This 'n That

Pickin' Nuts and Christmas

2011-12-07T07:41:00.001-08:00

"There's not enough room in the pickup to put all of these pecans!!" says Dad. Dad, the bags can be stacked on top of each other - we can indeed fit them all in. Oh, he says. "But they're wet! They need to dry some!" Yep, but Dad, they're in "onion" sacks - lots of air flow. They'll be fine. Oh, OK, he says.

Dad was worried because Saturday was another official harvesting day. We'd got another 400-500 lbs. off of 8 trees. Sunday was processing (cracking, shelling, picking) because of rain. Again. (Second Sunday in a row, dang it.)

As usual, I woke up Sunday so stiff & sore I could hardly move, but it's getting better. Or it was - now it's going to get worse because we have something like 900 lbs. of pecans to get ready for market.

See, I'm the official "picker". (Jeff and Dad help, too, but I'm the one who is spending hours at it.) That means I scoop a few handsful of shelled nuts onto a tray in my lap. I then carefully examine every single one to make sure it's perfect (or close to perfect). Pecans get something called "black spot" - which leaves, well, a black spot on the nuts. It doesn't hurt them or change the flavor or hurt people who eat them, but they're ugly. They scare people, so we make sure there aren't any in the bags for sale.

If possible, I break off the part with the black spot and put the resulting good pieces in one pile. The perfect nuts go into a baggie. The bad nuts (the ones with too many black spots, or the ones that are just plain old ugly) and any shell pieces go into a bucket to be disposed of. When I have a pound of perfect nuts, the baggie gets zipped up and tossed into a box. When I have a pound of bits & pieces, ditto.

As you can guess, this takes hours and hours to do. The whole time I'm sitting on my butt, listening to the TV (I'm getting rather fond of Judge Judy). Or music. No exercise - and that's a whole 'nother kind of stiff & sore!

Anyway, the decision to actually seal the newly-picked bags of nuts wasn't made quickly or easily. Dad had been reading again. He was very concerned about the moisture content of the nuts. Although we had hashed out what was an appropriate content for selling at market versus freezing them later, the topic had to be revisited. Dad had had a revelation.

See, the higher the moisture content the more the nut weighs so it takes fewer nuts to make up a pound. (Did you follow that??) That's a good thing. So yesterday Dad had to come over and check the moisture content of the nuts we sealed up 10 days ago. Yep, they're losing moisture even though they're in sealed baggies. That's a mystery - the bags still weigh a pound, and there's no visible moisture in the bags...

THEN, he made me count how many nuts were in the "old" pound, versus how many nuts are in the pounds I'd just been processing - the ones we harvested last weekend.

Amazingly (not), there was very little difference because the nuts were only about 1% different in moisture content.

Meanwhile, I'm not picking pecans. I'm jawin' with Dad. No work is getting done except that Doug was processing the shelled ones, bringing me buckets to pick through.

Grrrr. Can you see the steam coming out of my ears yet?

Dad finally took his hygrometer (the thing that measures moisture content) and went to go run the cracker.

But not until after we'd had another conversation about selling. See, after we found out that Memphis has a huge flea market the third weekend of every month, and the third weekend in December is the one before Christmas, and we have all these nuts, we decided to try to get a booth down there. I called last Friday and the lady told me to call back Monday 'cuz the vendors get to reserve a spot for the next weekend if they want. (The flea market bounces back & forth between Little Rock, Arkansas, and Memphis.)

I forgot to call her Monday. Oops. I called her yesterday and hooray! She had a couple of spots left so we got one.

Oh, not-hooray!. That means we've got to take ALL of the nuts we've harvested, 'cuz it's a two-day flea market and hopefully we'll be able to sell everything we've got.

Guess who's now sitting on her butt all day every day? I picked for 10 hours straight yesterday. And I'll be doing that every day until all the nuts are done. Hopefully before the flea market.

I'm cross-eyed. By the end of this harvest I won't want to see a naked pecan ever again.

And the worst part is, there's no time to decorate the house & yard for Christmas. Yep, I'm one of THOSE people - can't have enough Christmas decorations. We were going to put the bucket truck (not the bucket tractor) in the front yard, stick a plastic Santa in the bucket and raise it high. During the day people would see the Santa; at night the scene would be transformed into a giant Christmas tree with a star by running strings of lights from the bucket to the ground.

Maybe next year. Oh, and of course today it snowed. It's so cold I had to put my mini horse in the barn (he ain't happy). But it sure is pretty...

And yep, these are our bikes. THEY look prettier without snow!

Black Friday Wasn't Black At All

2011-11-26T05:23:00.001-08:00

This post is late - I'm sorry. I wrote it the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but didn't have any pictures to put with it. I was hoping to get some but we were sooo busy!

I got out of bed this Saturday morning and my feet said "Now, Lisa, you know we weren't built to carry 400 pounds!"

Then my back said, "Lisa, you weren't meant to work like a pair of mules for 10 hours straight!" My legs said, "Lisa, you are most definitely not a marathon runner!" My arms said "You are not a weight lifter!" and...you get the idea, I'm sure. I'm sore in places I didn't think I even had muscles.

I had a long conversation with the rest of my muscles and joints. I finally convinced them to do their jobs. See, we harvested pecans again yesterday. We had to cram in a lot of work because it's supposed to rain the rest of the weekend, and for once the local meteorologist got it right. It's clouding up right now. Thank heavens. I couldn't take another day like yesterday - I'd be stove up solid like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz.

I didn't have it as bad as the guys, though. They had to constantly lift/drag/push/pull 100 lb. sacks of pecans and stuff. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As you can tell from previous posts, our entire focus in life right now is harvesting pecans. I'm to the point of dreaming about it at night. Jeff keeps wanting to take time off from his day job to get it done. My Dad keeps dashing around buying stuff he thinks will help. (Some does, some doesn't. Thank heavens the shopping channels and infomercials don't have things considered useful for nut growers!) Doug is an accommodating, happy-go-lucky guy who works when we want him to and doesn't worry about it the rest of the time.

All week we'd been gearing up for a whole weekend of "official" nut-picking. Official means we bring out the heavy equipment. (Hand-picking with the rollie thingies goes on all the time.) We discussed the upcoming weekend's strategy on Monday; on Tuesday; and on Wednesday. Jeff would have four days off - we could get a LOT of nuts harvested! I don't talk much about Jeff in these posts but he's an absolutely essential part of this farming thing. He's the youngest, the strongest, and the smartest of us all. (And he's my soulmate.)

All week Doug, Dad and I had got out with the rollie thingies at various times and picked up nuts. We'd had rain last weekend and Dad had discovered an article on the internet by a member of the Alabama Pecan Growers Association (we're not in 'bama, but close enough). It talks about how pecans mold if left on wet ground. I'm a bit suspicious of that because if it were true there wouldn't be little pecan tree saplings everywhere, but OK.

We'd picked up a bunch of 5-gallon buckets of wet pecans. Now, how were we going to dry them? (Dad had ordered a hygrometer, which is a little machine you put things into that measures the percentage of moisture in whatever you've put in it. Pecans for storage need to be at around 4%. I know, you probably don't care about that.) Anyway, we don't have a commercial nut dryer. Putting them in the clothes dryer was out of the question - it gets too hot (yes, we actually considered it). Ditto oven-drying. Hmmm.

So Dad came up with the idea of just spreading them out on the front porch of the big house. Surely the sun would come out, and since there's a bit of breeze they'd dry OK anyway. I was very unhappy with this method because about a thousand squirrels live in the eaves of the big house, and I pictured those pecans as a smorgasbord just laid out for the tree rats. (Turns out they stayed out of them because my cats and Dad's dog kept lurking about.) Anyway, the nuts dried but it took a couple of days.

One of the most-discussed topics this last week was "Where are we going to store all of the nuts so the mice and so forth don't get into them?" (Notice "where", not "how"...) Well, we could put them in the metal-clad room in the barn that used to be where we stored cattle/horse feed? Nope - pesticides have been stored in there (phew!), plus the metal's rusted away in places. What about the big freezer that doesn't work? Nope, not big enough, though it's a good backup. The garage? Nope, not rodent-proof. Aha! The back of Dad's pickup - it has a canopy and he's done it before and never had mice get in. Problem solved. (Remember that...)

We all took Thanksgiving off except for thinking about harvesting and one (long as usual) discussion with Dad about what our first tasks would be on Friday and what time we would all get started.

See, Dad's one of those abnormal people who habitually gets up around 4 a.m. He's never been a full-time farmer, so I don't know why that is. And the worst part is he thinks everybody should get up at 4 a.m. just like he does. He wanted us to get an "early start", which meant get up at oh-dark-thirty. That way we'd all be working when the sun comes up. I have never, ever been a morning person (Dad knows this) and never shall be (Dad keeps trying to change this), and Jeff can't really function until he's been up at least an hour, but we told him we'd get out as early as we could. (It turned out to be around 8 a.m., which is very early for us.)

My first task yesterday was to shovel the now-dry pecans on the front porch into buckets so they could be run through the cleaner when we fired it up later.

And we hadn't been happy with the performance of the harvester two weeks ago; it was sweeping up basically everything that didn't have deep roots. So Jeff's first task was to adjust the height a bit higher. He'd read about it in the literature Dad downloaded off the internet (if there's a manual for the harvester, Dad doesn't know where it is).

Dad's first task was to talk to us about our first tasks (again).

Doug's first task was, apparently, to sleep in because he'd inadvertently been left out of the decision to get a very early start on yesterday's harvesting. Doug's a lucky guy.

Adjusting the harvester apparently required a screwdriver. I'm certain there are dozens of screwdrivers on this farm, but it took a little time to locate one. Then Dad (who hadn't read the literature recently) had to instruct Jeff how to adjust the height. My husband is a polite man, but he's a grumpy bear first thing in the morning, especially when he hasn't had a pot of coffee yet. He didn't snap at my Dad, I don't think, (remember, I was on the front porch shoveling pecans) but when I showed up his face was red and I swear I saw a bit of steam coming out of his ears.

When I finished shoveling pecans into buckets I went around to the harvester where Jeff was still trying to adjust it. (That's when I noticed the steam coming out of his ears.) Dad and I talked about how and where we should get started (again). He told me the first thing I should do is get the pecans off the porch (again). To which I responded, "Oh, I'm done with that." Oh, Dad says.

Then followed a discussion about whether or not the ground was dry enough to run the mechanical harvester over it. We're standing in the driveway, not the orchard, so it was sort of pointless except we agreed that the harvester shouldn't be run over wet ground. (Again. And I'd read the literature, too.). As usual, I was rarin' to go and the standing around talking things to death got to me - I snapped at Dad. I told him this is all well and good, yes, we all need to be on the same page, but none of the work is getting done while we're standing here talking about doing it. Ouch. I had to apologize - I was rude.

About this time we started talking about what we were going to put all the harvested nuts into. (That's the "how" part of storing the nuts.) In all the week's jawin' we hadn't got to that very important part. We had burlap sacks and we had actual red mesh pecan bags (think the plastic ones onions come in) "somewhere in the barn". Oh, goody - wonder how old those are?

Dad wanted to save the burlap sacks for the cleaned pecans; my point was - what are we going to put the dirty ones into?? Jeff disappeared, and came back with a bundle of fifty of the red plastic ones. They actually even said "Pecans" on them! So we compromised - we'd use some of the burlaps for dirty ones, some for clean ones, and the red ones for cleaned and/or finished nuts.

Meanwhile, Dad had to clean out the back of the farm pickup so we could put the bags in there. Oh-my-gawd. It was full to the top of the bed sides with stuff, including an ancient hand-seeder with an iron wheel and big wooden handles that Dad had bought as a yard ornament. We had to discuss where that was going to be stored until it could be put on display. (It will have to be anchored because somebody will steal it.) And I was rude again - Dad is notorious for just putting things any-old-where, so I said, "OK, you're going to actually organize this stuff, right? Not just dump it in a pile somewhere?" Ouch again. But Dad took it in good grace (I think).

Jeff and I went to get the rest of the red bags. Of course quite a few were ruined because they'd been there for who-knows-how-long, but most were good. We got sidetracked; they were stacked behind piles of absolutely fascinating junk. Some of it was stuff we'd heard Dad say, "I've got one of those around here somewhere but I can't lay my hands on it right now." Some were things we don't know whose they were (like the big aluminum kettle thing with a bail - ??) Some was trash (including a huge cardboard box that looked like someone had been living in it), so we ended up bringing out not only the red bags but a pickup bed full of garbage. Not on the day's agenda, but every little bit of work counts.

Dad hadn't got 1/4 of his truck cleaned out when we got back.

About that time Dad wanted to revisit the whole "Is the ground dry enough for the harvester?" question. So we went to the orchard. And looked at the ground. And kicked around in the leaves. And picked up a few nuts to see how wet they were. Dad decided we'd "try it and see how it does." (That's one of Dad's favorite phrases. I like it because he's open-minded. Sometimes.)

Then we walked around some more to decide how many and which trees to harvest. I was all for doing 10 or 15 of them, but because of the rain coming in we settled on 7. After much arguing about which trees had the most nuts and were, therefore, worthwhile to shake. (I did the arguing. I'm kinda hard-headed.) In the middle of it Jeff got disgusted and went to check on Doug. By this time Doug should have shown up because of the motor noises, it's just his habit, but he hadn't. (He slept in...)

Dad and I then got into another argument. This time he was doing the arguing. He said the trees further down in the orchard didn't have any nuts. I said they did. Dad wanted to go get his binoculars so he could look; I said there's no need, I can see the darned things though yes, there were a few that appeared to be bare. Another conversation that had absolutely nothing to do with that we were trying to accomplish that day, so we tabled it.

My second task, once the area to be harvested was settled on, was to take Trusty Rusty and the cart, and go pick up branches from the area we were going to harvest. Pecan trees are very messy; they drop more pieces of themselves than they do nuts. So Dad was going to "blow" the area with the mower. He sets the blades too high to cut but low enough to blow leaves and such into piles, so the harvester picks up less junk. We got started. Finally.

When that part was done and Dad went off to get Big Daddy and the tree shaker, I decided to pick up branches a little further into the orchard than we planned to work. I stopped and looked up at one of those bare trees. Yep, Dad was right - there were hardly any nuts up there at all. Then I looked down. Ye Gods! There weren't any nuts on the tree because they were on the ground under the tree. I couldn't take another step without crunching pecans underfoot!

Of course I had to run ask Dad if we could harvest those trees too. The ground under those trees hadn't been finish-mowed, so the grass was pretty tall. Dad said no. I said damn. That's OK, I know where I'm going to pick up nuts with the rollie thingie this coming week!

Dad went back to shaking trees. I went to get supplies (burlap bags, the can of ethanol-free gas, which won't gunk up our old motors, a toolkit. And some Cokes.) Somewhere the wires got crossed, because a couple of trees got shaken that had already been done once. (This is what happens when the boss turns her back, even for a minute!)

And about the time Dad finished shaking the first couple of trees, Nancy and her husband showed up to pick up nuts on the thirds. (They're special family friends; nobody else is being allowed to pick up as of yet.) So Dad finished shaking trees and went to talk. They chatted a while, and I went to (successfully - I thought) prod Dad into going back to cleaning out his pickup. Jeff started running the harvester, and all went well. For about twenty minutes.

Then the motor on the harvester quit. And wouldn't start. Then it started, ran for a couple minutes and quit again. Then it started and ran rough, and quit again. (Remember, Lisa - you can't get there from here...)

Jeff, who doesn't have much patience for that sort of thing, was cussin' and stomping around. Doug was helping (mechanickin', not cussin' and stomping around). Since I realize (ok, I lied - I've been told) that my mechanical abilities are limited to annoying the mechanic with dumb questions like "Does it have gas?", I stayed out of the harvester motor issue other than to make sure nobody gave up. While they each took turns watching the others work on the motor and providing helpful hints which were received with varying quantities of good grace: "Yeah, I know!" or "I already checked that!".

About this time I took off to get Dad, who'd had a visitor pull in and was jawin' with the guy even though he doesn't like him and was busy cleaning out his pickup. I was hoping to get the visitor to leave, then point Dad back towards the truck, not the harvester motor. The harvester would just be my excuse to interrupt and get rid of the guy. No luck. The guy knows all about engines, so he had to come help. Now we've got our usual Farm Confab - all work halted, four of us standing around while Jeff worked on the motor. Offering helpful input like "Does it have gas?". That didn't come from me, no sir - I was assisting by handing Jeff tools like a scrub nurse. He'd bark "10 mm!" and I'd hand him the socket.

Sometime in here I pointed out to Dad that he really ought to finish cleaning out his pickup. I don't think he could make himself leave; all of the repair talk was too exciting. I couldn't leave because they'd all get to jawin' and work would stop. Can you see the steam coming out of my ears yet?

Long story short, the harvester motor was repaired and put back in service. It had been set at the right height and Jeff was doing circles under the trees, grumpily trying to work around Bill and Nancy who have the uncanny ability of knowing exactly when we're going to shake trees so they always show up to pick up nuts within ten minutes of the first shaking. Hmm, wonder if they're being tipped off? I heartlessly told Jeff to just drive, that they'd get out of the way. (Bill and Nancy are in their seventies I think.) Dad disappeared, to clean out his pickup (or so I thought). Everything was ticking along. Doug was rolling up any nuts the harvester missed so I was kind of at a loss.

Then I remembered that Dad had been wanting us to pick up the cultured walnuts from the 4 trees in the front yard. So, casting a guilty glance over my shoulder to see if anybody was watching, I snuck off with a bucket to pick them up. These aren't those pretty, reasonably-soft-shelled walnuts you get whole and have a nice time cracking and eating during the holidays. These are crossed with black walnuts, which you have to take a hammer and a chisel to, to get to the meats.

Now, if you've never harvested walnuts, you probably don't know that the husk of the walnut (that's the soft outer shell) was used during colonial days to dye clothing, well, walnut brown. It's a beautiful color, but it's permanent. I had gloves on so I thought, "I'm safe. No black hands for me!". Unh-unh. The hulls were all squishy so I was squeezing the nuts out, leaving my gloves coated with pitch-black walnut sludge. One of my gloves, unbeknownst to me, had blown out. When I got done I had one brown hand (including under my fingernails), and one regular hand. Oh, well. It'll wear off. By next summer.

Things went well for quite a while (several hours, actually); we had a system. We also had our nut cleaner back from the guy we'd loaned it to (he finally found one for sale and bought it). The sack on the harvester filled up, it was taken off and dumped into the cleaner hopper, and everybody but the harvester driver picked debris out of the nuts that the cleaner missed. Until the cleaner motor wouldn't start. Oh, fer Pete's sake! Dad must've heard the silence because he showed up in his (not-yet-empty) pickup.

While Jeff and the others had another stand-around trying to fix the thing, in the interests of getting work done I got on the harvester. First time I'd driven the mower (a big orange thing that tows the harvester). Dad must've not been feeling well because he just pointed me towards it instead of giving me the usual instructions. And about this time Nancy had showed back up with a piece of homemade coconut cake for me. What a sweetheart! She appeared to be fascinated with the cleaning process because she hung around for quite a while, jawin' and helping pick out debris. (Doug told me later that her husband was watching the football game and she's not into football, so she probably just came back because she was bored.)

I only ran the harvester out of gas once. But I kept forgetting to stop by the cleaner and have the full bag removed and replaced, so a couple of times I had to go back over the same ground because the harvester just picked the pecans up and dropped them right back on the ground when the sack was full.. Hey - at least the pecans were all in a neat row, stacked and ready to be picked up!

We got a lot of pecans harvested, considering it was another Keystone Cops day. I'm guessing 600 pounds or so. We sold some pecans this last week and we have pending orders from local candy makers and nut roasters. Nancy has been spreading the word far and wide.

The weather ain't lookin' too good, though. Rain for the next three days and Dad says maybe even snow for Tuesday night. It won't hurt the pecans much, but it won't let us harvest, either. Darn. Guess I'll have to spend more time at my day job...

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go: Flea Market!

2011-11-21T06:37:00.001-08:00

OK, maybe this weekend wasn't the best to take pecans to the flea market. It was the one weekend a month Memphis has their huge flea market. We didn't decide to start selling in time to get a booth there. But we figured maybe the country folk would want pecans for Thanksgiving pecan pies (wish mine were as pretty as the one in the pic), so we rented a booth at a year-round, rinky-dink little market on a major highway out in the boonies. We've been by there on the weekends and usually the place is packed. We figured we would be far enough away from the Memphis market. (Turns out we weren't, but so what? This was a test run anyway.)

Although the idea had been kicked around for a couple of days, the decision wasn't made to actually go until Wednesday evening. Only two days before the sale. (I tried not to panic.)

But, as with everything here on the farm the decision to go to market wasn't reached quickly or easily. No, we had to have several Famous Farm Confabs about it. Anytime one of us had a new comment or idea, we'd call a meeting to discuss it. Which kind of booth - covered, with tables; uncovered, with tables; a bare piece of ground? (Covered, with tables. $20/day.) What quantity and stages of nuts should we take? (As many as we can - cracked and finished.) How much are we going to sell them for? (Finished go for $7.38 for 10 oz. at Walmart. And they're old - anywhere from 3-5 years in storage. And they taste like crap. Our finished halves are priced at $7.00 for 16-18 oz., bits & pieces at $6, cracked at $5, and whole in the shell for $4. We'd market them as pesticide-free, 2011 crop, heirloom trees "Stuart" variety, planted in 1960.)

Speaking of confabs, Dad panicked on Friday - he'd just realized we needed change. (I'm way ahead of you, Dad. Jeff and I are old hands at this selling stuff. We've been to numerous craft shows.) I told him Jeff was going to get the change when he got off work. "Oh, goodness, what if he has to work late?" Dad - I have my car, I can run to the bank, no problem. "Oh, good!" Then, "How are we going to handle the money??" Dad, I have a cash box. I carry part of the bank in an apron pocket to make change. The cash box stays hidden and locked up in the truck. "Oh, OK. But what if somebody wants a receipt??" Dad, I have a receipt book too. "Oh...um, OK." (I think at that point he kinda gave up on micro-managing, since we seemed to have the business aspect under control.)

On Thursday we took inventory. Oh, no! We had almost no clean halves to sell. Let the mad scramble begin.

Pecans have to go through several steps to get to the pretty halves stage. There's cleaning up under the trees; shaking the trees; harvesting the fallen nuts (aka "picking up") which can be done with a mechanical harvester that leaves the nutshells REALLY dirty and picks up everything under the trees, or picking up by hand, which takes forever but allows us to skip using the cleaner because we're only picking up good nuts. See my previous farming posts).

Then comes running them through four different pieces of equipment: the cleaner, which does an excellent job at, well, cleaning - it gets rid of leaves, branches, "pops" (which are empty or very light pecans), dust and debris. We had two or three huge burlap sacks and 8 or 10 5-gallon buckets of whole nuts that were already clean either because they'd been run through the cleaner or picked up by hand. We decided not to worry about the 1-1/2 burlap sacks that need to be driven up to where our cleaner is temporarily out on loan. We decided we had enough nuts to sell. Check.

The whole nuts for selling had to go through the cracker, which is under a lean-to in the barnyard. I *love* this machine. The nuts go into a hopper on top and Ka-POW, pause, Ka-POW, pause...one nut at a time gets whacked on both ends without crushing the nut. (Like I said, it's magic - the nuts vary in size and I don't know how that machine can tell.) The nuts then fall into whatever container you've stuck under the machine. This one takes a while to process the nuts. Somebody has to stand there and watch to make sure nothing goes wrong 'cuz sometimes a nut will get stuck. The guys love this one - other than toting the nuts to and from the machine, there's very little work involved. Dad and Doug started on the cleaned nuts on Thursday. Remember, hubby Jeff has a day job.

Then there's the sheller. See the hopper on top? The squared-off-cone thingie, not the round thing. I'm not sure exactly how the sheller works - that's all guy stuff. The sheller magically removes almost all of the shell from the cracked nuts. All I really know about it is you dump the nuts into the hopper, and there's a special stick (I think it's a pecan branch) that you have to use to stir the nuts to keep them going through one at a time. Yep, one at a time - just like the cracker. Takes a while. The guys love this one too - other than poking the nuts with a stick (which to a guy is a fun thing to do), they get to stand there and watch. I haven't figured out yet why it takes two people to stand there and watch, but that seems to be the Southern way. Dad and Doug got a lot of nuts through the sheller on Thursday and Friday.

It and the picker table (oh, and a sorting machine that hasn't been used in about 10 years but should "fire right up!" Yeah, OK, Dad...) are in the barn. In what was a really filthy room - layers of dust, the room stank of farm chemicals stored in one corner, you don't want to know about the rest of the stuff that was in there. Blech. It had taken Jeff and Doug a whole day to clean up that room and sanitize the machines. After discussing it with me because apparently I'm the Queen Bee of Cleaning. (Not - my answer was "bleach-water everything!")

I guess you've figured out by now that my 86-year-old father hasn't done any selling for years. When he has a good crop, people come out of the woodwork and pick up on the halves. (Half for them, half for Dad.) Dad's huge commercial freezers are full of nuts from two years ago. And he gives away most of his share, or they sit in the freezer too long (over 2 years) and he throws them away. Waste, waste...

Finally, the nuts had to be picked. (Are you confused yet? "Picked up" is different from "picked".) On Thursday, Dad and Doug had run a bunch through the mechanical picker. Jeff and I spent 4 hours that night hand-picking finished pecan halves and bits & pieces out of the picked nuts. We got 19 lbs. of halves and pieces. Remember those numbers: 8 man-hours for 19 lbs...

It was now Friday afternoon and the remaining nuts had been cracked, but not picked. Jeff had to work late, Doug was having some health problems, and Dad just works too slowly. Jeff and I made the command decision to just bag up the cracked nuts and call it good. It took us about 6 hours to bag up 63 pounds of cracked nuts. Dad was horrified that we were sorting out the bits of shell and only bagging the cracked nuts. Apparently the way it's usually done is they're scooped out of a huge bag or bin and weighed - shell pieces and all. Well, that's not good enough for Lancaster Pecan Farm. (Yep, he's decided to change the farm name.) We want to give our customers the highest value for their money.

Saturday dawned sunny but cold and windy. We went to market. I'll bet you guessed that after all our hard work the flea market sales sucked. We sold $101.00 worth of pecans, but we found out something really valuable - people don't want to buy cracked nuts. Of course they want the finished halves or bits & pieces. We sold out of bits & pieces, and 9 pounds of finished halves, plus 5 pounds of cracked nuts. That's it. (sigh)

The stuff on the left table is bath salts and other homemade things we brought to sell.

And I spent 'way more than our share of the sales at the flea market, but that's OK - I got a great Christmas gift for our triplet nieces who are turning 1 year old just before Christmas. (I won't say what it is because I think their Mom reads this blog.) And some pipe insulating wrap 'way cheaper than in the store. And a pretty beaded necklace w/earrings for $1. And we bought lunch. And I found some reference books I couldn't live without - how to run electrical wiring, basic woodworking, etc. And some more hot rocks for our hot rock kit. If you've never used hot rocks on sore muscles you should definitely try it! (sigh)

Dad popped in and out of the booth during the day, (Jeff and I were manning it - Doug had the day off) and in the early afternoon he had a brilliant idea: he has a small electric nut cracker and why couldn't we set it up and run pecans through it at the booth? Hmmm. Well, electricity costs extra, doesn't it? Dad toddled off to find the flea market guy, couldn't find him, and asked a vendor who was using power. $3.00 extra - no big deal. OK, well, there just aren't many people shopping here today, Dad, so - is it worth going home, getting it, setting it up...? It was to him so he said he'd bring it back after he ran some errands.

I guess he forgot, or ran too late with his errands, because he didn't bring it back. It would have been nice to have something to do while waiting for people to walk by, but I was afraid the other vendors would complain about the noise. (Ka-POW, pause...) We tried our best to stay out of the burlap bag of whole pecans we'd set out for visual appeal, but I caved. Towards the end of the afternoon I was just sitting there, cracking nuts by hand and eating them. They are SO good!

When Dad did finally come back, we had to talk about whether we wanted the booth for Sunday, too. Gee, Dad, they're saying it's going to rain. "Well, we could put up tarps along the sides." Yes, but, where are the tarps? "Oh. I can't think where they are off the top of my head. I could go buy some?" Well, if you really want to, but it's definitely going to rain. People don't shop open-air markets in the rain..."Yeah, that's true, they don't. Well, why don't we wait and see? I can call A.J. (the flea market guy) tomorrow morning and let him know." Good idea. We all agreed to wait.

But just in case we were going back on Sunday, we needed more finished nuts. The nuts that had been shelled on Friday needed to be picked. Dad felt strongly that we should use the mechanical picker to get ready for Day 2 at the flea market. We should have remembered how much we got finished Thursday (because the nuts had been run through the picker), because an argument could have been avoided.

We agreed that we could use the mechanical picker. It's a cool little number too. The nuts are vibrated to knock almost every bit of shell off. But it takes at least 2 people to operate because it's set on its highest speed. This is the "Lucy and Ethel at the candy factory" scenario. The guys hate this one because you really have to grab the nuts off the conveyor fast or you lose them...and that's too much like work. (Supposedly you can put a different widget on a whatchamacallit to slow the thing down, but nobody's had time to look it up. Plus, Dad hasn't located the manual yet.) In this pic, Doug is in the foreground and Jeff is in the background. They don't have the picker turned on 'cuz I guess they can't keep up. They've run a few nuts through, then turned off the machine so they can pick through them. Hey, whatever works, right?

Anyway, for Day 2 of the market I was all for using the picker at first. But not because it's efficient (that's another story). The three of us dipsticks ganged up on Dad and said it was easier on our backs to just do the finish picking by hand until the picker table could be either raised or lowered for the two tall guys. It's at just the wrong height. And, one leg is about to go through the barn floor so it isn't level - we need to put plywood down. That barn was built in the '20s. Plus the picker runs FAST, so if we don't want to go through all the shells to find the nuts we missed on the conveyor belt, we've lost them.

Oh, the arguing! (Dad's really a "It's my way or the highway" kind of guy, though he's getting better.) Finally it was settled - Dad was overruled - we idiots would finish-pick by hand. (I wish I'd known what I was in for: My fingers hurt - those !#*A!? shells are sharp!)

By 6 p.m. Saturday night we'd sat down to pick the shelled nuts by hand. Nothing like waiting 'til the last possible minute, huh? It took three of us (and several beers for the guys) 6 hours to hand-pick 17 pounds of halves and bits & pieces out of a big plastic tote full of shelled pecans. Remember those numbers above? 8 man-hours for 19 pounds after the nuts have been through the mechanical picker. So let's see, Friday night was 18 man-hours for 17 lb. finished. Duh. Like I said, we're dipsticks.

Selling the finished halves at $7.00/lb. makes no economic sense whatsoever considering the expenses involved, but we look at it like this: what else do we have to do? Well, a lot actually, but none of us are able to stand by and watch this bumper crop of pecans go to waste. All the nuts I'm talking about here, and including several 5-gallon buckets people picked up on the thirds, came off of 4 (four!) trees. 4 down, 194 more to go...

Oh, and here's what could be excellent news: Dad decided to go visit the big Memphis flea market on Sunday to check out any competition. He didn't find a single vendor selling pecans, but he found 4 (four!) companies who make things with pecans. They've been buying their pecans at Sam's Club or Costco, and they're not happy with the price or the quality. We might not have to go to flea markets and such - we may have some year-long customers lined up. I'm to call them today and arrange to take them samples. Then we'll haggle price. Awesome!

Meanwhile, hubby took the day off from his day job today (Monday). I put an ad on Craigslist yesterday morning and I've already had 3 responses to purchase pecans, and one lady who wants hers cracked and shelled. Jeff and Doug are out in the barn right now, running those 60+ pounds of cracked pecans through the sheller and the picker. My job for the rest of today, tomorrow and probably Wednesday (because of rain): hand-pick and package finished nuts. It's OK, it's raining cats & dogs. The dishes and laundry can wait another day or two.

Then this coming weekend, if it dries up enough, we go back to harvesting. Starting Friday. Thursday we're smoking a couple of Cornish Game Hens and I'll be fixin' the trimmings. Hey, all work and no play makes us really bitchy...

Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly Away - Home??

2011-11-16T06:29:00.001-08:00

Ladybugs are what's called "beneficial insects". To us farmers, anyway. They're carnivores - they eat nasty, crop-destroying bugs called "aphids", among others. (I think aphids are cute - they're bright springtime green, and really funny-looking, but...) The more ladybugs around, the safer our crops will be.

See, we are going to be "all-natural". In more ways than one, but that's another story.

That means organic fertilizers and no petrochemical pesticides. We think we're going to have to plant double the amount of things others do, so the bugs can have some. And the deer. And the raccoons, possums, etc. Even though we're trying to figure out how to keep some special ducks that eat bugs but not the crop - we have HUGE red-tailed hawks here, plenty big enough to carry off a duck. And duck poo is excellent fertilizer for the plants.

There are lots of critters around here that are good for our crops. This last summer we were overloaded with toads. You know, the cute brown ones with black spots? They're good bug-eaters too. They were everywhere, and ranged in size from your thumb to your hand. But don't step on one! And by the way, toads aren't slimy like frogs are.

Anyway, ladybugs are apparently long-lived. They hibernate in the winter. In our bedroom. I have no idea how they're getting into the house.

This is only the beginning. Later there will be hundreds of them, in a huge mass in that corner.

And here's another good sign: they're starting to form a mass in our other bedroom (my office), too!

Before you say Ewwww! let me say that we'll put up with a lot in order to make a go at farming. Although there's a very slight musky odor in the bedroom during their sleep, they don't bother us. Except the other night we found one in the bed, literally between the sheets. That one got totally lost!

They don't fall on us, or fly around, or crawl around except when they're getting ready to go to sleep. It's kinda fun to lay in bed, watching them walk aimlessly around the ceiling. They look a little like a Pac-Man game - they'll move along, then take a sharp 90 degree turn and head off in that direction. We counted 15 of them the other night.

Eventually they'll find the mass in the corner and nod off. One day in springtime we'll wake up and they'll all be gone. Every single one.

Isn't nature fascinating?

Harvesting Pecans!

2011-11-14T07:39:00.001-08:00

I talked to my boss about needing time off because it's harvest time. Her reply? "Go for it!". I'm so lucky to have such a great boss, that's for sure. Of course I'm going to have to give her some pecans, but that's OK. (Just kiddin'. There was no bribery involved, and she's a terrific person - she can have all the pecans she wants! And I ain't just saying that 'cuz she's my cousin, either...)

So last Monday I went out to help Dad and Doug get equipment ready. I rode down to Doug's to get him but he wasn't there, and damned if my riding mower (aka my "ATV") didn't croak on me. It ran fine, but it wouldn't move. Trusty Rusty had let me down. (That John Deere dump cart behind the mower is older than I am!) And that's the front of the bucket tractor. See the snaggle teeth? And that black thing is a grappler (or, as I like to call it, the "squeezing thing").

Oh, and that little weird brick building, well, nobody knows what it was originally intended to be. It's built of "slave brick" like the chimneys and dates to the 1840s, like the house. Dad says it's a cold frame for starting seeds, but I'm not so sure. There are steps that go down about 2 feet to the floor inside. Dad replaced the (missing) roof with solar panels back in the 70s but apparently that didn't work out. (That's another story.)

So, the mower broke down. (Remember, Lisa, you can't get there from here.) I went back up to the house to find Dad, but he was gone too. Damn. We needed to get on this - servicing the equipment so we could harvest. I had got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning anyway, so that bad old steam started to come out of my ears...

I went inside and did some work (even though I was technically on leave), and later Doug came in. Dad had looked over the mower and discovered the drive belt was bad - it basically fell off into his hands. He had gone and picked up another one so Doug and I went down to try to figure out how to put on the new belt.

Yeah, right. You just can't get to the drive pulley to take it loose so we could get the belt on. Even if we could, we'd need an impact gun to get that nut off, and we didn't know which way it turned (righty-tighty-lefty-loosey doesn't always apply to pulleys). We couldn't figure out how the old belt had possibly fallen off!

We tried everything: wrenching, beating parts with a hammer. Even cursing at it didn't work. I found the manual in my brother's old trailer and although there were great diagrams about how to change the mower blade belt, the manual said "to change the drive belt, take it to the dealer."

Completely enraged, we decided to just give up for now. One of us was going to put a shotgun slug through the motor if we didn't. (Later, Dad's friend Mike who is a terrific handyman, a hard worker, and a good friend to Dad - but in my opinion a real asshole - came over and showed Doug how to fix it. Turns out it was something simple and obvious we'd missed. Of course. Now Doug's a dipstick too.)

My bad mood turned out to be the start of an episode of depression, so I lost the rest of last week. Ugh. Doug and Dad did a lot of work on the equipment and got most of it ready, so that's a good thing. And when the weekend arrived, I snapped out of my depression, and Woo Hoo! It's harvest time!

In the past Dad had allowed people to pick up pecans on the halves. (Half for them, half for Dad.) This year we decided we had such a good crop that only special people were going to get any pecans for free, and only on thirds. But Saturday a guy and his wife showed up, claiming they knew Dad, and wanted a couple of ice cream buckets of pecans. Due to a miscommunication, we let them get away with free nuts. Shit. Well, it wasn't enough to hurt but Dad and I had a confab about how we were going to politely turn people away. During this confab I found out that he'd decided Jeff and I were equal partners in the harvest! With authority and everything!

First things first: now that the ground had been cleaned up, shake the tree. This is the coolest thing ever. The whole tree sort of vibrates - it doesn't whip around. I tried to get a pic of the nuts falling but my camera didn't do a good job. If you look close, those black dots against the sky are flying pecans. The tree does look a bit blurry because it's vibrating. And you'd better not be anywhere near or under it because nuts rain down like, well, nut-sized hail. Doug didn't get far enough away and got conked.

Years ago Dad had wisely put a roof on the tractor (that's Big Daddy), so he was safe. I knew how far away to stand, and my jaw dropped at how many pecans fell. Get this - not all of them are ready, so we will have to shake twice to get them all. (The tree shaker is monstrous - this is it squeezing the tree. I can't begin to get my arms around that tree.)

It isn't a bumper crop but we have a LOT of pecans - we estimated about 50 lb. per tree (in a really good year we get about 100 lb. per tree). Hmmm, 50 lb/tree x 200 trees = 10,000 lb. or around 5 tons. In the shell, but still, that should work out to around 2-1/2 tons of finished nuts. FIVE TONS. Where the hell are we going to put them all???

Once the nuts are down, we rake them out from in front of the tractor tires so they don't get crushed. (Yes, every single nut counts - that's money, honey.) Then comes the second-coolest thing: the mechanical harvester (or nut-picker-upper as I call it). There's a big burlap bag hanging off the front that catches the nuts. Dad's towing it with his finish mower. It doesn't need a tractor to pull it because it has its own motor.

In the back is a mat of chain that rotates, sweeping the nuts up into a hopper. Then they go up the arm into the bag. Doesn't my hubby have a cute tush? He's so camera-shy that this is just about the only kind of pic I ever get of him: a sneaky one.

This is the picker-upper in action. Again, my camera wasn't up to the job - there's dust and leaves flying out the back. It rakes the ground almost completely bare.

Unfortunately that means leaves and the little branches we missed get picked up too, but we have a piece of equipment (called a "cleaner") that we'll run the nuts through and it will toss all that stuff out.

I don't have a pic of it yet because Dad loaned it to a really nice family who have a few trees and wanted to see if it was worthwhile to buy one. He's going to get it back this week.

Because the ground in the orchard isn't completely flat, the picker-upper misses some nuts. So we have these nifty hand-picker-uppers we use to get the rest of them. You can sort of see them in the pic; they're the long-handled things with wire cages that roll along the ground. The nuts are pushed into the cage. In fact, the harvest is going to be so good that I just ordered four more of those. We're going to need help!

After shaking only two trees, here's eight 5-gallon buckets that we picked up by hand with the rolling thingies. Each bucket holds about 20 lb. of nuts in the shell, or about 10 lb. of nut meats. There are also two and a half big (I do mean big - see the pic above) burlap bags that came out from under those two trees too. And that doesn't count the buckets that people picked up and took home...

Wait a minute. I tried to pick up one of those burlap bags and I couldn't. Now, I can lift 50 lbs. easy, so - we're getting way more than 50 lbs. per tree!! It IS a bumper crop!

But we've got to really get our butts in gear. What with getting the equipment set up, and people dropping by, and other minor crises that popped up, this and the burlap bags is all we got picked up all weekend. Four of us were working at it!

In the past Dad has sold the nuts whole, in the shell. This year they're going for between $1 and $2. Per pound. I say "The Hell With That!". Dad has the equipment to mechanically take those whole nuts and end up with perfect pecan halves (well, with some bits & pieces, too).

So this week we're going to get that equipment functional, come hell or high water. There's a cracker (which, um, cracks the shells), a sheller (which gets most of the shell off), and a picker. The picker gets the rest of the shell pieces off, but "picker" is a misnomer - turns out people have to stand there and pick the nuts off a sort of conveyor belt, or they'll go right by and fall into the tub that holds the shell pieces. Remember that "I Love Lucy" episode where she and Ethel are working in the chocolate factory and can't keep up with the candies going by? Yeah, it's gonna be like that...And yes, there will be pictures.

We had a confab last night (today is Tuesday, I don't know where yesterday went). We're thinking that this weekend we'll bag up the nut meats we've got so far and take them to a local flea market. Assuming we can get all of the equipment working. Which is a big assumption considering you can't get there from here...

We can probably get $7 a pound for the finished nuts, since they're this year's crop and they're "no spray" - which means no pesticides. (Did you know that the pecans you buy at the grocery are anywhere from 3-5 years old? No wonder they taste like, um, crap.)

Oh, I know where yesterday went! I spent most of the day in & out of the house, politely running people off. Word's out that Lancaster Farms has a crop this year, and anybody who's still alive and who's ever come and picked up on the halves is showing up. And their friends, and their friends' friends... Dad's nuts are the best! (I mean his pecans, silly.)

And hey, we've got a Paypal account, so if you want to order some nuts, drop me an email. I'm planning to set up a little storefront on the web to sell them anyway...

Breaking News and Harvest Time

2011-11-13T11:05:00.001-08:00

A family friend, Thomas, saw me trying to disk our hard ground a couple of weeks ago. He had come over to pick turnip greens from Dad's fall garden. We planted lettuce and bok choy and spinach, but then Dad scatter-sowed the turnip greens and they choked our stuff out. Scatter-sowed is just what it sounds like: you put the seed into this mechanical thingie, turn the handle, and seed goes EVERYWHERE (including your mouth, your eyes, and I even picked some out of my ears once.)

Anyway, even with the several hundred pounds of oak tree on the disks (see previous post), they just weren't cutting it (get it? "cutting" it? OK, bad pun). So Thomas offered to sell us what's called a "breaking plow".

This is yet another ancient, wicked-looking, solid iron implement that hangs off the back of a tractor. The plow heads are shaped a lot like the grass cutter we had so much success with trying to dig a water line trench (that worked out well - not!) but there are two of those devil's tail-looking things and they're a LOT bigger. Plus, they turn the sod over so the grass roots are exposed, killing the grass.

Thomas is tricky; when he told me he had one I said something to the effect of "Gee, that's nice." He then went to Dad and said I had mentioned how nice it would be to have one and would Dad like to buy his? Of course Dad did, because he's really gung-ho about us trying to raise crops, and the ground really needed to be broken, and so he practically stole the thing by giving Thomas $60 for it. I promptly insisted that Dad take a check from me for it - I wanted that plow for myself; plus, it's going to be used for our business (we lease land from Dad for our plantings).

It's a perfectly good plow even though it's pre-WWII, and worth a lot more than $60, so I went behind Dad's back and gave Thomas an extra $100. Hey - it's a tax write-off as well as being a necessary tool. I swore Thomas to secrecy about the $100. Dad gets upset when we spend money on farm stuff even though I've told him a dozen times it's a tax write-off. He's a stubborn guy, my Dad.

That week Dad went and got the plow out of the brush at Thomas's place. (He just lives around the corner, which equates to about half a mile one-way.)

Last Saturday dawned bright and clear. As usual I was doing my Happy Dance, excited to learn how to plow. But wait - the tractor wouldn't start. It took three people twenty minutes to decide to check the battery and sure enough, it was almost dead. (That's Thomas on the right.) So it had to be jumped off. Done! Now the tractor's running, and I can go learn how to plow.

Um, no. When I was pre-tripping the tractor (kinda like truck drivers do before they start their day), I noticed the hydraulic fluid was low. That's not a good thing. Hydraulic fluid is necessary to lots of things on tractors, and if you run out you're screwed - it messes up some stuff inside that takes a pro to fix. I've never torn into the guts of a tractor and I hope I never have to. I know there are things that require special tools, and great big heavy wrenches, and - it's just not my thing.

So anyway, it takes two people to add hydraulic fluid; one to hold the almost-useless-wrong-tool-for-the-job funnel, and one to pour the fluid from a 5-gallon bucket. This results in pouring about 3/4 of the fluid into the tractor, and the other 1/4 down the outside. (Gotta remember to get a big transmission funnel!) Thomas had come over to teach me to plow, so I roped him in to helping me (for once, Dad wasn't lurking about). It took us fifteen minutes to try to get that thing filled. We finally figured there was enough because we couldn't find the dipstick is to check the level. It should have been marked, we thought, so maybe there isn't one. (Yeah there is, so we're the dipsticks!)

OK, now I've got hydraulic fluid. Engine oil's fine, it has fuel - I'm ready to go!!

Nope. I took a pass around the tractor, inspecting everything from tires to, well, everything else. I noticed hydraulic fluid dripping from one of the hose connector plugs in the back. And no, it wasn't from spillage. See, the tractor has what's called a "PTO" which stands for power takeoff. Things that hang off the back and need the tractor to power them have hydraulic hoses that plug in to the back. To keep dirt out, we keep those plug-ins, well, plugged. (Just FYI, if something on the back needs electrical power to operate, it has its own motor. Which often doesn't work, but that's another story.)

I tried re-seating the leaking plug; no luck. By the way, hydraulic fluid is yucky stuff, it's slimy and won't come off without GoJo. I'm not a girlie girl but ewwww...I wiped my hands on my sweatpants and now that crap won't come out. I guess I was too dumb to put on my work gloves first. Hey - this farming thing is a learning experience!

Thomas decided he was going to show me how to plow anyway, although we concluded that I couldn't do much more than learn until the leak was fixed. Around this time Dad came out to see what we were doing. He pointed out the dipstick for the hydraulic fluid to us dipsticks. Which of course took a wrench to get it loose because it hadn't been checked in God knows how long. I went and got the wrench, got it loose, and the hydraulic fluid was still low, so Thomas and I had to put more in. Another 20 minutes gone. (We didn't mention the drip.)

Then, since Thomas was going to make the first pass with the plow, Dad had to show him exactly where we were going to break the ground. Even though Thomas was standing there last weekend when Dad and I worked it all out (again), Thomas had to be informed (again). Dad stood at the end of the first row so Thomas would know exactly what to aim for. (That little white dot under the trees down there is my Dad.) You can see the dead grass where I disked last weekend.

Thomas ran the first row just fine, but when he turned to come back the tractor got stuck. It shouldn't have.

And look how deep that sucker goes! Now THAT's what we need to break up our clay and aerate it. (I went over that area 3 times with the disks, didn't even kill most of the darned grass.)

The tractor got stuck because of the hydraulic fluid. It was pissing it out now instead of dripping, and we had to stop immediately. Can you see the steam starting to come out of my ears? I wouldn't be learning to plow that day.

So here we go with another one of our Famous Farm Confabs. Dad called in Jeff and Doug. Thomas was there too. With me that makes five people scratching their heads and looking dumb. The guys had to each take a turn at re-seating the plug and eventually confirmed what I'd found - it wouldn't seat properly. In fact, by the time everybody was done playing with it hydraulic fluid wasn't pissing any more - it was gushing. The tractor was out of commission. (Remember, Lisa, you can't get there from here...)

After twenty more minutes of discussion with some arguing thrown in, it was decided that Jeff would take the leaky plug loose and run to the tractor supply place to get another because the rubber seal was shot. Dad argued that the plugs couldn't be bad - he'd just put them on about 10 years ago...Dad volunteered to go pick up the plug instead, so we gave him the leaky one with instructions to get one JUST LIKE IT - that's why he was taking it with him. (By the way, the tractor only pissed fluid when it was running; once we shut it off there's no pressure in the system.)

We moved on to other things - Jeff was doing I-don't-know-what, and poor Doug went back to working on the water line. I went out to take pix for this blog.

After a while, Dad came back. With the wrong plugs. He hadn't showed the guy at the tractor supply place the one we sent with him. Shit. So Dad got on the phone with another parts store, told them what we needed (oh, no, bad idea). The parts place was closing in 20 minutes but they'd charge Dad's farm account and hang it on the fence so we could pick it up later. (That's the country way, folks.)

We were at a standstill as far as plowing. Dad went in to nap. Jeff and Doug and I had a confab to decide what to work on. The biggest chainsaw had died and been taken to the shop, so working on the old oak was out. We stood around picking our noses for a while and jawing. (OK, we weren't really picking our noses, it's just an expression.)

Then I remembered something: while I was out taking pix, I had noticed a lot of pecans on the ground and it hit me: oh, shit! It's harvest time! Two hundred plus trees. (Isn't that a pretty picture? It only shows about 12 of the trees. The working orchard goes waaay farther back, then hooks right.)

And around and behind the pond are another 200 or so trees...but they're not accessible due to 10 years' worth of undergrowth. Damn.

I freaked. We weren't ready. None of the equipment had been serviced, the grass in the orchard hadn't been finish-mowed, the storage area for the harvest hadn't been prepared. We thought we had at least a couple more weeks but the nuts came in early this year. And it looked like we had a good crop of them, too. Which is amazing considering Dad didn't put any pesticide or fertilizer out this year.

I went in to tell Dad it's harvest time. He wasn't convinced, so we had to walk through the orchard. He said he still wasn't sure. (While pecans were crunching under our feet and I picked up a whole Walmart bag full without even trying.)

By the way, can you find the pecans in this picture? There are three. That's why we need to finish-mow before we shake the trees - so we can see the darned things.

I guess Dad went out and looked at the trees again later in the day, because he conceded that yes, it might be harvest time. But there were things he wanted to do to make sure. (Of course.)

Meanwhile, while Dad was ruminating, Jeff and I decided we had to run to town to pick up something at Home Despot, so we'd get the plug off the fence at the parts place while we were at it. Guess what? They were the exact same plugs Dad had got from the tractor supply place, only these were red instead of black. The wrong plugs. Again. Fortunately that tractor isn't used for harvesting, and Dad had to order the plugs from John Deere 'cuz that tractor's at least 50 years old. Forget about that anyway, it's harvest time!

There was still a good bit of daylight when we got back, and Dad had vanished into the garden to pick peanuts. (That's a pretty good pic of his butt...and no, he doesn't have a tail. His pants fit funny.)

And here he is with a plant ready to pick the nuts off of. My Dad's a "goofy hat" guy. And, he wears a belt AND suspenders. How tacky!

Did you know that peanuts grow on the roots, underground? I didn't. I swiped some from a bucket he had near the big house (his, ours is the little house). Unfortunately they weren't dry enough and YUCK. Freshly picked peanuts don't taste good at all. That's what I get for "stealing".

While Dad was out picking peanuts, Jeff, Doug and I decided to install Doug's hot tub in Dad's back yard, next to the swimming pool. As you can see, we had to clear out vines and stuff that had grown up through and on the pool deck before we could place the tub. (I had to force my way in, on the pool deck, to take this pic.) That's a corner of the deep end peeking through the vegetation. It's a 20x40 in-ground concrete pool, and I spent a lot of my childhood in it. Somebody once asked my mother why her daughter looked like a prune...

And we had to get power to the hot tub. It's a little one, supposedly seats 4, but it's great. And really, really nice of Doug to put it in our back yard instead of down by the trailer where he's staying. This is Doug with his tricked out bike, that I'm extremely envious of. Gosh he looks great on it! He looks good for a 59 year old dude, doesn't he?

So Doug went for the bucket tractor and Jeff and I started pulling stuff by hand. Yeah, OK - that stuff was dug in good. I gave up. Then Doug hit the power line to the whatchamacallit light - the bright one that comes on automatically and is mounted in the black walnut to light up Dad's side door area because home invasions are becoming more common and he's an old guy and...anyway. Fortunately the wire didn't break, it just pulled loose from the house. Dad had gone off somewhere in the car so we had to wait til he got back to turn off the power to the light.

When Dad got home he turned off the power and oh, by the way, since you're going to be up on the ladder, Doug, would you put the plastic cover over the vent? Unh-unh. Doug doesn't walk around on roofs, he's scared of climbing on & off it, and Jeff flat refuses to have anything to do with getting up on a roof.

Guess who did it? And I'm scared of ladders too! But I learned while putting up Christmas lights one year that bare feet are the absolute best for walking around on steeply pitched asphalt shingles, so I got up there, crab-walked across the roof and covered the vent. Then came the hard part - getting off the roof and onto the ladder (that's the scariest part for me). Doug guided my foot and all was well. I went in to change my britches from where I'd peed myself in fear. (Just kiddin' but it was a close call, let me tell you.)

Doug fixed the wire to the light and went back to clearing the pool deck. I couldn't do anything, plus I was exhausted, so I sat in a rocking chair cracking and eating pecans while watching the guys work at clearing. What a luxury! I was picking up the pecans around the big tree in the back yard and they are some kind of good. (Poppy the beagle likes pecans, by the way.)

We got the tub installed after much discussion about its placement, and after Jeff suspiciously and carefully rewired the switch for the pool lights to make a 110 receptacle. There was much shouting to and from the kitchen of the big house, where the breaker box is (and the ground wires, which the first time around Jeff missed installing. Hey, he's not an electrician). But he persevered, got it done, and we started filling the tub. Hopefully it would be ready tomorrow night.

We called it a day. I had a pot of chili simmering on the stove and the three of us pigged out.

Sunday dawned beautiful and sunny. I found Dad and, being my usual nutty self (OK, another bad pun, guess I'll just give up), I was hopping up and down with excitement. I asked him what-all we needed to do to see if it really is harvest time. (Yes, sometimes I act like a 4-year-old. But a lot of this farming stuff is like Christmas morning is to a kid!)

He asked me to pick up the small limbs around 8 or 10 trees so he could finish-mow. Then we'd see what was already on the ground. (He'd already mowed with the Monster Mower that will chew up just about anything under the trees, but in the meantime more limbs had fallen.)

I hopped on my trusty riding mower with the cart, and made passes picking up limbs ahead of Dad on the mower. At some point I'd misplaced my gloves, so I was working bare-handed, in shorts and a T-shirt. Bad idea - every time we passed each other I got pelted with bits of tree coming out of the mower. (And at some point I got into that creeper I'm so allergic to. My arms look like they've been burnt and my God! The itching!)

After I picked up the little limbs in the test area, Dad asked me to go pick up the big stuff in the rest of the working orchard (the 200 or so trees). With the bucket tractor. Woo hoo! For once I could hop on a tractor and just go!

I had a blast. It was scary, too - that part of the orchard is hilly and a leaning tractor scares the crap out of me. I figured out how to get to the dump site for the limbs without going crossways, though, so once I had that down I was flying. I was pushing down big limbs that were stuck in the trees and hauling them to the rot pile. (Gosh, I love destroying things with the tractor!) Some of those limbs were the size of small trees - that's how old and huge our pecan trees are. Dad planted them in 1960 or so.

I worked until almost dark, enjoying every minute although I didn't get finished cuz I got the tractor stuck in a little ditch that I didn't even see. (Sheepishly I went to get Dad, who tried to use the backhoe to pull the thing out backwards. No luck. Oh, well, we'd tow it out tomorrow with Big Daddy. I still felt like a complete idiot.)

After Dad got the test area mowed, and we'd tried to get the tractor out of the ditch, we decided to call it a day. As I walked alongside Dad, he told me the story of three trees we were coming to. They were the very first trees he planted. (They're the ones on the right in the pic.) They came from a very old orchard nearby and they're the first of the Stuart pecans he planted. Stuarts are an heirloom variety; they've been around forever. Most of our trees are Stuarts.

Those three old trees are gynormous. And covered with nuts except there's a problem - the squirrels seem to prefer those nuts to the others. I found a buttload of empty shells under the trees. Time to put some squirrels in the stewpot! (Hey, don't jump me about it - yes they're cute but they're eating our profit...and squirrels that have been eating pecans are yummy.)

Dad said he'd start servicing the harvesting equipment this week, and by the weekend we'd be ready to shake trees and pick up pecans. (Oh, dear, I though to myself...)

That night, Jeff, Doug and I got in the hot tub. Naked, 'cuz you don't want fabric fibers clogging up the filter. The tub promptly overflowed. No big deal, we thought. We enjoyed ourselves, relaxing and jawing, but when Doug got out to go home, the water level dropped significantly. Also, the water temperature had dropped because as the jets run, the water cools. Jeff and I stayed in a bit longer but when we got out, the water level in the tub dropped to below the jets - half of the tub's water was gone! Hmm, guess that tub's not meant for four (it's pretty small). Although I do displace twice the amount of water that a normal person does...

Never mind. It was a good weekend with a lot of hard work and a relaxing soak at the end. I couldn't wait for the coming week - we were going to get ready to harvest (my) very first pecan crop!

If we can get there from here, y'know...

PS: Here are the hidden pecans from the pic above:

Daylight Savings and Crazy Cows

2011-11-04T14:15:00.001-07:00

Spring forward, fall back. We won't actually lose an hour when daylight savings time goes away this weekend but it's going to feel like it anyway. I'm going to be ready for bed at 9 instead of 10, and ye Gods I'll probably wake up at 4:30 instead of 5:30. Everybody (except farmers) knows that 4:30 isn't morning, it's the middle of the night!

I still haven't figured out exactly why we do this crazy time flip-flop. Supposedly it was started to help the farmers, but I sure don't see how. I'm not one of those who gets up at 4 a.m. to milk the cows (and even without daylight savings it isn't light at 4 a.m.). And it's not like real farmers have other jobs to go to; most of the ones I know don't care what time it is unless it's time for lunch. They get up at dawn, work 'til dark, eat supper, and go to bed - and get up and do it all again the next day. Every day. Except Sunday.

The farmers who have livestock don't get time off in the winter like those who just grow crops. ("Just"??) Even the crop farmers have lots to do in the winter - equipment to service and repair, planning the next year's plantings, etc. etc. The ones who have livestock AND grow crops have it the worst: they don't get any break at all.

I've been there. Growing up my Dad had a small herd of Black Angus cattle and a large garden. (OK, a large garden isn't "crops" but to a kid it sure felt like it!) The cows were purebreds and, like most purebreds, dumber than a possum crossing a highway.

Every spring and fall, usually around the time change (hey - maybe that's why it was started? So we'd know when to do it?) we rounded up the herd and did our culling, tattoing, worming, castrating, etc. Roundup was the only time I ever heard my Dad swear when I was a kid. I even tattled on him once to Mom, when I was around 6 or so. (I think he said "darn it!". Now he swears like the sailor he used to be, but that's another story.)

Those cows knew what roundup was all about, and they didn't want to go through that narrow, splintery wood chute and have their necks squeezed in the head-catcher. Which was the only way we had in those days to make them stand still. Nowadays the vet comes out and spends a pleasant day with a blow gun, darting each cow with a tranquilizer so we don't have to get up close and personal with a thousand or so pounds of wide-awake deranged bovine. (I just made that up. I'll bet the vets wish it worked that way! Anyway, we didn't use a veterinarian - we did it all ourselves, me and my Dad.)

That head-catcher was ancient. It was made of oh, I dunno, 3" diameter iron pipes. When it was open the catching bars formed a V shape with little curves in them so they wouldn't actually choke the cows. The cows saw it and thought they just had maybe a tight squeeze to freedom. (But the ones who had been around a while weren't fooled, as I said.) To close it my Dad had to a) yank really hard on a rope that ran through some pulleys and b) time that yank just right so it would close on a running cow's neck. The V would shut on the cow's neck and Dad would latch the pulley to keep it closed.

At least, that's the way it was supposed to work. In an ideal world. If you didn't have a crazy cow who wanted to go over the rails of the chute, or over the head-catcher instead of through it. If the rope didn't break. If the pulleys actually slammed the bars shut like they were supposed to. Like I said, it was a really old piece of equipment, hand-made goodness knows when by goodness knows who.

No, sometimes the rope would break when he yanked on it and Dad would fall on his ass while the cow jumped through the V and made a bid for freedom. I found it very entertaining when this happened but the harder I laughed the madder Dad got. One time he got so mad he scooped up a handful of runny green cowshit and flung it at me! Which, being a kid, only made me laugh harder because I grew up running barefoot through runny green cowshit. (That's why I don't get sick - I've already developed immunity to just about every common microbe.)

Or the pulley wouldn't latch, the V would spring open and yet another cow would make a break for it. Or Dad didn't get the pulley latched in time and the cow...you get the idea.

Being caught didn't hurt the cows but you'd have thought they were being tortured. The noise was deafening and it was a scary sight: eyes rolling, tongues hanging out, foaming at the mouth from all the bawling, bucking, kicking the poor cow behind them...

My job in all of this was to funnel a few cows into the chute, then slam the gate behind them. All told there were about 30 or 40 of them, all penned up in various little interconnected corrals. Moving them took skill, balls (mine, not theirs) and a sharp stick. We didn't own a cattle prod, they were expensive and I wouldn't have used one anyway because I think they're cruel.

Picture this: A grubby 8 or 9 year old red-headed girl with freckles and yes, I had pigtails. Braids, actually, to keep the hair out of my face. The cows outweighed me by about oh, 900 pounds. (The pregnant ones had me by about a thousand.) Dancing around, yelling, whistling, poking, jumping in among them to keep them going into the chute only one at a time (or as close to it as I could manage - cows truly do stampede). Believe it or not, I never once got trampled. Those cows knew who I was - I was the one who handfed them handsful of sweet feed during the winter when they came into the barn for their hay.

But every year we'd get at least one of what we called a "crazy cow". (I can almost guarantee that cow in the middle there is a crazy one.) Extra high-strung, they'd panic. They'd trample anything and everything to NOT have to go into that chute, and I actually saw one climb over a 10' high wall made of 2 by 8s with only a couple of inches of gap between them. Those were the dangerous ones, and I quickly learned to just let them go through or over whatever they wanted. Dad would have to take care of those.

I once watched a crazy one go through an opening in the barn wall that she couldn't possibly have fit through - it was square, about 2' on a side. But by God she did it. She only got stuck for a few seconds and I almost peed myself laughing at the backend of that cow hanging in the barn, hooves waving in the air (she'd had to jump to reach the opening), udder squished flat against the wall, her tail whipping droplets of green runny well, you know. But she made it through - right back into the corral. Hee hee. Stupid cow.

Once I had the gate shut and Dad had the cow or steer immobilized (hah! they weren't immobilized, they could still fling their heads around), I'd climb the chute and run around to the front. We'd go to work. I set up the numbers in the tattoo pliers and recorded them in the book, Dad wiped the ear and punched, then I'd wipe on the ink. They'd get their vaccinations.

It took two of us to put dust in their eyes to prevent pinkeye. Dad would grab the cow by the nose and try to hold her head still, but most of them left with yellow faces and leaving Dad with snotty fingers. (We went through a LOT of pinkeye powder and you don't even want to try to picture what Dad's coveralls looked like at the end of the day.) Anybody who needed a shot of antibiotic got one, Dad gave them as good a look-over as he could with them in the chute, and we cut them loose.

Meanwhile, the calves (who had been separated into their own pen) were bawling for their mothers, their mothers were bawling right back, and the herd bull stood outside everything tossing his head, bawling, and looking mean because of the ruckus. We did the bull last in case he tore the head-catcher loose. Yep, a couple of them did over the years.

My favorite part was the calves. I'd grab one by the ear, hop on and see how long I could stay. (Usually no more than a couple of seconds, with nothing to hang on to.) To make steers we'd "ring" the bull calves. There wasn't any cutting involved but now that I think back on it, cutting would've been less cruel. The ring was a stretchy thick band that took special pliers to open. We'd slip it over the little testicles and let go. It pinched the place where the testicles attached to the calf's body and eventually they fell off. Man, that must've hurt...

At the end of the day, Dad and I were filthy dirty and completely exhausted. I usually headed to the lake in the springtime, went in clothes and all. And most of the cows, once they were reunited with their calves and let back into the pasture, didn't take more than a few steps before stopping to graze. But the crazy ones, well, they'd hightail it for the woods. I just looked at them and smiled, because I knew that soon a truck would come and take them away. Not to slaughter, they were purebreds, but to some other poor farmer's herd where HE could deal with them.

And I don't remember a single cow ever wondering what time of day it was.

I Broke It!

2011-10-24T01:11:00.000-07:00

West Tennessee dirt only pretends to be dirt. It's actually clay. Interesting bit of trivia: a certain kind of Southern wasp mixes it with bug spit to make adobe nests that you have to chisel off. While ducking & covering because the wasps understandably don't like what you're doing. You have to duck & cover because unless your aim is dead-eye accurate, you can't spray the nest to kill the bugs. They create tunnels in that clay and the spray just won't get in there. It won't soak in, either. We call those stinging creatures "dirt daubers", by the way. And I wonder how they keep their jaws from getting glued shut from the mouthsful of clay??

But I digress, never a good sign at the beginning of a post. My excuse is that I'm bone-tired, but I'm also as happy as if I'd eaten a whole box of chocolates without gaining a gram. I got all of the new ground broke today! (Well, the first through fourth passes - it's gonna take at least four more.)

New ground is ground that hasn't ever been worked, or was worked long enough ago for Mother Nature to pack it tight. The ground I was going to break hadn't been worked since the farm was part of a huge plantation before the Civil War.

I had to cut through about 6" of pasture grass sod, then (hopefully) a few inches into the hard-pack. It's hard to tell from this pic, but the top part has been disked twice and the bottom part (where the grass is green), hasn't. That's how thick the grass is.

Breaking ground is done with a huge, heavy iron implement attached to the back of a tractor called "disks". The disks are round, um, disk-shaped steel blades stood on end. There are several rows of them and they're angled funny to make the disks bite in.

Disks are understandably made to cut through dirt, but we don't have dirt. We have clay that, after last summer's drought, you have to take a pick to in order to dig a hole. (See yesterday's post.)

So yesterday when the guys hooked up the disks (it's one piece of equipment but it's called disks - go figure) they added several hundred pounds of oak tree on top, to make the disks get a bite. They used the "bucket tractor" and chain to lift hunks of oak tree trunk onto the disks.

I call it the bucket tractor because, well, it has a bucket on the front. It doesn't look like a bucket so I don't know why it's called that - it looks more like a wide-open mouth with bottom teeth sticking out instead of up. That tractor also has the backhoe on the back (OK, yep, that's why it's called a "back" hoe, because it's on the back). The backhoe looks like a much smaller mouth with messed up teeth, and it hangs off what looks like a spider's leg. To operate the backhoe you sit on a teeny seat facing the rear and use six or seven levers to dig big, big holes, sometimes where you don't want them, or to knock things over (like your wife - but that's another story).

Anyway, before I started disking this morning I walked down to where the guys were (still) working on the water line. I had to make sure work was well underway before I took off out of sight. To my guys out of sight means out of mind, at least if the one out of sight is the boss.

Just a side note here. I'm the boss because everybody knows women are bossy. (Have you ever heard somebody call a man "bossy"?) And I'm swimming in a sea of testosterone that sometimes makes my eyes water. It's a survival mechanism for me here on Lancaster Farms. If I don't act like the boss, 1. I'll get steamrollered and 2. work won't progress to suit me. Everybody's heard that old saying "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!" Thank heavens it's true and my guys know that!

When I arrived at what has now become The Water Line Project, one of Dad's friends had come by and they were - yep - standing around jawin'. Doug was leaning on his shovel, Dad and Mike and Jeff were leaning on other things. The conversation died when I walked up, so they must've been planning something and leaving me out of it. (It's not paranoia if someone really is plotting behind your back, y'know - especially if you're the boss.)

I joined the group, trying to pull Dad aside to ask him a couple of questions about the disking process because I hadn't done it before. I know how to run the tractor, I have loads of common sense but I'm also smart enough to know how dangerous tractor work is and I wanted to make sure I was being safe about it.

After about fifteen minutes I was getting impatient. Time was passing and I was chomping at the bit to get on the tractor and get to disking. I always seem to be impatient around the guys because I'm the kind of person who, given a task, will work at it until a) I drop or b) the task is done. The guys, however, like to take it slow. Neither way is necessarily right or wrong, it's not that black-and-white. There are times (meaning always) when my approach is better, and times (meaning never) when theirs is better.

After another ten minutes or so of conversation, during which I tricked them into telling me what they had been plotting, I finally got Dad away. But not all the way up to Little Mama, which is my nickname for the tractor with the disks attached. (Just FYI, Little Mama is an all-purpose tractor which means it doesn't have anything like a bucket or a backhoe permanently attached.)

No, Dad wanted to discuss future plans for the old water line (again). The one that's been in the ground for 35 years, predates county water service and leaks like a sieve. That line (actually, its replacement), will end at a hose bib for irrigation this first couple of years, until we can get real irrigation put in. In a couple of years we're going to have approximately a mile of soaker hoses for sale, so check back if you need some. I'm not kidding, either.

In case you hadn't figured it out yet, my Dad has a penchant for repetition. Sometime during the last century when my Dad was a boy, his Dad coined the phrase "beating a dead horse" because my Dad will talk a subject to death and beyond. (OK, Dad isn't really that old, he's only 85. I'm just picking on him because the whole beat-a-dead-horse thing drives me batty.) We agreed (again) that the old line would, in fact, be replaced and would, in fact, terminate right here in a hose bib. Not an inch further; the line would stop here. But because we didn't drive a stake, the whole conversation will have to happen again when it's actually time to run that new water line...

Anyway, with that settled (again), we headed up to Little Mama. I told Dad the few things I knew about the job I was about to undertake, and he said I pretty much had it right. When we arrived at the tractor, though, I couldn't get on it and go; Dad had to explain how the tractor operates. Now, you'll read me griping about my Dad being a control freak (gee, maybe that's where I get it from), but that old goat knows about things like disking. And he wants me to not get hurt, that terrifies him (Dad, it terrifies me, too.)

So, with ill-concealed impatience I nodded my head as he pointed out the throttle lever, the clutch pedal, the brake pedals, the gear shifters, the steering wheel, the...etc. He made sure I had my work gloves and was wearing steel-toed boots. Then he let me actually get on the tractor. And then he gave me a little test - if something happens, what's the first thing you do? (I stomped on the clutch pedal - that disengages both the PTO and the drive wheels. Gimme a hard one, Dad.) OK, what's the second thing you do? Well, that's where I messed up. I reached for the key to turn off the tractor. Damn! I forgot that tractors don't turn off via the key; you have to choke them to death - literally.

After I had demonstrated stomping on the clutch and yanking on the choke a few times, I reached for the key thinking "Woo hoo! It's time to go!"

Nope. Dad hit me with a surprise - that tractor has a seat belt, and he insisted that I use it. (Can you see the steam starting to come out of my ears yet?) So then we find out that the seat belt is (embarassingly) not long enough to go around me. Then we figured out it was adjustable, and spent another five minutes trying to figure out how to adjust it. The belts were double-looped through a thingie and had a lock-bar widget to keep them from slipping. Ye Gods! If you read yesterday's post, you'll know that this hobby farmer's motto is "You can't get there from here."

Enough said. We got it fixed, I put it on, got the go-ahead from Dad and reached for the key. No key. Aaargh! Dad patted all of his pockets and thank goodness he found it. He wouldn't have to walk back up to the house and try to find it. NOW I could go!

But not quite yet. Jeff came along, (leaving his work area and leading me to be suspicious about what he was up to). He asked if I had the ear plugs. Double damn! I'd forgotten them.

I undid the seat belt, climbed down, and stomped off to the house. Which turned out to be a good thing, because I'd also forgotten something to drink.

When I got back to Little Mama, Dad had headed back down to supervise the trenching for the water pipe. I was all by myself! I could get on the tractor and get started! Without the seat belt! Hallelujah!!!

So I did. And I hadn't had those disks in the ground for five minutes before Dad and Jeff had to come see. Jeff stopped at the barn, watched for a few seconds, and then (hopefully) went back to work. Dad, however, had to come talk about exactly what ground was going to be broken. Again.

We went over it twice, making sure it was crystal clear to both of us that 1) his little grafted pecan trees wouldn't be damaged, and 2) there was no way in hell I would be able to get it all done today because I couldn't seem to get started.

Oh, and, since I finally remembered to start carrying the camera with me I had to give it to Dad and ask him to take some pictures. We spent another five minutes discussing angles, distances, etcetera. I finally cranked up the tractor, vowing "I'm not stopping again until I have to pee or this tractor catches on fire!!"

I kept my vow. Because the Coke fell over when I accidentally popped the clutch, I didn't have to pee for the rest of the day. It took me seven hours to break up that ground, and it was an exhausting but exhilarating seven hours.

I parked the disks with the rest of the implements and unhooked it, then took off on the tractor to check on The Water Line Project. Because the day wasn't over yet - plenty of daylight left. When I got there, they had actually dug another ten feet of ditch. Ten feet?! In seven hours?! I knew I shouldn't have left them alone, dammit. And Jeff wasn't there, just Dad and Doug. I didn't even stop, I needed Jeff because the tractor had developed a low tire and he has the air compressor...

There was more drama today, and a little more work got done, but I had accomplished my task. It felt terrific. It was terrific not only because I love running any tractor doing anything, but also because I finally felt like a farmer. We would actually be able to (try to) grow crops next spring. It was actually going to happen - I had taken my first tiny step towards being a hobby farmer.

"You Can't Get There From Here"

2011-10-22T19:08:00.000-07:00

Well, of course you can. What it really means is "you can't get there from here quickly or easily."

Today was a perfect example. We had a few things to do around the farm. The priority chores for the day were to dig a trench for a new water line, and start breaking new ground for planting. Sounds simple, right? Only we found we couldn't get there from here.

I was all eager and dancing about this morning - I was ready to get on the tractor and start breaking ground. But noooo - Dad had decided the right tractor for disking was the one they were using to dig the water line trench. I was not a happy hobby farmer.

So Dad had decided we'd use the old "grass knife" as he calls it to dig the trench for the water pipe. It's a big heavy piece of iron that hangs off the back of the tractor. It's curved and the end of it is triangular It looks a lot like a cartoon of the devil's tail. It points down and forward, like an upside-down scorpion's tail. (Seriously, it's an evil-looking thing.) But supposedly it would dig that trench in a heartbeat!

However, the decision was made that it needed to be sharpened before we could use it. It's only been about 30 years since it was used but it's kinda rusty. Plus the ground is awfully hard.

But we didn't reach that conclusion quickly or easily. Dad and I went down to where we were going to run the water line, where our friend/guest Doug was digging random holes trying to find the natural gas line. And the telephone line. Because earlier in the week we had agreed that nobody wanted to hit them when we dig the trench for the new water line.

No, Dad and Doug and I had to stand around for 20 minutes and talk about the whole process of putting in a new water line. We all had to agree (again) that we definitely didn't want to hit the gas line or the phone line. We all peered into the holes Doug had dug, where he had successfully located portions of the gas line and the phone line. We talked about how we were now pretty sure where those lines were, since we knew where they started (at the road) and ended (at the old trailer). We decided it's likely that they were run in straight lines.

We talked about how hard-packed the earth was, and how poor Doug had sweated with shovel and a pick (although oh-so-carefully because, you know, he didn't want to hit the gas line or the phone line), to find those lines.

That's about the time that Dad decided the grass knife ought to be sharpened before we try to cut the ground with it. Because the ground is so hard.

So Dad and I traipsed back up to the house, talking about what to use to sharpen the grass knife. (Doug continued digging, or maybe he fell down in an exertion-induced faint; I didn't look back to see.) Dad said he had an electric grinder. When we got there Jeff was ambushed with the task of sharpening the implement.

Then Dad had to discuss with Jeff what tool would be best to use for the sharpening, and in good time the decision to use an electric grinder was confirmed. Dad and Jeff found out that they each have one and played a rousing game of "mine is better than yours."

By this time almost an hour has gone by. We're wastin' daylight. Can you see my face starting to turn pink? And those few wisps of steam spurting from my ears? I'm waiting for them so I can use the tractor, although I don't know why when there are FOUR running tractors on the farm...

I decided to do my usual surreptitious surveillance of the guys while they're working. Sometimes I have to step in and crack the whip, so to speak, because they'll get to jawing and work will come to a standstill. So I'm on the front porch of our tiny house, hosing it down. (Something really smelly and yucky got spilled and didn't get cleaned up. The flies had set up housekeeping. That's another story.)

Jeff went to bring the tractor with the grass knife up to the front of the house, which is where he likes to work on things. That's the easiest place to get electricity to things like a grinder, too. Plus, it looks kinda cool to all those city folk who drive by, seeing a big green tractor in front of the old plantation house...and I like it too. Plus he parks it under the huge tulip poplar so it's in the shade.

But Jeff didn't show up with the tractor right away. Dad (who had apparently been lurking just out of sight) had to corral Jeff by the tractor and talk about, well, I don't know exactly what, but part of it was how important it was to raise the grass knife high enough off the ground when Jeff moved the tractor so he wouldn't inadvertently dig a trench we didn't want. (Can you see the steam starting to trickle out of Jeff's ears? Nah. He takes that kind of thing in good grace because that's just how my Dad is.)

Finally, when it looked like Jeff had a good start on sharpening the blade and that Dad was leaving him alone to do it, I went inside to work on a few things. Like balancing the checkbook. Because for some reason known only to my father, I couldn't just hook the disks up to the bigger tractor and head out; I had to wait until the trench for the water line was dug and use that tractor (after they took the grass knife off and hooked up the disks).

At any rate, I went out to check on Jeff after a bit and all heck had broken loose. Jeff was indeed busy with that grinder, only instead of sharpening the blade he was cutting the bolts that held the blade in place.

Somebody (I'm not for sure who but Dad was standing there) had decided that not only did the blade need to be sharpened but it needed to be re-angled. It was set too straight-up-and-down, or some such. While my back was turned, the guys were at it again. They'd had a conference without me. Damn.

Those square-head bolts had only been on there for fifty or sixty (or seventy or eighty) years, and Dad apparently couldn't understand why we couldn't just spray some WD-40 on the nuts and take them loose. That was part of the confab they'd had. Jeff had to convince him that cutting the bolts was necessary. That implement is so old that I swear it's hand-forged.

So I came out the door and Jeff, all sweaty and grimy with bits of metal stuck to him, asked if I could go get some new bolts. "New bolts?" I said. "What for?". (That's when I found out about the confab.)

Yes, I could go get new bolts. It's a 15 mile drive one-way to the tractor supply place. I eyed the sun, which was pretty much pointing straight down by this time, and hustled off to get my purse. I had to drive the truck because yesterday my car wouldn't start (oh yeah, we have to work on that this weekend too).

Off I went, hell-for-leather, determined to get the bolts and a couple of other things and get back right away. (Speed limit? Isn't that the minimum you're allowed to drive?) But it's Saturday, and our area isn't as rural as it used to be. There was traffic. And I had to go to Lowe's for some more cut-off wheels for the grinder, too, because Jeff couldn't find more of his and Dad couldn't find any of his. (We're lucky Dad found his grinder, but Jeff used his own anyway. Apparently he won the "mine is better than yours" game, or maybe he just out-stubborned my Dad.)

I was gone quite a while. I was going to stop at Wally World and pick up a couple of inconsequentials (like something for dinner) but drove right on past when I saw that the only parking spaces in that huge lot were all the way out by the road. Wally World was a madhouse I just didn't have time for. So I beat feet home, starting to feel very frustrated that I hadn't got anything done that I'd planned. But remember - you can't get there from here, Lisa...

Jeff had finished cutting the other bolt and had sharpened the blade. When I got back he was spray-painting the thing John Deere green to match the tractor, because "appearances are important when you're a hobby farmer." I got tickled at that - he was dead serious. (I think he just didn't want to go help Doug dig holes...even though we were pretty sure we know where that gas line and that phone line are, Dad wanted Doug to dig even more holes to spot-check the length of each.)

I have to admit that Jeff was right; that wicked-looking grass knife didn't look wicked painted green; it just looked like it has a serious purpose and it would get the job done. Plus it would stop rusting. I was just aggravated at the delays and starting to feel snotty about it all.

Jeff put the grass knife back together with the new bolts, and angled it to everybody's liking. He headed off to dig the trench. About this time Dad came down the driveway, headed to - wait for it - the tractor supply place to get some water line because he wasn't happy with the stuff he had.

But by this time it was well after 2 p.m. and I was seriously aggravated. I knew there was no way I'd be able to start disking today. All week I had been praying for sunny skies; I had really been looking forward to it. The smell of fresh-turned earth in sunlight is wonderful. (OK, you can't really smell the earth while you're working, all you can smell is diesel exhaust but you can smell it when you stop!)

To be perfectly honest, I just really love driving any tractor doing anything. Heck, I even love toodling around the farm on my riding mower with the little dump trailer behind me. We don't have a fancy four-wheeler or one of those Gator thingies but the riding mower I inherited from my brother does the job nicely.

Anyhow, at this point I let my aggravation get the better of me. I went in the house and sulked. I'm not going to lie about it - I sulked like a spoiled two-year-old. I should have gotten on my mower and ridden down to watch the trenching, even though it's easily within walking distance. Driving the mower would've made me feel happier but hindsight's 20-20, right?

I sulked all through the movie I watched on TV. I was sulking when Dad got home and came over to have a mini-rant about how frustrating it is that sometimes you can't seem to get anything done. About how you can't just go do something, you have to do six other things first. And how, when the end of the day comes, you feel like you've been working backwards instead of forwards. I strenuously agreed and we both felt better when he headed off to get ready to watch the ball game.

Oh, and during that conversation I found out why he didn't want me using the big tractor: because it will start in gear and take off. Like I'm going to forget about that?! (If I did, I can guarantee I'd only do it once.)

Jeff came in a while later and started digging around in the living room, looking for something. It turns out that the grass knife worked great - except that the trench it cut was only about 3" wide. Not nearly wide enough to lay pipe in. So Jeff had switched tractors; he'd got the one with the backhoe on it and proceeded to dig a gynormous trench. The bucket of the backhoe is what, 18" wide?? Oh, and in the process they discovered that the phone line and/or the gas line did not, in fact, run in a straight line from the road. Fortunately no damage was done to either (finally, something went right!).

But Doug had set the bucket of the backhoe down on the water hose that had been run from the newly-installed water meter to the trailer he's staying in. (Wait - I thought Jeff was operating the backhoe? That's what I get for sulking...) That's the water line we're running not, unfortunately, water to irrigate our crops. I had you fooled, didn't I? Remember, you can't get there from here...

Anyway, when Doug set the bucket on the hose, the hose burst. Now they had to fix it or Doug wouldn't have any water at the trailer because the old water line that runs down from the barn leaks like a sieve. Dad ran that old water line a mere 35 years ago but it was small diameter pipe rated for only 80 psi. (That was decades before the county forced Dad to switch the farm to high-pressure city water.)

Jeff found the hose thingamajig and a short length of hose we'd bought for another purpose and out he went.

I continued to sulk.

So it's dark now, the ballgame is on, and the guys came in a while ago. I'm eating my corn dogs and potato salad as I write and Jeff's watching the game. They got about a third of the length of trench dug.

And Dad let them put the disks on the big tractor, so I can start bright & early tomorrow. Jeff just came in and said he tried it and the disks are cutting about 4" deep. This is after they put several hundred pounds of oak tree on the disks to help that several hundred pound steel implement bite into our hard-packed clay. I'll have to disk and disk and disk again to get that hard ground broken up to my satisfaction, but I'm prepared for that. Looking forward to it very much, actually.

Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to get there from here. Keep your fingers crossed!

Iraq, Iran, and Freedom of Speech

2011-10-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

So we're going to pull our military completely out of Iraq (except for some embassy guards). Supposedly by the end of this year.

I'm not sure I'll believe it's done, even if "they" say it is.

Has anybody noticed that over the past 30 years Iran and Iraq have taken turns being the bad guys? I remember in the '80s Iraq was the bad guy, then we got over it and Iran became the bad guy. It has flip-flopped like that and now Iraq is the bad guy again. I used to care about things like that but I've flip-flopped over the years myself.

I'll never forget something that happened when I cared. In 1982 I was a freshman student at Memphis State University. Iraq was the bad guy at the time, and Iraqi students were being persecuted to the point of assault. There was a rally on the green one day; I stumbled upon it while hurrying to class. The mob of around 100 kids was mostly young men; the girls were mostly hurrying by, just as I was.

What stopped me was the tirade being shouted through the amps. It wasn't against Iraq, but against the Iraqi students. Some of them had been heard bad-mouthing America for whatever we were doing to their homeland (that's why they were getting beat up). The shouters believed Iraq deserved it, and that the Iraqi student deserved to be persecuted. They were calling for the Iraqi students to be thrown off campus. Not for being Iraqi but for expressing their opinions.

Well, stupid me. I spoke up. I yelled something to the effect that this is America and the Iraqi students have freedom of speech just like everybody else.

Bad mistake. Somebody threw a rock at me and it hit me right in the forehead. A rock! The mob turned towards me and I ran. A professor happened to be right there when the rock hit me and he ran with me to the safety of a nearby building. That rock shocked me to my core. And I was in tears but I wasn't crying for myself. I was crying over the ignorance - no, the idiocy - and the hypocrisy of the shouting mob. These were my peers! What would America become when these kids grew up?

Well, now we know what America has become. A nation of hypocritical idiots. God help us all.

The Passing of a Giant

2011-10-20T07:28:00.000-07:00

Shortly after we arrived in Tennessee in April, an extra-strong spring storm came through. A microburst zapped us and blew over our 400-500 year old white oak. I don't have a good pic of the whole tree standing, but it's the one on the right. The trunk was about 10 feet in diameter at its base. (It looks dead but this pic was taken before the tree greened out for spring.)

Jeff and I were watching TV during the storm. The wind gusts were shaking the house, thunder & lightning galore, when I felt a thump through the floor. It was a deep bass thump, and the house shook a bit. I asked Jeff if he felt it and he said no. I said "Something big just hit the ground!" and I peeked out a window. When lightning flashed I saw dark sky, not the outline of the branches of our oak. I FREAKED.

I went running out into the storm (no coat, no shoes) and the tree was gone. Just gone. I burst into tears. In the dark I couldn't tell what had happened but as you'll see from the pix we were really, really lucky. It could have fallen on the house...

This is only one branch sticking up; the rest of the tree is on the ground. If it had fallen the other way our home would have been annihilated.

It turned out to be almost completely hollow inside. It looks like at some point lightning struck it and the entire inside of the tree burned - it was all black inside.

That chainsaw looks totally inadequate for the job at hand, doesn't it? But Jeff has persevered...

This might give you an idea of how big the tree really was.

And the removal continues:

That was "my" tree. I loved that tree. It had a hollow in it that I used to crawl into when I was a child. It had the remnants of my brothers' tree house although the only way to climb it was with a ladder. I remember one time a wild dog had her puppies in the hollow.

As time went by the tree grew around the hollow and closed it up. That was OK - the majesty of that giant was enough. It shaded the house from the scorching summer sun, and dropped acorns by the hundreds. It was a home for squirrels and birds. It spoke to me of peace, quiet, and deep, slow thoughts.

I miss that tree every day. I grieve for it as an old friend who has passed, and removing its remnants is painful. Part of my childhood, part of my heart, is gone.

My apologies to my subscribers for the multiple notifications you received - I'm not very good at arranging pictures on blogspot!!

Well, Howdy!

2011-10-19T12:51:00.001-07:00

"Lucy, I'm home...!" (And if you're familiar with that phrase, you're either my age or you like old TV shows.)

I'm home. Really, truly, home. Back on the farm in Tennessee where I grew up. It's fifty-four acres of pure heaven. Most of the property is in 50 year old pecan trees but we have a good two acres for gardening, and a pond that's about an acre or so. Jeff calls it a pond - to me it has always been a lake and when I was a kid it was a lot bigger than it is now although it hasn't actually changed in size. Must be me.

Our cross-country move was exhausting and

problematic. Our caravan consisted of our neighbor Kevin driving a 27 foot U-haul, towing Jeff's 49 Dodge pickup on a trailer.

It took three people to get that U-Haul door to shut and we still left things behind! The 49's cab was crammed full, as was the bed, tastefully tarped in blue & brown vinyl and plastic baling twine. (We took this pic after we arrived.)

Jeff drove his 69 Dodge pickup, towing the remodeled ancient horse trailer with Max the mini on board. Poppy the beagle kept him company in the cab. (Jeff was REALLY happy about that because Poppy is a fruitcake. What can I say? She's a beagle.) We frequently had to wash the dog spit off the inside of the window and the windshield ...

Again, the bed of the pickup was crammed full and oh-so-tastefully tarped. (This was my view all the way across country, LOL - the ass-end of the horse trailer!)

I drove my Subaru Outback wagon. With four cat carriers. And four extremely miserable cats. The vet gave me some tranquilizers (well, she didn't GIVE them to me, they cost a buttload of money) and on the first day I think I overdosed everybody. They slept all day so that when we got to the motel, they woke up and freaked out. Teeth and claws came out of those carriers, with some fur and glowing eyes attached.

Every day of the trip we had to dig them out - from under the bed, from behind the bed, from the top shelf of the "closet", and even once from inside the box springs. (I don't know if one of them made a hole or if it was already there.) After the third or fourth day we had a system - Jeff would pick up the bed and I'd crawl under it and grab a cat, cram a pill down its poor throat, and thrust it unmercifully into the hated carrier. (Repeat three times.)

In addition to the cats my car had all of our trip necessities - suitcases, munchies, drinks, pet supplies. And last-minute "Oh my God I couldn't possibly leave this!" stuff. A lot of that stuff is still in the car, 6 months after arrival. Oh, well, it will get cleaned out eventually. I found my work boots in there last weekend. I could've used them when I was helping Jeff cut wood last summer.

Let me tell you folks something. The "Wild" West ain't so wild. In fact, it's downright boring (except for snow on the few mountains we drove through and some cool wind farms). If I never see another tumbleweed or sagebrush bush in my life, I'll be happy. We traveled through Washington, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. (I think I missed a state but I'm not sure - they pretty much all looked the same.)

We made an unscheduled 3-day stop in a little town in Utah when Jeff's 69 pickup broke down. That pic of the horse trailer with the snowy mountains was taken just outside of Tremonton, right before the axle seized or whatever happened. (I can't remember exactly.) I have to admit - the people in that little town were so nice, and much more friendly than I expected. We stayed in a nice motel - the kind that's a single-story U shape, with chairs out front of your room fer sittin'. Seriously, it was nice - more expensive than Motel 6 but cozier, too.

Max the miniature horse was not happy although he was nicer about it than the cats. For such a little guy he's got a big mouth, and I often heard him bugling (aka cussing Mom out) whenever we hit a bumpy stretch of road. He's too short to see over the trailer doors, really, but whenever we stopped I'd run over and stick my hand in the trailer to scratch him (and check on him, of course). We removed the divider and left him loose so he could move around - after all, he spent 8-10 hours in that thing every day.

Oh, Oregon! That's the state I forgot to list. Here's what I saw of Oregon: The ass-end of the horse trailer and a glimpse of the U-Haul in front. While holding my breath, crossing my fingers and praying we'd make it through the treacherous weather on the pass. We did stop somewhere along there, though, and even though it was cold and snowy it sure was pretty.

And here's some cool ravines in Wyoming:

That's it for the trip pix. I had the camera and for some reason I just couldn't take good pictures through the car windows while driving 55 mph on bumpy interstate. And when we stopped it was to a) go potty - us or the dog or both, b) check on the vehicles, c) unload the horse for the night, or c) to sleep. I don't think Jeff or I ate more than 6 or 7 real meals the whole trip. We were too tired when we got to the night's stop. Unload, undress, sleep. Shower, well, maybe. Sex? Forget it!

I had the whole trip planned. I spent literally hours online, planning our route because I had to find a "horse motel" for each night's stop and there had to be a Motel 6 nearby (where pets stay for free). Each pair had to be approximately an 8 hour drive apart. We got really lucky when the truck broke down so early in the trip. The horse motels down the road, and the Motel 6s, were all helpful and even U-Haul gave us a couple of extra days to get there even though it wasn't their equipment that broke down.

We made a detour into Oklahoma to pick up an engine for Jeff's 49 (the one on the trailer). Can't beat $150 and we were going to be relatively close anyway. Loading the engine into the back of the 69 was a major pain - we had a come-along but no real ramp to drag the thing up with. It was hilarious! Everybody was cussing and grunting and shoving...but we got it in there. Now Jeff looks wistfully at it every now and then, wishing he had time to start the process of putting it into the old truck.

And let me say this: the "horse motel" we stayed at in Tulsa was AWESOME. It was actually a house, we had it all to ourselves, and Max had a large paddock right outside. For $70/night, it was cheaper than most other nights' stays, and the people who owned the place were wonderful. We got there late, and the Missus even stayed on the phone with me to help us find the place because Google maps didn't have it right. We weren't too tired that night to sit on the screened porch and enjoy a little peace.

So now we're home. Jeff is as happy to be back as I am, although neither of us is very happy about having to work - off the farm, that is. We love the farm work and wish we could dedicate ourselves to it full-time. (We think that with planning and a little luck, that day isn't too far away.)

Next up: the passing of a giant...see y'all later!

Catching Up, Good-bye

2011-02-04T11:31:00.000-08:00

Goodness. Where has the time gone? I finished up my job with the Census back in July and haven't written since??

Well, I pretty much took August off - from everything. After a year and a half of chaos, I needed a break. Little did I know it was going to be a longer break than I expected.

On August 28 I dislocated my kneecap and tore a ligament in the process. Thus followed two months of forced inactivity and I couldn't really sit at my desk with my leg stuck out straight.

In November my husband and I quit smoking. For 22 days, so I know we can do it. Why did we start back, you ask? Because I got a call from my father that my brother was having serious physical problems. I hopped a plane to Tennessee the next day (the day before Thanksgiving - amazing that I got the flights, it was meant to be.)

My brother was diagnosed with end-stage lung cancer. I stayed in Tennessee and cared for him until his death on January 4, 2011. Rest in peace, Chris, and know that you're loved.

Then I stayed on to take care of my brother's estate. I came home to Washington on January 22.

So those are my excuses. The real reason I haven't been writing is that I haven't decided exactly what my focus will be for my blog. With everyone's time so precious these days, and with the number of blogs out there, random musings aren't going to bring people in (not even my friends & family, LOL). People want significant content - to educate, to entertain. So I have to find my niche and then I'll be back in the blogsphere with a new name and a lot more of interest.

Wish me luck!

Those Crazy Raccoons!

2010-07-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

It was September 28, 1998. We were living in Long Beach, Mississippi - a few miles west of Biloxi - about 100 yards off the beach itself. Hurricane Georges was nearly upon us and we had brought the motorcycles into the living room, filled up the bathtub with fresh water, and battened down the hatches.

My husband and I were playing Scrabble by candlelight, listening to the fury of the storm when I heard the strangest sound. It was a kind of "chittering" noise and it worried me because I couldn't identify it.

I looked out the front window and saw the funniest thing EVER. We had a persimmon tree in the yard. The wind was whipping that 10-foot-tall tree so hard it was touching the ground before it sprang back up and blew over to touch the ground on the other side. Clinging tightly to the branches were not one, not two, but THREE adult raccoons - and they were squabbling over the persimmons as well as enjoying the wildest ride of their lives! We watched them for at least ten minutes before they tired of the game (or had eaten enough of our persimmons).

We were lucky. The storm surge didn't hit us, and the Category 2 storm didn't do much damage. And we will never forget those nutty raccoons!

That's MY Seat!

2010-04-17T07:36:00.000-07:00

So, every time I get up from my spot on the couch something or somethings furry immediately occupies it.

Me: That's MY seat! Move over.

Dog: But I'm cold and I've already curled up under my blankie!

Me: That's MY blankie you dummy. Now move!

Cat: You tell her, Mom. Stupid dog! (licks his privates)

Me: You stay out of it. And by the way, you're going to have to move, too!

Dog: Shut up, Cat, or I'll bite your tail. Mom, I'm COLD.

Me: I don't care! Move over or I'm going to call Animal Control.

Cat: Oh, lighten up. It's just a couch. You can sit in the middle, see? (As he curls up on top of the dog under the blanket in MY SEAT.)

Me: Dammit, I said MOVE!

Cat: No.

Dog: Cat, get off me!

Cat: No.

Me: THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE. I will give you both to the Asian restaurant down the street, I swear I will!

Cat: (licking his privates again) Well, at least then you won't eat there any more. You don't need to sit on the couch. You need to get some exercise - you're fat, y'know.

Dog: (laughing)

Husband: (laughing)

Me: OK, husband, get up. YOU fight with them for a change!

Husband: No. This is my seat!

Some days I just can't win.

Apathy, Ignorance and Obamacare

2010-03-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

Although many people voiced their opinions about Obamacare, too many more did not. I'm not going to get into the pros and cons of the health care reform that just passed. Suffice it to say that we can get this legislation repealed, and I pray that we do it.

What I want to talk about is why so many citizens didn't respond, didn't act, didn't protest or endorse these bills.

Many formal polls showed that an overwhelming number of Americans are against this particular set of reforms. But those polls, a "sampling" of Americans, don't accurately reflect the number of people who are ignorant or just don't care, because those are the people who either weren't surveyed or refused to respond. Notice there aren't any numbers published for those people.

I conducted an informal poll of my friends and neighbors who are mostly middle class, and was stunned at the results. Almost 80% didn't know any of the particulars of the bills. Of the remaining 20%, 5% were "somewhat familiar" with the legislation. The other 15% had a vague idea (a lot of it wrong) of what the legislation encompassed.

Of the people I surveyed, overall 23% were in favor of the bill, 40% against and an unbelievable 37% had no opinion.

The majority of the people who were for reform fell into the 20% who were either somewhat familiar with the legislation or had a vague idea (often erroneous) what it encompassed.

The number that concerns me the most is the 80% who were completely unfamiliar with the particulars of the legislation. A lot of those people said they don't watch the news because it's too depressing.

Others said outright that they don't believe they can do anything about what the government is up to, so why bother? Most of these people don't vote, by the way, for the same reason.

How can we reach the apathetic among our citizens? What can we do to convince them that their votes and voices make a difference, without sounding like a bunch of alarmists? I think we all know that the government isn't going to launch a campaign to get people involved...

Any ideas? Anyone?

Thoughts on Giving

2010-03-14T09:57:00.000-07:00

I've always believed in that old adage "Charity begins at home." I've interpreted it to mean that I should keep my money close to home, to help out those around me in the US - rather than sending it out of country.

One of my mottoes is "If you can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em." It's a very stark and cold-sounding way to phrase it, I know. I don't intend to offend anyone with it, it's just that I'm blunt about things I'm passionate about. They got themselves into the mess, they can get themselves out. I've often wondered who appointed America "Keepers of the World"?

But what about disaster relief? Now that's a topic that gives me grief. Out of compassion and sympathy, do I send my hard-earned dollars to help out or do I stick to my guns and keep my money at home? I compromised with the Haiti disaster - I sent some money but not nearly the amount I send to my local causes (like food banks, foster child support, school supplies). I'm happy with the compromise but I still feel a bit of guilt about not sending more.

Steve over at bripblap.com wrote a very interesting blog on this subject. He has expressed my thoughts on the matter in a much more politically correct manner. I'm sympathetic to his angst on the subject, too. Why don't you check it out and see what his thoughts are?

The 545 People Responsible for All of America's Woes

2010-02-20T10:24:00.000-08:00

Recently I received one of those viral emails we all get. This one, instead of promising good fortune if I passed it on to 30 more people, had real content.

It was a version of a column written by Charley Reese back in 1985. (Charley retired from writing on August 30, 2008.) During his career Charley was, according to Wikipedia, "... a syndicated columnist known for his plainspoken manner and conservative views. He was associated with the Orlando Sentinel from 1971-2001, both as a writer and in various editorial capacities. King Features Syndicate distributed his column, which was published three times a week."

Charley's article, "The 545 People Responsible for All of America's Woes" is as pertinent today as it was in 1985. Perhaps more so considering the population's disillusionment with our current government.

I've reprinted the original column here, with some additions and changes in red print. I can't imagine a better call to arms (so to speak). It's wake-up time for the people of the United States. Let's do something before our government gets completely out of control: call your representatives and senators; write them; write letters to the editor; support a candidate whose platform calls for smaller government. It's time to get involved, people!

The 545 People Responsible for All of America's Woes

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation (a recession) and high taxes, we have inflation (a recession) and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices – 545 human beings out of the 235 (300) million – are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.

I excluded all but the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.

No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislation's responsibility to determine how he votes.

A CONFIDENCE CONSPIRACY

Don't you see how the con game is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of Tip O'Neill, who stood up and criticized Ronald Reagan for creating deficits.

The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating appropriations and taxes.

O'neill (Palin) is the speaker of the House. (S)He is the leader of the majority party. (S)He and his (her) fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto.

REPLACE SCOUNDRELS

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 235 (300) million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted – by present facts – of incompetence and irresponsibility.

I can't think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.

When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red. If the (Army and) Marines are in Lebanon (Iraq, Afrghanistan), it's because they want them in Lebanon (Iraq, Afrghanistan).

There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take it.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation" or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone have the power. They and they alone should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses – provided they have the gumption to manage their own employees.

It Can Happen To You!

2010-02-04T08:41:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago I started putting our financial house in order. I subscribed to a two personal finance blogs (The Simple Dollar, and Man vs. Debt). I read their archives and went to work.

Thank God I did. It forced me to look closely at our expenditures and I was able to cut out a whole lot of wasted money. Now I'm funding our emergency fund as quickly as possible. I'm aiming for 6 months of living expenses in there. Unless something really bad happens, we're going to weather this recession.

My friend Margaret (not her real name) and her husband haven't been so conscientious and now they're in trouble. M. had a well-paying job until she was injured on the job in December of 2008. She hasn't been to work since, and there's serious doubt that she will be able to return to her old profession.

Shortly after they married, her husband quit his full-time job to start his own business. He struggled along and they paid their bills with a good bit left over for a few luxuries. He plays in a band and they were able to spend a good bit of money on drinks with friends and family at his gigs. She also had the money to spend on personal grooming (hair, nails).

But all that changed a few months ago when her worker's compensation claim was closed. To compound matters, during the last year or so her husband's business began to fail and has now all but died.

What's incredible to me is that they didn't make any substantial lifestyle changes when she became unable to work.

They now have no income other than the little bit he earns playing in the band a couple of times a week. They're behind on the mortgage. She just got food stamps yesterday but won't know if they'll get cash assistance or not until her 401(k) is evaluated by the state.

How did this happen? These people had much higher incomes than my husband and I. She has a financial advisor, even. Although she hasn't told me so, from what she has said about her finances I believe they had very little savings other than that 401(k). I can't help but wonder what advice her financial person gave her. Was she advised to save for a rainy day, and didn't? Or have they burned through the savings?

What frightens me is that this could happen to anyone who doesn't have a good emergency fund. I know, because it happened to us - twice. We almost lost our house once because my husband was injured and off work for 3 months. Three months. That's all it took for our financial house to come crashing down.

Ladies and gentlemen, Grandma was right. "Save it for a rainy day" isn't just a quaint homily - it's crucial to survival in today's world. Would you be able to survive if you and/or your significant other lost your jobs or were injured and unable to work?

Is it Hypocrisy? Socialism and Social Security Disability

2010-02-03T09:03:00.000-08:00

President Obama's attempts to turn America into a socialist country are terrifying. The climate is right for such a change - it feeds into our society's sense of entitlement. I've read over and over lately how the vast majority of our youth (and a good bit of Generation Y) believe that our society owes them: owes them a job, an education, material possessions, owes them whatever they need or want. Most of them don't believe they should have to put forth much if any effort for what they get (hence the word "entitlement").

So much has been written about this lately that I don't really need to get into it here. And I don't want to, either. It infuriates me.

Moving on.

In 2008 one in five citizens had some form of disability, including me. I'm arguably one of the luckier ones. My disability is a mental illness which gives me some hope of eventually getting better, unlike those who have permanent physical disabilities. For the purposes of this article I'm defining the disabled as those of us who draw Social Security Disability income.

Is Social Security Disability a socialist program? Of course it is - it's called "Social" Security. And I'm vehemently against socialism. So, because my main source of income is from Disability, does that make me a hypocrite?

I think that it does. And although I didn't ask to get sick, and I'm doing my best to find a job that I can keep, and I'm an entrepreneur as well, I still rely on that Disability money to pay the bills. I can't see any other way to keep food in our mouths and a roof over our heads.

What do you think? Am I a hypocrite? Or is it OK for me to tell myself that the socialist programs already in place are OK - but no new ones are allowed? Where is the line between helping those who truly can't help themselves and providing for those who could?

No Role for Mental Health Professionals in the Practice of Torture

2010-02-01T13:04:00.001-08:00

One of the ways I keep up with what's going on in the world is through email feeds from selected websites. One of them is from Science Daily, a wonderful site that publishes nuggets about the latest scientific research.

The title of this blog is from an article at Science Daily. Don't believe me? Click on the title and go read the short.

The research seems to be supported by this quote from an article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Doctors and Interrogators at Guantanamo Bay", published July 7, 2005:

"Clinical expertise has a limited place in the planning and oversight of lawful interrogation. Psychologists play such a role in criminal investigations, and medical monitoring of detainees is called for by international legal instruments. But proximity of health professionals to interrogation settings, even when they act as caregivers, carries risk. It may invite interrogators to be more aggressive, because they imagine that these professionals will set needed limits."

The latest research according to Science Daily implies that the psychologists/psychiatrists aren't capable of setting limits because they don't have the necessary expertise.

And while all of this is very interesting (at least to psychologists and psychiatrists and torturers), and in an intellectual way I myself find it a fascinating discussion, what I want to know is this:

Why are we even TALKING about torture in the first place?

When the shit hit the fan about "interrogation techniques" at Guantanamo Bay I thought this whole torture business was over with. Apparently not. Apparently it's still acceptable for the US government to torture information out of suspected terrorists. Else why would research be going on into who's fit to participate?

Americans are members of a nation that practices the torture of other human beings. That means we all sanction it, because we're not doing anything to stop the government from doing it (even if the government would admit that it's still going on). And what about the people who are actually doing the torturing? Americans are sanctioning government employment of sociopaths and sadists, and we're paying them for their "skills" with our own money. Yours and mine.

Like many Americans, I don't give a lot of thought to homeland terrorism. I don't let fear rule my life, or even enter into it that much. When I do think about it it's usually in terms of "Oh, well, the government is watching out for that sort of thing." And when I think about what "watching out for" means, I certainly don't think it includes torture. Not after Guantanamo Bay anyway.

It seems I'm wrong. And it makes me sick to my stomach.

Do you have any thoughts about the practice of torture to secure information from suspected terrorists? Is it acceptable? What are the costs and are you willing to pay them?

Two for One: Spanish Style Shrimp with Garlic, Jeff's Shrimp and Rice

2010-01-31T14:43:00.000-08:00

It was Girls' Night In. Mexican food was chosen and I wanted to fix something unique. So I looked in my recipe collection and found a tapas recipe I liked.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, tapas are little plates of yummies served in Spain along with your cocktail or beer. They allow you to try local specialties without spending a lot of money.

Anyway, the recipe I found was reasonably quick and easy: Spanish Style Shrimp with Garlic. It sounded yummy, so I sent hubby to the store to pick up some shrimp while I showered and made myself pretty.

Hubby called me from Wally World to make sure he got the size of shrimp that I wanted. What we both neglected to determine was whether I wanted raw or cooked shrimp.

He got cooked. The ones they boil in plain old water with no seasoning. Yuck. (He was very apologetic since I had a hysterical fit when he got home with it.)

Since there wasn't any way to modify the tapas recipe for cooked shrimp, I gave up and just contributed some cash to the food because this all happened about 3 hours before we all got together.

Leaving me with a pound of (yucky) cooked, thawed shrimp.

The next day that shrimp needed to be used. I refused to touch it, mostly because I didn't feel particularly clever that day and was unable to come up with any ideas for dinner. Which might've had something to do with the hangover I had from the bourbon I drank at Girl's Night In...

So Hubby came up with Jeff's Shrimp and Rice. Like any good cook he made it with a little of this and a little of that, so in the recipe below you'll need to use your own judgment about how much of each seasoning to use.

The recipes follow. If you try Jeff's Shrimp, why don't you come back and comment on how much of each seasoning you used?

Spanish Style Shrimp with Garlic
Yield 4 servings (serving size: 1/2 cup shrimp and 1 lemon wedge)

Ingredients

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 bay leaf
1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
4 lemon wedges

Preparation

Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add pepper, garlic, and bay leaf; cook 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Increase heat to medium-high. Add shrimp; sauté until shrimp have pink or orange markings and white, opaque flesh (about 4 minutes). Remove from heat. Sprinkle with salt. Discard bay leaf. Sprinkle with parsley, and serve with lemon wedges.

Nutritional Information
Calories: 161 (31% from fat)
Fat: 5.5g (sat 0.9g,mono 3g,poly 1.1g)

Jeff's Shrimp and Rice

Canola oil
1/4 cup chopped fresh sweet onion (such as Mayan or Vidalia)
Black pepper
Red pepper flakes
Parsley flakes
Garlic powder
Cumin powder
Dried oregano
3 cups cooked white rice
Olive oil
1# cooked large shrimp

Heat 3 tablespoons canola oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add seasonings, crumbling dried herbs with your fingers to release the flavor. Saute the seasonings for a minute or two. Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes or until tender. Stir in the cooked rice and cook, stirring occasionally for 5 minutes or until rice is hot. Add just enough olive oil, stirring constantly, to give the mixture a slight sheen. Heat through; add cooked shrimp and cook for another 5 minutes stirring frequently until shrimp is hot. Serve.

As usual, I'm unable to properly attribute the tapas recipe. I collect them from all over the web and don't usually log where I found them.

Haiti's Other Casualties

2010-01-20T12:27:00.000-08:00

To recap what we already know: the human death toll in Haiti continues to rise with today's aftershock. Experts predict there could be one or more yet to come. We're all familiar with (and appalled by) the devastation. Aid has been mobilized from several nations, including our own.

Most of that aid focuses on the people of that small island nation, as it should. But what about Haiti's silent sufferers? I'm talking about the animals. Not just pets - livestock and wildlife, too. Who will help them survive this disaster?

Well, me, for one. There's no federal aid for animals in disaster areas. The only help available comes from animal welfare charities and volunteers. Today I donated cash since I can't get down there myself. And believe me - if I could, I'd go down and help.

Without relief efforts a very large number of Haiti's livestock will die. Without this precious food resource the people of Haiti could starve. Follow my logic?

So please, consider donating to animal rescue efforts. If you don't know who to give to, try visiting The Animal Rescue Site. There's a link right there on the front page.

And say a few prayers for everybody down there, would you?

Ladies: Which movie star are you most like?

2009-12-31T18:50:00.000-08:00

Here's some fun just for us girls...It's one of those emails that's making the rounds but I thought it would be fun to reproduce it here. It's really fun, assuming you recognize the movie star's names.

Which Movie Star Personality Are You Most Like?

Ever wonder which movie star you are most like? Well, a team of researchers got together and analyzed the personalities of movie stars. The gathered info has been incorporated into this quiz. There are only 10 questions so it doesn't take long.

Number a piece of (small) paper from 1 to 10, then answer each question with the choice that most describes you at this point in your life. Add add up the points that correspond with your answers.

Don't look ahead or you will ruin the fun!

1. Which describes your perfect date?
a) Candlelight dinner for two
B) Amusement Park
C) Roller blading in the park
D) Rock Concert
E) Have dinner & see a movie
F) Dinner at home with a loved one With candlelight

2.. What is your favorite type of music?
a) Rock and Roll
B) Alternative
C) Soft Rock
D) Classical
E) Christian
F) Jazz

3.. What is your favorite type of movie?
a) Comedy
B) Horror
C) Musical
D) Romance
E) Documentary
F ) Mystery

4. Which of the following jobs would you choose if you were given only these choices?
a) Waiter/Waitress
B) Sports Player
C) Teacher
D) Policeman
E) Bartender
F) Business person

5. Which would you rather do if you had an hour to waste?
a) Work out
B) Make out
C) Watch TV
D) Listen to the radio
E) Sleep
F) Read

6. Of the following colors, which do you like best?
a) Yellow
B) White
C) Sky blue
D) Teal
E) Gold
F) Red

7. Which one of the following would you like to eat right now?
a) Ice cream
B) Pizza
C ) Sushi
D) Pasta
E) Salad
F) Lobster Tail

8. Which is your favorite holiday?
a) Halloween
B) Christmas
C) New Year's
D) Valentine's Day
E) Thanksgiving
F) Fourth of July

9 If you could go to any of the following places, which would it be?
a) Reno
B) Spain
C) Las Vegas
D) Hawaii
E) Hollywood
F) British Columbia

10. Of the following, who would you rather spend time with?
a) Someone who is smart
B) Someone with good looks
C) Someone who is a party animal
D) Someone who has fun all the time
E) Someone who is very emotional
F) Someone who is fun to be with

Now total up your points on each question:
1 A-4 ; B-2 ; c-5 ; d-1 ; e-3 ; f-6
2. A-2 ; B-1 ; c-4 ; d-5 ; e-3 ; f-6
3. A-2 ; B-1 ; c-3 ; d-4 ; e-5 ; f-6
4. A-4 ; B-5 ; c-3 ; d-2 ; e-1 ; f-6
5. A-5 ; B-4 ; c-2 ; d-1 ; e-3 ; f-6
6. A-1 ; B-5 ; c-3 ; d-2 ; e-4 ; f-6
7. A-3 ; B-2 ; c-1 ; d-4 ; e-5 ; f-6
8. A-1 ; B-3 ; c-2 ; d-4 ; e-5 ; f-6
9. A-4 ; B-5 ; c-1 ; d-4 ; e-3 ; f-6
10. A-5 ; B-2 ; c-1 ; d-3 ; e-4 ; f-6

Add up your total and find out which Movie Star you are:

(10-17 points) You are MADONNA:
You are wild and crazy and you know it. You know how to have fun, but you may take it to extremes. You know what you are doing though, and are much in control of your own life. People don't always see things your way, but that doesn't mean that you should do away with your beliefs. Try to remember that your wild spirit can lead to hurting yourself and others..

(18-26 points) You are DORIS DAY :
You are fun, friendly, and popular! You are a real crowd pleaser. You have probably been out on the town your share of times, yet you come home with the values that your mother taught you. Marriage and children are very important to you, but only after you have fun. Don't let the people you please influence you to stray.

(27-34 points) You are DEBBIE REYNOLDS :
You are cute, and everyone loves you. You are a best friend that no one takes the chance of losing. You never hurt feelings and seldom have your own feelings hurt. Life is a breeze. You are witty, and calm most of the time. Just keep clear of back stabbers, and you are worry-free..

(35-42 points) You are GRACE KELLY :
You are a lover. Romance, flowers, and wine are all you need to enjoy yourself .. You are serious about all commitments and are a family person. You call your Mom every Sunday, and never forget a Birthday. Don't let your passion for romance get confused with the real thing.

(43-50 points) You are KATHERINE HEPBURN:
You are smart, a real thinker. Every situation is approached with a plan. You are very healthy in mind and body. You don't take crap from anyone. You have only a couple of individuals that you consider 'real friends'. You teach strong family values. Keep your feet planted in them, but don't overlook a bad situation when it does happen.

(51-60 points) You are ELI ZABETH TAYLOR:
Everyone is in awe of you... You know what you want and how to get it.. You have more friends than you know what to do with. Your word is your bond. Everyone knows when you say something it is money in the bank. You attract the opposite sex. Your intelligence overwhelms most. Your memory is the next thing to photographic. Everyone admires you because you are so considerate and lovable. You know how to enjoy life and treat people right..

Crockpot Orange Roast Pork

2009-12-20T15:18:00.000-08:00

Winter's here, and the crockpot is getting extensive use again. The other day I made this oh-my-God delicious pork roast. I wish I could remember where I got the recipe so I could attribute it properly.

It's so simple to make, but packs so much flavor. I served it over rice, with a side of asparagus. My husband ate most of the roast (lucky guy, has a high metabolism and no problems with cholesterol). I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Crockpot Orange Roast Pork

Ingredients:

1 (3-1/2 lb.) pork shoulder roast
1 onion, chopped
6-oz. can frozen orange juice concentrate
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
2 Tbsp. flour
2 Tbsp. cold water

Preparation:

Trim roast of visible fat. Place onions in bottom of 3-4 quart crockpot. Sprinkle salt and pepper over roast and place in crockpot on top of onions. In small bowl, mix together thawed orange juice concentrate and brown sugar, and salt and pepper, and pour over roast. Cover crockpot and cook on high for 3 hours, then reduce heat to low and cook for another 3 hours.

Remove roast and onions from crockpot, cover, and set in low oven to keep warm. Skim fat from juices in crockpot. Then pour into large heavy pan. Blend flour and cold water in small bowl and add to juices in pan. Bring to a boil and cook, stirring frequently with wire whisk, until thickened. Serve gravy with roast and onions.

The Escapee

2009-10-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

"Shit! Ella, GET BACK HERE!"

Ella, my dumbest hen, had shot out of the chicken pen and taken off across the yard at a dead run, clucking like a deranged mental patient. Her feathered bottom rocked dangerously from side to side, threatening to topple her at any moment. She looked like a fat woman running, one with one leg shorter than the other.

God dammit. I was late for work already, dressed in my work clothes and did NOT want to chase down a stupid chicken through our septic waste-infested yard. (Gotta get that septic system looked after.) But I did it anyway because my chickens had recently had to be penned up due to a neighbor's complaint.

It was bad enough that I was going to show up at work with chicken shit from the pen stuck to the bottoms of my loafers - no matter how I scrubbed them in the grass, some would stick and I'd carry "Eau de Chicken Poop" into the office. Now add "Eau de Human Poop" to the shoes and my co-workers would surely be very happy with me. I couldn't change shoes 'cuz they're the only ones I have decent enough for work in an office.

All I had wanted to do was throw hay to the mini horse, feed the chickens, get in the car and haul ass for work. But nooooooo. Ella had to choose that moment to make a break for it.

We played ring-around-the-rosy with my horse's favorite tree. He thought it was a fine game and joined in, terrifying Ella who shot off under the electric fence into the very neighbor's yard who had complained. Shit, fuck, hell, damn. I cursed that hen with every dirty word I knew, including some phrases in other languages that were too disgusting to translate into English. At the top of my lungs. The neighbors, who already thought I might be white trash just for keeping chickens, are now convinced.

I'd lunge left, she'd run right. And vice versa. Never mind that her rooster was calling to her to get her ass home; she has a stubborn streak a mile wide. Never mind that she HAD to be hungry, she HAD to know that I was coming into the pen to feed them. It took me ten minutes to corner her and when I grabbed her you'd have thought I was killing her. She was still screeching at the top of her lungs when I got her back in the pen, which prompted Edwin the rooster to attack me in order to protect the dumbest of his harem. (Edwin isn't the brightest bulb of the bunch either.)

I made it to work and quickly slipped past the wrinkled noses and raised eyebrows to wash off my shoes in the sink in the ladies' (ewww). I couldn't do anything about my formerly creased pants which were now a mass of wrinkles from the knees down, thanks to the dew in the grass, and bearing oddly shaped stripes of dirt from Edwin's eight toes.

Oh well, I thought, shit happens when you have animals. But I really think Ella's deranged. If she keeps it up she won't be my star layer anymore; she'll be dinner.

My Favorites: Seriously The Best Brownies I've Ever Had

2009-09-18T12:23:00.000-07:00

Brownies. Mmmmmm. I've always been a chocoholic, so brownies were one of the first things I learned to make as a kid. Early on every batch of brownies had a bit of my knuckle skin in it from grating the chocolate by hand, but nobody noticed. These are fudgy, moist, and oh-so-bad-for-you. The recipe comes from Amy Vanderbilt's cookbook although I added the chocolate chips. You can frost them if you want to be obscenely decadent.

2/3 c shortening
4-1 oz squares unsweetened chocolate, grated
1 c packed brown sugar
1 c granulated sugar
4 eggs
1-1/3 c sifted all-purpose flour
1-1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
1 c chopped nuts
2 t vanilla
1/2 c. semisweet chocolate chips (if desired)

Preheat oven to 325F. Grease 9x13 pan.
Combine 1st 4 ingredients in saucepan. Place over low heat; stir occasionally until shortening and chocolate melt. Remove from heat, add eggs, and beat until well blended. Sift dry ingredients together. Beat into egg mixture. Stir in nuts and vanilla until smooth. Pour into pan. Bake about 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center has crumbs on it. Set pan on rack to cool. Cut into squares or bars.

You want me to WHAT?

2009-09-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

My husband has been trying for years to get me to go to a nude beach. Or a nudist resort. Or pretty much anywhere that will allow me to take my clothes off in public without getting arrested.

I am not and have never been a thin woman. Not even close. I'm a doni* like the picture, only now that I'm 47 my breasts aren't as full as hers. But otherwise we're pretty similar. The thought of exposing my vast quantity of flesh to other people didn't bother me for myself - I just didn't want to gross anybody out. I imagined people pointing and whispering "Oh my God look at that woman - ewwww!" or maybe even, God forbid, shouts of "Hey, you should put your clothes back on RIGHT NOW!"

But my husband is a persistent man. He showed me multitudes of nudist club sites on the net, saying, "Look, honey - they're all just regular people like us." Hmmm, I didn't see any donii in those pics although yes, some of the naked people were overweight. Mostly men, and everybody knows most men are willing to take their clothes off at the drop of a hat no matter what they look like.

And all those people in the pictures were tan. I mean, REALLY tan. I've never seen so many mahogany-colored Caucasians. Being in the sun is very bad for me. I'm a natural redhead with vampire-white skin who doesn't tan. I freckle if I'm lucky, but only after I've burnt myself to a rare-beef red. Plus I have a history of skin cancer so I really should stay out of the sun unless I just WANT to get cancer and die.

But again, hubby persisted. He found a "local" clothing-optional beach and talked me into going. He insisted that I could wear sunscreen. I finally said yes just to shut him the hell up. And in hopes that he'd quit looking at naked people on the internet. (Like that will happen.)

Last Saturday we packed for the beach and headed south to Oregon. We inadvertently took the long way, and I was ready to turn around and go home about half an hour before we even found the town where we make the turn to the Columbia river. But we finally found the place. It was a LOT more than 100 miles away (it turned out to be 187 miles one-way going the short way, not the way we went down). I was pissed.

But we arrived on a beautiful island in the Columbia River just outside of Portland. Found a parking spot and lugged our cooler, chairs, towels etc. to the beautiful sand beach. And there they were: a couple hundred mahogany-colored naked people and a few vampires like me. They were all shapes, ages and sizes. There were kids in diapers. (Well, they weren't wearing diapers - they were naked.) There were octogenarians. There were probably 30 boats and a seaplane all tied up just offshore. People were sunning, strolling and swimming. Naked.

I took all of this in during the first 10 seconds of arriving at the beach. It was gorgeous. It was shocking. It was all I could do not to turn around and run back to the car. I didn't see anybody who was as fat as I am.

But we had driven for FOUR HOURS to find the place, and I was damned if I wasn't going to participate. I set up our chairs, positioned the cooler just-so, and ran out of things to fiddle with. It was time to strip. I took a deep breath and peeled down.

Nobody noticed.

Nobody pointed or yelled or threw up. Nobody even whispered, as far as I could tell. I was just another person on the beach. I had Jeff put sunscreen on my butt and I put it on my breasts and stomach, the most painful places to get burnt. I left my arms and legs to the Goddess. I put on my sun visor to protect my face, and plopped down in the chair to take it all in.

I think I quietly broke every rule of nudist etiquette that day. I've always been a people-watcher, so, I reasoned, why shouldn't I look? And I figured as long as I didn't stare, and I kept my comments for my husband's ears only, it was ok. So I looked at everybody, and said to Jeff everything from "Look at the guy jogging - doesn't he know how funny he looks with his Johnson flapping back and forth? hee hee..." to "Oh, he's a hunk, I'd do him in a heartbeat!"

Then came time for me to get out of my safe little chair and stroll along the beach. By then I had seen a couple of women my size (and one even bigger) so I was a tad more comfortable. But still not very. So I sucked in as much of my stomach as I could and off we went.

It turns out that people were, in fact, whispering, but according to Jeff they were talking about the huge dragon I have tattooed on my left shoulder blade. How he knew that I couldn't tell you, but I choose to believe that yeah, they were talking about my tattoo. Uh-huh.

After we'd been up & down the beach I felt more comfortable. We went swimming - I'd forgotten how much fun skinny dipping is, and how my husband's penis looks like it belongs to a 2-year-old when he swims in REALLY cold water. Hee hee. That stretch of the Columbia river is about 200 nautical miles from the Pacific, so it's freshwater. I could clearly see my feet while standing in it up to my chest.

Did I enjoy the day? You betcha. It's an amazing feeling of freedom to be naked in the outdoors, whether you're around other people or not. It somehow put me in touch with nature, with the earth that I came from and will someday return to. I felt wonderful. I was happy - for the first time in months.

Will I go back? You betcha. Unless we can find a nude beach closer to home, that is.

I left there with an incredible feeling of accomplishment: I overcame my fears and my embarrassment. I have just a touch of sunburn on my shoulders. My husband the nudist, however, refused sunscreen and looks like a boiled lobster. Hee hee!

* A "doni" is a Venus figure from the early Paleolithic era - about 25,000 years ago.

Bye-Bye, Freedom

2009-09-10T12:56:00.000-07:00

Prior to Barack Obama winning the Democratic party nomination for President, I was largely uninterested in politics. My political bent has always been Libertarian so basically none of the candidates I voted for ever had a chance. (They still don't.) I was as enthralled as the rest of the U.S. with Election 2008, and was quite pleasantly surprised when America elected her first black President. I took it for what it was - a sign that "things they are a'changin".

Boy, was I ever right. Talk about change - the people who voted for Obama put a Socialist in the White House. I think even the far left is secretly shocked at what the President is up to. His attempts to take control of our lives away from us are so outrageous that even the sheeple of the Deluded States of Armchair-ica have been shaken out of their cud-chewing somnolence to say, "Hey! Now wait just a minute!". The wolves are among us, and this is the first time I've ever been grateful for the media in its current form. With all the news coverage, the pack leader is having a hard time hiding the hunt. His targets? Capitalism and personal liberties, for starters.

I have to hand it to him - the man has cojones. In the first six months of his presidency Obama and Congress have interfered in everything from the smallest aspects of our lives (vis a vis the usurious tobacco tax hike, a blatant attempt to force us to stop smoking or go broke) to the biggest of big business (vis a vis the insurance and automotive company bailouts, the money for which came out of your pocket and mine). Now he's trying to impose socialist medicine on us. This is just the first several months of his Presidency, my God! What's the rest of it going to be like? What other sectors of private business are the government going to step into and take over? What other personal liberties are we going to give up?

Speaking of personal liberties, aside from the fait accompli tobacco tax hike there's a bill before Congress that would require all persons wishing to own firearms of any sort to obtain a 5-year permit from the federal government. Fortunately the bill is languishing in committee and the experts say there's no chance it will ever pass - but still. It's the principle of the thing. It frightens me that the government is intent on regulating so much of my private life.

And I don't want Obama taking capitalism away from us. It's what this country was founded on, and what has worked for 233 years. I believe in survival of the fittest for the good of the whole. In a capitalist society the strong survive and the weak fall by the wayside, a principle that has made and kept us First in the First World.

But there is an upside to all this. We're not helpless - we have the power to stop what's going on. If only one-half of the people in the US contacted their representatives, Obama's plans would go up in smoke. Our power lies in fear: frighten your representatives into thinking that they aren't going to be re-elected and you can bet they'll desert Obama's ship like rats.

President Barack Obama. A man who went from "boy" to "Big Brother" in his own lifetime.

Three-Quarters of the Way to Heaven

2009-09-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of www.freefoto.com

One of the Christian concepts that has always fascinated me is Heaven. I've fantasized throughout my life about what Heaven would be like. Of course it would have all the people and things that I like, and none that I don't. That's a given. But lately I've been reading a lot about personal happiness. I've decided that, since this is my only chance, I want to create my own heaven right here right now. Is it possible? Well, not according to the criteria I set above. But I can come close:

I can surround myself with people I like and cut loose those I don't like. Whenever possible.
I can watch whatever movies I want.
I can learn to love myself, forgive myself and be patient with myself.
I can keep my house as neat and clean as I want. Or not.
I can gain satisfaction from helping others.
I can choose not to wear makeup and a bra.
I can work towards financial goals that will help me achieve my heaven-on-earth, like saving money to buy a small farm where I can have more animals and a bigger garden.
I can run around barefoot even if my heels crack and dirt gets under my toenails.
I can let go of past failures that cause me pain today.
I can love thunderstorms even if people think that's weird.
I can make amends to those I've hurt in the past and find peace knowing I tried even if I'm not forgiven.
I can wear socks with sandals.
I can accept my disability and be comforted by the knowledge that I'm doing everything in my power to get better.
I can spoil my animals rotten.
I can practice random acts of kindness, and learn to accept kindness in return.
I can eat junk at the fair and ride the rides 'til I puke (though I've only puked once).
I can forgive those who have hurt me and let go of that pain.
I can act a fool in Walmart, playing with the toys and riding the shopping cart to my car.
I can do things that will make the world a better place even if only in small ways, such as going "green", getting involved in my community and keeping a sharp eye on the government (and making my voice heard).
I can eat chocolate. In moderation.
I can contribute to causes and charities I deem worthy, whether it be by financial contributions or donating my time.
I can cook fabulous meals. Or not.
And finally, I can love my husband with my heart, body, soul and mind. And be loved in return.

According to that last criteria, I'm three-quarters of the way to Heaven already.

I Forgot Dinner: Italian Mac 'n Cheese

2009-09-06T13:41:00.000-07:00

Oh, hell. I forgot to take some meat out of the freezer for last night's dinner. And although we're overrun with squash right now, that's it for the garden at this time. Kinda hard to fix dinner with just squash. Plus, I want to pickle a bunch of it, so...I improvised. Big-time. I took a cruise through my cabinets and came up with this concoction that turned out to be pretty good.

Italian Mac 'n Cheese

2 boxes cheap macaroni & cheese
butter, olive oil & 0% milk
1 14.5 oz. can asparagus cuts & tips
1 10 oz. can white turkey in water
1 oz. Neufchatel cheese
1-1/2 tablespoons purchased pesto
onion powder
8 Ritz crackers

Boil macaroni as directed. Meanwhile, open & drain cans of asparagus & turkey.

While pasta is draining, in pasta pot combine cheese sauce mix, butter & olive oil (use half butter, half olive oil as called for on the macaroni boxes), milk as called for plus 1/4 c. extra, and cream cheese.

Cook over low, stirring, until smooth. Add asparagus and turkey; stir gently until hot. Stir in pesto and onion powder to taste. Add macaroni; combine. Crumble the crackers and stir in. Stir until all is nice and hot, then serve.

We ate ours with fresh cucumber slices and lowfat ranch dressing.

Do you have any "I Forgot" dinners you'd like to share? I'd love to hear about them!

On Being Frugal

2009-09-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

People tend to think we're dirt poor. It will inevitably come up in a conversation that we use our dishwasher as a drying rack for our hand-washed dishes. Or that we don't own a lawnmower. (We actually do own a lawnmower but he's a composting mower with four small hooves and an attitude.) Or that I make our own laundry detergent, window cleaner, dog shampoo, etc. That my 99-cents-a-bottle Suave Clarifying Shampoo does double duty to easily clean the soap scum out of the tub. That we haven't had a "real" vacation the entire 13 years of our marriage - including a honeymoon that was simply a weekend at the beach nearby.

I have my hair professionally cut once every few years. I haven't had a professional massage in, well, ever. I've never had a pedicure at a salon. My nails are my own. They're always broken and often dirty - ewww.

We have chickens and plant a garden every year. I'm actually stealing time to write this - taking a break from canning bread-and-butter squash pickles. Want some yellow squash? Please take some! If you don't I'll leave some on your doorstep in the middle of the night. But don't worry, you won't be getting any big tomatoes. A downdraft from a small storm knocked them over so they aren't ripening as they should. Except the cherry tomatoes, which love us like stray cats do. We can't kill 'em. Want some cherry tomatoes? They're dee-li-shus! And next week I'll be canning green tomatoes...you can't have any of those, we like them too much.

Anyway, when people get that uncomfortable or even pitying look on their faces, I explain that our frugality is by choice and I'm amazed how many of them are amazed. Some of them predictably blurt, "But why? If you have the money..." Bewildered by our choices. Thinking that we're just plain cheap (as if that were a bad thing?).

Most will say "I don't have the time to do that stuff" or "I want my yard to look like a golf course" or "I'd lose my mind if I didn't get away to (name your destination) every year". The women are very attached to having their nails done, their hair professionally cut/colored/styled and getting their massages. Most are too polite to comment about my fingernails or my longish toenails (ewww) or my shaggy long hair.

But a very few will figure it out and we'll see a light bulb come on.

The nosy ones who figure it out will say, "Wow, you must have some money in the bank?"

Well, we don't actually have much money in the bank - yet. We're trying to overcome years of poor financial choices. That's one of the reasons we choose to be frugal and our savings account is growing. But even if we were set for life we'd still make the same choices. OK, I'd probably have my hair cut and get a massage once a month (except in August when I'm busy canning). I'd definitely get pedicures. And we'd probably take a yearly vacation if we could find someone to look after our menagerie.

The wonderful thing about being frugal for me was learning how to be. It didn't come all at once. I started researching ways to go green and found that frugality was naturally tied to that concept. Being frugal just kinda happened over time, and it's still happening.

I had and still have so much fun researching all the things I can make myself! I had no idea I could make my own eco-friendly dog shampoo in two minutes using cheap ingredients. It works and doesn't injure the dogs' skin. Make my own laundry detergent? Cool! It takes maybe 15 minutes to make 4 gallons. And I'll never go back to buying it - the stuff I make does a great job, costs 1/10th of store-bought per load and doesn't have any icky chemicals in it. Plus it softens so I don't have to buy dryer sheets anymore either. (I could never remember NOT to throw a dryer sheet in with the towels, so by the time I switched they weren't very absorbent any more. Now they've recovered.)

And of course anyone who's ever had a home-grown egg will realize that those things you buy at the grocery are poor imitations. Yes, keeping chickens, putting in a garden and putting up the harvest is work, but one of the payoffs is having our own organic vegetables. The flavor and quality simply can't compare. Now if I could just find an eco-friendly, humane way to keep the squirrels out of my tulip bulbs...

Right now I'm trying to talk my husband into getting a dairy cow. Fresh milk, cream and butter would be oh-so-bad-for-us but oh-so-yummy, too. And there would be even more terrific compost for the garden. I'm being sneaky - if I ask for a cow I might get a goat. Max the mini horse would love some company. Plus I could make my own goats' milk soap with the excess. Did I mention I make our own soap, too? It's fun except when I screw up and get slurry instead of bars but that has only happened once (so far).

I could go on and on about how happy it makes me to be eco-friendly and frugal. Let's just say that I now take great satisfaction in knowing that I'm saving us money and doing our part to save the environment. Did you know that a gas lawnmower has a bigger carbon footprint than most cars? Ewwww.....

Why I Want to be President of the Greatest Nation in the World

2009-08-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

I don't. Nobody should want that job. It's like being the guy who sits on the little seat over the shark tank, waiting for kids to hit the target with the ball and drop him in the water. Except the handholds that he uses to climb back to the seat are greased - so he spends the whole day in the tank. With the sharks.

No, I feel a responsibility - nay, a duty - as a citizen of the US to do what I can to make this country a better place. All my life I've watched Presidents renege on their campaign promises and make stupid decisions and propose programs that were downright ludicrous. They've lied to, cheated & stolen from their own people. They've abandoned their ethics and morals. Or, in what may be the worst case, done absolutely nothing to better the lives of the citizens who put them there.

I want to be President so I can inject a healthy dose of common sense into the office. So I can for God's sake get government spending under control before we are bankrupt. To place the federal government's focus where it belongs: on the home front.

If I were President I'd:

Protect Social Security and Medicaid.
Withdraw troops from friendly countries and put that money into intelligence operations.
Get us the hell out of the Middle East and everywhere else we don't belong.
Shut out illegal aliens and severely restrict legal immigration.
Put Congress to work repealing laws that invade the privacy and rights of our citizens.
Give power back to the individual states.
Implement a flat tax to replace the current, incomprehensible income tax structure.
Do away with lobbyists, forcing members of Congress to listen to their constituents instead.
Surround myself with advisors who can see the long-range, big picture. (Mostly academics, I'd imagine. If they'd take the jobs.)

That's just where I'd start. I'd hopefully do a lot more than that. But those are my pet projects. What I actually do would be dictated by what the people of the United States want done.

There's no way I'd ever get elected. A white female with no legal degree and no political experience, who's also Bipolar? I can hear the gales of laughter now.

Oh well, we can do what we've always done: hope the government will straighten itself out. Or we can help them do it. How?

VOTE.

It's that simple.

Paid for by Lisa L. Owens for President, an imaginary not-for-profit organization made up of fictitious supporters and funded solely by fictitious citizens and not by any business, corporation, or political party.

The Difference Between Scottish Cooking and Food (Guest Post)

2009-08-24T13:40:00.000-07:00

Today's post is lifted in its entirety from W. Bruce Cameron's column. I subscribe to him via www.arcamax.com. The guy is hilarious! Here's today's offering:

W. Bruce Cameron
Monday August 24, 2009
The Difference between Scottish Cooking and Food

Take the very worst of Scottish cooking, and what do you have?

English cooking.

That is the conclusion of a food historian named Cathryn Brown, whose research indicates that the Scottish dish haggis isn't Scottish at all, but was invented by the English, who apparently hate people.

To define terms: "Haggis" refers to what happens when you take inedible animal parts, mix them with horse feed and cook it in a sheep's stomach. Nobody likes it, especially the sheep. "Scotland" is a country where it rains a lot. "England," same thing. A "food historian" is a person who talks about meals of the past, whereas a person who dwells on meals of the future is "my father." A Scotsman himself, my father will view tonight's dinner and, without taking a bite, ask, "What's for dinner tomorrow?"

Why a person who studies food would be interested in haggis is anyone's guess.

Food historians will tell you that before the invention of food, people were remarkably hungry. What Cathryn Brown will tell you is that the first recorded mention of haggis is in a 1615 English cookbook, describing the dish as "very popular throughout England," so it must have been eaten in that-time-before-food that we were just talking out.

The first mention of Scottish haggis doesn't appear until 1747, though in my opinion this proves nothing -- maybe it just took that long for the Scots to get up the nerve to eat it.

The Scots are very proud of haggis, which was written about by Robert Burns, the Scottish national hero, "renegade poet" and creator of the song "Auld Lang Syne," whose lyrics go like this:

"Should old acquaintance be forgot,

"And la la, la la, la la,

"Should old, um ... hmm hmm hmmm

"La la la, in old lang syne!"

A Scottish friend of mine gave me a tin of haggis as a gift, which I accidentally left sitting out on a table at a restaurant when I left. When I realized my mistake, I rushed back to the restaurant, but I was too late: Someone had already been to the table and left two more tins of haggis.

At any rate, Brown's research has stirred up the Scots, who have rallied their numbers by chanting the stanzas from Robert Burns' "Address to a Haggis":

"Trenching your gushing entrails bright

"Like onie ditch;

"And then, O what a glorious sight. ..."

It goes on from there. I think the last line is "La la la, in old lang syne."

Picture going to a restaurant and saying, "I want the thing described as gushing in a ditch."

"Good idea," my dad would say. "What's for dinner tomorrow?"

Scottish cooks will advise you that the best way to enjoy haggis is to picture your mother-in-law eating it. Otherwise, you're advised to have a bottle of good Scottish whiskey nearby. Take a forkful of haggis with one hand, grab the bottle of whiskey with the other, raise the haggis toward your mouth, and then quickly lift the bottle of whiskey and hit yourself in the head with it.

"Good job," my dad would say. "What are you going to hit yourself with tomorrow?"

A slab of haggis on a plate is very attractive if you've never before seen food. Otherwise, you get an urgent message from your stomach saying something like, "You are NOT swallowing that!" followed by strong agreement from your throat and mouth, who advise you that if you ignore their warnings you're probably going to spend an hour or so gushing onie ditch.

So some claim the Scottish deserve the credit for inventing haggis, while others disagree, saying the Scottish deserve the blame. Meanwhile, in England, people are quoted as saying: "Wait, you're going to do what to a sheep? And then eat it? Why can't we just have a traditional English dinner at McDonald's?"

A lot of people who are descended from Scots will find this whole column offensive and will vigorously defend haggis because they've never tasted it. Yet my father, though proud of his Scottish heritage, won't care if you take his haggis away.

He can always have it for dinner tomorrow.

To write Bruce Cameron, visit his Website at www.wbrucecameron.com. To find out more about Bruce Cameron and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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Copyright 2009 Creators Syndicate Inc.

Read more about W. Bruce Cameron at ArcaMax.com.

About Mental Illness

2009-08-13T13:20:00.000-07:00

To preface, let me say that I have Bipolar Disorder. It's a mental illness, also known as "manic-depression". Here are some common misconceptions I've run into when telling people I have a mental illness:

Having a mental illness does not mean I'm crazy. In the world of psychiatry, "crazy" has no meaning.
Mental illness is not contagious.
Just because I'm mentally ill does not mean I'm retarded. My IQ is 154, well into the genius range.
Mental illness is a legitimate disease. I'm not faking, lazy, or lacking in self-discipline. "Pulling myself up by my bootstraps" is not an option.

Here are some things that upset me:

I don't want or need pity. Sympathy & understanding, yes - pity, no.
Sometimes I need your help, sometimes I don't. Let me be the judge of that.
Yes, I take medications. No, they don't make me stupid. Drowsy, maybe, but not stupid.

Here is some information that you might find helpful when interacting with a mentally ill person:

Living with mental illness makes life a daily struggle. Please forgive me if I don't always live up to your expectations - it's not because I don't want to, it's because I simply can't.
Practice compassion. Try to put yourself in my place.
Learn what kind of help I need, and provide it to the best of your ability.
Listen carefully. Sometimes it's difficult for me to communicate.
Before you criticize me for my failings ask yourself "Would I say this to someone who has cancer?"

And finally, here are some tips for those of us with a mental illness:

Learn everything you can about your disease and try to get those who love you to do the same.
Take your medications as directed and know what side effects to look for.
Be patient when it comes to finding the right medication combination. It took me six years to find one that works, and there are no guarantees that this combination will continue to work in the future. Try to accept this as part of your illness and use hope to combat the frustration.
Depending on your illness, just accept the fact that you will probably be on medication for the rest of your life. This fact can come in handy if your doctor doesn't want to prescribe something just because it's addictive. If s/he thinks it will help, push for it to be prescribed.
Be completely honest with your doctor and/or therapist.
If something about your treatment doesn't seem right or isn't working, ask questions. If you're still not satisfied, find another doctor or therapist.
Be accepting, forgiving and patient with yourself.
Realize that living with you can be a trial and go easy on your loved ones. It will take them some time to get used to your illness.
Don't be afraid or too proud to ask for help from those around you.
And finally, don't ever give up. It may take work, but you can find the right treatment(s) that will allow you to function at a level you find acceptable.

Any other comments on mental illness? I'd love to read them.

Calculated Inefficiency & Extravagance of Motion

2009-08-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

I just saw the film "Cheaper by the Dozen". It wasn't the one with Steve Martin - it was the original 1950 movie about the life of Frank Gilbreath. He was the first person to study efficiency. His work became the foundation for things like time and motion studies and is responsible for a lot of the ways we do things today. His work was all about saving time. You can read more about him at Wikipedia if you like.

The man put a stopwatch to everything. In one scene he's buttoning his vest (this was in the 20's or 30's when men still wore 3-piece-suits all the time). His wife times him buttoning it both ways - from top-to-bottom and from bottom-to-top. Turns out it's quicker to button it from the bottom up. Who knew?

But I don't think Mr. Gilbreath and those who followed in his footsteps did the average human a service. Our lives are so busy these days that we're being bombarded with tips & tricks for saving time. Many of these involve what's called "economy of motion". A good example is keeping a basket on the stairs. It saves time and energy to toss things in the basket during the day, then carry it up only once. For those of us who are overweight efficiency and economy of motion can be enemies to our health.

Shouldn't those of us who are fat* practice calculated inefficiency and extravagance of motion? Most of us have become sedentary, so wouldn't it be healthier to run up and down the stairs several times a day? It shouldn't take that much longer to do it if you trot up the stairs instead of just walking them.

We've all heard the common ways to incorporate more exercise into our lives, such as take the stairs instead of the elevator, bike to work if possible and park far from entrances. Here are some other ways to practice calculated inefficiency & extravagance of motion:

Set up your kitchen so it's inconvenient. Make yourself have to walk across the room to get things. For example, put your drinking glasses in a cupboard away from the sink and the fridge. Put your pots & pans as far away from the stove as you can; ditto your spices (which shouldn't be near the stove anyway). It will be annoying at first but you'll get used to it. Put your most commonly used items in bottom cabinets - the bending is good for you unless you have a back problem.
Store your clean linens far from the baths & bedrooms.
When you're straightening up the house, carry only one or two things at a time to another room. Hurry when you do it.
Dance your way around. OK, maybe not in public, but it's your choice.
Don't sit when you can stand; don't stand still when you can pace; don't walk when you can trot (or dance, or run).
If possible, don't use a shopping cart. Instead, carry two of the little baskets they offer for smaller purchases, one in each hand. You'll have to set one of them down to put something in it and gain the benefits of bending/lifting (again, if you don't have back problems).
Do something physical while watching TV. March in place, do jumping jacks, sit-ups or push-ups, arm curls with cans of green beans. Ladies, do your Kegels (if you don't know what they are you should ask your OB/GYN). You won't miss your show and you'll be getting some exercise at the same time.
Do stretching and leg lifts while using the computer. You can find all kinds of exercises on the internet that you can do while sitting. Here's a good one from WikiHow: http://www.wikihow.com/Exercise-While-Sitting-at-Your-Computer
Keep your tools a few more steps away than is convenient when you're working on something.

Practicing calculated inefficiency and extravagance of motion might just help you lose some weight. It will certainly make you feel better - you'll be getting more exercise. Does anyone have any other tips for practicing these techniques? I'd love to hear them.

* Yes, I said "fat". I know it's not politically correct, but because it sounds so negative I use that word to help me turn down high-calorie foods and to practice the techniques I offer above.

Politicians Make Bad Doctors...

2009-08-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

...in more ways than one. Obama's health care reform seems to be a good idea. Yes, it's true that millions of Americans don't have health insurance and that having health insurance is a good thing. Ergo, we (meaning the government) should do something about getting health insurance for those people. President Obama and his liberal cohorts make that sound like a simple problem with a simple solution. Just approve the President's health care reform and voila! All fixed.

I disagree. I see the millions of uninsured and underinsured as a symptom of a bigger problem. Contrary to politicians, a good doctor won't simply treat the symptoms; s/he will look for the cause and treat that instead (thereby eliminating the symptoms). Politicians are just treating the symptoms with this ridiculous health care proposal. Americans need decent jobs to pay for health insurance. They need education to get those jobs. Why doesn't the government spend those trillions of dollars on boosting small business and funding scholarships so more Americans can go to college? Why don't they treat the cause and not the symptom?

Another reason politicians make bad doctors becomes visible if you look deeper into the proposed health care reform. If passed, it would put a bureaucrat in charge of your health. The government would set standards for health care, including who can receive what - tests, surgeries, treatments, drugs. I don't know about you but I want my doctor to decide that, not somebody without a medical degree who is only focused on the costs. If my child is sick I don't care what it costs to get him well again - I'll pay it. Somehow.

And the killing blow to Obama's health care reform is this: where is the US going to get enough doctors and nurses to treat the additional 50 million insured? Doctors, hospitals and clinics are already stretched to the limit providing care for those who currently have insurance. How can our existing pool meet the additional demand?

Notes:

"Of the 45.7 million U. S. residents without health insurance, 20 million are employees - or in the families of employees - of businesses with 50 or fewer employees." - National Center for Policy Analysis, No. 642, Wednesday, February 11, 2009, Daniel Wityk: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba642

"Small businesses drive the nation's economy—more than 95 percent of all businesses in the United States [emphasis added] have fewer than 500 employees..." - U.S. News & World Report, "Small Businesses Hold on Despite Economy: Weak consumer spending and lack of credit take their toll on small-business owners, but many persevere" July 22, 2009, Matthew Bandyk: http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/small-business-entrepreneurs/2009/07/22/small-businesses-hold-on-despite-economy.html

Cockadoodle Bleak

2009-07-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

" 'Cockadoodles?' " 11-year-old Katie said incredulously. "Why do you call them that?"
"Because it's silly," I replied. "And even grown-ups need some silliness."

I was referring, of course, to our six half-grown chickens. I had been calling them "The Girls" but when Samantha turned into Samuel and started crowing, I had to find something else. "Cockadoodles" just jumped into my mind. Plus, the evolution of Sam's crow is just too silly to believe. It started out as a sort of scream; a cross between a screech and a squeaky door hinge with a bit of throat-clearing thrown in. Now it has progressed to a hoarse "Rrr-RRR" or the "cock-a" part of "cock-a-doodle-doo". Even the next door neighbor, near whose bedroom window our chicken coop is, thinks it's hilarious. She has promised me that if Sam's crowing ever bothers her she will let me know. Sam's attempts also provoke the neighbor's rooster into answering, and I swear I can hear that bird laughing at Sam. He throws a hiccup into the middle of his normal crow.

It's my first attempt at keeping chickens, and I want to enjoy the hilarity of Sam's progress. But I've sunk into what my doctor calls a "depressive episode." It's the bottoming-out part of being on the bipolar roller coaster. When I'm on the downside I live in a peculiar state: part paralyzing anxiety, part utter boredom and part complete hopelessness. It's disorienting and frustrating as hell. Intellectually I know that this bizarre state is transient. These episodes pass, just as my manic episodes do. But in the midst of one it's impossible to believe that in my heart.

The depression leaches all of the color out of my world. Literally: when I see pictures in my mind during this kind of episode they're in black and white, like old movies. And I see the things around me as just objects, unable to see the beauty in the details. My miniature horse becomes just a small animal, his delightful personality masked by the filter of my depression. My husband's smile is like a snapshot of a stranger; it evokes no gladness in my heart. All I see when I look at the baby squash in the garden is all the work ahead of me - canning, freezing, etc.

A lot of people think of depression as "the blues", but it goes much deeper than that. I don't feel sadness - I feel hardly anything at all except fleeting remorse that I can't function, can't meet the responsibilities I impose on myself and those I owe my loved ones. I seem to be capable of only two emotions: terror (due to the anxiety disorder I have in addition to bipolar) and hopelessness. Other than those I'm completely numb. I simply don't care about anything, even though I want to.

It's a horrible state of mind, one I simply can't cope with. The only way I have of living through it is to engage in escapist behavior. I read a lot, I become obsessive about learning about something new, I play PC games for hours on end. I have to distract my mind, keep myself from brooding, and physical activity just doesn't do it. Whatever I do to escape must involve my mind, and all of my mind at that.

I also eat a lot of chocolate, craving the endorphins it provides. No wonder I'm almost 100 pounds overweight.

I used to self-medicate with marijuana and booze, but the medications I'm on make the booze deadly and I don't have a source for pot right now. I find it very interesting that marijuana helps so much. I can function much better when I'm depressed if I get high. I think because being stoned creates a pleasant state of mind. It sort of overrides the numbness, replacing it with fascination, curiosity and the ability to find humor in the absurd. It brings back parts of me that I like. There's actually some research confirming the benefits of marijuana for bipolar sufferers, but I need to go find that study again before I can quote it.

I've learned in therapy to try to identify the triggers for my mood swings. Two big ones hit me in the last couple of weeks: serious money worries, and grief. Our only credit card got canceled (for bogus reasons, fuck you Chase bank) and I lost one of my cats. She just vanished, seemingly into thin air. The grief was almost unbearable; maybe the depression has its upside since the anguish I was feeling is now gone.

I will probably spend the rest of my life trying to find the right words to describe my state of being when I'm depressed. And when I'm manic. I'm not sure I'll ever find the accuracy I seek, but maybe each description will be a puzzle piece and at the end of my life those pieces will form that picture they say is worth a thousand words.

In the meantime, writing about the downside helps. Not so much now as later, when I'm trying to understand whatever it is I did (or didn't do) when I was depressed. It helps me identify triggers for the mood swings so I can hopefully avoid them or at least be forewarned that the depression/mania is likely. And if I do finally succeed at suicide when I'm depressed, maybe the words I leave behind will help the people I leave behind.

For now, though, I'm not suicidal. Just trying to live through this miserable state of mind, one minute at a time. Thanks for listening.

My Favorites: Shrimp & Peppers Fettucine

2009-07-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

Although I'm disabled I still fill up my days with important things. I even get so busy that I forget to take something out of the freezer for dinner pretty often, too.

Which reminds me - BRB...OK, got some pork chops out.

On really busy days I'll turn to my personal collection of "Quick & Excellent" recipes. This one results in a gourmet-style meal of shrimp and pasta. All you really need to serve with it are some rolls with herbed butter.

I recommend you not substitute dried pasta for the fresh fettuccine unless you're really in a pinch. Fresh pasta always tastes so much better than dried! And we choose not to use green bells in this recipe; we feel they overpower the subtle flavors of the poblano and garlic. And finally, this one's great because if I forget to get the frozen shrimp out in the morning, all I have to do is cut open the package, shake out as much ice as possible and fill the bag with cold water - the shrimp thaws in a jiffy.

Here it is. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Shrimp & Peppers Fettucine
4 servings

Ingredients

1 9-oz. pkg. refrigerated spinach fettuccine
4 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
3 small red, green, yellow, or orange sweet peppers, (or 2 lg.) seeded and cut in strips
1 small or medium poblano pepper, seeded & cut in strips
2 medium onions, cut in thin wedges
6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 lb. peeled and deveined medium shrimp
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp. dried basil, crushed

1. Cook pasta according to package directions; drain and return to pan. Toss with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Keep warm.

2. Meanwhile, in skillet heat the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat. Stir in peppers, onions, and garlic; stir-fry 4 to 6 minutes or until crisp-tender. Add shrimp, cayenne pepper and basil. Cook 2 to 3 minutes more or until shrimp are opaque, stirring occasionally. Serve over pasta.

A Rant on Immigration

2009-07-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

Q: Why does America have a satellite studying the moon right now?
A: To find out if we'll have someplace to go when we're out of room because of our immigration policies.

My husband and I are pretty far out there on the immigration issues. We believe America should completely close her borders. All of them. Illegal immigrants should be sent to prison and preferably put to hard labor to discourage the repeated attempts to move in. Legal immigrants should meet very strict requirements, similar to those imposed by New Zealand or Ireland - something along the lines of, if you don't have a job waiting for you or $250,000.00 cash, you can't move in. Temporary visas must be enforced - when they expire, out you go.

We need to beef up border security by whatever means possible. Build huge fences with concertina wire on top. Mine the borders. Hell, build moats and fill 'em with alligators! Put up cameras and post those US troops we're pulling back from overseas there so we'll have eyes on every foot of the borders. (Bless you, Minutemen!) We absolutely must get control of the situation. This has to stop.

Yes, I know what it says on the Statue of Liberty. I happen to believe that those words are seriously outdated. The world has changed and the tired, poor and yearning to be free mostly seem to want welfare and free health care. Money for which, by the way, comes out of your pockets and mine.

But we know we're out there on this issue, so we're perfectly willing to accept minor changes. For heaven's sake, don't grant amnesty to the current illegal immigrants unless the citizenship requirements are going to be enforced (not just required). The government wants to offer American citizenship as if it were a prize for coming clean. "Oh, yes, I'm an illegal alien!"

I think they're going to be surprised at how few takers they get. And why should the illegals speak up? They're already here, they've got tax-free jobs and/or welfare plus free health care - what benefit do they get from having to learn English and become citizens? Social Security in their old age? The experts say it won't be there. Oh, goody - they get to pay income tax on their earnings. And incur all those other obligations and expenses involved with being U.S. citizens.

I just don't see it happening, people. Close our borders now - if not for our sakes, then for our children's and their children's...

Whew! I feel better now. I'd love to hear from you on this issue.

Please Don't Insult Me

2009-07-12T13:59:00.000-07:00

I come from a very different culture than the one in which I'm living now. I was born and raised on a farm in West Tennessee and I now live in the Seattle metro area. Although I live in a one-horse rural town, the people here are nothing like those in the South.

Other than the usual differences (people here are less friendly, less open and less hospitable), the main thing that bugs me is when someone offers to pay me for doing something nice. It's apparently inconceivable that I could offer to help, or give a pint of homemade jam, or pick up something at the co-op - with no expectation of payment.

Take my neighbors, for example. One couple is so horribly suspicious of my motives that I've now quit offering them things. This spring I started squash plants from seed and had a lot more plants than I could use, so I offered them some. First I was asked how much I wanted for them; when I refused payment I could tell they were wondering what I would expect from them in return. Suspicion was clearly written on their faces. They apparently thought it over and/or talked it out, though, because they came over later and got the squash plants. And their attitude stunk - they came and got the plants and didn't even say thank you.

Then there are my other neighbors, to whom I'm a lot closer. I've almost broken them of trying to pay me for things - but not quite. And they're starting to accept our offers of help and of "stuff", like reclaimed lumber we don't particularly have any plans for. Growing up on a farm taught me to take things when you find them, so we have lumber and plywood and stuff that is just sitting around waiting for our next project to be conceived. In the meantime, though, if our neighbors need something they're welcome to it. That's just how I was raised.

I did have to have a talk with her, though - I reassured her that I was only being nice. That I didn't want anything in return, and I wasn't storing up favors so I could ask for something later. (I can talk more freely with her than with the suspicious ones.) Now that we've become friends she and her husband are more willing to accept help, "stuff" and/or goodies. Plus, they're learning to offer things to us as well. It's win-win for everybody.

See, that's the way it's done where I come from. Plus, it makes me feel good to help out or to give something someone can use. So please, people, don't insult me by offering to pay or being suspicious of my motives. Isn't it possible that I'm just a nice person? And couldn't that be true of others as well?

Tips for Buying from the Bulk Bins

2009-07-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of advantages to buying foods & spices from the bulk bins at your local store. The stuff is usually a lot fresher than pre-packaged items, plus you can buy only what you need. A lot less packaging goes to the landfills, too. Often you can find products in the bulk bins that you can't find pre-packaged without going to a more expensive store. And the unit cost can sometimes be much, much cheaper.

Here are a few tips for getting the most out of buying from the bins:

Buy herbs & spices as you need them. This is great if you need a seasoning you don't use often. Buy only what you need in the quantity you need it, so take your measuring cups & spoons with you. For example, I recently got 3 tablespoons of whole dried rosemary for 9 cents.
If you only need a small quantity of flour, for example, don't use the large plastic bags. Put it in the smaller bags offered for spices. You'll save a teeny bit on weight, but the biggest benefit is you won't put a larger bag in the landfill.
Don't use the twist-ties the store provides. Instead, carry a marker with you. Write the product code on the bag itself and tie it loosely. Since the cost is calculated by weight, every little bit you can save helps.
Some stores offer nice, thick plastic bags to put your selections in. Unless you have a planned use for those bags when you get home, pop over to the produce section and get a lightweight bag for your purchase. Again, you're saving on weight.
Transfer your purchase to an airtight container when you get home. Remember that flour, seeds and nuts should be frozen (or at least refrigerated) if they're not going to be used right away. They can go rancid.

Does anyone have any other tips? Please leave them in the comments...

My Husband + Our Finances = Huh??

2009-07-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

I'm worried. I take care of all of our money and everything related to it. Every dime. My husband doesn't even get an allowance and has to call me to see if he can buy breakfast when he's stuck out of town. (He's a truck driver.) He has no clue how to do a budget or balance a checkbook. He doesn't even know exactly where all our money "lives", though he does have some idea of the names of the institutions. Who do we owe? A vague idea. How much? No idea. Our net worth? Totally clueless. He doesn't even know how much his paychecks are until he gets the stub in the mail.

But that's the way he wants it!

It's worrisome because what if something should happen to me? Oh, he could pay the bills because that's all organized. He knows where the book is that has all the websites, login IDs and passwords written in it (I pay everything online). He could figure out how to log in to the sites but he would have a terrible time figuring out how to get to the "pay bill" screens.

I log in to our checking and savings accounts every day, tracking spending and looking for identity theft. He could log in to our primary bank, but I know he wouldn't be able to read that code that our checking account transactions are translated into, like "61910061323 BONNEY LAKE 308023 07/06619100613 $9.15". Because I keep every debit receipt until it clears the bank, I can quickly find the one for $9.15 and verify that it's OK. He wouldn't do that. Identity theft could be a real problem for him.

Hubby might be able to cobble together a budget because I keep a year's worth of weekly budgets in reserve in case there's a dispute over whether something got paid or not. He could look at those and figure it out. But would he stick to it? He doesn't track spending so I'm not sure he even knows how. I foresee lots of overdraft charges.

What worries me the most is that he has no idea how to manage money and refuses to learn. He needs to know how to prioritize and track spending and research investments. He needs to know how to plan for the future. He won't let me teach him, either. Says it's all too complicated. (This from a man with a genius IQ who can remember everything he ever learned about cars, trucks and motorcycles. Seriously!) I've simply quit trying to convince him that this is something he needs to know about.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can pull this ostrich's head out of the sand? Should I even try?

My Two Personal Finance Gurus

2009-07-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

Mary Hunt

When I became disabled in 2001 I was in debt up to my eyeballs. I thought I was going to have to file bankruptcy because I had no clue what to do. I had already filed bankruptcy once in my life and it really, really messed up my credit. I did NOT want to have to do it again.

So I started researching on the web. There weren't quite as many personal finance gurus out there then as there are now but there were lots of them. I think I went through them all until I found my savior, Mary Hunt. Her book The Complete Cheapskate gave me step-by-step directions on how to get out of debt and stay out. It's not available at Mary's site anymore but you can still find it at Amazon.com.

Mary has revised her guide over the years. It's now titled Debt-Proof Living and can be purchased through her bookstore at her website, aptly named Debt-Proof Living.

I haven't purchased the new book; the old one has stood me in good stead. Even though my husband and I have been living hand-to-mouth since 2001, we're now almost debt-free and we actually have savings in the bank. To keep motivated and to learn all sorts of new tips & tricks for living frugally I subscribe to Mary's newsletter.

Mary's website has some free access pages, but most of it is reserved for paid subscribers. I haven't subscribed so I can't comment on what's there - you'll have to visit and see for yourself.

In summary, Mary was a godsend to us. She continues to provide us with simple, concrete things we can do to save money on living expenses. She gives good financial advice for people who are at the low end of the income scale by answering readers' questions in her newsletter. She also publishes lots of reader submissions and her own tips for living frugally. Here's one of my favorites: make your own laundry detergent. It's quick, easy and best of all, it's waaay cheaper than buying commercial detergents that are mostly water anyway. Why don't you visit Mary's site and see if you can find her recipe?

Trent Hamm

I found Trent last year. I read one article and I was hooked. He writes a blog called The Simple Dollar which focuses on frugal living and personal finance, and he writes more broadly than Mary does. Trent writes about subjects like personal finance, motivation, organization and time management (among many others). He's always publishing reviews about books pertinent to his topics, too. Like Mary, he answers readers' questions but unlike Mary he has responded to me personally a couple of times! Every single one of his articles has been thought-provoking in some way; most are helpful in very discrete ways. And often there's a lively discussion of his articles via the comments.

The Simple Dollar's website is great. It's easy to navigate and you can find links to the important stuff on every single page, including the archives. (When I first found Trent I spent hours reading through the archives, that's how fascinating I found his writing to be.)

Trent's advice is most frequently geared towards changing attitudes and behaviors. He writes a lot about how we got ourselves into debt and what we need to change within ourselves to get out. But he's a hands-on guy too - there are lots of discrete, how-to tips and tricks in his writings, like his article on Ten Great Ways to Make Powerful Visual Reminders of Your Personal Finance and Other Goals. I subscribe to Trent's newsletter; he writes at least once a day and I usually read him first thing in the morning. I also follow Trent on Twitter (trenttsd); he's always tossing out interesting quotes and links to interesting stuff.

I'm sorry to say that I haven't read Trent's book, 365 Ways to Live Cheap, but I plan on buying it in the next month or so. He also offers some very low-cost ($2) ebooks such as 31 Days to Fix Your Finances, "... about figuring out what you want out of life and reorganizing your finances so that you can have it". He also offers a wonderful FREE ebook titled Everything You Ever Really Needed To Know About Personal Finance on One Page. It's a terrific introduction to the basic concepts of managing your money and I highly recommend it.

Here are a couple of my [current] favorite articles from Trent: Trimming the Fat: Forty Ways to Reduce Your Monthly Required Spending (notice the word "required" in there), and Is Suze Right? Do Emergency Funds Now Trump Debt Repayment?

Trent also offers a step-by-step-with-pictures guide to making your own laundry detergent, but I prefer Mary's recipe. (Sorry, Trent.) Why don't you go check out The Simple Dollar? I'm betting you'll be very, very glad you did.

Motivation: Take a Different Perspective

2009-07-06T10:16:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you but I have a terrible time motivating myself to do things I consider unpleasant. I didn't learn much self-discipline as a child and haven't learned much as an adult, either! A broad category of "unpleasant" for me is - housework. Ugh. I'd almost rather take a beating than wash dishes or do the myriad other chores necessary to have a clean and neat home.

Recently, though, I learned a new way of looking at unpleasant tasks. For example, I used to say to myself "I have to wash the dishes" which was immediately followed by "I don't *want* to wash the damned dishes, it's boring!". Now I say "I want to wash the dishes because I'll enjoy having a clean kitchen and I'll be proud of myself for doing it." This doesn't always work because the underlying fact is still that I hate to wash dishes. But I know if I keep applying this mental technique to all my housework chores I'll eventually have a neat and clean house without so much struggle. I really want to have a neat and clean house. My friends want me to have a clean and neat house, too, so they don't start sneezing every time they come over. (We have 5 cats and 2 dogs in the house.) My friends would also like to enjoy my delicious cooking without fear, too.

The beauty of this concept is that it can be applied to so many things in our lives. It makes for a more positive attitude, which is one of the components of happiness. It seems such a simplistic thing, to take a different perspective on life. But it can be difficult because old habits die hard. Keep at it, though, and it can change your life.

Things Recipes Don't Tell You

2009-07-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

Herbs & Spices

Quantities are guidelines only. The actual amount you use will depend on how old your spices are; if they don't smell very strong you'll need to increase the quantity (and buy new spices). This is why you should taste your dishes whenever possible & adjust the spices accordingly.
It usually isn't necessary to add salt as called for in a recipe. However, I can think of two exceptions: plain mashed potatoes (or any other food that's known to be really bland), and baked goods where salt is a necessity for rising and so forth. Oh, and although there's a lot of debate about this one, I believe you should salt meat you're going to grill/broil if you want a nice crust on it.
Dried herbs should be measured, then crushed between your fingers to release the flavor before adding to a dish. Fresh herbs should be chopped at least a little bit, too.
If a dish calls for an herb or spice you don't usually keep on hand, try to find it in bulk. You can buy 3 tablespoons of rosemary, for example, for about 9 cents. Plus, it's fresh! And if you're not any good at estimating quantities, take your measuring spoons with you.

Measuring

The only time it's necessary to be absolutely precise when measuring is when the ratio of one ingredient to another is critical. When making baked goods from scratch, like bread, it's necessary. It's also necessary when making sauces or gravies. The rest of the time, don't sweat it.
When a recipe calls for "1/4 cup chopped parsley", chop the parsley and then measure it. If the recipe calls for "1/4 cup parsley, chopped", measure the parsley by first packing it loosely into a measuring cup; then chop it up.
When measuring dry ingredients, don't shake the cup or spoon. Just loosely scoop or spoon the ingredient in, then use the back of a knife to scrape it off level with the top of the measuring implement.

Cooking

The only times I know for sure that it's necessary to preheat the oven are when baking pizza, and when making baked goods like cakes, bread, etc. For roasts, casseroles, roasted vegetables, lasagne, etc. etc., it isn't necessary and wastes money. Just add a few minutes to the cooking time instead.

Substitutions

There are charts and tips all over the WWW for substitutions. All I wanted to say about them is don't be afraid to substitute things. It's the way you truly learn to cook!

My husband calls me "The Kitchen Goddess" and every time he says it to someone I blush. I'm not a goddess, just a darned good cook. If you have any specific questions feel free to leave them in the comments and I'll be glad to respond. Happy cooking!

Yes Ma'am

2009-06-26T09:01:00.000-07:00

Think for a moment to the old days when youth respected age. Any decent adult was free to correct any kid, and did. Rude behavior just wasn't tolerated - not in public and not at home. These days, as I've reached my mid-forties and woken up to what was going on around me, I've been known to correct a complete stranger's child (or children) in a public place, usually Wal-Mart: "No running!", or "No yelling, please!" and once, "Where's your mother? I'm going to wash your mouth out with soap!" It sounds positively Victorian doesn't it, what I do? And presumptuous - who am I to correct someone else's child? "This is America, goddammit, and nobody messes with MY kids." (Um, including you, ma'am.)

I do have to say there's an age limit on the kids I'll correct. I tend to leave the teenagers alone since one never knows when one of them will pull a weapon and put me down. Yes, one actually flashed a knife at me in Wal-Mart, in front of God and everybody - and said "Lady, mind your own fucking business." Hmph. I did. Funny, I can't even remember what the little asshole did. He was one of those tattooed-by-the-age-of-10, bolts-of-metal-through-every-loose-bit-of-skin kind of kids. Maybe 14 years old? What does that say about courtesy and respect in America today?

Most children today have plain old bad manners. They haven't been taught courtesy and respect. One of the characters in the movie "No Country for Old Men" said something to the effect that when "yes ma'am" and "no sir" went away, well, it was Katie-bar-the-door on society. I'm with him on that.

What if adults politely corrected the misbehavior of children around them? Maybe the kids would get the message. If the parents would allow others to correct their children maybe the parents would get the message, too. I don't foresee it happening in the general population but I'm going to keep at it. Perhaps I can make a tiny difference, one child at a time.

It's Not My Fault!

2009-06-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

I don't usually rant. I normally try to stay somewhere between cheerful and chirpy as much as to not annoy my husband as to hide my real state of mind. But sometimes something gets under my skin and I have to write about it. I hope you'll get something from this, even if it's just thought-provoking.

I admit that I've sometimes had trouble owning up to my mistakes. But when it comes to the real things, the things of importance, I will face the music. I confess, apologize as needed, and most importantly I admit that in some way that I was at fault for whatever the problem was.

It amazes me how many people today won't take responsibility for their actions. Take my only child, for example. He's 24 and should know better, but everything from being fired from a job because of absenteeism and tardiness to his recent D.U.I. are all "Not My Fault." In his mind he literally has no responsibility for any of it. He was a victim of circumstance, malice, or any of a hundred other absolutions he imagines. So many people, especially our kids, blame others consistently for the consequences of their own actions. "Not My Fault" echoes across America.

It's a social cancer. It started when kids were allowed to escape the consequences of their actions. When we stopped punishing our children for doing things they knew they shouldn't do. When we accepted lame excuses for poor performance, for irresponsibility. When we parents started letting them get away with blaming their problems on something other than their own actions. Those kids grew up and passed it on to their kids. And there's only one way to stop it.

Ask yourself if you're accepting responsibility for your own behavior. If you're not, your kids won't either. The next time you want to blame your situation on someone else, ask yourself if you did something to put yourself there. Remember that the hard road is admitting you put yourself there; the easy road is lying to yourself and blaming somebody else. Both roads have consequences just like everything else in life.

The easy road lets you tell yourself you didn't do anything wrong, you didn't fail at something, you didn't make a mistake. You're just a victim of life, it's not your fault. This kind of thinking lets you be lazy, it relieves you of having to learn to overcome obstacles. Do you really want to live your life as a victim? Helpless and unable to better yourself and your situation in life? I'll bet the answer is no.

Just once take the hard road and accept responsibility for your own actions. It's painful for a little while but your conscience will be clear and more importantly, you'll be in charge of your life. You won't be a victim any more.