Fall Musings

The fog is so thick this morning, I can barely make out the outline of the big maple at the edge of my back yard. I love the view out my back windows, especially in the morning and especially in the fall. I love watching the sun come up and paint the trees with yellow and gold. The dogwoods blaze with crimson and sometimes the deer creep out of the brush to welcome the day. I love the nip in the air, the smell of woodsmoke and the rustle of the leaves that carpet my yard. A brown thrasher is scratching industriously under the winter honeysuckle as I write this, reminding me that I need to be looking for my own breakfast. Fall calls for cold weather food – sausage and pancakes, chili and cornbread, bubbling casseroles and apple dumplings. It’s a time for the last bustle of work on the farm, preparing to hunker down for winter. The horses love the crisp air. I read somewhere that horses are happiest in about 40 degree weather. I seem to be happier in cooler weather too, and I have a little more energy when the thermometer dips below the eighty degree mark. I don’t run and buck like the horses do, but at least I can walk a little faster! And there is nothing better than riding on crisp days under a canopy of fall colors. My mom obsesses over the leaves in her yard, but I have found that mine will eventually blow down into the holler behind my house if I just leave them alone. Any leftovers can be chopped up by the mower next spring. The dogs love the leaves – Trace especially likes to burrow into them for his naps. And the little kids that visit love to rake big piles and jump into them. The leaves bring back memories of football games, hayrides and wienie roasts. The full moon these past days has been especially bright. The almanac says it is the Beaver Moon, named by the Indians because it was one of the last chances to trap beavers for the fur that would keep them warm through the winter. I’m not interested in trapping beavers, but I do love to go outside during a full moon, when I don’t even need a flashlight to make the last trip to the barn. When I was growing up, we didn’t do much about Thanksgiving. Usually, Thanksgiving week was reserved for hog killing and our traditional meal around that time centered around fresh tenderloin, freshly ground sausage, and crackling bread. I didn’t like the crackling bread, but I loved the cracklings fresh out of the kettle. I remember watching Gertrude Dansby, who worked for us for years, cooking off the lard and frying cracklings in a huge black kettle in our backyard. I guess the cracklings were sort of the equivalent of pork rinds, but they were much better! After we stopped killing hogs, we started celebrating Thanksgiving in a more traditional way, and this week, my mom’s family will gather at her house for turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, and all the other good things. It’s great to gather with family to count our blessings and enjoy the bounty of the holiday table. But I think my favorite time of Thanksgiving day is late in the evening, when the rush is over and I can enjoy a plate of leftovers by the fireplace, with my dogs at my feet and a book in my hand. It’s a last breathing space before the Advent and Christmas rush begins. And I am thankful.

Adventures in the Show Ring

National 4-H Week – it surely brings back good memories for me. And I daresay that much of what I learned through my work in that organization have helped me out more in my life and my career than most of what I learned in school.
Of course, being a farm girl, most of my projects in 4-H involved animals. They didn’t have the horse project when I started out or I’m sure it would have been my main focus. Horses were the main focus of just about everything in my life from the time I was able to say the word. But there were plenty of other animals to keep me busy. Beef cattle, swine and sheep were the projects I concentrated on. I could have raised chickens but have I ever mentioned just how much I have always disliked chickens?
The pig shows were always held in March. It was a lot colder in March then than it seems to be now, and my feet were always half frozen, no matter what kind of socks and boots I wore. Pointy pig feet and half-frozen human feet were not a good thing, especially since pigs seem to have a penchant for stepping on those human feet. The local show was held at the fairgrounds and then we went on to the big show at the Nashville Union Stockyard. If there has ever been a colder place in the state than the stockyard, I don’t know where it was. The wind whipped off that river and went right through you. Showing pigs was really pretty simple. They turned all the pigs in a big ring and we had to find our pig and show him off to the judge. We carried long sticks – some were made of wood and some were made of metal – and we used those sticks to guide the pigs around, stopping and starting and trying to show off the pig to his best advantage. Of course, if you had a lesser quality pig, you tried to stay out of the judge’s line of sight until they had weeded out the other lesser quality pigs. But if you had a really good pig, you wanted the judge to see him. It was fun, and I earned a pretty good little bit of spending money with the pigs, but I was always glad to take my poor bruised and frozen feet home at the end of the day.
Oddly enough, we showed lambs in June. I always thought they should have reversed the dates on the pigs and lambs, but I’m sure there was some sort of good reason why they didn’t. Nowdays, the kids have it easy. They have little halters to put on their lambs and they lead them around. We were a hardier group when I was a child. Like the pigs, they just turned all those lambs loose in the ring and we had to find our lamb, catch it and wrestle it over to the wall and try to hang on. We knelt on the ground and held the lambs by the head, or tried to hold them. My lambs were usually pretty tame, but there were always a few who escaped or dragged their handlers across the ring. I remember how soft my hands always were after the show, from the lanolin in the wool.
The biggest shows were always the steer and heifer shows. The steer show was held in December, at the Nashville Union Stockyard, and it was even colder than it was in March! There was a lot more excitement at the cattle shows than the other shows, or at least it seemed that way. The judges were masters of suspense, taking their time selecting their top steers and looking and studying and going back and forth until they would slap one of the calves on the rump and applause would break out. The bidding for the champion steers was lively, and the top calves always brought top dollar. H.G. Hill always bought the grand champion – not because the calf was that much better than all the rest but as a publicity move. Another tradition was eating at the Charlie Nickens barbecue place on Jefferson Street. I don’t know if it was the only restaurant nearby or just the favorite of the adults, but that’s where we always went to eat when we showed livestock at the stockyards. Their menu was shaped like a pig, if I am remembering correctly and their barbecue was great.
I really enjoyed my heifers. The show was in June or July, at the Ellington Agricultural Center, and after the shows, the heifers came back home and raised babies. I could let myself get attached to these sweet calves because I knew they would most likely live out their lives on our farm. We raised Shorthorn cattle, which are known for their gentle dispositions. They come in three colors – red, roan and white. My greatest disappointment was that I never had a white heifer to show. Ironically, my good roan heifer had a white calf the very year I became too old to show in 4-H. A few months earlier and I would have had my wish!
Showing livestock taught me a lot. Winning and losing graciously, the truth that it takes hard work to reach a goal and that sometimes life isn’t fair, that the best part of competition is not necessarily the ribbons and other truths that I only came to appreciate fully as an adult. The prize money I received kept me in spending money all through my teen years, and I made a lot of friends that I still keep in touch with from time to time. The stockyards is gone now, as is Charlie Nickens barbecue. I’m glad I was able to experience those historic spots before they were gone.

The County Fair

Fall is the season for county fairs, and these days always bring up memories of my activities during the fair when I was growing up. It was a big event at our house, because the whole extended family was involved in one way or another.
My granddaddy was chairman of the fair for many, many years. I don’t know much about what he did, but I do know that we didn’t see a lot of him during that week. Now that I am on the fair board myself, I understand why! Mamma and Daddy both worked in the Young Farmer and Homemaker concession stand, meaning we were at the fairgrounds every night until closing time. I may be foggy about my memories, but it doesn’t seem to me that people worried quite as much about early bedtime when I was growing up as they seem to now. In fact, I don’t think folks worried quite as much about a lot of things as they do now.
The livestock shows were a big part of the fair back then, and our cattle, sheep and pigs were proudly displayed under the Maple Shade Farm signs. It took a couple of days to haul all of the entries to the old fairgrounds at Twomey, and a lot of work to get them ready for their public appearances. We didn’t have trailers then, so we hauled all the stock on a ton truck with tall sideboards.
There wasn’t much you could do with pigs, other than wash them and spray a little oil on them to make them shine, and the sheep were fairly easy to handle. The cattle had to be washed and brushed and taught to lead. This involved a lot of pulling, tugging and being pulled, tugged and dragged.
And there were all the other things to make. My friend Lynne and I used to get together to make all kinds of food we hoped would take a blue ribbon in the baking division. We would pore over the prize list and make lists of what we might make. Then Mamma and I would stay up half the night making the last minutes goodies like banana bread and pies and cookies. Sometimes we would have to make several batches before it came out just right. I’m sure everyone in the house got sick of banana bread a few times! We had already done some canning and jelly making, taking extra care with the jars destined for the competition. The beans had to be placed just right to show off how evenly they were broken and the jelly had to be extra clear of any imperfections. The canning section of the home economics department always looked so beautiful, with jars and jars of colorful fruits and vegetables nearly arranged to catch the light.
The cooking and crafts and sewing were fun, and profitable, but my real interest was in the cattle shows. There usually weren’t enough adults to show all the cattle in the championship classes, so I would be elected to help. Since the big bull was the easiest one to handle, he was usually my entry and I always felt proud to be able to show such a big animal. As I got older, I had my own little string of cattle. I remember the year my previous 4-H heifer had twin calves at fair time. There was a lot of oohing and aahing over the sweet little babies, and I think I remember that their mom won her class that year. Then, another of her offspring won the championship a couple of years later. I think that was the last really big cattle show we had down at the old fairgrounds. The facility out at Grinders Switch is much nicer than that old barn, but I still have such good memories of showing down there. The picture I have posted with this blog is of me and one of our calves in the old barn at the fair when I was about six. What I mainly remember about this photo shoot is that my mom got after my daddy because he didn’t tell me to take my sweater off for the picture!
I remember the old concession stands up on the hill overlooking the midway. They were built of wood and looked old and rickety even when I was a child so I have no idea when they were built. The exhibit building was old too, with squeaky wooden floors, windows that were usually open to try and catch any breeze available on those hot August days. And the basement, where corn, pumpkins, hay, tobacco and other vegetables and fruits were displayed, was always a little spooky to me.
Near the end of the fair, they paid our prize money for the ribbons we had collected. That was my fair money and I could ride the rides and eat cotton candy and caramel apples to my heart’s content, or however long my money held out. The fair organizers were pretty smart to pay us in cash because they knew they would get a lot of the money back!
All good things must end, and I remember the sadness I felt when we made the last trip up the hill and I caught one last glimpse of the ferris wheel as we traveled up toward the square. I’m sure my granddaddy and parents were heaving a sign of relief that it was over, but at that time, I would have been happy to have the county fair happen several times a year.

Here a Chick, There a Chick

The only chicken I really like is on a plate, preferably fried with biscuits and gravy on the side. I never have liked chickens, from the time I was a little girl. My folks used to warn me about the roosters, saying to be careful around them because they might flog me. I didn’t know what flogging was, but it didn’t sound good. But then, with the sometimes strange logic of grownups, they would send me to the hen house to gather the eggs. I don’t know exactly why, but the hen house always seemed scary to me. It was dark and smelly and I was always thinking of getting flogged or seeing a chicken snake or getting pecked by an angry hen. My mama would go in there and reach right under those hens to get the eggs. Not me! There was always a bundle of cane poles in the corner by the door of the hen house, stored there until needed for the garden. I would pick up one of those poles and use it to pry and chase the hens off their nests before I even attempted to gather the eggs. I kept an eagle eye out for snakes, because one of the stories told about my daddy when he was a little boy was the time he put his hand on a chicken snake in a hen’s nest. So, gathering eggs was not a simple, happy task, but more like a scene from a gothic novel.
My mama, on the other hand, really likes chickens. The varmints who live around the farm really like chickens too, and gradually they have decreased the flock to fewer than a dozen hens and three roosters. So, Tim, who rents our farm and treats mama just like his own family, gave her fourteen hens for her birthday. He brought them in two coops, unloaded them and, according to her instructions, put them in the hen house for the night.
The next morning, mama turned out the newcomers along with her existing flock and it was then that things became interesting. Apparently, these new hens had never been outside in the real world. They also had never seen a rooster. And when they did encounter the roosters, they didn’t seem to like their looks because they spent half that first day chasing them all over the back yard. Mama told me later that night that they were the strangest chickens she had ever had. For one thing, they talked all the time. And they do, making that little “wraaark, wraaark” sound with their little heads turning from side to side. They also follow mama around, just like baby chicks follow the hen, talking all the while. All went well that first day, unless you were the roosters, and the newcomers joined the established flock in the hen house that night.
It was the second night that trouble began. I was at mama’s that evening, working on a jigsaw puzzle. She got up from the puzzle and said she was going out to fasten up the chickens. I was engrossed in the puzzle and didn’t notice that she had been gone longer than it should have taken, but suddenly, the front door was flung open and mama, with a big stick in her hand, burst in. Mama is about five feet tall and weighs less than one hundred pounds, but she can still outwork me on most days and you don’t want to make her mad. “Can you come out here and help me get these chickens up?” she said.
The new hens were the problem. Most the veterans were in the hen house, tucked in for the night. The newcomers were parading around the yard, occasionally going in the hen house and coming right back out, talking all the while. In the next half hour, I was reminded of one of the reasons I have never really liked chickens. I was stationed by the door and mama would round up a little group of hens and move them toward me. When I opened the door, the little groups would go inside. That was good, but the problem was that another little group would wander out the door at the same time. I really don’t know how, but we did finally get all the hens inside and slammed the door. I think next year, I’m going to suggest to Tim that a nice pot of flowers would be a good birthday present.

Kitty Chaos

There is a misconception about peaceful country life. There may be peaceful conditions somewhere, but usually not here. Last week, chaotic was probably a better adjective to describe my household.
I don’t know if my animals are more neurotic than others or if other people are just too embarrassed to talk about it. The first real inkling I had was several years ago when one of the cats kidnapped my dog’s puppies. But that’s another story for another time. This time, it’s a case of kitnapping.
I have to go back a few weeks to the first litter of kittens, which were born quite un-eventfully to Patches, one of three calico cats who live part time in the house. She gave birth to five of the biggest kittens I’ve ever seen, one of which opened her eyes at 4 days old. All of them had their eyes open within a week. That was strange enough, but at least the kittens were pretty much staying put. Then, when they were about two weeks old, Dolly gave birth to a lone black and white kitten in the middle of my bed. Apparently she decided that was not the safest place for the baby so she moved the kitten in with Patches and her family. Patches didn’t mind; in fact, it worked out pretty well for everybody. The kittens especially enjoyed having two food sources and each cat could take a break without worrying about what was going on back at home. Sort of a mother’s day out program. It was good for Dolly’s solo baby to have other kittens to snuggle with and for about a week, peace reigned in the bedroom closet.
Did I mention how precocious Patches’s kittens are? Well, they decided to explore the rest of the house at about three weeks old and it just tore Dolly all to pieces. Her kitten stayed put, but she was pretty alarmed at all the coming and going with the other babies. If there were a Kitten Protective Services, Dolly would be the head of the agency. She just didn’t think it was safe for those babies to be out of the nest and spent a lot of time and energy bringing them back to the fold. It was sort of like trying to fill up a bucket with a hole in the bottom. The kittens were too big to carry, especially since Dolly only has three legs and is a smallish cat to begin with. So she would grab them around the neck and sort of drag them across the floor. They didn’t go quietly and when I was talking on the phone several times, the caller asked what on earth was wrong with those cats.
Just as Dolly was getting reconciled to the idea of the kittens leaving the nest, her own kitten started following along. I think at that point, she gave up the idea of keeping them under wraps, and everything would have been fine had not Buffy had her kittens, right there in the same nest as the older kittens.
Now, Buffy is a young cat and this is her first experience with motherhood. Dolly, as head of Kitten Protective Services, was immediately convinced that Buffy had no idea what she was doing, and she may have been right. She would hover over her and then look back at me as if to say, “I’m going to have to remove these kittens from the home.” Which is exactly what she tried to do. I found one in the kitchen cabinet, one in the dresser drawer and woke up in the middle of the night to find one in my bed. For a couple of nights, it was just like trying to sleep in the middle of a three ring circus, with kittens going everywhere and not quietly. But finally, things pretty much got back to normal, or as normal as it ever gets at my house. Buffy has figured out the motherhood thing and is taking care of her kittens, along with Dolly’s kitten. The other babies are eating on their own now, for the most part and beginning to go outdoors in the daytime. But they still go back to the nest in the closet and there they all are, three different groups, all curled around each other in peaceful harmony, at least for a little while. Anyone need a kitten?

There Are Never Enough Daffodils

Spring has exploded. It started out timidly, like a child sticking a toe in the water before diving in. There was just a haze of green over the trees, a few blooms on the southeast side of the house, a hint of warmth in the air. Then, suddenly, violets carpet the yard, spring peepers serenade the evening, and there is an extravagance of daffodils. The bluebells and trout lilies carpet the hillsides and the bloodroot unfurls its leaves in the shady woods. The birds work nonstop, courting and building nests, and there is the intoxicating scent of newly mown grass.
The full moon was last week, a moon bright enough to lure the adventurous outdoors to walk in its light. It, too, seems to enjoy the spring weather and only reluctantly hides its face long after sunrise.
Easter was a perfect spring day, starting with a glorious sunrise and ending with gentle breezes and a sky filled with stars. What more could you ask to celebrate the empty grave?
There are things I will miss about winter – long evenings beside a fire with a good book, lying under warm blankets listening to the wind whip around the eaves, snuggling with a dog on the couch while snowflakes swirl, and early morning walks in a glittering fairy land. But spring brings a freshness that is a renewal of life. It means open windows, and waking up in the mornings to fresh breezes and birdsong.
My mom and I have had a forty year love affair with the wildflowers that bloom along the footpaths and in the deep woods. I have my high school biology teacher, Fay Carothers, to thank for countless happy hours spent rambling and scrambling over every inch of our one hundred acres to find hidden pockets of beauty. It is a spring time tradition with us to view the bluebells that spill down the bluff and the trout lilies that cover the banks of the branch between us and the neighboring farm. One of my favorite memories is the year of the bloodroot, when the hillside appeared to be covered with snow.
If I were in charge, there would be more of spring. More daffodils, more spring breezes, more lilacs. Even now the daffodils are fading. There will be other good things to come. The dogwoods are just beginning to show their color and the tulips are nodding in the breezes. From my window I can see tiny green snowballs on my snowball bush. The rambling rose, which has been on this farm longer than I can remember, is putting out tiny buds. But the daffodils are my favorite – like the essence of sunshine, captured in a flower. I wish I could catch a moment in time and hold it back for a few more weeks. There are just never enough daffodils.

I Want to Live in Farmville!

I think I would like to live in Farmville. For those who don’t know, Farmville is an online Facebook game which allows you to build a farm, plow, plant and harvest crops, harvest from trees and animals, and own all kinds of cute buildings and decorations, expand, rearrange and share with your other friends who play the game. The farms are tidy and as far as I can tell, maintenance-free (other than harvesting your crops before they wither). Some of my friends give me strange looks when I talk about Farmville and some go so far as to ask me why on earth I want a farm on my computer when I have a farm in real life. My answer is simple. In Farmville, the fences are easy to put up and they don’t fall down.

Real farm life is great, but it is a series of fixing what’s broken, repairing what won’t run, searching for what you need to do the repairs, rescuing horses caught in the fence, rounding up horses who have escaped from the fence (usually at the most inconvenient times) and either mowing or wishing for rain so you have something to mow. And there are always fences to put up or fences to fix.

Last Saturday we had a community choir concert. I dressed up, put on my makeup and went to pick up my mom. I noticed a horse standing on what appeared to be the wrong side of the garden fence. Upon a closer look, three of her legs were on the wrong side of the fence but the fourth was between the top wire and the rest of the fence. So, here I am, already running a little late, in my good clothes and shoes and I have to get the horse out of the fence. Luckily, it was just a matter of lifting one hind leg up and holding the wire down, but I still had a horse on the wrong side of the fence and I was already late. Farmville has nice wooden fences that never break and the horses are so well behaved, they don’t even try to escape. My horses, on the other hand, are escape artists. They can find there way OUT of anywhere. But for some reason, they can’t figure out that they can get back in the same way they got out.

A few years ago, I decided that the old piece of a fence across the road had to go. A friend with a bulldozer pushed it away and filled in some ditches and did some other repair on the pasture. An electric fence seemed to be the solution to keep the horses inside and off the newly sown ground. It was very satisfying to see all those new posts and the wire with the little orange flags fluttering in the wind and to hear the “click, click, click” that meant the horses would not even try to escape. It lasted about an hour, until the entire herd came running across the pasture and went straight through the new electric fence. Their mission accomplished, they made a u-turn and ran back through what was left of the fence, trailing wire and orange flags in their wake. We don’t even have electric fences in Farmville, because those nice wood fences work so well.

Then there is the tractor. My tractor is a temperamental machine, given to sudden bouts of refusing to start or stopping with no warning in the middle of a job. The scenario goes like this. I walk down to the tool shed and climb into the seat. The tractor starts and I back it out, at which time it stops and refuses to start. Okay, it’s out of gas – good reason. But the gas is all the way back at my house, under the carport. So, I get off, go through the gate, close the gate, walk to my house to get the gas. Of course the gas can is not where I thought it was, and when I finally locate it, it is empty. So, I get in the truck, drive to town and buy gas. I drive the truck as far as the gate, carry the can to the tool shed and fill up the tank. After a few tries, the engine starts and off I go. Just as the tractor is halfway through the gate, it stops again. Now I have an open gate, a tractor that won’t start, and I’m already tired. Things like this just don’t happen in Farmville.

But then there are those moments of joy in finding unexpected treasures of wildflowers in the woods, or dipping my toes in the branch on a hot day. There is the miracle of a newborn foal struggling to his feet for the first time, or a hidden nest of baby kittens in the fragrant hay. And when I walk into the barn and run my hand over the huge logs hewn by other hands over 100 years ago, or when I put the tractor away and look at the freshly mown pasture, or when I have been gone a while and I turn down that shady lane that means home, it’s all worth it. You can’t get any of that from Farmville.

Fight! Fight!

Phoebe tried to break up a cat fight this morning. Being a young dog, she has less experience with cats than the other dogs and she thought, with the eternal optimism of youth, that she could do it. Now, it wasn’t a real fight, not yet, just that vocal preliminary to what might or might not turn into a full fledged cat fight. It was Ole Yeller, a battle scarred veteran, and the upstart Chubby, who probably outweighs his counterpart but doesn’t measure up in experience. When I came in the house, Phoebe was still trying to break up the quarrel and the combatants were hurling insults in a language I probably didn’t want to translate. My advice to her was to leave them to it if she didn’t want to end up the object of the fight herself.
We had a small dog fight in the house the other night. I was the inadvertent cause of it because I stepped on Tess’s tail. A collie tail takes up a lot of floor space. She yelped and I moved my foot and that would have been the end of it had Phoebe not walked by at that exact moment. To Tess, who doesn’t always have a good grasp of cause and effect, it was obvious that whatever happened with her tail must have been Phoebe’s fault and that she must learn not to do whatever it was she did again. Phoebe, of course, had no idea why she was being punished. It wasn’t the first time an innocent bystander bore the brunt of a situation between others and it won’t be the last.
I remember one day at my mom’s house, when one of my puppies was with me in her kitchen and one of her indoor cats apparantly took offense at something she said. She jumped on poor Maggie, who wasted no time fleeing the scene and finding refuge under the bed. But that didn’t end things because the other house cat who was somewhere in another room heard the beginning of the fight and flew into the kitchen where she jumped into the now non-existent fight and proceeded to beat the stuffing out of the cat who must have wondered how she ended up as the victim. Cats are like that. They don’t care who started the fight or why. A fight is a fight and takes on a life of its own. When I was growing up, I witnessed this phenomenon many times. Two cats in the backyard would come to blows over some perceived insult and cats would come from all over the farm to rumble. Never mind that only the original pair knew how it started and what it was about. Nothing can move as fast as a cat who hears a fight starting, and it didn’t matter where they were or what they were doing – it was mandatory that they participate. It was just amazing how fast the yard could fill up with angry cats.
I always wondered what they all thought when the fight was over and I wondered how they decided the winner. There never seemed to be hard feelings; everyone just walked away to lick their ruffled fur and take a nap. Too bad human fights don’t end as easily.

Around the Table

I saw part of an interview with Michelle Obama this week and my attention was caught by her explanation of their dinner table tradition of “roses and thorns.” Family members at the table sahare the best (rose) and worst (thorn) thing that happened to them that day. What a great idea for families. But maybe the better idea is the simple act of having a meal together around a table, a tradition I suspect is pretty rare today.
I grew up in a multi-generational household. My grandparents, parents, uncle and I lived under one roof of a big rambling farmhouse and every meal took place around a big oval table in a real dining room. We didn’t have anything as formal as a “roses and thorns” tradition, but we did have a tradition of conversation and discussion of everything from farm prices to what happened at school that day or the latest gossip from town. That’s where I learned, not so much which fork to use or how to correctly fold a napkin, but how to carry on a conversation. I probably learned how to argue a point there too, although I don’t remember much arguing going on.
Extended family was sometimes a part of that dinner table. When I was very young, great uncles, aunts, and cousins from West Memphis came every year for a week or so to visit. These were happy occasions, for the most part. (I do have one vivid memory of hiding under the bed once because I didn’t want to deal with a particularly unlikable great aunt!) But even the less beloved visitors probably taught me valuable lessons about being polite in mixed company. My great aunts and cousins from Nashville visited us pretty regularly, and my great grandmother Fannie Tate Colley was a frequent addition to the dinner table as long as she was alive. Those visits were a source of much merriment; laughter and good conversation was a family trait of the Colleys, and it was no wonder that one of those family members made her mark as country music’s great comedian, Minnie Pearl. To those of us around that table, she was just Ophelia and just as funny in that role as her alter ego. She was just one more talented storyteller in the midst of whole collection of storytellers.
And then there was the food. Hot biscuits and homemade butter every night. Fried chicken, roast beef, pork chops, vegetables from the garden, and desserts with a bowl of whipped cream to put on top. Milk fresh from the cow or sweet tea with lemon. Hog killing time provided tenderloin and fresh sausage and winter brought Granddaddy’s country ham baked by his own special method. We had a feast at every meal, and the only difference in “company dinner” was the quantity of the food and the number of leafs in the table.
Another great memory I have of the dinner table was silo filling time. The tradition on Lower Shipps Bend Road was for all the neighbors to get together to fill the trench silos that everyone had as part of their farm. The silage was cut, usually in August or early September, hauled to the silo where it was dumped inside, packed tightly and covered to ferment until it was needed to feed the livestock in the winter. The neighbors moved from farm to farm until every silo was full and dinner (which was the noon meal in the country) was the only pay anyone received. Hosting the silo filling was an event even bigger than Thanksgiving. The table groaned with platters of fried chicken and roast beef, green beans, mashed potatoes, potato salad, corn, peas, squash, okra, skillets of cornbread and a variety of pies to finish off the meal. I was always anxious about the date for the silo filling at our house because sometimes it came late enough that school interfered with my participation in the event. In good years, I was still at home and was able to partake of the bounty. On other years, I could depend on my mother and grandmother to save me my favorite piece of the chicken and at least a slice or two of chocolate pie.
Living alone, of course my mealtimes are very different now. But one of my favorite things to do is still to have dinner with a big group of friends around a table filled with conversation and lots of laughter. A big part of the fun of traveling to horse shows is sharing a meal after the show with my fellow horse people. Even lunch during the work week sometimes turns into a mini party as friends join us at the “big table” at Breeces or the Farmhouse. Breaking bread together is more than eating at the same table – it’s a fellowship. I can’t help but wonder about the generation of people who grow up without the memories of those times around the dinner table with family and friends. Somehow I just don’t think it will feel the same to look back on solitary meals in front of the television or in the back seat of the car or in front of the computer screen. I cannot remember any specific piece of knowledge I learned around that big table of my childhood, but somehow I know I learned a lot. And I’m glad I have those memories.

Loving the Snow

First of all, I love snow. I’m not one of the humbugs who groans and complains when snow is forecast. There’s just something magical about those first flakes and the way the world is transformed. I don’t even mind that I have to slog through the stuff to feed the animals or (much) that I have to break ice in the water tanks. But this snow is a different kind of snow and I guess I see now why people in other parts of the country don’t get as excited about it as I do!
Yesterday was kind of fun, walking through what for these parts would pass for a blizzard. The horses didn’t seem to mind it too much because they didn’t seem interested in staying in the barn. The dogs were pretty delighted to play in it. Phoebe, the youngest, had never seen snow like this and she kept sticking her nose in it and then coming up with a snow cone on her nose. She and Tess, the collie, had a great time playing tag. The other dogs, Kelsey and Trace, are older and more jaded and really preferred the comfort of the horse trailer. Phoebe was still having fun this morning. Her light weight allowed her to walk across the crust without even leaving a pawprint. Tess, being about forty pounds heavier, kept breaking through. She reached her limit in the driveway as we were coming back from the barn. She and Phoebe had started a game of tag when she skidded about three feet, all four legs went in all four directions and her nose went into a pile of crusty snow. She got up and I swear, she looked back to see if I noticed and went straight to the door. She is recovering nicely now, on the couch in front of the fire. I don’t know if I will be able to convince her to got outside again today.
I told Bullet, my horse, that this would be a good time to have a sleigh. He didn’t seem to think that was such a good idea, since he is the only horse on the farm that is broke to drive. I’ve never been on a sleigh ride. It looks like so much fun in the nostalgic pictures on the Christmas cards, but I suspect it is one of those things that would leave something to be desired in the reality.

So, I will spend the next couple of days sitting by the fire, watching the landscape, making soup, reading, working puzzles, and making periodic trips to fill the bird feeders, feed and water the animals and check on my mom, who lives next door. Maybe Tess will even share the couch with me for a nap!
I have been intending to start a blog for a while, ever since I started reading the one done by my friend Stacy Beam. I’ve been struggling to find a title for it that reflected what I want to do with these writings. I discarded some titles as sounding to pretentious for what are really just going to be mostly ramblings, but I didn’t want to use the word ramblings either. And I would like this to be like a conversation on the front porch. I heard someone the other day talk about the phrase “Sit a spell.” When you ask somebody to “sit a spell,” you are asking them to just stay a while and be sociable. Not a formal visit, not an extended stay, just an amount of time that maybe only Southerners can identify. Sort of like knowing how big a mess of beans is, or when you cross the line between carrying on and throwing a hissy fit. So, this is my first experiment in inviting my friends and would be friends to sit a spell and listen to my ramblings about my life in the country. Glad to have you and I hope you will come back soon!