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Home of Michael Perry – Author, Humorist, Singer/Songwriter, Amateur Pig Farmer

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Archive for July, 2009

When It’s Mostly Girls

We’re a small family of four, but as the sole male I grinned when a recent emailer referred to my family as “your sorority”.

Good’n.

Eat Your Peas

Back when I was out book-touring, my wife planted a big patch of rape (special thanks to our neighbor Tom L. who came by with his yellow and green tractor and matching plow), which is kinda like cabbage without heads.  We’ve been using it to feed our pigs, ducks and chickens.  We do this by setting up mini-paddocks (I made a bunch of chicken wire panels for the birds, and for the pigs we use a combination of old cattle panels and electric fence) and moving them sequentially.

The good news is they love the stuff.  The ducks and chickens eat it right down to the stem.  The pigs dive into it, roll around in it, eat half of it, then spend the rest of their time rooting in it, doing a great job of prepping the soil for whatever we plant there next year.  The two photos below show the pigs on a recent night right after I moved the panels.

Bad news is, they love the stuff so much we’ve pretty much run out.  We also scatter-sowed (we again being my wife while I was on book tour) a big patch of mixed oats and field peas on last year’s pig run (got the idea from this guy).  So lately I’ve been cutting big piles of that and wheelbarrowing it up the hill.  The laying hens ignore the peas, the meat hens pick at them, the ducks devour them, and the pigs go through and pick out all the green oats before going back to strip off the pea leaves.

If you read Coop you know how much I love making trips to the feed mill (especially with any one of my three blue-eyed co-pilots), but every peapod them pigs crunch helps knock a few fractions of a cent off the price of those pork chops.

Hula Hoops and Happiness

We had a fine, fine time down there at Phoenix Park.  Spare a thought for Chris, stage left and cropped.

Long Beds Phoenix Park 2009

Thank you to photographer Darlene for sharing this.

Hippie Food Tantrum

As the parent of a two-year-old, one is accustomed to tantrums.  Still, one is caught off guard to find the tot flopping around the kitchen floor screeching, “Iiiiii wanna stir da hummus!! Iiiiii wanna stir da hummus!“

I Wish

Those old percolators made better coffee.  Such a lovely sound in the morning.   Bubble-up-a-lup…

I am preparing a future post on my coffee snobbery.  Unbecoming but undeniable.

Music Recovery

Have I ever mentioned Maria McKee?  Oh the cracks in that voice.  Found her in the early-to-mid 1980s.  Maria and Lone Justice led me to better music.

This album cover didn’t hurt.

Other music miscellany:

- Two songs that evoke world-weariness, melancholy, and resignation without retreat: “Me and Paul” by Willie Nelson, “Blue Wing” sung by Tom Russell.

- Jimmie Dale Gilmore.  Hadn’t listened to him for a while.  Acquired taste, perhaps, but once you got it, you got it.  “Spinning Around the Sun” is the album that hooked me.

- Tompall Glaser – the overlooked Outlaw.  I was listening to the lovely “I Ain’t Looking for the Answer Anymore” but Tompall is best known for being on this album and charting with “Put Another Log on the Fire (Male Chauvinist National Anthem),” a song written by this famous children’s author who also wrote this famous Johnny Cash song.  In the company of his brothers, Tompall created gorgeous harmonies.

- Nicest dry rough voice that isn’t Rod Stewart (or Tompall Glaser): Jimmy Nail singing “What’s the Use.”  I also like many tracks off his Crocodile Shoes album.  Here he is singing “Big River.”

- Hoyt Axton.  Singing “Evangelina” with that voice so deep, easy and placid compared to the turmoiled and talented fellow who owned it.

- Bobby Bare “It’s Alright” – No link, just want to note he is king of the dispassionate death ballad including spoken recitation.

- Favorite lyric of the day: “If money talks, I wish’t it’d speak t’me…“, Jason & The Scorchers.

- Goofiest and most inappropriate (stalker humor, anyone?) song that made me laugh out loud (at the Rin-Tin-Tin reference): “It’s Me Again, Margaret,” by Ray Stevens.

This is what happens when you pull a big writing binge while listening to Pandora.  For reference, although I’ve linked to YouTube stuff when possible, all of the versions I was listening to were the ones up on Pandora.  I note this for reasons of OCD and also to let you know the feel of the versions available on YouTube are not always the same as the album cuts I heard (especially “Evangelina” and “Me and Paul”).  And nope, I’m not on the Pandora payroll.  In fact, although it is free, Pandora frequently winds up costing me money (e.g., buying Jimmy Nail albums).  That’s the point of Pandora, I guess.  It feeds you random songs while letting you tweak the mix.  You can click past a limited number of songs if they don’t strike your fancy, but my Number One Pandora Rule is: Even if you don’t care for the song in question, you NEVER fast forward on Hank Williams The First.  That’s just bad voodoo.