bread and spaghetti - from the same farm. The durham is not ready to combine yet, but a week or so and they’ll be back on the combine. The diverse crops mean that they need to keep their own combine running. It just isn’t practical for custom cutters to come in to do the combining. And, compared to the big production farms around here the family operation isn’t very big at all. There is a place, not far from here, where the strips are 3 miles long. It has been a while since I worked summer fallow, but even with the monstrous tractors they use these days, I know that there mile strips make for a boring job working them. You get on the tractor and drive three miles, where you get to make two corners and then you drive three more miles - all day long. The big event is switching from one strip to the next one.
The rooster, of course, knows nothing of production farming. He doesn’t even know much of the work of the ranch. His domain is a little patch fenced off with chicken wire. He’s big stuff inside of that area, but that is pretty much all of his territory. Just look at a chicken some day. Not much room in that head for a brain.
I never was a fan of raising chickens. It’s just the way I am.
One thing that is different about the farm these days is the large vegetable garden. Three kids living at home means for ample labor to grow a lot of good food. When we were growing up the farm didn’t have a well. All of the water had to be hauled in and there was a large cistern with a pump to provide the domestic water. Nonetheless, water conservation was a big deal and other than a few house plants, there was no domestic garden.
These days the community has gone together to develop a water system and there is abundant water for all of the houses in the area and there is plenty of water for a large home garden.
There is a second rooster crowing now. I think he might be a bit younger. At least his sound isn’t as confident and clear as the first on that I heard.
I’m not a farmer. I was called to a different vocation for my life. But I have deep admiration for those who live and work much closer to the source of our food. I like knowing where my food is coming from and I like knowing that this farm has been in the business of producing food for others for more than a century. Through trial and error and no small amount of mistakes this corner of my family has figured out how to get to the sixth generation on this land.
According ot local lore, seven generations makes you a native instead of a newcomer. One more to go.
I am old enough to have watched some of those generations come and go. My uncle and aunt, who lived on the place all of their married lives, came to the end of their earthly lives years ago. Their two boys are now in their seventies. Their oldest grandchild is now twenty and will be moving to a city to continue her education at the end of this week. No one knows if there is someone in the next generation who will work the farm.
What we do know is that we are stewards of the land for a little while only. Our time is considerably longer than that of the chicken, but it is pretty short compared to the mountains on the horizon.
And while we are here it becomes our task to see what we can share with others. There will be plenty of hungry people in years to come. Raising food to fee folks will be a worthy occupation for generations to come.