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

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Posts Tagged ‘farm’

A Scythe and Sunshine

Little something from the next book (due out August 21):

I use three whetstones to sharpen my scythe. Each is a slender oval that fits nicely to my palm. They vary in grit from coarse to fine. One was quarried in Austria. When I’m in the field I carry the whetstones on my belt in a repurposed plastic pop bottle half-filled with water. In addition to providing lubrication and keeping the grain of the stone from becoming clogged, the water makes a slurry of the stone and steel particles, thus enhancing the sharpening action. It’s calming to work in the old granary with the sunshine angling in and a cross-breeze pushing through. I spend a lot of time on the road, and sometimes it seems as if this country is either sadly slumping or hyperactively rising and no in-between. It’s a solid comfort, then, to stand here on this concrete floor with that date etched in the foundation behind me, watching other people run the distant interstate. Sometimes I think maybe the only thing I’ve learned in this life is to simply inhabit moments like these. To feel the sun, see the valley, hear the stone rasping on steel.

Pigs and Anne Murray

 

Fed the pigs a mix of hog feed and curdled goat milk. In the background you can hear Anne Murray singing on the pickup truck radio. It was tuned to WCFW, where FM means Fine Music.

Nice 4th and Baler Photos

Good 4th last night. Sat on our ridge with a fire and 70% homegrown food (have never successfully grown marshmallows), just enough breeze and woodsmoke to keep the mosquitoes and gnats in fly-by mode, and for miles in all directions, amateur fireworks (some of which get bigger every year).

Have never been a fireworks guy. Don’t care to play with them, and figure you might as well light five dollar bills and throw them to the wind. But yesterday I harrumphed and approved the expenditure of $16.50 toward a simple grab-bag batch. We parsed them out over the evening between homemade campfire pies and watching the bigger bursts in the distance. Saved a bunch of colorful ones for the very end. And after watching the 11-year-old dance across the yard writing with a sparkler in the dark, after hearing the four-year-old’s peals of laughter at the colorful ones that spun in the driveway…well, sometimes a guy has to unbend a little, huh? We spread that $16.50 out over two hours and while I stood holding my wife’s hand in the dark as the last colors fizzled, we did the math on any number of other manufactured entertainments and figured we took the cash for a decent ride.

Earlier in the day my wife and daughters went to the river with friends while I stayed home to write, move some chickens, and help my neighbor (same guy who did this) bale a batch of hay. (Later that night when we were going to make campfire pies and realized we didn’t have any bread, I ran back over there and he lent us half a loaf – there’s yer rural barter system in full effect).

Delicate Dance

Finished writing just after midnight last night and on my way to the house I noticed the granary door was open. We have a batch of chicks in there, and although they’re under a screen weighted down with rocks, we secure the doors at night to keep out roaming chicken-nibblers. While shutting the door, I thought, smells like skunk in here. Then I heard a noise, and there he was looking right back at me. I backed away from the door and he moved, but rather than go out the door, he crossed over to the old horse stall where the chicks are. It’s a dead end, basically. So I tiptoe over and peer in, and there he is curled up at the far end of the stall.

I gotta get some work done, so this is the shorthand version, but it took me a while to get that skunk out of there. Somehow he managed to spray everything but me, and we are both out and about our business today. So far no one has told me I smell like a skunk. I cannot speak to whether or not the skunk’s friends and family are accusing him of smelling like a human.

Neighbors Got a Cow

Y’know how it is in the country, sometimes you’ll get a call from the neighbor needing some help with unloading a cow. So you get on your tractor (OK, your mother-in-law’s tractor) and you head on over there.

More photos of the cow in transit over here.

Who made the cow? Our own Steve Bateman, who made Transmission Man and also works in less permanent mediums…

Wisconsin Trails Tractor Tale

The latest issue of Wisconsin Trails magazine is out. I’m honored that the “My Wisconsin” section contains an essay I wrote about my Dad’s first tractor, a hard-working Massey-Ferguson 135. The essay is excerpted from My First Tractor, a wonderful collection available from Voyageur Press.

The May/June issue also includes articles about musky fishing, dirt-track racing, fine dining in Monticello, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, and a “Last Word” essay by my mentor and one of those folks on my “without-whom” list, John Hildebrand. John’s book Mapping the Farm is tremendous (the section on the bull overdosing on apples is worth the price alone), and his A Northern Front deeply influenced my evolving feelings about sense of place.

Good Busy

So much going on right now…writing deadlines, planting, new chicks, getting ready for new pigs, fencing, garden things, fishing with daughters, magazine work, lots of behind-the-scenes stuff to get some projects underway, booking events for 2012, so grateful for my wife and her steadiness…and highlight of the week? After FIVE YEARS on this farm – and with the help of my two daughters – on Monday night I FINALLY got the brown pole barn cleaned out and have a place to park everything AND stack my fencing stuff and my secret stash of prize 55-gallon drums (procured by Mills, natch).

Back at it.

Theoretical Beef

Had a meeting with my wife and my pal Mills last night, planning for this year’s protein projects. Deciding how many meat chickens to raise, how many pigs, and whether or not we’ll be able to pull off raising some beef. As many of you know, I had the same plans for last year but due to my schedule, wound up raising “theoretical beef.” They’re very easy to care for, inexpensive, and you can just go on and on about your operation without ever having to actually drive a fencepost.

Went for a Walk

Mom had to work last night (I use the term Mom here in the context that when you have children, there comes a day when you discover you are referring to your wife as Mom, and your Mom as Grandma), so after school my eldest helped pack a snack and dress the three-year-old, and we headed out for a walk. Skies were gray, temps were cool with some wind, and we had to wade through some remaining banks of grainy snow, but I gotta say I was happily surprised by the demeanor of my fellow hikers, which was sunny throughout.

As flattened, brown, and generally stomped as the landscape is at this stage, when you walk it, there’s also a great sense of rediscovery, and it was heartening to see my children reflect that. Much chattering, tree-climbing, pointing to this that or the other thing emerging from the snow or draped in flattened weeds, and of course – all children seem to have this chip – the greatest happiness reserved for water where there usually isn’t water. We have a small pond out back, and it was something to see last night, larger than it’s ever been. The oldest enjoyed toeing ice floes out into the open water. There were also many streams and rivulets gurgling along where later this summer will only be a faint grassy furrow.

We saw a perfectly preserved bear track (cast in dried mud), a deer (that’s like seeing a squirrel, frankly), and enjoyed a snack while sitting on a stump overlooking the valley. Back in the yard we were greeted by a sweeping clutter of chickens, and supper never tasted so good.

Gratitude.