Sabbath eve, August 17, 2012
Another work week, come and gone. Such is not to be taken for granted.
This week we baled iron and clay pea plants. To my delight, all our farm animals seem to like the resulting product. I am told the hay is high in protein and other nutrients and being a legume, the peas fix nitrogen into the soil. No one I know has planted peas for hay in these parts, but the practice was documented by farmers in the 1930’s and appears to have merit.
With the advent of cheap chemical fertilizers such practices became obsolete. The decline in availability and increases in the price of those substances have just begun and will progressively get worse. Or so I am led to believe.
The weather has been hot, but hot is to be expected in a Texas August. We’re a bit dry, but much better off than last year; apparently those states to our North are getting a taste of what we recently endured.
The consequences of this drought will be much greater, considering the affected region is the breadbasket of our nation.
We also planted three acres of peas for green harvest: an acre of black-eyed peas, an acre of purple hulls, and an acre of zipper creams. At some point we lost the battle when it came to keeping the peas harvested; a combination of heat, other work that needed to be done, (the kind that pays the bills), and one big ass rattle snake that avoided getting killed a couple of times after scaring shit out of a field hand saw to that. So this week we pulled whole plants, pods and all, allowed them to dry in piles, and gathered the piles to be thrashed by hand when time permits.
None of this makes sense from an economic standpoint, but these methods kept humans fed for centuries before being discarded in our recent history. I feel compelled to learn them and preserve the knowledge.
I’ve made it a practice for a few years now to keep a store of essential grains and dried beans on hand from one year to the next, both for planting and for feed. Most of this ends up fed to farm animals, but not until the next crop is harvested to take its place. There probably won’t be advance warning of a catastrophic event if and when it comes, other than that you are receiving right now as you read my words and those of others of a like mind.
Consider yourself warned.
I got stung by a scorpion for the third time this year. It’s been years since I was stung previously and those incidents also came in a group (four as I recall, and that’s not something easily forgotten). Most times I feel no side effects other than the intense pain at the site of the sting. However this last sting made my arm tingle all the way to the elbow and I also felt it in my tongue (I was stung on the finger).
We have an abundance of black widow spiders this year. Somehow I have managed to avoid learning what the sting of one of these bitches is like. I’ve seen what the bite of a brown recluse can and will do to human flesh, but I don’t know anyone that has been bitten by a black widow. I’d just as soon it stayed that way.
One of my Great Pyrenees dogs came up missing. Don’t know what happened but I’m relatively certain he’s dead. Brings me down to 8. Been thinking I need a male Anatolian to cross with my Pyres. (When exactly did I become white trash?)
Manuel’s out and about, but still not ready to resume work. Bullets play hell on a body.
This is a hard land in which I live.
But it’s home. And I it’s where I’m supposed to be.
Til the day I die.
Continued--Saturday morning.
We've rain in the forecast. Thanks to Martin and Lindemann Fertilzer from nearby Cost, Texas we have chicken shit and chemical fertilizer spread respectively on two hay fields. Hay for sale is still scarce in Texas, particularly in small squares; feed prices are prohibitively high and getting higher. I'm hoping to get in at least one more good cutting. A barn full of hay is my version of a bank account.
Cattle remain expensive but are well off from highs of six months ago. I suppose the droughts to our North have caused sell-offs, and then there's the cost of feed.
I still suffer horse mania--Gaff's offspring are hitting the tracks around the land and so far are performing well. Abraham takes care of my stock and fights the good fight with his own brand of mental and spiritual ills. I think Gaff has given him a reason. Abraham loves race horses.
Keith the hitchhiker came by for a spell, but can't seem to stay put, even when he has a place to stay. I've noticed a growing number of wanderers, reminiscent of depression era hoboes.
We've been watering pecan bottoms and remain hopeful there'll be a crop this year.
The garden is an afterthought, although I do have a nice patch of sweet potatoes and a start on fall tomatoes. We have peas tucked away in freezers, refridgerators and jars; the sweet corn was wonderful this year and that too has been put away.
Hogs, chickens, goats and cats make up the rest of the barnyard menagerie.
I still milk cows in the morning and Leah continues making cheese.
Despite the trials, life is good.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Hat tip to Rafael Correa
Full disclosure: I am not a leftist. Or a rightest. But I call things as I see them, and I respect Ecuador's president for standing up to western powers out on a witch hunt to bury Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks.
Make no mistake about it: the charges against Assange, while having some basis, nominally, I suspect, are being used to punish the man, to make an example for others that would do the same: Tell the truth, expose the lies and you will be eliminated.
Make no mistake about it: the charges against Assange, while having some basis, nominally, I suspect, are being used to punish the man, to make an example for others that would do the same: Tell the truth, expose the lies and you will be eliminated.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
The Devil's Right Hand
Yesterday I saw Manuel for the first time since he was shot. His face was grotesquely swollen, a huge scar extended from ear to ear where surgeons reconstructed his jaw. His mouth was partially wired shut. A plastic breathing tube stared at me from his neck. His eyes still smile. Somehow he is able to speak, nonetheless.
Manuel told me doctors removed a bullet from his jaw bone, another remains lodged in his collarbone and a third passed through his right forearm, breaking the bone in the process.
His account of the event differed remarkably from that of Jesus.
I still don't know what happened.
What I do know is that a very dear friend came close to losing his life and remains disfigured for no good reason.
Manuel told me doctors removed a bullet from his jaw bone, another remains lodged in his collarbone and a third passed through his right forearm, breaking the bone in the process.
His account of the event differed remarkably from that of Jesus.
I still don't know what happened.
What I do know is that a very dear friend came close to losing his life and remains disfigured for no good reason.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
La violencia llega
Demons ran wild at our farm last night. I sit, drained. Exhausted. It began, I suppose, when three young Mexican men arrived at our farm.
I was working, as usual on a Sunday, the first day of the week according to my calendar. I saw Manuel and Jesus and a few unknowns sitting around a picnic table behind the trailer they share as I drove by. Smoke rose from the grill; the umpah beat of Norteño music blared from speakers of an unfamiliar car.
Later, while in the garden transplanting tomato plants, Manuel approached me with a few young men, introduced as nephews from Houston. They wanted to buy a hog or a goat, kill it, and take the meat back to Houston.
I told them I was too busy. Because I was.
They left, disappointed, or so I thought.
Around 10 pm my dogs began to bark incessantly. Leah and I were watching television. I heard a frantic knock at my back door.
I opened the door. Jesus stood in a pair of jeans and socks, bathed in blood. There was a hole in his abdomen and one leg of his jeans was soaked. Blood on both arms, his torso. His face drained white. Sweating.
In Spanish he said, “They tried to kill me with a knife. I killed Manuel, but the rest of them are still over there and I have no more bullets.”
Manuel is a beloved friend of twenty years. A brother, of sorts.
“Do what?”
Jesus began showing me where he’d been stabbed.
“You killed Manuel?”
“Yes, but just Manuel. The rest are still over there. What should I do?”
“Stand right here. I’m going to call the cops.”
The next few hours I count among the most difficult I have faced in this life.
It took about fifteen minutes for the cops to arrive but I couldn’t go to my friend’s aid, (or dead body, if what Jesus had said was correct), for fear of getting caught in the fray.
Being a convicted felon I’d be the only guy in a gun fight without a gun. I suppose I could have wielded a garden hoe or some such…
But I am not made of such stuff.
The rest is a blur of cops, ambulances, well-meaning volunteer firemen and rescue workers, and finally the helicopter that flew away with Manuel’s body.
I did not learn until midmorning today that Manuel survived his wounds, despite being shot in the face from point blank range with a .38.
Will violence jump the Mexican border?
It already has in my back yard.
I was working, as usual on a Sunday, the first day of the week according to my calendar. I saw Manuel and Jesus and a few unknowns sitting around a picnic table behind the trailer they share as I drove by. Smoke rose from the grill; the umpah beat of Norteño music blared from speakers of an unfamiliar car.
Later, while in the garden transplanting tomato plants, Manuel approached me with a few young men, introduced as nephews from Houston. They wanted to buy a hog or a goat, kill it, and take the meat back to Houston.
I told them I was too busy. Because I was.
They left, disappointed, or so I thought.
Around 10 pm my dogs began to bark incessantly. Leah and I were watching television. I heard a frantic knock at my back door.
I opened the door. Jesus stood in a pair of jeans and socks, bathed in blood. There was a hole in his abdomen and one leg of his jeans was soaked. Blood on both arms, his torso. His face drained white. Sweating.
In Spanish he said, “They tried to kill me with a knife. I killed Manuel, but the rest of them are still over there and I have no more bullets.”
Manuel is a beloved friend of twenty years. A brother, of sorts.
“Do what?”
Jesus began showing me where he’d been stabbed.
“You killed Manuel?”
“Yes, but just Manuel. The rest are still over there. What should I do?”
“Stand right here. I’m going to call the cops.”
The next few hours I count among the most difficult I have faced in this life.
It took about fifteen minutes for the cops to arrive but I couldn’t go to my friend’s aid, (or dead body, if what Jesus had said was correct), for fear of getting caught in the fray.
Being a convicted felon I’d be the only guy in a gun fight without a gun. I suppose I could have wielded a garden hoe or some such…
But I am not made of such stuff.
The rest is a blur of cops, ambulances, well-meaning volunteer firemen and rescue workers, and finally the helicopter that flew away with Manuel’s body.
I did not learn until midmorning today that Manuel survived his wounds, despite being shot in the face from point blank range with a .38.
Will violence jump the Mexican border?
It already has in my back yard.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Gaff--horsin around
Day before yesterday I finally figured out how to access progeny reports on Gaff, our recently acquired Thoroughbred stallion. I also signed up for an alert system (Equineline) that notifies stallion owners any time offspring of a stallion work out at a track, enter a race, or run in a race.
Yesterday, Gaff had his first winner, a two year old filly in Puerto Rico of all places. Nilsa M. She finished 5 1/2 lengths ahead of the second place horse and over ten lengths better than the third place finisher in her first start.
I also discovered eleven of his progeny sold in two-year-old in-training sales. They fetched an average of $15, 563 with a median price of $10,000.
I had nothing to do with any of this, but I can't help but be excited.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Yesterday, Gaff had his first winner, a two year old filly in Puerto Rico of all places. Nilsa M. She finished 5 1/2 lengths ahead of the second place horse and over ten lengths better than the third place finisher in her first start.
I also discovered eleven of his progeny sold in two-year-old in-training sales. They fetched an average of $15, 563 with a median price of $10,000.
I had nothing to do with any of this, but I can't help but be excited.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Peak oil, fact or fiction?
George Monbiot recently penned an article titled, We Were Wrong on Peak Oil.
Peak oil pundits around the world convulse in their seats as they read these words.
By my definition, Monbiot is right. Average daily production reached the highest levels ever and continues to grow. Meaning we haven't reached peak oil.
What people fail to understand is that shale oil, the main contributor to new US domestic production, is costly to produce, both in terms of energy invested over energy returned, and also in terms of money.
They also don't understand that the vast majority of oil produced by a man-made fractured shale well comes in the first year, with precipitious drops in production thereafter.
Meaning that continued production requires a continued frenzy of drilling, fracking, hauling, etc.
The day this frenzied activity stops, you can set your timer. One year thereafter, this new supply will have, for all practical purposes, disappeared.
The rise in production continues, unabated.
The cliff at the end of this rise in production steepens.
Peak oil pundits around the world convulse in their seats as they read these words.
By my definition, Monbiot is right. Average daily production reached the highest levels ever and continues to grow. Meaning we haven't reached peak oil.
What people fail to understand is that shale oil, the main contributor to new US domestic production, is costly to produce, both in terms of energy invested over energy returned, and also in terms of money.
They also don't understand that the vast majority of oil produced by a man-made fractured shale well comes in the first year, with precipitious drops in production thereafter.
Meaning that continued production requires a continued frenzy of drilling, fracking, hauling, etc.
The day this frenzied activity stops, you can set your timer. One year thereafter, this new supply will have, for all practical purposes, disappeared.
The rise in production continues, unabated.
The cliff at the end of this rise in production steepens.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
