Portrait of the farmer with lettuce

Posted on May 24, 2014 by Keely

I have missed the pace of summer. When the weather is like this, I go outside in bursts to do chores, swimming through a bathtub of hot and humid air, wading through a sea of glittering, waist high grass, watching for snakes. When I walk through the door, the world is bright and hot and loud and flashing like the Vegas strip, but clean: bluebirds scudding from tree to wire to bending weed, the sprinkler tiktiktikking, flowers thick and logy with perfumed dew, Cappy pompously hollering at everything that makes a sound, grass so green and sparkling that it hurts to look at it, pigs chatting and slapping themselves down in the mud. My skin is instantly slippery with sweat and the dirt turns to mud on my arms and legs. When I come in, I rinse. Sometimes I rinse in the shower three times a day, just to get the salt and grass off and ease mosquito bites. It keeps my skin from itching right off my body. In the house it’s cool and dark and quiet except for the ceiling fan tapping out a slow count to mark the time, which wouldn’t seem to pass at all, otherwise.

you might think I’m vain
so I beg your pardon
but selfies with lettuce should be a thing
because I look my best in the garden

My New Hat

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Keely

Last night I got into bed, all ready to have an early night. Sean was just about to climb in with me, but he heard something out front.

“Chunky’s on the porch. I’m going for it”
“If you get him, what are you gonna do with him?”
“he’ll be too blown apart. I’ll just throw him away. It’d be a different story if we could get any .22 bullets.”

From bed, I heard that shotgun noise (ch-chk), then a while later, BOOM. Sean came back inside.

“It was a clean kill. I kinda feel like I should do something with it”
“But you said —”
“I’d feel bad”
“okay. Let me get dressed”

five minutes later I was kneeling on a tarp in the middle of my kitchen floor, helping Sean process a raccoon. The entry wound was small, just the size of a quarter. The sternum was shattered and the lungs were full of shot. Chunky didn’t suffer, and most of the meat and fur was in good condition.

I’ll be honest. Sean and I are amateurs when it comes to this stuff. I’m sure any of my students could have gutted and skinned this thing faster than we did, but we’re learning, and at least we have the gumption to try.

Sean froze the head separately for me. When I get home tonight, I’m going to thaw out the hide and scrape it, then wash it and tack it to a board to dry. When it’s dry, I’ll try my hand at brain-tanning. If all goes well, I’m going to try to make Chunky into a hat. We messed up the tail a little, but it’s a first try, and skinning a tail isn’t easy. The head skinned out nicely though.

Raccoon is edible, though my students don’t recommend eating it in the summer. I need to do more homework on that subject before I make a decision. Right now, I don’t know whether we’ll eat it. If we don’t, it’ll go to the chickens, circle-of-life-style. We don’t kill for sport, but to control pests, and we try to make sure that every part is used somehow. We even saved the Arkansas toothpick.

Howdy Farmer

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Keely

I got crafty this weekend! I made the new seat for this old chair out of my old overalls and a worn out pair of Sean’s work khakis. I made the potholder out of an old t-shirt using the bottom of an old lampshade for a loom. Making beautiful and/or useful things out of trash for free leaves me feeling like a giddy rockstar.

We’re expecting a couple of tobacco plants and some heirloom tomato and pepper starts to arrive in the mail sometime soon. It’s expensive to order the plants, but we didn’t have success with the greenhouse this year, and we could use the head start that healthy plants will give us. Sean has been working overtime to till up enough garden for the summer. Yesterday we popped in a set of tomatoes and a set of peppers, and the garden is already half-again as big as it was last year, without our having planted corn. We’re swimming in lettuce, though our peas have some kind of fungus and aren’t producing like they should. The summer garden will be a handful, but I think, with my trusty partner by my side, I’ll do better than I did last year at keeping it from getting overrun.

It seems our garden has laid a golden egg: I looked it up, and the internet says that this guy and his babies are Mostly Harmless, but there are holes in our sweet potatoes, so I have my doubts. He is pretty cool looking, though. In other insect news, those horrible blackflies that come through window screens and bite like mosquitos are back. We haven’t figured out how to keep them out, so we’ll just have to live with the agony until we can create some kind of ingenious solution.

The chickens have been troubled this week. It seems that someone has started eating eggs, which we have to put a stop to somehow. I know it’s because we don’t collect eggs early or frequently enough, but collecting eggs is a real challenge on our schedules, especially since Cappy turned vicious. We gave Spot away this weekend, in hopes that Cappy would chill out. Chunky and his family are back, and though they can’t get onto the back porch because of the foster kitties, they’re wreaking havoc in the chicken yard. We didn’t realize it until today, when we heard the chickens squalling from down in the garden where we were doing some weeding. Sean sprinted up the hill, and by the time I’d caught him he’d already chased two raccoons out of the henhouse. We lost all three of our sexlinks this week, after having had months with no attrition, and it looks like Chunky’s to blame. Sean’s ready to blow the whole Chunky clan away.

The pigs are growing a couple of pounds a day, and they need it! Our barbeque is next Saturday, and we’re expecting more guests than last year. We bought these pigs at a smaller size than last spring’s, and they’ve had less time to grow. We’re expecting them to weigh in at around 110 pounds, whereas Big-un was a hefty 140 by Memorial Day. We won’t have as much pulled pork, but I had to bag and freeze about two thirds of what we had last year, so there should be enough to feed everyone and then some, and Sean’s planning to smoke one of our turkeys to make doubly sure.

Sean and Sizzie mugging for the camera.

Teaching (mostly) White Kids

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Keely

Dear incoming teachers,

Don’t be disappointed if you’re teaching white kids.

Sometimes teachers (especially new TFA teachers) get into pissing contests about whose job is toughest, and a lot of people will discount the challenges that you face because you’re teaching white kids. Folks will assume that you have a cushy job. Don’t buy into this. If you believe this, you are allowing yourself to give credence to assumptions that are based on race and reflect lower expectations for students of color. If you catch your friends making these assumptions, call them on it.
The other thing, which I didn’t appreciate until my partner (who teaches in a mostly-black school) pointed it out to me, is that I get to experience diversity every day. I witness racial dynamics in action among the students at my school. Sean doesn’t. In this particular way, my experience is richer than his.
If you are lucky enough to have the opportunity to teach in the integrated south, your experience is going to be unique in ways that your peers can’t yet imagine.

Lots of Love,

Ms. O