Off Off Broadway

This week on the farm.

This has been a big week at the farm. For one thing, hay arrived yesterday, 40 rounds of it. Having a barn full of hay at the start of winter is a huge relief. Now we don’t have to worry about how we’ll feed the grazers all winter.

The temperature dipped into the 30s last week, but we haven’t had a frost, and the grass is still growing, although not exuberantly so. Raven has already hauled a round of hay to the cows and another to the horses.

The cows smelled the hay coming, and by the time the big trailer rumbled down the driveway they were standing at the fence, watching, and already starting to moo, which is what they do to let you know they want something.

The hay comes from a farmer named Dube (pronounced “Dub.”) He grows nice hay and doesn’t use Grazeon, which is a persistent, satanic herbicide that should be banned from all use everywhere. Here’s what the NC Extension Service has to say about it:

When mulches, manures, or composts with residual herbicide activity are applied to fields or gardens to raise certain vegetables, flowers, or other broadleaf crops, potentially devastating damage can occur.

I know the effects of Grazeon from personal experience. We purchased hay years ago that was cut from a field to which Grazeon had been applied. Our animals ate the hay, and the following spring we shoveled manure from their pens and applied it to the garden. That growing season we discovered severe damage in our garden plants. Their stems and leaves began to twist, and they began to die.

If you are experiencing the effects of this dangerous herbicide, you may want to read this post about how to decontaminate Grazeon from your garden.

Dube doesn’t deliver. We could go get the hay ourselves, but the only equipment we have is a small trailer, and Raven can only get 2 rounds of hay on it. So it’s less expensive and more environmentally ethical to pay a guy to bring it to us. He’s about 35 years old, strapping and healthy. I’ll call him Derek.

Last year when we phoned him to schedule the hay delivery, he was in the hospital, speaking through a trach tube. He had just come off a ventilator. He had caught a dangerous strain of covid at a training session for his work in early 2021. He was in the middle of a divorce, and perhaps his immunity was particularly low. Derek was one of those vital people that covid brings to their knees. He was in the hospital for 6 months. By the time he got to the ventilator, as you well know, the odds of survival were against him.

But he pulled through. After the hospital he was sent to rehab for physical therapy, where he had to learn to use his limbs again. Then for months he hobbled around on a cane. Last year his cousin delivered the hay in Derek’s place. Derek had to get on disability.

Early this fall when we called him to schedule the delivery, he was in Colorado on a cross-country motorcycle adventure. That tells you how well he has recovered. He actually gets to go back to work in December, although his company is requiring that he repeat all the training.

Seeing him yesterday brought this really joyful feeling that I was watching a walking miracle, and it also reminded me of the unending grief of the past few years. Our American society is starting to normalize the pandemic and move beyond it, understandably. But seeing Derek arrive with a gooseneck trailer loaded with the winter’s hay reminds me of the oh-so-many people who did not survive. The pandemic changed our lives in many ways, large to small. A rural life, by its nature, is less populated than an urban one, and I really couldn’t afford to lose the people I lost.

Our hay guy is still with us.

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You don’t think of leaf-peeping in the coastal plains, but it’s a thing. The trees have now started to turn.

3 Spots are Left in the Cypress Swamp Paddle

If you want to come paddle a Cypress Swamp, which is incredibly glorious in the fall, there’s still time and space. We set sail at 10 tomorrow from George L. Smith State Park near Metter, Ga. I’ll check my email all day today, until about 9 tonight, so if you free yourself up to go, send me a message, and I’ll order a boat for you. Beginning paddlers are welcome. This is a safe way to get yourself out into the wild, out of the city, and out of whatever challenges you’ve been bearing. Let the black water wash it away.

The cost is $250. That covers your boat, paddle, life vest, and a short lesson on kayaking. It covers a lunch of pumpkin chili (with or without our grassfed beef) and Raven’s earth-oven sourdough bread, as well as a veggie tray and two desserts, which I baked last night—chocolate chip brownies and lemon oat bars.

Monies raised go to the restoration of Cedar Grove School and Church, a structure built of cypress and heart-pine that stands in my community. I’ve been leading this project for at least five years now, doing the work gradually as I’m able to raise the money and find carpenters. The building now has a new roof, new (hand-built) windows, and new doors. At the moment we’re working on replacing any and all compromised wood inside the building, especially one area that experienced a terrible leak and has a lot of rot.

A barn owl still lives in the attic. Because of the rotten places in the walls and ceiling, she can get into the church, and she leaves a lot of owl pellets, streaks of white poop, feathers, and animal carcasses on the floor. Soon she won’t be able to get into the church. Then when we get to the point that we can repair the holes in the attic walls, the owl can move across the road to an old mule barn, which would be a much better home for her babies.

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13 Years on the Farm

Wednesday marked 13 years since we closed on our house and land here in the delta of the Altamaha and Ohoopee rivers. As I said on social media, this is our stage, and there's always some kind of drama going on between the mule and the cows, the anoles and skinks, the mockingbirds and crows, the hawks and chickens, me and mice. Sometimes it's Comedy Central. It's not Broadway, but it's a good, good life.

Here’s a drone shot of the farm taken by our son Silas. You can find him on Instagram @crumbstarz. He does genius videos (if you need a videographer, hire him—especially if you’re a musician. Music videos are his specialty.) If there were music to this image, it would be John Prine’s “Spanish Pipedream:”

“Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches.”

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Celebrate the Altamaha’s Founding Keeper

A memorial for James has been scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 6, 1:30-3 under the oaks near the entrance to Harris Neck Wildlife Refuge. This place was tremendously important to James.

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One Last Story

Last Saturday evening two of our neighbors got married. This is a second marriage for both of them, and they’ve been courting for four years. They got married at an event venue right on the Altamaha River called Rivercross (it features a large cross made of poles that has been erected as to be visible from both the river and the entrance.)

Our friends stood on a bluff with the river behind them while Rev. Posey, who pastors once a month at another little historic church in our community, married them. I heard the pastor’s voice catch a couple of times—he is single, having lost his truly lovely wife to covid. Both of them got sick simultaneously and both ended up in the hospital, and he was the only one who made it out.

This couple, our neighbors, have been planning their wedding for a while. In fact, their marriage license was dated August 2020. The bride’s parents are deceased, so her cousin (who I’ll call Patsy) was standing in as the mom. The groom got the preacher to pull a terrible prank on Patsy.

You know how stressful a wedding day can be. First of all, the bride misplaced her bags, and it took 2 hours to find them. Then the wedding rings couldn’t be found, and Patsy had to tear their jeep apart. She found the little box holding the rings wedged down between the seats.

“Patsy,” said the preacher, without even a hint of a smile. “We have discovered a problem. This marriage license is outdated, and I don’t think we’re going to be able to use it.”

Patsy was already stressed. The bags had been lost, then the wedding rings. She’d been upstairs trying to fix the bride’s hair. She would put it up and the bride would rearrange it. An outdated marriage license was the last straw. She was pretty certain that the wedding would have to be cancelled on the spot. “I told you this,” she said to the groom. “I told you that it wasn’t going to work.”

“What are we going to do?” the preacher asked.

Patsy, dumbfounded, stood trying to come up with a solution that would allow the wedding to continue. But it was Saturday evening at 5 p.m., and she was pretty sure that nothing could be done. She was ready to crumble on the spot.

Finally the preacher reached out and put his hand on her arm. “It’s okay, Patsy,” he said. “We’re just joking with you. It’s going to be okay.”

Patsy was not happy. “I know you’re a preacher,” she said. “But I’ve got one thing to say to you: ‘GO TO HELL.’”

I’m not sure anybody had ever told the preacher to go to hell. “Well,” he said.

“Do you realize I have heart problems?” Patsy said. “You could have given me a heart attack.”

The preacher was remorseful. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying not to laugh. “We didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You don’t know the day I’ve had,” she said.

In the end she was a good sport about the prank, and she stood on the bluff with her cousin and gave her away. They all looked so pretty there with the mighty Altamaha behind them, although it’s quite low from the drought, and a lot of sandbars are showing.

It’s a good thing, I guess, that weddings don’t happen that often. They sure are nice events when they do.