Howdy again, y’all. Ben here, bringing you an update from the rolling hills of Northeast Missouri.
The weather is transitioning here, but I’m not ultimately sure towards what. Within a week we’ve had patchy frost of the sort that makes the sweet potato greens die back, and a few days that’ve been hot enough to send some of us for a mid-October pond dip.
I’ve seen geese headed both ways, and similarly, I’ve been caught somewhere half between my shorts and my coveralls. A strangely summery breeze blows through my open windows and creaking door tonight, the whine of windmills harmonizing with the far off tinnitus-like tone of soybeans being harvested.
Today I’ve gotten pelted by the first of many Asian lady beetles, which flee the path of the combine every year during harvest, taking shelter in between the pages of outhouse newspaper, in the crevices of stacked firewood, the window panes, and occasionally my food and/or facial orifices. In the past I’ve scooped up handfuls of the dull, ladybug-esque critters and attempted to feed them to the chickens. I gather that they were unimpressed with the flavor.
As the gusts of change whip through Dancing Rabbit, sending the honey locust and elm leaves a-fluttering, and the hedgeballs a-dropping, there is a noticeable change in the flora and fauna, even if it feels a bit like August instead of October. The deer pods seem not to venture too far from the draws and hollers except on the coolest nights, when they traipse along my mulberry planting, pausing to gently defoliate the few wiry limbs still clothed in leaf.
For the past six-or-so odd months I’ve been anxiously anticipating the acorn mast, with hopes of finishing our hogs underneath a nearby stand of pin oak, which produced a prodigious windfall of nuts last autumn. Unfortunately, they just don’t seem to be providing as much fodder as I’d wished.
Lucky us, we’ve got a few other tricks up our sleeves. Well, the pigs don’t have sleeves, as it hasn’t gotten cold enough yet. For one, there are a handful of other oaks on the land currently masting a decent nut crop, and my daughter has dutifully taken on the task of gathering these up for the piggies. There’s also the various sunchoke patches I’ve planted over the years, which provide both nutrition and entertainment when the hogs are turned out among them to root for their dinner. Then there’s turnips.
Now a lot of folks disparage the turnip, but they probably have too many other vegetable options. The pigs don’t particularly care for them in their whole form, but will gradually chow on them if they’ve been coarsely diced with a hatchet.
As an experiment, I’ve mixed turnip seed into our pasture mix, for both their feed value (human and animal) and their ability to break the soil loose. The result is that I can harvest turnips in almost any direction. This year I’ve sown turnips three times. In early spring and fall, folks seem more willing to eat them, rather than the summer crop, which had to compete with tastier vegetables.
Some things don’t seem to grow so well here in our eroded, terra cotta soils, at least not for me, but turnips do fine. They don’t even need much in the way of winter storage, cuz they taste about the same whether or not they’ve frozen and thawed a bunch of times. The greens are mighty fine too, except for when they’re not. The peelings can be made into some sort of wine, I’m told. A person can be frugal and hedonistic at the same time, I suppose.
Not only must we humans and swine adjust our diets for coarser, more bitter and pungent foods, but the ruminants seem to be less than satisfied with their food as well. The grasses, while still appearing ripe and green, are high in lignin, and the goats seem consistently convinced that the grass is greener elsewhere, which interrupts our grazing and fencing philosophy of keeping the candy inside the fence. Yet they shall have to remain on pasture, until we can create some hay storage and additional winter shelter for our ever-expanding herd.
Our great big sow, Esmerelda, is claiming at least a quarter of our tiny barn, and I see interspecies relations as possibly challenging this winter. That’s fine, because I need something to do this winter, and I don’t seem to enjoy puzzles or board games near as much as my neighbors. Nothing keeps a body warm like breaking up a disagreement between a pig and a donkey. Maybe somebody out there needs a couple few miniature dairy goats?
This year has felt long, and knowing that it might get up to ninety degrees today makes me feel like I’ll never reach that point where I get to hermit crab inside my house in front of a fire, reading seed catalogs and coming up with ways to burden myself with future projects. But the unseasonable heat does mean that I can continue plopping our growing baby Arthur in the sandbox. He’s got a high feed to gain ratio, I reckon.
There he is able to entertain himself while we go about the business of busy-ness, though I often struggle to make it very far from him without the support of friends and family, who are more often than not homeschooling at somebody else’s home, making money, or otherwise working for and supporting our larger community.
Arthur lets me shell the buckets and buckets of cowpeas for a few minutes before he decides to help, typically by knocking over said buckets and attempting to ingest them, hull and all. He’s been getting his oral fixation fix lately via watermelon. He’s put away pounds of the stuff. Hand diaper laundry is still a daily occurrence, and more often than not the bottom of the washtub is littered with little melon seeds. I reckon our compost may have a few volunteers come next year. Sadly, we have finally consumed the last of the watermelons, and he’s not so into turnips.
I frequently panic about now in regards to our winter preparedness, and while we’ve made some progress this year, we’re well behind on firewood processing, farm infrastructure, childproofing our humble homestead, and finishing our root cellar in preparation for all that food I wish we’d raised. It helps me to consider all of those living without the privilege of worrying about what seems to be the distant future, who do not choose to live a meager, day to day existence, but are nonetheless stuck there due to some form of injustice.
Child-rearing is a distraction for me, and while sometimes the responsibility of raising another little person compounds the sense of urgency I have around our physical survival, it is often a welcome distraction from the dark and doom of modern life. I suppose things will calm down, and I’ll eventually have time to reflect on the friends we’ve lost this year, the work undone, the goals unmet, and all the changes in the world I wish were or were not occurring. I haven’t even had the time to let electoral politics get under my skin, and while I’m generally in favor of civic responsibility, I find babies, pigs, and even turnips to be a better use of my concentration than this soap opera of a political season.
While I often end the day as soon as the animals and children are safely put away, totally exhausted, and sometimes fearful of the slow pace at which I am progressing through my physical necessities, I feel awful lucky to be living simply as I am. Maybe all these politicians would be better at their jobs if only they’d grow themselves a few turnips and mend their own clothes, instead of spending all their time creating turmoil between folks who’d be fine neighbors to each other most of the time, without all that nasty rhetoric. But what do I know? I’m just a feller with some responsibilities, and hard as it is for me to handle, voting is one of them.
Whoever ends up running the country, I hope they’re pro-turnip.
Reminder: we’d like to know! if you haven’t already, please consider sharing your opinion on future programs we might offer at Dancing Rabbit by taking our short 5-minute online survey – we’d really appreciate it!
Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an intentional community and nonprofit outside Rutledge, in northeast Missouri, focused on demonstrating sustainable living possibilities. Find out more about us by visiting our website, reading our blog, or emailing us.