All of our beautiful broccoli plants have ants digging tunnels around their roots. When this happened last fall, the plants withered and died. What can I do?
Author Archives: Keely
Gotta Catch ’em All
It’s now 10:37 and we’ve concluded our annual Spring Sunday Pig Chase.
dinner at 11:00 and a cranberry margarita, thank you very much.
We went to Memphis today to pick up groceries, feed and maybe a canoe. As we stepped out the door, dressed in our raincoats and dreading the deluge, our three little pigs greeted us cheerfully from the driveway.
Aw. Heck.
We chased them back into their pasture with the full understanding that they have completely lost their fear of the electric fence. We knew they’d get out again, but we had to go.
Memphis was nice. We didn’t get the canoe, but we got a sweet new grill, fencing for the gardens, lots of pig feed and some needed staples at Whole Foods (staples = bagels, chocolate, cranberry juice and baguettes). We hurried home so that we could unload the truck and get to Helena in time to watch Game of Thrones with some friends. When we got home, the pigs were gone. They were nowhere to be found, but they had left clues.
Pig damage in the garden. They must be stopped!
After searching for a while we came in and made some calls, cancelling our plans and asking friends for backup. While I was on the phone, we spotted the swine trotting through the yard. Sean and I cornered them in their house and managed to tackle Daisy.
The first one was easy. She brayed horribly in Sean’s arms, but his triumph was unquenched.
We stashed her in the chicken yard. About ten minutes later, we caught the next one. Sizzle bashed her head into the chicken gate when we herded her in, but she’s fine now. That left Levi, and Levi didn’t want to be caught. Ian showed up after a while, and the three of us chased her all over these hills. At one point, the boys had her cornered in a hollow tree (!) but she escaped them.
When it got dark, we lost track of her. All we had for light was Ian’s phone, and he needed to get home, so we nearly gave up. I knew I wouldn’t sleep well without knowing Levi was in her pen with her sisters, so we cruised down to our neighbor’s place to borrow a flashlight. While we were there, our car crapped out. No joke. Byron is a saint and (of course) he helped Sean fix it. All it needed was a little battery scraping.
Levi wasn’t in her old pasture. She wasn’t visiting her sisters. She wasn’t in the yard anywhere. We found her asleep in her hollow tree and Sean snagged her.
My sweetheart is the ultimate Porkemon Master: he caught ’em all.
Acting White
Let me preface this by making it clear that I’m white and I can’t pretend to fully understand the experiences of the young people of color that I teach. I do, however, consider it worth my time to try to understand the social dynamics that operate in my classroom and that influence my students’ goals and self-efficacy.
I teach in a predominantly white high school in rural Arkansas. Most of the public schools around my district are much less diverse and serve a majority-black population. The numerous private schools in the region are almost exclusively white. Sean teaches in a school that has never been integrated. It was a white school until integration was mandated. That event coincided with the opening of a private school less than a mile away and LHS became a black school.
I had a conversation yesterday with a couple of colleagues about the phrase “acting white” and it’s still turning around in my head. Our black students use the phrase to deride other black students (or themselves) for appearing to put effort into school and for openly seeking success. The phrase associates success, earnestness and goody-two-shoesiness with whiteness, and implies that you can’t be black and successful or black and educated. It turns my colleague’s stomach, and mine, to hear them using this phrase because it’s a slap to the face of the few black kids who don’t fit the mold of “blackness”. Our students self-segregate during their social time. White kids have cliques and they congregate during lunch and before school according to their interests. There’s someone for everyone to talk to, some support system for every kind of weird, as long as you’re white. There aren’t enough black kids to form cliques, so they all hang together. If you are black, at P-W, it is much harder to be different than if you are white.
My colleague compared it to girls in sports, saying that if you’re a girl, you have to overcome a stereotype to play sports, but if you’re a boy, you have to overcome a stereotype to not play. That takes a lot of confidence, which isn’t abundant in teenagers. If you are black, especially if you’re male, you have to overcome a stereotype to even try to succeed in school. You have to reject your friends and your race and “act white” to gain access to the choices and privileges that we teachers work so hard to provide for our kids. One of the endless frustrations of this job is the kid who actively chooses to forego education, throwing everything you value and every bit of work you’ve done back in your face, daily. By demanding that she get an education, maybe we’re trashing her identity and throwing her values back in her face, and maybe the reaction, which seems so out of proportion, actually isn’t.
Though it makes me uncomfortable to hear my kids talk about “acting white” I want to validate them. They’re being accurate. They are describing a real phenomenon. Our society is dominated by white people who promote white values. Achieving success and being yourself requires sacrifice, and for some people it costs more than for others. For youth of color it can demand the sacrifice of a racial identity and a community. However you define success, you must recognize that it isn’t readily available to people of color, especially people of color who embrace black culture.
Because I am limited by my own experience, I’m going to compare this race issue to a gender issue again. As a woman, I’m uncomfortable traveling alone. I will never sleep on the street in Dubai, as a male friend recently recounted to me that he’d done during a long layover. It is absolutely horrible and unfair that I should be afraid to go out alone at night, but I am. I am afraid of strangers doing me physical harm, and that sucks. It’s not right, but it’s right that I should be afraid. My fear is justified. Just so, my students are justified in equating success with whiteness. It sucks. It’s unfair. It’s wrong, but it’s correct.
My colleague brought up the irony that we can’t change this injustice without more black role models, and to become a black role model, you have to act white. I’m not sure, yet, what I think of this statement.
Until yesterday, I don’t think I’d really come to grips with the personal, internal conflict that characterizes the achievement gap. Here I am at the end of my second year of teaching in a school with racial tension out the butt, and I’m just now comprehending, in a really personal way, the pressure that made J drop his Pre-AP classes, telling me he’d done it because “there’s so many white faces in there. I’m too stupid to be in that class.” When I moved here, I knew something about educational inequity, but I didn’t have any sense of the feelings that contribute to an individual’s experience of educational inequity. I do now, so I guess it’s time for some action. Ideas? How can I, in my role as math teacher of all things, empower the kids I work with every day to overcome social pressure and stereotypes?
It’s not an easy question. I’ll have to ask the kids.
Pig Problems and Other Stuff
We had the worst night of sleep in intergalactic history this week. The first time we woke up that night, there was something screaming bloody murder out front. We thought it might be a pig, so we leaped out of bed. I threw on shoes, snatched the flashlight and sprinted down the driveway following the shrieking sound. The sound stopped, and I turned back, illuminating the porch where Sean stood half-dressed, barefoot, and loading a shotgun. I turned the light on the pigs and they looked at me with expressions of porcine consternation. They were piled like sausages in their little shelter, wondering why I’d disturbed their slumber. I guess the screaming was a rabbit or something in the claws or jaws of some predator. We went back to bed.
The second time we woke up, there was a quiet murmuring coming from the kitchen, a quiet, British-accented murmuring. I sat up. There shouldn’t have been anyone in my house aside from the snoozing Sean beside me, and there certainly shouldn’t have been anyone British in the house at all. I shook Sean awake, alarmed, and he coolly rolled out of bed to silence the clock radio in the kitchen.
Nights here are usually not peaceful. There are always owls and coyotes in the woods, and often an armadillo or two will trundle by under the bedroom window in the night, making as much noise as a lawnmower or a small marching band as it rustles through the dry leaves. Sometimes the rain will drive sideways through the open windows over our bed and soak us awake, or the lightning will rattle the windows. What we don’t usually get are human disturbances like the BBC world news.
It rained a lot yesterday. Sean has threatened to go all Army Corps of Engineers on the hill behind the house to create some kind of drainage system that doesn’t require an ark.
antediluvian back porch with Chunky the raccoon
Postdiluvian back porch. My shoe floated away.
The raccoon that has been raiding our back porch has friends and/or family accompanying him to the buffet now. We’re going to have to start keeping all of our feed in the house, which blows. The varmints are cute, though, and it’s cool to see them out there, fearlessly growing ever fatter on our dime. Tonight, we heard squealing out front and went to check on the pigs, only to discover a raccoon brawl in a treetop beside the house.
We’ve outfitted the front porch for relaxation time. It’s not perfect, but watching the storm from the couch last night was pretty exquisite. I love the smell that soaks up from the ground when it rains and the rumble that starts underground with each thunderclap, and climbs to rattle the windows. We’re warm and dry on the porch, but only just.
we donated this homestead basket to a friend’s silent auction
We’re facing some pretty serious challenges with our pigs right now. They seem to have no respect for the electric fence. We peeked outside about half an hour ago, and they were in the garden. They had dug up all of the corn that Sean planted this week, completely ignoring their new boundaries. They’re fearless when it comes to the fence, and we’ve got video of them hopping over it like fat little gazelles. It wasn’t an issue until Sean moved them this afternoon, but now it’s a front-burner concern. They’re loose right now, and we’re hoping they’ll independently decide to hop the fence back into their pasture. If they don’t, we’re kinda screwed. They’re too skittish to herd and not hungry enough to lure anywhere. I’m glad we don’t live near a major roadway or have any nearby neighbors with aggressive dogs, but I’m not thrilled at the idea of letting them have their way with our gardens.
pigs on the loose
pigs in the garden. Oh boy.
Update: Night is the best time to deal with unruly swine. They just want to sleep and they don’t see especially well. We were able to rebuild the fence around them while they huddled together in a pigpile. After a long week of teaching, building an electric fence in the dark is an excruciating exercise in patience. The wires tangle up in the shadows, your flashlight dies, your partner mutters threats under her breath and you can’t quite make out whether they’re directed at you or at the errant hogs. You slip in the mud and pig shit and discover new crimes (they’ve dug up the onions!) every few minutes. It’s awful. I don’t recommend it. Electronet, here we come.
I am so ready for some pulled pork sandwiches.
Hitch
Hitch up yer dungarees! This weekend kicked some derriere and I’ve got some thoughts I’ve been thinking on and I’m ready to spill because I think I done thunk ’em out fully.
1) Hitchin’ up the team:
Meet Jesse and Chelsea. They’re living and working on Jesse’s family’s farm in Ohio.
We played board games and had real conversations and amazing food all weekend. Every time we end a visit with them, I’m left with a hole in my heart as the car rolls down the gravel road. We always talk about ways to bring our lives closer together, and someday we will. These folks are our family.
The farm just acquired two gorgeous Haflinger draft ponies, Molly and Polly, at an auction last weekend. They’re a trained team, and are to be used, among other things, for logging and to haul wagons and farm implements. It felt so good to smell like horse again. Jesse and Chelsea taught us the basics and let us each try driving the team. The girls know their stuff and they’re eager to work. They’re really magnificent, purposeful, powerful animals. My superior position felt fragile: It was a privilege to direct their strength, but I never felt like I had any ability to command them without their consent.
We were lucky enough to be present on the farm for Open Farm Day. I hung out with Molly and Polly and got them ready for the driving demonstration, but not before checking out the chinampa and the hugelkultur. I helped Chelsea put up signs, which meant I got something of a grand tour.
It’s a living fence! You can see the willows starting to leaf out. It’ll provide fencing for livestock, withes for basketry, food for critters, and wildlife habitat.
They raise a lot of sheep, and they’re ridiculously cute when they’re small.
This eggmobile is moved from place to place to give the chickens fresh grass. As it moves, it leaves a well-fertilized swath in its wake. There are also chicken tractors for the broilers, which are moved on the daily to keep the meat birds delicious.
In addition to all the cool stuff mentioned above, the farm practices management intensive grazing with their sheep and cows, presents farm-to-table dinners, and is hosting a permaculture course. I’m selling them short by trying to list it all. They rock.
Jesse told me a great story about a hawk that used to prey on the chickens that would graze in the pasture. When they started grazing the pigs and chickens together, the hawk killed a chicken, only to have his dinner stolen by the pigs! The hawk spent the rest of the summer sitting mournfully on his perch, gazing down at the fearless fowl below, knowing they were unattainable thanks to the pigs.
The kind of farming that our friends practice is something that I aspire to emulate in every aspect of my life. They solve problems creatively and seek to build streamlined, efficient systems that are sustainable and productive. The farm is beautiful and it does important work. It allows the people who live and work there and the patrons who support the business to live ethically. It educates people about the significance of food in the economy and the environment.
On Saturday night, we had a picnic dinner and a fire in a hilltop pasture. The view was stunning, the food delicious, and the conversation candid. We are all at this amazing point in our lives where we have these enormous choices to make, and the imminent decisions can either be crushing in their significance or can make you feel free.
2) Gettin’ hitched:
A ton of our friends are getting engaged these days. Sean and I have been together for almost six years, we are the dream team, and we choose each other every day, gladly. Marriage seems like an obvious choice for us, but we’re not getting married, at least not for a while. There is no compelling reason for us to get married: We don’t believe that our lifestyle is sinful (apparently some people do?!), and, though we want to have kids someday, we don’t think marriage necessarily has to come first. There is, however, something that compels us to not get married: we can’t buy into an institution that excludes people that we love. Love and partnership aren’t limited to one man and one woman, and marriage shouldn’t be either. Until it’s an option for all of our friends, in any state, we refuse to take advantage of our privilege. For Sean and Keely, the personal is pretty much always political. That said, I’m super stoked for some beautiful weddings.
3) Bonus
highlights from my conversation about the farm photos with C:
Ms O: “they have a wire bottom on their chicken house, which is on wheels, so the chicken poop falls on the ground and fertilizes the grass, and they move it so they can fertilize all over the place”
C: “That’s awesome!”
(this is markedly more enthusiasm than I expected)
C: “Are those solar panels? Way cool.”
C: “when they were logging my woods, the tractors ripped that place up. Probably, if you were doing it with horses, you’d do way less damage. That’s what my grandpa did. He had mules and stuff when he first got here. That seems like a pretty good way of doing things.”
chasing piggens 