Got any summer plans? No. But I’ve got a canoe.

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Keely

Summer’s here and time is measured in drops of sweat and changes of damp clothes. Last night, the heat woke me from a sound sleep for the second time. It’s stifling when you can’t open the windows for fear of the blackflies.

It’s cool and bug free on the lake. and the moon has been enormous and golden, floating like a reflection in the sky full of glittering water beetle stars. In the evenings, we’ve seen the sun set twice over the water and it’s filled a part of me that I didn’t know was drained. We’ve explored some of the coves and creeks nearest to the boat dock by day; we’ve seen herons, turtles and a snake that slipped through the water silently. We’ve managed to cram four people into the canoe and not flip it, and to mostly avoid sunburn. I don’t have summer plans, but I do have a canoe, and I could pull a Huckleberry Finn from here.

It’s only fifteen minutes from sitting on the couch to floating on the lake. Bonus points: the canoe has a built-in cooler.

A neighbor is delivering a round bale of old hay sometime this week and we’ll use that to mulch the garden. It’ll be a tremendous help for keeping the garden moist and minimizing hose-dragging. We had a soaking six inches of rain last week, but the summers here are not wet, and dragging a hose around in the heat is a torture I’d prefer to reserve for my enemies only, when possible. We’ve managed to clear the weeds around the cucumbers (we’re getting several every day now) and in some of the aisles, but we have a long battle ahead of us. Little green tomatoes and winter squash are appearing on the vines, and we’re looking forward to blackberries in a few days. Cabbages and some garlic came in today, and carrots and turnips yesterday. We’re moving into the hot months where nothing new is planted and we just weed and harvest and try to keep the bugs and coons from eating everything we grow.

We brought in our first batch of garlic today. Drying isn’t really a thing here, but we’re hoping for the best.

I was taught to not pick up hitchhikers, but his pack looked so heavy and he seemed harmless. I gave him a ride from my cabbages all the way to the woods.

We’re heading up to Forrest City to watch a World Cup game at the Mexican restaurant this evening. If we’re lucky, we’ll pick up a few pullets in Wynne to keep poor Freckles company. In other livestock acquisition news, Sean is seriously scheming to buy a feeder pig and drag it to North Carolina for a luau in a few weeks. His Granny is turning 90 and we’re going to help celebrate. My partner is seriously nuts. Who does that?!

Tips for spending less money and putting less crap in landfills

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Keely

I haven’t written a post quite like this before because I like to be very careful about how I talk about social and environmental issues. Words can be politically polarizing and I don’t like to be labeled an environmentalist because the label dismisses the other parts of my identity and the economic and social impacts of the way that Sean and I choose to live.

Thanks to Westwick Dreaming for the bounce over to My Make Do And Mend Year and for reminding me that it’s important to share these things. In the spirit of reusing, recycling and repurposing, this post lists some of the simple things that we do at the homestead, in addition to buying local, to minimize the stuff we throw in a landfill and the money that we contribute to businesses that don’t match our values:

Part 1: Recycling, Repurposing

Sponges: I cut a corner off of a dish-sponge and it becomes a counter sponge. I cut a second corner off and it becomes a floor/nastiness sponge. After that, I throw it into a container on the back porch and it becomes an outdoor sponge. Sometimes the progression is shortened or modified depending on the needs of the moment, but the principle works well. This was inspired by the dish-sponge, bulkhead-sponge, sole-sponge, head-sponge progression I learned in my weeks with Ocean Classroom in middle school.
Old rubber scraper: It became brittle and the end began to disintegrate, but instead of throwing it away, we hung it on a nail by the chicken fence and now use it to scrape out containers of nasty goop on its way into chicken-bellies.
Packing materials: we keep a bag of them in our storage room and delight in mailing them back to our friends and family.
Recycling: A lot of folks in our area don’t recycle. Even the progressive young teachers that we spend most of our time with are daunted by the absence of a curbside recycling service in our community and wind up discarding hundreds of pounds of recyclables each year. Sean and I use a set of three Rubbermaid tubs that fit in the trunk of our car. As one fills up, we pull it onto the porch and bring in another. We rinse our recyclables before throwing them in the tubs, which prevents critters from taking an interest and unpleasant odors from developing. We dump the tubs when we make trips to the city. Usually, this system works fairly smoothly, though we do occasionally produce too much recycling between trips.
Clothes: if they’re good quality, we donate them, but if they’re too torn or stained, we toss them in my rag tub. I use them as cleaning rags or to make patches, potholders, and new seats for old chairs. I may also use small scraps in lieu of twine to build trellises and tie tomatoes. I saved the pockets from my old overalls and I’m planning to nail them up in our tool-storage area to use for small tools and bits of hardware.
Tissue paper, gift bags and wrapping paper: I use wallpaper glue and make pretty lanterns with the tissue paper we save. Otherwise, this stuff gets folded neatly and stuffed in a drawer to be used next holiday.
Twist-ties and bread-tags: Stored in the junk drawer, these things come in handy from time-to-time. A bread-tag can be used to extend the life of a flip-flop when the strap pulls through the sole.
Plastic grocery bags: We use these for covering bowls of rising dough, harvesting and storing greens, and in the place of paper towels for picking up dead mice and frogs that the cats dragged in. Thanks to the grocery store, we have never bought garbage bags: I stuck wall-hooks to our trash-can and they keep grocery bags from slipping into the bin when they grow full. Between composting and recycling, we don’t make a lot of trash, so this bag size works well for us.
A photograph would have been actually gross, because the cupboard under our sink is a scary, scary place.
Paper grocery bags: I store packing materials, clothes that aren’t in season, craft materials, and overflow recycling in these. They also make good table-covers for messy projects.
Feed Bags: One of these on the porch makes a great trash-bag. They also make drop-cloths for painting, skinning or other messy projects.
Egg Cartons: We use them over and over for our eggs. These would also make good packing materials if we were ever to run out.
Yogurt containers, cans and peanut-butter jars: I sort bits of hardware or rubber bands or twist ties into these, or use the lidded yogurt containers as backup tupperware.
Jugs from vinegar or detergent: These make great scoops for feed.
Compost: it’s easy and as a bonus, our trash never smells like garbage.

Part 2: Making from scratch

Soap: We use the lard from our pigs to make bar soap. I often use the bar soap to wash my hair, and it can be grated to powder and mixed with borax and baking soda for use as laundry detergent. Liquid hand soap is easy to make out of the odd ends of the grated bars or bits scraped out of the pot: just add water and allow the soap to dissolve.
Trellises: Bamboo (not to be mistaken for the native cane) is not indigenous to the forest here, so I feel no qualms about harvesting poles for trellising our tomatoes, cukes, peas and other climbing or trailing plants. I simply pound some canes into the ground and tie cross-bars to these uprights to provide support for my crops.
Food: obviously, we grow a lot of food ourselves. I’m not sure this has saved us much money, (we’ve spent a lot on infrastructure in the past few years) but it helps us cut back on packaging materials that we have to throw away, and contributes to reducing emissions from shipping and chemical use in industrial agriculture.

Part 3: Minimizing by borrowing, buying used, or buying quality

Books: I read a lot, and instead of buying books I go to the library or download for free. I pay a membership fee to use the library in Memphis, and it’s absolutely worth it. Supporting artists is important to me, but I’m not sure how to do this most effectively when it comes to authors: I don’t want a larger cut of my purchase going to a chain store or Amazon if I can help it. For now, I’m sticking with supporting libraries.
Clothes: My clothes come almost exclusively from Goodwill and moving-out piles. This arrangement suits me because I don’t feel guilty discarding something that I don’t love as much as I thought I would if I hardly spent any money on it.
Food Storage: We bought a set of pyrex containers that will last into the next century and totally eliminates the Tupperware-lid-matching problem.
Furniture: Our furniture is all used or homemade, which I’m extremely proud of. It’s not all beautiful and it doesn’t match, but who cares? We’ll upgrade when we’re ready, probably piece by piece as I learn to refurbish nifty old stuff.
Farm Equipment and Appliances: From lightbulbs to fencing, Sean does his research to make sure it’s durable, effective, and energy-efficient before we purchase anything new. We also get away with borrowing a lot of these items from our wonderful neighbors. Gifts of pork and garden veggies make these arrangements mutually beneficial.

Anything cool that I should be doing and haven’t thought of yet?

Snakes, induction, pool parties, and free time (?!)

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Keely

Sean and I got down to business when we got home last Tuesday. We loaded up the truck with the tables and the propane cooker that we’d borrowed for the barbeque and bumped down the road to Danny’s. I was reading this amazing book, Code Name Verity, so I didn’t look up until Sean said “whoah…” and stopped the truck. There was a snake, sunning itself in the middle of the driveway, perfectly still. It was a rattlesnake, at least four feet long and easily as big around as my forearm. Whoah.
We edged around it warily, and I placed my body between Sean and the snake, which never moved a centimeter. Its stillness gave me the heebie jeebies. We knocked on the door and Sean informed Danny that his “pet was loose in the driveway.” Danny looked out from the top step and went goggle-eyed; He does this very well – our neighbors are all good at theatrics and story-telling. He went into the house and came out with Nancy and a flat hoe, then walked right up to that rattler in his house-slippers. “Be careful baby,” said a worried Nancy, then to Sean and me, “the logging up behind Catherine’s place is driving them out of the woods. We’ve never seen one on this property before, but they’re on the move now. Loggers killed a six footer with 18 rattles just the other day. Wish they hadn’t killed it, they’re endangered.” Danny had reached the snake by now and was using the hoe to prod it. It set up a rattle, which is more like a buzz, and rose up, ready to strike. Danny held his ground and then actually scooped the snake up on the hoe and threw it a few feet off into the grass. He followed it and repeated the performance. It never stopped buzzing, but Danny was slowly able to harry it until it was well into the treeline.
Sean, Nancy and I let out our breath with a whoosh and Sean and I hopped into the truck to meet Danny down at the shop to unload the tables and cooker. We were all a little unsettled and I looked down at the ground before I stepped out of the truck, unreasonably afraid of running across another snake, this time by surprise. Of course there was nothing there, and I laughed at myself as I stepped out of the truck, reached into the back and pulled out the stand for the cooker. Sean and Danny were leaning against the tailgate, talking about snakes. I walked a few steps into the shop and just about set it down right on top of a copperhead. I noticed just in time and pulled back. “speaking of snakes,” I said, and gestured. Danny turned and there it was, not two feet away from him. “Keely!” he hollered, “My God! He has got to go. He was inside the shop! My God! How did he get in here!” The snake was gorgeous: its hide was a polished copper with deep chocolate patterns. It was coiled up, probably hunkered down for the night, and it never moved until Danny grabbed a long handled tool with a blade and smashed its head. It thrashed a bit, and Danny flung it off into the grass outside the shop. “You’re not gonna skin it, Keely?” Sean said with a shudder. I shrugged. “You want it?” asked Danny, and I nodded “why not? I’ll skin it and practice on it, just like with my raccoon.” Danny gave a laugh but beheaded it for me and I placed it in a bag and chucked it in the truck.

Snakes are weird. They have a musky smell to them that lingers on your hands. I pulled the snake out of the bag when we got home and started trying to skin it. Sometimes, when I would trigger something just right, it would thrash or make a slow slithering glide. It seemed alive, even without its head. Sean couldn’t be in the room with me while I did it. I made a long cut down the belly and once I got it started, the skin pulled off like a banana peel, but all in once piece. It was easier than skinning a raccoon or a pig and took maybe ten minutes. The skinned snake was gray and strange. I bagged it back up and threw it away, disconcerted on an animal level. The skin I laid out, scaly-side down, on the same pallet as my coon skin. Sean helped me flatten it with some window-screen and then staple the screen down to the board so that there wouldn’t be holes in my snake-skin. It’s drying now, though nothing’s really drying in this humidity. I’m going to try making some bracelets out of the hide.

Last Wednesday was my official last day of school, though it was our third day without kids. We teachers spent most of the week doing nitpicky things in our classrooms and gossiping anxiously about the big changes that our district is going through: TFA is not placing in our district for reasons that I wholly support, but the news came late and we have a lot of positions to fill; in addition to that pressure, we’re moving the 7th and 8th grades up to the high school campus. We don’t have enough classrooms, so some teachers will be in portables. We’ll be offering fewer electives and some of us may have to teach more subjects. It’s not a comfortable change, and transparency isn’t one of our superintendent’s professional values.

Interjection: It is broad daylight and I’m hearing coyotes outside. This is extremely unusual and a little nervewracking.

Wednesday evening, Sean and I went to Memphis for dinner and I was able to check out the book Rose Under Fire which is the companion to the book I had just finished. A librarian had to bend the rules for me to make it happen, since the book had not yet been processed since its return, but I charmed her with my enthusiasm/desperation. Her willingness to help me reaffirmed every good thing I’ve ever believed about librarians. I gladly spent $50 for another year’s membership with the Memphis library. Every time I go through the doors to that place I have to fight back a happy-dance.

We went to bed too late and I woke up way too early: I had to be in Monticello, nearly three hours away, by 8:00 am. You do the math: I’m on vacation. I was volunteering to help with induction, TFARK’s orientation for new teachers, and I was less than 100% stoked. I’d committed before I realized that we’d have no new TFA teachers at my school, and I couldn’t go back on my word so I stayed the course. My exhaustion evaporated soon after I arrived and began meeting new teachers. Everyone was so passionate about teaching, so excited to meet their students, so ready to love everything about Arkansas, and so eager to learn that I found myself plugging in to their bubbling energy and recharging. I think I made a summer’s worth of recovery in two days. My jaded, cynical perspective is gone and I’m ready to dive in to next year with all my heart. If you’re one of the people I met at induction or at the party in Helena on Saturday, this is my sincerest thank you. You’ve inspired me.
My favorite part of induction was the math content group. I love teaching math (most of the time) and talking about the specifics of teaching math makes me happy. I loved being grilled by new teachers about my classroom and hearing their ideas for how to get kids excited about math. Totally wonderful. I hope some of them will take me up on my invitation to come up here some weekend during institute to do some planning or talking or canoeing and to let Sean feed them. I want to have a real community of math teachers next year, and it’s already looking good.

Sean’s science lady from our co-op had us over to her beautiful home yesterday. We sat by the pool and had some drinks and chit-chat. She was funny and gracious and fed us generously. It was a perfect way to kick off the summer, that strange season where I have free time and I don’t quite know what to do with myself. It’s a fantastic feeling.

2nd annual End-of-School Homestead BBQ

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Keely

Friday was the last day with students for Ms. O (that’s me!) and it was marked by some very special moments that I will save for a later post. One of the best parts of Friday was first thing in the morning when my principal slipped a grocery bag of red plastic cups and a copy of the lyrics for the song “red solo cup” into my hand, saying “you’ll need these.”

Folks started arriving shortly after Sean and I got home from school. We built a fire to start making coals to fuel the smoker and to heat a barrel of water for scalding the pig. After a week of rain, though, we didn’t have much dry wood or much luck. It took us hours to get the water hot enough.

Our neighbor, Butch, came over with some of his helpers (rising ninth graders: my future students!) to guide us through the process. He was invaluable to us at last year’s barbeque, when we were slaughtering our very first hog. We’ve been through the process a few times now, but his experience is indispensable. He’s butchered hundreds of hogs in his day.

We had intended to heat water for scalding over our fire, but we wound up digging a hole for the barrel and building a fire around it.

We had intended to heat water for scalding over a fire, but we wound up digging a hole for the barrel and building a fire around it. After some trial and error, this method proved successful.

When the water was hot enough, Sean shot the pig with the .22, then stuck it under the breastbone to bleed it out.

When the water was hot enough (not boiling, but too hot to touch), Sean shot the pig with the .22, then stuck it under the breastbone to bleed it out. Dillon dragged it to the top of the hill and the crew dipped it in the hot water to scald it.

After scalding, the pig is scraped to remove hair and the outer layer of skin.

After scalding, the pig was scraped to remove hair and the outer layer of skin. It was surprisingly white under all that red hair.

After scraping, Sean and M hung the carcass from an old swing set that we found in the yard.

I don’t have any good photos of the evisceration process, but it’s fairly simple. Make an incision in the lower part of the belly, cut down toward the head and back toward the hip bones. Be careful to tie off the bung. When you are ready for the organs to spill out, cut through the sternum. On a hog this small, you can do this with a knife. A friend asked us to save the liver for him, and Sean saved most of the other organs to dissect in class. We buried the intestines to keep from attracting critters. Sean halved the carcass and we laid the halves, skin-side-down, on the smoker.

Using the coals from our hardwood fire, the team kept the smoker between 200 and 250 degrees all night.

Saturday:

Sean was still tending the smoker at dawn.

The night watch looked tired but happy.

We kept roasting all day, and Jesse heroically weed-whacked a bocce court. We laid plywood over the worst mud puddles, made a mountain of slaw and set out tables and chafing dishes, borrowed from another generous neighbor. At around 2:00 we pulled the pig off the smoker.

Dan and I helped turn the whole smoked hog into pulled pork for sandwiches.

Folks were arriving by then, and the party was underway. People hung out in lawn chairs and ate and talked. Groups of folks wandered down to look at the pigs or the garden and congregated at the bocce court. One friend brought 50 pounds of crawfish and boiled them up to share. They were spicy and delicious, and we got some great carapaces to feed to the pigs and add to the compost. At one point, the weather laid down a little bibbity bobbity boo and gave us a rainbow.

Sean rocked shorts and cowboy boots, and Shannon turned up in an outfit to match.

I wish you could see the rainbow in this photo.

Unfortunately for us, the rainbow came before the rain. It started pelting and people grabbed dishes and papers and cameras and dashed onto the porch, laughing. A pot of crawfish was left boiling on the cooker, just like Pompeii.

Everyone wound up a little soggy.

Some brave souls went out in the rain to bring in the keg, and we finished it before dark. Some folks stayed out on the porch, drinking and watching the clouds, some sat in the living room, chatting, and others shucked crawfish in the kitchen, making a dent in the not inconsiderable bounty in the bottom of a fortuitously rescued cooler.

Eventually, everyone went home. We stayed up for a while, talking to friends from afar who came down to stay with us for the weekend, then crapped out, absolutely exhausted.

Sunday Night:

We spent Sunday recuperating and tidying up the sodden and abandoned yard. A red velvet cake, soaked in the sudden shower, had bled all over the table, and we discovered a pot of crawfish still on the cooker. In the evening, we ran to town for Game of Thrones and Pizza Night, a Marianna Sunday tradition.

We packed our friends in the back and rolled up to the park for a pre-dinner walk.

Can an Arkansas experience be complete without a little wind in your hair?

The pizza bros did it again: yet another delicious Sunday night dinner to fortify us through our journey to Westeros.

On the way home, I rode in the back with Sarah and watched the indecisive clouds skid back and forth over the silver treetops. We stopped for a swim under the star-littered, rain-laden night sky and dried off as best we could in the humid night, watching the fireflies glitter in the fields along our dirt road. It’s the best show on earth, folks.

Country Living Challenges: Keeping Chickens (Alive)

Posted on May 29, 2014 by Keely

Our beautiful and obnoxious rooster, Cappy, woke us this morning with his raspy sunrise song. On a typical morning, there’d have been nothing unusual about this, but we were surprised to hear his voice. When we went outside, there he was, drenched with rain and looking irate on the front steps.

Usually, roosters don’t hang out on the front steps.

It all started on Saturday. Last week, we lost several of our hennies. Evert day or two, one or more would go missing. On Saturday night, I didn’t check the birds, but at about midnight I heard clucking and squawking outside my bedroom window. I charged around the house like a lunatic in a state of undress, searching for a flashlight. I couldn’t find one, so I ran outside and switched on the truck’s headlights. Nothing. I ran back in and found the flashlight, put on some more clothes and went out to stalk the night predators. I treed a raccoon on power pole in the yard, but couldn’t find a chicken. After looking, I went to the coop and counted. Everyone was home except Cappy. I figured he was lost.

I didn’t see a trace of Cappy in the morning which I didn’t find strange. Usually, when a chicken goes missing, it’s just gone without a trace except maybe for a few feathers strewn around the site of the kill. I went on with my life and started checking on the birds before bed, finding Windsor in a tree, Sunday night, and lifting her out to stick her in the henhouse where she belongs. It wasn’t until Monday that I saw Cappy again, scratching in the chicken yard like he’d never been gone. It was like seeing a ghost. Sean and I had to lift him and WIndsor out of the trees that night.

Tuesday, we came home a little after dark to find Windsor’s feathers all over the chicken yard, one of the babies torn to bits in the henhouse, and Cappy missing. Sean grabbed the .22 and managed a shot at the raccoon that was still gnawing on Windsor at the back of the chicken yard. He missed the shot and the chicken-thief got away. It’s devastating each time we lose a bird. We try to take care of them, but there’s not much we can do when a coon has learned to go into the henhouse in daylight. Later that night, after we cleaned up the mess and went to bed, we heard clucking and squawking out the window, a repeat of Saturday. We ran out and found a bedraggled looking Cappy, tailfeatherless, sitting on the ground by the back door. We tucked him in and went back to bed.

He was gone last night when we get home, and every day we assume he’s not coming back, but so far he’s proven resilient. He looks ridiculous, strutting around and naked in patches where critters have been at him, and this morning he was soaked to the skin to boot. I wanted to laugh: “The emperor has no clothes!”

Cappy may not be pretty, but he’s tough, which I guess is what counts if you’re a country chicken.

We’re on the lookout for new hens. It’s down to Cappy, Freckles, and the two remaining chicks, who I believe are boys. Remember when we were getting a half-dozen eggs a day? Those days are long gone, no thanks to Chunky and Co.