Time Marches On
Maple leaves are just starting to emerge in Hot Springs. You gotta look for 'em, and look real close, but you can see them when the sun's just right and you hold your head the right way. There's a willow on the outside of the curve that comes down around Bluff that's pushing it's leaves out, too. Funny that it's out so early - it's down there in the holler and can't get very much sunlight.
I've got the upper field plowed, and if it stays dry another day or two, I just may disk it. A bit early, maybe, but it got good and cold for a night or two after I turned it, and I want to get a jump on things before they operate on my shoulder.
H* across the creek turned his tobacco fields today. They're neat as a pin and in perfectly straight lines. When I get to be 70, I might be as good as H*, but I doubt it.
A friend came up from Alabama for the afternoon. Actually, was heading back from somewhere in Tennessee and stopped here on the way home. She had plenty of stories of the farm life back home, and they were all too familiar: bugs, drought, hard-pan, chefs, customers, cotton, soy-bean, and worst of all, marketing co-operatives. We spent some tome fantasizing about being artists, instead (that's how we'd make more money!) and then decided it's best to invest in real estate.
J*'s a good egg, though, drought and marketing co-operatives not withstanding. She's moved onto her great-aunt's farm, a hundred plus acres smack dab in the middle of the Black Belt, and is determined to make something of it. Flowers and herbs seems to be the path, with maybe some pastured poultry. One way or another, she's going to keep the land in agriculture. It's a noble calling, I suppose. I sometimes look back and wonder where I went wrong. I could be in a soup line, or asleep under a bridge somewhere, instead of doing this. Or investing in real estate. But, no, I took a wrong turn somewhere and find myself growing food for people. I forget where I was going with all this. Something about J* being on ancestral land, something about land use changing, but about some people determined to keep it from changing. I was going so say something about Spring arriving and leaves budding about, as to underscore times relentless march forward, but it repetitiveness. It was going to represent something about change that we welcome, while there is other change that we resist. I got sidetracked by marketing co-operatives and bugs, though. That happens to me a lot.
I've got the upper field plowed, and if it stays dry another day or two, I just may disk it. A bit early, maybe, but it got good and cold for a night or two after I turned it, and I want to get a jump on things before they operate on my shoulder.
H* across the creek turned his tobacco fields today. They're neat as a pin and in perfectly straight lines. When I get to be 70, I might be as good as H*, but I doubt it.
A friend came up from Alabama for the afternoon. Actually, was heading back from somewhere in Tennessee and stopped here on the way home. She had plenty of stories of the farm life back home, and they were all too familiar: bugs, drought, hard-pan, chefs, customers, cotton, soy-bean, and worst of all, marketing co-operatives. We spent some tome fantasizing about being artists, instead (that's how we'd make more money!) and then decided it's best to invest in real estate.
J*'s a good egg, though, drought and marketing co-operatives not withstanding. She's moved onto her great-aunt's farm, a hundred plus acres smack dab in the middle of the Black Belt, and is determined to make something of it. Flowers and herbs seems to be the path, with maybe some pastured poultry. One way or another, she's going to keep the land in agriculture. It's a noble calling, I suppose. I sometimes look back and wonder where I went wrong. I could be in a soup line, or asleep under a bridge somewhere, instead of doing this. Or investing in real estate. But, no, I took a wrong turn somewhere and find myself growing food for people. I forget where I was going with all this. Something about J* being on ancestral land, something about land use changing, but about some people determined to keep it from changing. I was going so say something about Spring arriving and leaves budding about, as to underscore times relentless march forward, but it repetitiveness. It was going to represent something about change that we welcome, while there is other change that we resist. I got sidetracked by marketing co-operatives and bugs, though. That happens to me a lot.
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