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.

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