One of the premises of “Are You Ready” is that this country, if current fiscal policies do not change, is doomed to an economic collapse that, of course, would affect the whole world. Many people pooh-pooh that possibility, having faith, (or is it gullible ignorance?), in our federal government. But many economists think the collapse is inevitable. More information is on Andy Sutton’s website: my2centsonline.com. Educate yourselves and form your own opinion.
I tend to also view the current economic situation as dire. In my story, I used a war in the Middle East and China playing their financial trump cards as the catalyst for the collapse. The cause of the forthcoming regression, however, might not be one of such a grand scale, but instead be very subtle. We can read what the experts write and listen to the media’s perception of the way things are, but that doesn’t mean we can see the signs.
On a personal level, I see the signs and I’m struggling. My wife is self-employed and none of my three employers provides health insurance, so we as a family have that bill to pay. Blue Cross/Blue Shield has just requested a 9.9% increase from the state insurance board for our plan. That’s $885 per year – after taxes. My wife pays 15.3% social security taxes, none of which we ever expect to get back. Roughly calculated, including the tax breaks we receive on our 1040 schedule for paying our own insurance, she would have to earn $1125 to actually receive the $885 to give to BC/BS. At $100 per day earnings, she would have to work eleven more extra days next year to enable us to afford health insurance. Perhaps the Fed or the impotent Congress can legislate the earth to revolve slower around the sun like they get the earth to spin faster that Sunday in March when daylight savings time starts – enough to add eleven days onto the 2008 calendar?
So last week bread at our local grocery chain went up 10%, with other foodstuffs comparably increasing. My first tank full of heating oil was 10% higher than last year’s highest price. With the recent record high crude oil futures, I expect to pay even more for the next. In spite of those record highs, gasoline prices remain somewhat stable, but I can’t see them staying there for much longer. Our electric company’s agreement with the Socialist State of Pennsylvania to limit rate increases expires in 2008. We’re looking for 10-20% increases then. Yet none of my employers are offering the 13.7% increase in wages needed to earn 10% more (after taxes), actually required to give you the purchasing power to offset these forthcoming price increases. All in all, it’s becoming very, very hard to make ends meet. This is not news to most of you.
I’m not bragging, but for the last 16 years, we’ve been very faithful in our giving to the church. I’m actually ashamed to say – that as of right now, we’re failing to do so to the extent we have in the past. Is it me, my lack of faith, or just a consequence of a failing, inflationary, recessional economy? We’re a couple months behind in our rent, owe my brother $400, my daughter $1000, and my son a couple hundred. Should we drop health insurance so we can pay our other bills? Should we let them repossess the car so we don’t have to make that payment? Are we really going to be forced to stop giving to the church? The savings necessary to stay afloat go beyond keeping the thermostat at 62 degrees, burning more wood, changing over to energy efficient fluorescent light bulbs, and driving less. Other people have to be in a similar situation, don’t they? Yes, I know I’m just supposed to give the problem to Jesus and TRUST him for a solution, but even with faith, it’s becoming more difficult and more difficult……….
How are you all handling it? What methods are you using to make ends meet? What do you see coming? Please let me know!
Maybe next week, I can resume Alyssa’s story………….. Mort
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Chapter Twenty - Agronomics
“Looks like all the illegals didn’t make it back to Mexico,” Uncle Jeremiah said when he first saw the Diaz’s. Thank goodness only a few people were near enough to hear him. However, my father was, and shot him that look that you never wanted to get from Dad.
Aunt Lois wasn’t as subtle; even before Dad’s glance had a chance to reach Jeremiah’s eyes, she smacked the back of her husband’s head.
“Schwetz net su dumb,” she said in the dialect. “That’s not a nice thing to say at all, especially in front of the girls. I don’t ever want to hear anything like that again!”
“Ah, I was only joking,” he responded.
It’s good it was only he and Lois, Dad and I, and Amy that heard it. I was pretty sure Amy and I weren’t adversely affected by it; we wouldn’t be scarred for life. But grown-ups need to be more careful what they say around impressionable adolescents. He said he was joking, and I believed him. Our family was a bunch of wise guys, good at joking and teasing, especially politics, but we didn’t always stop and think about the damage it might do. There had been so much talk in the media, like radio call-in shows, about the immigration problem, or at least what some people called a problem. People just like to ride the waves on an issue; becomes the popular thing to do. When some movement gets started, everyone jumps on the bandwagon, regardless of what they really believe about the issue; if they would just stop to think about it.
In any event, comments like that didn’t reoccur, at least any that I heard. But I wondered if the problem could resurface as more and different people joined our community. Bottom line, we made the Diaz’s feel welcome, just like we did any other newcomers. Beyond their cooking skills, they were a valuable addition to our crew; always willing to pitch in, learn new things, and boy could those boys play soccer!
That’s right, we hadn’t given that up; we played every Sunday afternoon. Enrico and Luis had to be on separate teams though, to keep it fair. Benny, as we called their father, was pretty good, too. But we had good players to even it out. Joe loved playing both with them or against them; either way, it was challenging.
Even though we had to wait for the corn to dry to harvest it, that didn’t mean any other farming had not occurred while waiting. Sometime in early September, Larry and Harvey had planted rye in a ten acre wheat stubble field that had earlier been pastured off by the cattle. The fast growing grain could be pastured in late fall if they needed it, but would certainly provide the first new forage n the spring. The planting was possible because of three things: they had a good supply of the summer’s rye harvest remaining to use as seed, they had successfully adapted two pieces of farm equipment to operate without tractor power, and Butch’s Clydesdales.
Larry estimated he had enough rye seed to sow 60 acres, but was determined to only use one half of it, so their would be some preserved for next fall’s planting. When he sowed the ten acres that left him enough to seed another twenty later in the fall in the harvested cornfields that he hoped at least a few acres might be harvested for grain somehow next summer. We would see.
The two pieces of farm equipment that were adapted were a field cultivator and the grain drill. A field cultivator had tines in it with two inch wide shovels on them that dug in and loosened up the earth as it was pulled through the field. The grain drill had a metering system to accurately drop the seed into small seed furrows created by the drill’s disks, which ran through the soil as the drill was pulled. It wasn’t a problem for Butch’s horses to pull the equipment; the problem was disengaging them. Both the field cultivator and the grain drill worked when they were in the down position and didn’t work when raised up. They were designed to be raised and lowered by hydraulics powered by the tractor. Before tractors and hydraulics were the norm, some machinery had a ground driven hand clutch or a lever system to raise and lower the piece, but the boys were not able to locate either of those on any old machinery that could have possibly been fitted onto our equipment to adapt them for use with horses. By good fortune, Larry had some handjacks, a hand powered, screw type mechanism that would lengthen or shorten depending on which way you turned the screw. When the hydraulic cylinders on the equipment were replaced with these handjacks, by shear brute strength, Larry could raise or lower either piece of equipment to the proper operating or transporting height.
He didn’t want to do that very often, so once the field cultivator was in the ground, it stayed there until the field was finished; similarly with the drill. It gave Butch a chance to show off his horse handling skills, making sure they didn’t walk into a situation where the machine would have to be lifted and steering them precise enough to not overlap the seed with the drill or leave skippers (areas of no seed). He and his horses did admirably; even Dad, Jake and Larry took tries at it, and learned well. One team could easily pull the drill; it was on rubber tires and rolled easily, but the cultivator was another matter. Larry’s field cultivator was twenty feet wide and he usually used a one hundred and ten horsepower tractor. While the correlation is not exact, we only had six horsepower, so no way could they pull twenty feet. Speed through the field is the other component in the equation, so the horses, going slower could still accomplish the task when the cultivator was narrowed. Larry’s machine had wings that were folded up for transport; they were taken off. And then, six tines on each side of the remaining frame were removed, bringing the working width down to about eleven feet. They tried it that way, with the intent of taking more off if the job was too difficult.
The first time through the field was the hardest as the soil had not been tilled since October the previous fall, it had been driven on by the combine, tractor, baler, and wagon, baked by the summer sun, plus the cattle had been treading on it in all kinds of weather making it very hard. I don’t know if Butch ever had his six horses hitched as a single team before, but with some chains, our braided ropes, some keen thinking, and the work of all, they accomplished it. Then Larry started them out only lowering the cultivator a little at a time, until the point was reached that the horses could pull without out over-straining, but still do a good job ripping up the soil. One time over the field was not enough to make a good seedbed. Back and forth through the field they went a second time and even with Larry setting the machine deeper, it pulled easier and put good tilth in the soil. But for final seedbed preparation, which required a third trip, Dad added a spike toothed harrow that we used in the garden that leveled off a nice even fine seedbed.
Because the farmers had successfully completed the task of sowing rye in September, when October came and we had cleared some cornfields, sowing wheat was accomplished as well using the same procedures. Harvey and Larry’s farming operation only had about one third of its acreage in hay. With the emphasis on pasturing, some acreage would need to be shifted to some kind of hay crop. Hay was hard to harvest, but easy to pasture. Unlike corn, there was no practical way to manually harvest grains like rye, barley, wheat, and soybeans. We would try some by hand, but needed to cut down on those acres. The necessity of that shift mandated that Larry plant timothy as well in every field of wheat he sowed that fall. Timothy was a grass that was planted in the fall, was excellent horse feed, really easy to dry, not so bad to harvest, and would first produce a crop the following summer after the grain had been harvested and the straw cleared off the field. So to get a crop next year and subsequent years (as timothy is a perennial), it needed to be planted this year. Larry had traded for timothy seed. The grain drill, in addition to having a compartment for the wheat, also had a seedbox for the grass seed. It took very little extra effort to plant the timothy in the same trip we made to sow the wheat.
Aunt Lois wasn’t as subtle; even before Dad’s glance had a chance to reach Jeremiah’s eyes, she smacked the back of her husband’s head.
“Schwetz net su dumb,” she said in the dialect. “That’s not a nice thing to say at all, especially in front of the girls. I don’t ever want to hear anything like that again!”
“Ah, I was only joking,” he responded.
It’s good it was only he and Lois, Dad and I, and Amy that heard it. I was pretty sure Amy and I weren’t adversely affected by it; we wouldn’t be scarred for life. But grown-ups need to be more careful what they say around impressionable adolescents. He said he was joking, and I believed him. Our family was a bunch of wise guys, good at joking and teasing, especially politics, but we didn’t always stop and think about the damage it might do. There had been so much talk in the media, like radio call-in shows, about the immigration problem, or at least what some people called a problem. People just like to ride the waves on an issue; becomes the popular thing to do. When some movement gets started, everyone jumps on the bandwagon, regardless of what they really believe about the issue; if they would just stop to think about it.
In any event, comments like that didn’t reoccur, at least any that I heard. But I wondered if the problem could resurface as more and different people joined our community. Bottom line, we made the Diaz’s feel welcome, just like we did any other newcomers. Beyond their cooking skills, they were a valuable addition to our crew; always willing to pitch in, learn new things, and boy could those boys play soccer!
That’s right, we hadn’t given that up; we played every Sunday afternoon. Enrico and Luis had to be on separate teams though, to keep it fair. Benny, as we called their father, was pretty good, too. But we had good players to even it out. Joe loved playing both with them or against them; either way, it was challenging.
Even though we had to wait for the corn to dry to harvest it, that didn’t mean any other farming had not occurred while waiting. Sometime in early September, Larry and Harvey had planted rye in a ten acre wheat stubble field that had earlier been pastured off by the cattle. The fast growing grain could be pastured in late fall if they needed it, but would certainly provide the first new forage n the spring. The planting was possible because of three things: they had a good supply of the summer’s rye harvest remaining to use as seed, they had successfully adapted two pieces of farm equipment to operate without tractor power, and Butch’s Clydesdales.
Larry estimated he had enough rye seed to sow 60 acres, but was determined to only use one half of it, so their would be some preserved for next fall’s planting. When he sowed the ten acres that left him enough to seed another twenty later in the fall in the harvested cornfields that he hoped at least a few acres might be harvested for grain somehow next summer. We would see.
The two pieces of farm equipment that were adapted were a field cultivator and the grain drill. A field cultivator had tines in it with two inch wide shovels on them that dug in and loosened up the earth as it was pulled through the field. The grain drill had a metering system to accurately drop the seed into small seed furrows created by the drill’s disks, which ran through the soil as the drill was pulled. It wasn’t a problem for Butch’s horses to pull the equipment; the problem was disengaging them. Both the field cultivator and the grain drill worked when they were in the down position and didn’t work when raised up. They were designed to be raised and lowered by hydraulics powered by the tractor. Before tractors and hydraulics were the norm, some machinery had a ground driven hand clutch or a lever system to raise and lower the piece, but the boys were not able to locate either of those on any old machinery that could have possibly been fitted onto our equipment to adapt them for use with horses. By good fortune, Larry had some handjacks, a hand powered, screw type mechanism that would lengthen or shorten depending on which way you turned the screw. When the hydraulic cylinders on the equipment were replaced with these handjacks, by shear brute strength, Larry could raise or lower either piece of equipment to the proper operating or transporting height.
He didn’t want to do that very often, so once the field cultivator was in the ground, it stayed there until the field was finished; similarly with the drill. It gave Butch a chance to show off his horse handling skills, making sure they didn’t walk into a situation where the machine would have to be lifted and steering them precise enough to not overlap the seed with the drill or leave skippers (areas of no seed). He and his horses did admirably; even Dad, Jake and Larry took tries at it, and learned well. One team could easily pull the drill; it was on rubber tires and rolled easily, but the cultivator was another matter. Larry’s field cultivator was twenty feet wide and he usually used a one hundred and ten horsepower tractor. While the correlation is not exact, we only had six horsepower, so no way could they pull twenty feet. Speed through the field is the other component in the equation, so the horses, going slower could still accomplish the task when the cultivator was narrowed. Larry’s machine had wings that were folded up for transport; they were taken off. And then, six tines on each side of the remaining frame were removed, bringing the working width down to about eleven feet. They tried it that way, with the intent of taking more off if the job was too difficult.
The first time through the field was the hardest as the soil had not been tilled since October the previous fall, it had been driven on by the combine, tractor, baler, and wagon, baked by the summer sun, plus the cattle had been treading on it in all kinds of weather making it very hard. I don’t know if Butch ever had his six horses hitched as a single team before, but with some chains, our braided ropes, some keen thinking, and the work of all, they accomplished it. Then Larry started them out only lowering the cultivator a little at a time, until the point was reached that the horses could pull without out over-straining, but still do a good job ripping up the soil. One time over the field was not enough to make a good seedbed. Back and forth through the field they went a second time and even with Larry setting the machine deeper, it pulled easier and put good tilth in the soil. But for final seedbed preparation, which required a third trip, Dad added a spike toothed harrow that we used in the garden that leveled off a nice even fine seedbed.
Because the farmers had successfully completed the task of sowing rye in September, when October came and we had cleared some cornfields, sowing wheat was accomplished as well using the same procedures. Harvey and Larry’s farming operation only had about one third of its acreage in hay. With the emphasis on pasturing, some acreage would need to be shifted to some kind of hay crop. Hay was hard to harvest, but easy to pasture. Unlike corn, there was no practical way to manually harvest grains like rye, barley, wheat, and soybeans. We would try some by hand, but needed to cut down on those acres. The necessity of that shift mandated that Larry plant timothy as well in every field of wheat he sowed that fall. Timothy was a grass that was planted in the fall, was excellent horse feed, really easy to dry, not so bad to harvest, and would first produce a crop the following summer after the grain had been harvested and the straw cleared off the field. So to get a crop next year and subsequent years (as timothy is a perennial), it needed to be planted this year. Larry had traded for timothy seed. The grain drill, in addition to having a compartment for the wheat, also had a seedbox for the grass seed. It took very little extra effort to plant the timothy in the same trip we made to sow the wheat.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Chapter Nineteen-Corn (conclusion)
And corn as a supply of food was becoming evident, based on two developments. Shortly after the corn harvest started we ran out of oatmeal and cereal - no more Cocoa Puffs. And all through the fall harvest and later that winter, more people starting arriving; people we didn’t know – a couple from Bedford, a family from New Jersey, single women, single men, some older than Dad, and quite a few children. They arrived at different times and in different ways. Most walked; a few came on bicycles, a couple even still had their cars, one even came on horseback. Some looked well and brought goods with them, but many were very thin, dirty, poorly clothed for wintry weather, and carrying few belongings. Their arrival was always a cause for suspicion. Questions would go through our minds. Are these good people? Is one a thief? Are they sick? Are they running from something? Will they fit in? Do they understand our culture?
They had questions too, but in almost every instance it was the same one: Can we work for food? Harvey and Jean always had the same answer: First you eat, wash, and rest. Tomorrow, there’s work. Some would pridefully argue they should work first, all would smile. Most would express gratitude immediately; a few would be skeptical and cautious in their acceptance of the farm owners’ graciousness. All would eat, they didn’t all stay. A few chose to settle in at Crystal View, some just moved on. Some came with skills, some had none. Either way we had work for them - in the cornfields, in the barn, in the butcher house. Plenty of help to bring in the corn crop, but also to help shovel feed, move fences, fork manure, milk, cook, sew, do dishes and laundry.
With the increased number of workers, we could even devote time to woodcutting. Harvey’s furnace, Poppop’s woodstove, and the cook stove in the butcher house took a lot of fuel. Up until now they had been using the supply of firewood they had on hand and burning scrap that had accumulated over the years. That supply had reached its end. Now that there had been a frost and the cooler temperatures were prevalent, crews could venture into the woods with less annoyance from the bugs or fear from disease carrying ticks. It took some skill to chop and saw trees up, but it was one that could be learned. Even some of the youngsters could tag along and help by picking up the smaller pieces of sawed branches, stacking the firewood, or loading and unloading the wagon. The crews also spend timing cleaning up fallen branches and dead trees in the fencelines along the edges of our fields.
All these extra workers came with a few challenges, too. Where will they all sleep and use the bathroom? What about meals? Because our houses were getting pretty full and there was a concerted effort to maintain some privacy for the owners themselves, the newcomers were asked to sleep in the top of the barn. We had bedding and mattresses. Like the barn floor wasn’t already overfilled, there was no heat, and what kind of privacy could they have? Fortunately, Harvey’s barn was built in an “L” shape, so one wing was devoted to single women, the other end to single men, with families in the middle. Hay bales were rearranged into makeshift walls or pieces of the plastic from the silage bags that Larry was feeding from were hung as dividers. Small dressers or end tables, boxes or crates from the two houses were provided for the newcomers to keep their few belongings and toilet articles in. Eventually, the milking herd was housed underneath and a little bit of heat from the cows would help, but realistically, it was just like camping out in winter. Our guests needed good sleeping bags or plenty of covers, long underwear and heavy clothing, all of which we were able to find in our inventoried goods. As an added benefit, moving some things out of Jean’s upstairs kitchen made some more room for Lois’s infirmary.
There was one certainty; as expressed by Harvey and Dad in a huge sign at the barn’s main entrance with reminders at other doors. The sign said:
NO SMOKING OR FIRES IN THIS BARN
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD CANDLES
MATCHES OR LIGHTERS BE FOUND HERE
IF YOU BURN DOWN THIS BARN
YOU BURN YOUR HOME AND FOOD
No matter how cold it got that winter, the ban was never lifted. At one point the residents had learned to heat up bricks or stones at an outside fireplace, built far enough away from the barn to provide some light for bathroom trips during the night. They would then put them in their sleeping bags or under the covers like in colonial times. Harvey and Dad allowed that. Also, Barry, Uncle Bruce, and Dean installed a few car headlights in the barn to make some light during the evening and early morning.
There was a schedule made for showering, and as far as toileting, once again, the boys had exhibited some forethinking. A double outhouse had been built about fifty feet from the barn doors, right next to the manure pit. It was not only convenient for those sleeping in the barn, but also for all of us working around the farm. A lot less water to carry to the bathrooms in the houses. Also, it was ecologically sound. For instead of digging a hole and having our wastes go into the ground, the boys had designed the outhouses so the wastes would flow by gravity right into the manure tank, and then eventually be hauled to the fields to fertilize our crops.
Feeding everyone became our major concern. One of the first things was a change in the eating schedules. As soon as our number exceeded 30, meals had to be served in two shifts, your shift being determined by what time of the morning or evening you were needed at your assigned duties, like milking or dishes. I also noticed how happy the newcomers were to have milk with every meal. They might have not drunk milk for months and even though I was almost tired of drinking it all the time, it made me realize I lucky and blessed I was to have some.
As our oatmeal and cereal was gone, we had to come up with a new breakfast menu. Fortunately, the boys finally had a working flour mill built and running. They had carved two millstones from pieces of a concrete feed trough we didn’t need to have and then incredibly created a drive for it by using Larry’s hay rake in reverse. I mean, normally a tractor was used to power a nine foot wheel with six arms and tines on to rake hay. The boys hooked up a gearbox to rotate one of the millstones, hooked up the power take off shaft to the gear box, and then by walking around the hub and pushing the arms on the rake, transferred the power the opposite direction to make the millstone turn. It was rough for one person to do it alone, but two, three or even six people could hop in to drive the mill. Maybe some day they might be able to drive it with oxen or water, but at least for now, it worked!
They had successfully made wheat flour and were ready to tackle corn next to make cornmeal. That was good news at Butch’s farm; they had been smashing corn with bricks and hammers for over a month. With wheat flour, in addition to baking bread, cakes or pies, we could now make biscuits for breakfast. They didn’t need sugar, very little leavening, and were delicious with all that butter we had. They were also the perfect companion for the gravy we could make with all the meat we had, now that we had flour to thicken it. Our wheat supply was finite, so when they had mastered the art of making cornmeal, some could be added to the biscuits or used straight to make cornbread if we had some eggs to spare. The trick with making cornmeal was roasting it properly first. We accomplished this by spreading the shelled corn on cookie sheets on top the butcher stove whenever it wasn’t being used for cooking or laundry.
Roasting and grinding corn became a steady chore for several members of our crew. Of course some times the cornmeal would be cooked and served as mush, which was similar to oatmeal in consistency and served hot, often times for supper.
“I love mush,” Dad said one evening at supper, “especially with this blackstrap molasses on it.”
“Well I don’t,” I replied, “you can have your mush and your blackstrap. I can barely eat it smothered in butter. You know that blackstrap will be gone one day; we don’t grow sugar cane around here.”
“I know,” he answered, “maybe by then we’ll have some honey or trade for molasses or syrup. It’s to my advantage though, that hardly anyone else likes it, so my supply will last a while.”
“That was your theory with candy in the house, too,” Mom chimed in. “You’d buy kinds, like black licorice, that no one liked.”
“Yep,” Dad responded, “that way it would last weeks, instead of all the munchkins eating it in two days.”
“Oh, you’re the most loving father ever,” I crooned.
“You got that right,” he answered. “Now mother, if everyone has had there fill of mush tonight, it’s going to be pretty cold tonight. You can save the leftover for breakfast.”
“Of course dear,” Mom replied, “wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Any leftover mush would be poured into a pan and if put somewhere cold enough, would ‘set up’ overnight. It could then be sliced into blocks and fried for breakfast. Maybe it was a little better that way; at least I could handle it, again with butter and a little pancake syrup which we had fortunately managed to conserve.
One other way we were very glad to eat cornmeal, probably never thought of by anyone in our family, was brought to us by a couple with their two sons who arrived from New York City. The parents were cooks in a Mexican restaurant and could they do things with cornmeal. Not just tortillas, which were excellent, but also other dishes with our homegrown beans, beef and pork. They were immediately assigned to the kitchen crew and were glad to be there. Their names were Benito and Rosa Diaz.
To be continued………….. Mort
They had questions too, but in almost every instance it was the same one: Can we work for food? Harvey and Jean always had the same answer: First you eat, wash, and rest. Tomorrow, there’s work. Some would pridefully argue they should work first, all would smile. Most would express gratitude immediately; a few would be skeptical and cautious in their acceptance of the farm owners’ graciousness. All would eat, they didn’t all stay. A few chose to settle in at Crystal View, some just moved on. Some came with skills, some had none. Either way we had work for them - in the cornfields, in the barn, in the butcher house. Plenty of help to bring in the corn crop, but also to help shovel feed, move fences, fork manure, milk, cook, sew, do dishes and laundry.
With the increased number of workers, we could even devote time to woodcutting. Harvey’s furnace, Poppop’s woodstove, and the cook stove in the butcher house took a lot of fuel. Up until now they had been using the supply of firewood they had on hand and burning scrap that had accumulated over the years. That supply had reached its end. Now that there had been a frost and the cooler temperatures were prevalent, crews could venture into the woods with less annoyance from the bugs or fear from disease carrying ticks. It took some skill to chop and saw trees up, but it was one that could be learned. Even some of the youngsters could tag along and help by picking up the smaller pieces of sawed branches, stacking the firewood, or loading and unloading the wagon. The crews also spend timing cleaning up fallen branches and dead trees in the fencelines along the edges of our fields.
All these extra workers came with a few challenges, too. Where will they all sleep and use the bathroom? What about meals? Because our houses were getting pretty full and there was a concerted effort to maintain some privacy for the owners themselves, the newcomers were asked to sleep in the top of the barn. We had bedding and mattresses. Like the barn floor wasn’t already overfilled, there was no heat, and what kind of privacy could they have? Fortunately, Harvey’s barn was built in an “L” shape, so one wing was devoted to single women, the other end to single men, with families in the middle. Hay bales were rearranged into makeshift walls or pieces of the plastic from the silage bags that Larry was feeding from were hung as dividers. Small dressers or end tables, boxes or crates from the two houses were provided for the newcomers to keep their few belongings and toilet articles in. Eventually, the milking herd was housed underneath and a little bit of heat from the cows would help, but realistically, it was just like camping out in winter. Our guests needed good sleeping bags or plenty of covers, long underwear and heavy clothing, all of which we were able to find in our inventoried goods. As an added benefit, moving some things out of Jean’s upstairs kitchen made some more room for Lois’s infirmary.
There was one certainty; as expressed by Harvey and Dad in a huge sign at the barn’s main entrance with reminders at other doors. The sign said:
NO SMOKING OR FIRES IN THIS BARN
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD CANDLES
MATCHES OR LIGHTERS BE FOUND HERE
IF YOU BURN DOWN THIS BARN
YOU BURN YOUR HOME AND FOOD
No matter how cold it got that winter, the ban was never lifted. At one point the residents had learned to heat up bricks or stones at an outside fireplace, built far enough away from the barn to provide some light for bathroom trips during the night. They would then put them in their sleeping bags or under the covers like in colonial times. Harvey and Dad allowed that. Also, Barry, Uncle Bruce, and Dean installed a few car headlights in the barn to make some light during the evening and early morning.
There was a schedule made for showering, and as far as toileting, once again, the boys had exhibited some forethinking. A double outhouse had been built about fifty feet from the barn doors, right next to the manure pit. It was not only convenient for those sleeping in the barn, but also for all of us working around the farm. A lot less water to carry to the bathrooms in the houses. Also, it was ecologically sound. For instead of digging a hole and having our wastes go into the ground, the boys had designed the outhouses so the wastes would flow by gravity right into the manure tank, and then eventually be hauled to the fields to fertilize our crops.
Feeding everyone became our major concern. One of the first things was a change in the eating schedules. As soon as our number exceeded 30, meals had to be served in two shifts, your shift being determined by what time of the morning or evening you were needed at your assigned duties, like milking or dishes. I also noticed how happy the newcomers were to have milk with every meal. They might have not drunk milk for months and even though I was almost tired of drinking it all the time, it made me realize I lucky and blessed I was to have some.
As our oatmeal and cereal was gone, we had to come up with a new breakfast menu. Fortunately, the boys finally had a working flour mill built and running. They had carved two millstones from pieces of a concrete feed trough we didn’t need to have and then incredibly created a drive for it by using Larry’s hay rake in reverse. I mean, normally a tractor was used to power a nine foot wheel with six arms and tines on to rake hay. The boys hooked up a gearbox to rotate one of the millstones, hooked up the power take off shaft to the gear box, and then by walking around the hub and pushing the arms on the rake, transferred the power the opposite direction to make the millstone turn. It was rough for one person to do it alone, but two, three or even six people could hop in to drive the mill. Maybe some day they might be able to drive it with oxen or water, but at least for now, it worked!
They had successfully made wheat flour and were ready to tackle corn next to make cornmeal. That was good news at Butch’s farm; they had been smashing corn with bricks and hammers for over a month. With wheat flour, in addition to baking bread, cakes or pies, we could now make biscuits for breakfast. They didn’t need sugar, very little leavening, and were delicious with all that butter we had. They were also the perfect companion for the gravy we could make with all the meat we had, now that we had flour to thicken it. Our wheat supply was finite, so when they had mastered the art of making cornmeal, some could be added to the biscuits or used straight to make cornbread if we had some eggs to spare. The trick with making cornmeal was roasting it properly first. We accomplished this by spreading the shelled corn on cookie sheets on top the butcher stove whenever it wasn’t being used for cooking or laundry.
Roasting and grinding corn became a steady chore for several members of our crew. Of course some times the cornmeal would be cooked and served as mush, which was similar to oatmeal in consistency and served hot, often times for supper.
“I love mush,” Dad said one evening at supper, “especially with this blackstrap molasses on it.”
“Well I don’t,” I replied, “you can have your mush and your blackstrap. I can barely eat it smothered in butter. You know that blackstrap will be gone one day; we don’t grow sugar cane around here.”
“I know,” he answered, “maybe by then we’ll have some honey or trade for molasses or syrup. It’s to my advantage though, that hardly anyone else likes it, so my supply will last a while.”
“That was your theory with candy in the house, too,” Mom chimed in. “You’d buy kinds, like black licorice, that no one liked.”
“Yep,” Dad responded, “that way it would last weeks, instead of all the munchkins eating it in two days.”
“Oh, you’re the most loving father ever,” I crooned.
“You got that right,” he answered. “Now mother, if everyone has had there fill of mush tonight, it’s going to be pretty cold tonight. You can save the leftover for breakfast.”
“Of course dear,” Mom replied, “wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Any leftover mush would be poured into a pan and if put somewhere cold enough, would ‘set up’ overnight. It could then be sliced into blocks and fried for breakfast. Maybe it was a little better that way; at least I could handle it, again with butter and a little pancake syrup which we had fortunately managed to conserve.
One other way we were very glad to eat cornmeal, probably never thought of by anyone in our family, was brought to us by a couple with their two sons who arrived from New York City. The parents were cooks in a Mexican restaurant and could they do things with cornmeal. Not just tortillas, which were excellent, but also other dishes with our homegrown beans, beef and pork. They were immediately assigned to the kitchen crew and were glad to be there. Their names were Benito and Rosa Diaz.
To be continued………….. Mort
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Chapter Nineteen - Corn - Part 3
So once the uses for our corn were established, it shed some light on how to harvest it. The corn harvested as a whole stalk could be utilized by the cattle. The hogs and chickens could eat any ears of corn, even if they had grown a little mold in storage. But the corn we wanted to eat ourselves, feed our horses, and save for seed had to be harvested in the cleanest fashion and stored where there was the least chance of spoilage.
So what did a field’s location have to do with which method we employed to harvest it? Its proximity to cattle. In any field that was close enough to our cattle (or Butch’s) to be fenced off and have the cattle forage in all winter, we would only remove the husked ear from the field. It took a little more effort to harvest, but produced both a clean, safe food for us and left the most forage for the gleaning animals. An added advantage of having the cattle forage all winter in those fields was the manure they deposited there.
Just pulling the ear off the stalk, husk and all, was a much quicker process. We would harvest many more loads per day, therefore we used this method at the end of the harvest season when we were running out of autumn and afraid we might lose some of the crop to winter. Additionally, by the end of fall, the corn was dry enough that it would keep on the barn floor with less risk of spoilage. From the barn floor, as winter progressed, we would husk the corn under roof, feed the corn to the chickens or hogs, and the husks to calves, cows or horses.
By any measure, the hardest and most time consuming method of bringing in the crop was harvesting the whole stalk. It was the method we started with that Wednesday in October and we didn’t actually finish until early spring. For although we may have cut the corn at the beginning of the harvest season, we didn’t need to bring it back to the farm until we needed it, it had dried more fully, and we had time to haul it. The fields that we harvested by this method were those farthest from the farm, fences and water, where no cattle were near enough to use the forage we left behind using the other methods. This method necessitated much more horsepower, as it required less acreage to fill a wagonload of stalks compared to a load of ears only. As a result, many more loads came from these fields, plus it was the farthest distance Butch’s teams had to travel to bring in the corn.
For this job we once again brought out the sickles with their short, heavy, sturdy blades. Scythes would not work well for corn. The cornstalk was way too thick for the scythe’s thinner, flimsier, blade, and it took two hands to swing a scythe. The person wielding the sickle would grab three or four stalks with one hand about shoulder high and then cut the stalks with a couple swings of the sickle with the other hand. Ideally he would hand off the clump to another harvester I’ll call shockers. No, they weren’t electrifying; they stacked the clump of stalks in an upright configuration we call a shock. You must have seen them on Christmas or Thanksgiving cards, or pictured on calendars. That fall we created scores of those shocks immortalized by the poet who wrote:
“When the frost is on the pumpkin and the fodder’s in the shock”.
With the stalks in an upright position, the ears on the stalk could dry, but by strength of numbers, the shock was protected from the devastating effects of wind and weather through the winter. If we had plenty of shockers in the harvesting crew and our timing was on, there would always be a shocker ready to grab the clump of stalks from the cutter. If not, the cutter would throw the clump onto the ground, making it much harder for the shockers to pick them up and shock. One reason we began shocking corn in mid-October was that the stalks were still strong enough to take the handling. Trying to harvest whole stalks after they had become dry and brittle would be both frustrating and unproductive as the stalk would break off in your hand or the ear would fall off. The other reason was that we didn’t have to be as concerned that the corn was not dry enough to keep in the barn. That risk aside, whenever a wagonload of harvesters traveled to a field to shock corn, those that were not engaged in the shocking process (for we conveniently rotated jobs throughout the day), would take the wagon to a different part of the field and pull the whole ear off the stalk to create a wagonload of corn to take back home. No sense wasting the horsepower by coming back from the field empty.
Typically, we’d use a hay wagon that by design had slatted sides that bales of hay would not fall through, but ears of corn would. For these excursions the boys had fastened boards on all four sides of the wagon around the bottom foot or so from the floor of the wagon to keep the corn from falling off. Every trip home, we’d ride on top the pile of corn. It was always a pleasant ride, especially for the older generations who would reminisce about many a ride on the corn wagon they had taken while growing up. We also had a feeling of accomplishment with the fruits of our labor piled under us, not to mention the fact that we would soon be arriving back to the warmth and comfort of home, particularly if the weather was bad. Not being sure if this early harvested corn was dry enough to keep, we were judicious in the placing of it, so that we could use it first, before it had a chance to spoil.
We had to shovel every load of corn off the modified hay wagons. Later in the season, when the shocking was completed and we were harvesting ears only we switched to using gravity bin wagons. They were metal sided wagons that had a sloping floor and would unload by opening a gate at the wagon’s lowest point. Some shoveling was still necessary, but not near as much. Loading and unloading ears were much easier tasks than doing the same with stalks. I never helped much, but rode along a trip or two. It was back breaking work, but necessary to supply our herd with needed forage.
When either shocking or picking corn, gloves were a very necessary tool, primarily to prevent blisters and also cuts. Cornstalks are rough, but worse was their proclivity to tear in string-like strips that had sharp edges. While not threatening amputation, a cut from such a sliver was similar to a paper cut, but worse. It was very annoying, caused much burning and would be susceptible to infection as corn stalks had different molds and fungi growing on them, especially later in the growing season.
Of course the most necessary tool for shocking was the sickle, although a machete would have worked as well. For pulling and husking corn, however, a husking knife was the preferred tool. If you tried to husk corn all day long without one, the whole area between and along the sides of your thumb and forefinger would take a beating. Gloves helped some, but soon you’d wear holes in them. Husking knives were short pieces of metal with just a dull edge on it, that lay on the thumb side of the forefinger and you used to snap the ear off the stalk or the husk off the ear. Once you learned how to use one, you wouldn’t want to be without it. The knife was fastened to and held in place by rings of leather that fit over your fore and middle fingers. That way the knife was always in the right position and you didn’t drop it while husking. Poppop had two such knives in his antique collection so he used them as a pattern to make a couple dozen more from scrap pieces of metal and leather he cut out of old handbags we had found when we inventoried our belongings.
All in all, husking corn was a pretty neat experience. The horses would pull a wagon right through the field. Three people husked the rows of corn directly in front of the horses before the wagon ran the corn down. They threw the ears into buckets outside the horse’s path and then the buckets were dumped into the wagon when the wagon had moved ahead. Someone had the job of carrying the empty buckets back up in front of the horses; lots of times, it was me. On each side of the wagon, eight or ten people would each take a row and throw the plucked ear directly into the wagon. The most athletic, who wanted to show off their throwing skills, would take the rows farthest from the wagon. So they’d miss once in a while or hit someone (accidentally for the most part); ears could be picked up. Taking 18 to 20 rows in one pass down the field could fill a load in no time. It was a great time for fellowship, laughter, teasing, planning. No noise like when working with engine powered machinery. We even used the harvest moon to husk corn in the evening, the days leading up to and the couple nights of the full moon near the end of October, and then again in November. It was spooky, but at the same time peaceful, sensing God’s silent, still and silhouetted creation and knowing you were with people who cared about you.
Other years, Harvey’s one hundred acres of corn would have all been stored in those plastic bags, so there was virtually no space on the farm dedicated to corn storage. At Crystal View Farm there was an old wooden slatted corn crib, facing open air, where cleanly husked corn could be placed to dry with little risk of spoilage. But it only held about eight acres of corn. Our lack of storage space was another driving factor that forced us to shock as many acres as we did. There was space remaining on the barn floors at the two farms, but it was disappearing quickly. Loose hay took up a lot of room and also baled hay and straw had been stacked in both barns in early summer when Larry still had fuel. We used very little of that hay and straw the rest of the summer, preferring to conserve as much as we could by making maximum use of pasturing. Pasturing also negated the need for using straw as bedding – a very good thing as we didn’t want to spend time and labor forking and hauling manure out of barns. We could delay that chore until the worst part of winter. To make as much room for the corn as possible, the men had painstakingly restacked the baled hay up against the roof, and even on top of the loose hay we had harvested. Also, all the equipment and wagons that Harvey usually stored in the barns was taken outside to free up as much space as possible for the corn.
So space had been created for the corn as the harvest progressed. We piled, shoveled and heaped the ears as high as we could so we’d still have room to work at husking for the livestock and shelling for us and the chickens, or for any other purpose that might arise. The cleanly husked corn that was intended for our use was not just piled on the floor. Larry and Poppop made rings of box fence wire about eight feet in diameter and stacked them on slatted wooden pallets in upright cylinders right on the barn floor near the area where a good flow of fresh air was usually present. Similar to the wooden crib at Butch’s, this would promote thorough drying to keep our food supply as safe, nutritious, and palatable as possible.
To be continued…… Mort
So what did a field’s location have to do with which method we employed to harvest it? Its proximity to cattle. In any field that was close enough to our cattle (or Butch’s) to be fenced off and have the cattle forage in all winter, we would only remove the husked ear from the field. It took a little more effort to harvest, but produced both a clean, safe food for us and left the most forage for the gleaning animals. An added advantage of having the cattle forage all winter in those fields was the manure they deposited there.
Just pulling the ear off the stalk, husk and all, was a much quicker process. We would harvest many more loads per day, therefore we used this method at the end of the harvest season when we were running out of autumn and afraid we might lose some of the crop to winter. Additionally, by the end of fall, the corn was dry enough that it would keep on the barn floor with less risk of spoilage. From the barn floor, as winter progressed, we would husk the corn under roof, feed the corn to the chickens or hogs, and the husks to calves, cows or horses.
By any measure, the hardest and most time consuming method of bringing in the crop was harvesting the whole stalk. It was the method we started with that Wednesday in October and we didn’t actually finish until early spring. For although we may have cut the corn at the beginning of the harvest season, we didn’t need to bring it back to the farm until we needed it, it had dried more fully, and we had time to haul it. The fields that we harvested by this method were those farthest from the farm, fences and water, where no cattle were near enough to use the forage we left behind using the other methods. This method necessitated much more horsepower, as it required less acreage to fill a wagonload of stalks compared to a load of ears only. As a result, many more loads came from these fields, plus it was the farthest distance Butch’s teams had to travel to bring in the corn.
For this job we once again brought out the sickles with their short, heavy, sturdy blades. Scythes would not work well for corn. The cornstalk was way too thick for the scythe’s thinner, flimsier, blade, and it took two hands to swing a scythe. The person wielding the sickle would grab three or four stalks with one hand about shoulder high and then cut the stalks with a couple swings of the sickle with the other hand. Ideally he would hand off the clump to another harvester I’ll call shockers. No, they weren’t electrifying; they stacked the clump of stalks in an upright configuration we call a shock. You must have seen them on Christmas or Thanksgiving cards, or pictured on calendars. That fall we created scores of those shocks immortalized by the poet who wrote:
“When the frost is on the pumpkin and the fodder’s in the shock”.
With the stalks in an upright position, the ears on the stalk could dry, but by strength of numbers, the shock was protected from the devastating effects of wind and weather through the winter. If we had plenty of shockers in the harvesting crew and our timing was on, there would always be a shocker ready to grab the clump of stalks from the cutter. If not, the cutter would throw the clump onto the ground, making it much harder for the shockers to pick them up and shock. One reason we began shocking corn in mid-October was that the stalks were still strong enough to take the handling. Trying to harvest whole stalks after they had become dry and brittle would be both frustrating and unproductive as the stalk would break off in your hand or the ear would fall off. The other reason was that we didn’t have to be as concerned that the corn was not dry enough to keep in the barn. That risk aside, whenever a wagonload of harvesters traveled to a field to shock corn, those that were not engaged in the shocking process (for we conveniently rotated jobs throughout the day), would take the wagon to a different part of the field and pull the whole ear off the stalk to create a wagonload of corn to take back home. No sense wasting the horsepower by coming back from the field empty.
Typically, we’d use a hay wagon that by design had slatted sides that bales of hay would not fall through, but ears of corn would. For these excursions the boys had fastened boards on all four sides of the wagon around the bottom foot or so from the floor of the wagon to keep the corn from falling off. Every trip home, we’d ride on top the pile of corn. It was always a pleasant ride, especially for the older generations who would reminisce about many a ride on the corn wagon they had taken while growing up. We also had a feeling of accomplishment with the fruits of our labor piled under us, not to mention the fact that we would soon be arriving back to the warmth and comfort of home, particularly if the weather was bad. Not being sure if this early harvested corn was dry enough to keep, we were judicious in the placing of it, so that we could use it first, before it had a chance to spoil.
We had to shovel every load of corn off the modified hay wagons. Later in the season, when the shocking was completed and we were harvesting ears only we switched to using gravity bin wagons. They were metal sided wagons that had a sloping floor and would unload by opening a gate at the wagon’s lowest point. Some shoveling was still necessary, but not near as much. Loading and unloading ears were much easier tasks than doing the same with stalks. I never helped much, but rode along a trip or two. It was back breaking work, but necessary to supply our herd with needed forage.
When either shocking or picking corn, gloves were a very necessary tool, primarily to prevent blisters and also cuts. Cornstalks are rough, but worse was their proclivity to tear in string-like strips that had sharp edges. While not threatening amputation, a cut from such a sliver was similar to a paper cut, but worse. It was very annoying, caused much burning and would be susceptible to infection as corn stalks had different molds and fungi growing on them, especially later in the growing season.
Of course the most necessary tool for shocking was the sickle, although a machete would have worked as well. For pulling and husking corn, however, a husking knife was the preferred tool. If you tried to husk corn all day long without one, the whole area between and along the sides of your thumb and forefinger would take a beating. Gloves helped some, but soon you’d wear holes in them. Husking knives were short pieces of metal with just a dull edge on it, that lay on the thumb side of the forefinger and you used to snap the ear off the stalk or the husk off the ear. Once you learned how to use one, you wouldn’t want to be without it. The knife was fastened to and held in place by rings of leather that fit over your fore and middle fingers. That way the knife was always in the right position and you didn’t drop it while husking. Poppop had two such knives in his antique collection so he used them as a pattern to make a couple dozen more from scrap pieces of metal and leather he cut out of old handbags we had found when we inventoried our belongings.
All in all, husking corn was a pretty neat experience. The horses would pull a wagon right through the field. Three people husked the rows of corn directly in front of the horses before the wagon ran the corn down. They threw the ears into buckets outside the horse’s path and then the buckets were dumped into the wagon when the wagon had moved ahead. Someone had the job of carrying the empty buckets back up in front of the horses; lots of times, it was me. On each side of the wagon, eight or ten people would each take a row and throw the plucked ear directly into the wagon. The most athletic, who wanted to show off their throwing skills, would take the rows farthest from the wagon. So they’d miss once in a while or hit someone (accidentally for the most part); ears could be picked up. Taking 18 to 20 rows in one pass down the field could fill a load in no time. It was a great time for fellowship, laughter, teasing, planning. No noise like when working with engine powered machinery. We even used the harvest moon to husk corn in the evening, the days leading up to and the couple nights of the full moon near the end of October, and then again in November. It was spooky, but at the same time peaceful, sensing God’s silent, still and silhouetted creation and knowing you were with people who cared about you.
Other years, Harvey’s one hundred acres of corn would have all been stored in those plastic bags, so there was virtually no space on the farm dedicated to corn storage. At Crystal View Farm there was an old wooden slatted corn crib, facing open air, where cleanly husked corn could be placed to dry with little risk of spoilage. But it only held about eight acres of corn. Our lack of storage space was another driving factor that forced us to shock as many acres as we did. There was space remaining on the barn floors at the two farms, but it was disappearing quickly. Loose hay took up a lot of room and also baled hay and straw had been stacked in both barns in early summer when Larry still had fuel. We used very little of that hay and straw the rest of the summer, preferring to conserve as much as we could by making maximum use of pasturing. Pasturing also negated the need for using straw as bedding – a very good thing as we didn’t want to spend time and labor forking and hauling manure out of barns. We could delay that chore until the worst part of winter. To make as much room for the corn as possible, the men had painstakingly restacked the baled hay up against the roof, and even on top of the loose hay we had harvested. Also, all the equipment and wagons that Harvey usually stored in the barns was taken outside to free up as much space as possible for the corn.
So space had been created for the corn as the harvest progressed. We piled, shoveled and heaped the ears as high as we could so we’d still have room to work at husking for the livestock and shelling for us and the chickens, or for any other purpose that might arise. The cleanly husked corn that was intended for our use was not just piled on the floor. Larry and Poppop made rings of box fence wire about eight feet in diameter and stacked them on slatted wooden pallets in upright cylinders right on the barn floor near the area where a good flow of fresh air was usually present. Similar to the wooden crib at Butch’s, this would promote thorough drying to keep our food supply as safe, nutritious, and palatable as possible.
To be continued…… Mort
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Chapter Nineteen - Corn (cont)
Gathering nuts was both easy and fun. Like Harvey had envisioned, we youngsters did the bending and the picking, while our elders aided by moving the buckets from tree to tree and carrying the full ones to the wagon. To get started, we used Brutus to pull the wagon full of empty buckets and nut-pickers. A carefully thought out route was followed, dropping off people and buckets at predetermined nut-infested areas of the farms. I stayed with Brutus to the last stop, where we only had seven empty buckets and five people remaining. While Brutus was resting in the shade and munching early fall grass, Jake, who drove the wagon, Uncle Bruce, Aunt Kristen, Dean and I filled the seven buckets with nuts and loaded them onto the wagon.
We then retraced our steps, picking up people and loading buckets of nuts all the way back to the farm. It quickly got to the point where there were more nuts than people on the wagon; though Harvey commented once that it was hard for him to tell which were the nuts. Soon every square inch of the wagon floor had a bucket of nuts on it, so everyone was walking back to the farm. Some of the kids, Robbie, of course, clung precariously onto the sides of the wagon as Brutus plodded along. He’s such a show off.
We unloaded the nuts into Poppop’s basement in time for lunch, and then repeated the whole process by another route in the afternoon. They yielded well; we must have gathered over 100 buckets. But the pile of nuts in Poppop’s basement wasn’t the only evidence of our toil. The juice in black walnut hulls possess the powerful ability to stain. Depending on the maturity of the nut or how long it lay on the ground, the stain was either a light greenish-yellow brown or a deeper brownish black. Practically everyone had come across a black walnut tree that day, so Wednesday morning when we started the corn harvest, we all had yellow-green-brownish stained hands. It wouldn’t wash off so I figured we’d have to work it off. The corn harvest gave us just that opportunity.
Prior to the collapse, Harvey and Larry’s corn was harvested by two methods. One was to use a machine called a forage harvester to chop into fine pieces the whole stalk and ear while there was still a fair amount of moisture in it. Then the chopped material was packed into oxygen limiting, tube-like plastic bags where the material would ferment similar to sauerkraut and thus be preserved as what is known as silage. The second was to use the combine to shell the kernels of corn off of the ear, leaving the rest of the stalk, cob and husk in the field. If the right moisture, the shelled corn could be ground into the plastic tubes as well, or if it contained less moisture, could be dried with artificial heat and stored in a grain bin. Neither of these methods could be used this year – we did not have the fuel to spare, nor were there any bags available.
Fortunately there are ways to harvest corn by hand and we had the tools, the know-how, and the manpower to do so. The three ways that we employed were harvesting the whole stalk, the ear with the husk on, and a husked ear. The method we used was determined by the field’s location and the intended use of the corn. There was much discussion about how we should use the corn.
“I recall,” Mel said during that discussion, “a chart I saw in school in an environmental biology class, that compared the amount of grain consumption by various animals to the amount of product produced.”
“I bet dairy cows were the most efficient,” Larry declared.
“I think it’s hogs,” Dad offered.
“Has to be chickens,” Mom chimed in. “What did the chart say?”
“I don’t remember exact figures, or the exact order,” Mel responded. “But I remember their groupings. Raising cattle and sheep for their meat took the most: five to six pounds of grain for every pound of meat produced. Hogs took less, three or four pounds. Producing milk took around three pounds of grain per pound of milk, while egg production took two and a half, I think. And chickens for their meat use two pounds of grain.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Dad commented, “that a six pound chicken only ate twelve pounds of grain in its short lifetime.”
“I don’t believe the figure on milk production either,” Larry complained. “A cow giving 100 pounds of milk per day doesn’t eat 300 pounds of grain.”
“That’s very true,” Mel replied. “I thought about that at the time. I think the two keys were that it measured the grain consumption of the animal over its whole lactation and lifetime and that the figure was a grain equivalent. Think of all the days you feed a heifer before you even get one drop of milk and also the grain a cow eats while it’s dry. All that grain was figured in.”
“That makes sense,” Harvey said. “But what did you mean by ‘grain equivalent’?”
“I concluded that the study was conducted as part of the ecology revolution,” Mel answered.
“You mean the environmentalist whackos?” Joe asked.
“I suppose you could say that,” Mel chuckled. “The study’s purpose was to show that we should be feeding people with the grain instead of feeding it to animals – to show it was an ecological, financial, and moral obligation to not feed animals the grain that starving people could eat.”
“You buy that?” Josh asked.
“No,” Mel answered, “I immediately recognized the results as propaganda and missing a very key element.”
“What element?” Uncle Bruce asked.
“The study didn’t take into account the whole ration the cow, sheep or hog ate. To answer Harvey’s question, the grain equivalent was the amount of grain the animal would eat if you replaced every other ingredient in the animal’s diet with grain.”
“You can’t do that!” Larry exclaimed. “It’s not healthy for the cow.”
“We know that,” Mel agreed. “But they had to compare apples to apples. Chickens eat very little grass or other plant matter, while cattle and sheep can be on all forage diets.”
“So I might have guessed wrong,” Mom interjected. “Almost 100% of a chicken’s diet, at least commercially, is grain. They would eat the most grain compared to what you get from them.”
“True, maybe,” Jean offered, “but I’d rather eat two scrambled eggs or a drumstick than a half pound of corn.”
“Agreed,” Mom replied, “So I guess in our operation, it’s advantage cows – we shouldn’t waste so much corn on the chickens.”
“I don’t know if I would reach the same conclusion,” Dad said. “With your chickens not being cooped up and running free range around the farm, they eat insects, weed seeds and pick at the garbage. As they don’t eat much grain, we can spare some for them. Besides, eggs and chicken are a valuable source of protein in our diets. The cows on the other hand, are producing more milk than we can use without additional grain to their ration. They can grow and produce milk on grass, hay, vegetable stalks and pods, cornstalks and husks, at least this time of year.”
“When it gets colder,” Larry added, “both the cows and young stock will need more energy to grow. You see now, they’re getting some grain in the corn silage we have leftover from last fall. That supply might last until late winter at best. Then they will need more grain to grow, at least until new, rich spring grass is available for them to forage. You think about it: cows, sheep and goats might be our saviors through the next few years. We can’t eat all those forages you mentioned like grass and stalks. They can, and in turn produce food that we can eat. They didn’t mention that in the study did they Mel?”
“Of course not,” she replied.
“Bet they didn’t think of the manure either,” Poppop added. “It’s a valuable fertilizer for us to grow more feed for the livestock and food for us. Our yields would drop dramatically without it. Livestock are indeed a blessing to our operation and a solution to our predicament. Heck, goats will even eat bushes and weeds and poison ivy to give us meat and milk.”
Thinking back on that, we later learned that the several goat farms in the neighborhood had continued to prosper and provide food and work for many guests. It made me think how the Israelites survived and even thrived in the virtual deserts of Midian and Sinai and other arid areas of Palestine. Their goats and sheep could convert any scrubby growth into food, not to mention the value of their skins and wool.
“Yes,” Harvey concluded, “our cattle will keep us going. I look at some of the neighbors’ land that was placed in the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. In essence, rented to the government to take it out of production in order to stabilize prices and create cover for wildlife. Almost all those acres are seeded in wild grasses that we can’t eat, but our livestock can. When those agreements were still in effect, harvesting those fields was prohibited; there’s lush growth there. Now with the government inoperative and not fulfilling their side of the contract, that is paying the rent, that makes the contract void. That grass may now be grazed and will become a valuable forage, especially as winter progresses.”
“Bottom line is,” Larry said, “even with all the available forage around, when it becomes harder for the livestock to find it and the temperatures get lower, we should feed some corn to our cattle, and use some for the chickens. What about the hogs?”
“I would say,” Joe answered, “only if we have some to spare. They can grow without it, but when you go to butcher a hog fed milk only, the pork isn’t firm at all and annoyingly difficult to cut. So it would be better if we can spare some.”
“I’m sure we can,” Dad replied. “Fortunately, when we run our hogs with the cattle, the hogs can root through the manure for undigested pieces of grain. And they also find roots and tubers in the fields as well. Hogs around here aren’t totally dependent on us feeding them milk and corn; they convert some inedible materials to food for us, too.”
“OK,” Jean said, “corn for cows, chickens and hogs, and don’t forget us!”
“That’s right,” Poppop agreed, “don’t forget us. But there is one group of animals we didn’t mention yet that needs corn, too.”
“Brutus!” I exclaimed, “the horses.”
“Right,” Poppop replied, “Brutus and the horses at Butch’s. They are going to be doing some hard work and need the energy. Our oat supply is limited, so they need corn. Also when our oxen get to working age, they’ll need more grain as well.”
“And lastly,” Larry added, “we have to save some corn for seed.”
To be continued…… Mort
We then retraced our steps, picking up people and loading buckets of nuts all the way back to the farm. It quickly got to the point where there were more nuts than people on the wagon; though Harvey commented once that it was hard for him to tell which were the nuts. Soon every square inch of the wagon floor had a bucket of nuts on it, so everyone was walking back to the farm. Some of the kids, Robbie, of course, clung precariously onto the sides of the wagon as Brutus plodded along. He’s such a show off.
We unloaded the nuts into Poppop’s basement in time for lunch, and then repeated the whole process by another route in the afternoon. They yielded well; we must have gathered over 100 buckets. But the pile of nuts in Poppop’s basement wasn’t the only evidence of our toil. The juice in black walnut hulls possess the powerful ability to stain. Depending on the maturity of the nut or how long it lay on the ground, the stain was either a light greenish-yellow brown or a deeper brownish black. Practically everyone had come across a black walnut tree that day, so Wednesday morning when we started the corn harvest, we all had yellow-green-brownish stained hands. It wouldn’t wash off so I figured we’d have to work it off. The corn harvest gave us just that opportunity.
Prior to the collapse, Harvey and Larry’s corn was harvested by two methods. One was to use a machine called a forage harvester to chop into fine pieces the whole stalk and ear while there was still a fair amount of moisture in it. Then the chopped material was packed into oxygen limiting, tube-like plastic bags where the material would ferment similar to sauerkraut and thus be preserved as what is known as silage. The second was to use the combine to shell the kernels of corn off of the ear, leaving the rest of the stalk, cob and husk in the field. If the right moisture, the shelled corn could be ground into the plastic tubes as well, or if it contained less moisture, could be dried with artificial heat and stored in a grain bin. Neither of these methods could be used this year – we did not have the fuel to spare, nor were there any bags available.
Fortunately there are ways to harvest corn by hand and we had the tools, the know-how, and the manpower to do so. The three ways that we employed were harvesting the whole stalk, the ear with the husk on, and a husked ear. The method we used was determined by the field’s location and the intended use of the corn. There was much discussion about how we should use the corn.
“I recall,” Mel said during that discussion, “a chart I saw in school in an environmental biology class, that compared the amount of grain consumption by various animals to the amount of product produced.”
“I bet dairy cows were the most efficient,” Larry declared.
“I think it’s hogs,” Dad offered.
“Has to be chickens,” Mom chimed in. “What did the chart say?”
“I don’t remember exact figures, or the exact order,” Mel responded. “But I remember their groupings. Raising cattle and sheep for their meat took the most: five to six pounds of grain for every pound of meat produced. Hogs took less, three or four pounds. Producing milk took around three pounds of grain per pound of milk, while egg production took two and a half, I think. And chickens for their meat use two pounds of grain.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Dad commented, “that a six pound chicken only ate twelve pounds of grain in its short lifetime.”
“I don’t believe the figure on milk production either,” Larry complained. “A cow giving 100 pounds of milk per day doesn’t eat 300 pounds of grain.”
“That’s very true,” Mel replied. “I thought about that at the time. I think the two keys were that it measured the grain consumption of the animal over its whole lactation and lifetime and that the figure was a grain equivalent. Think of all the days you feed a heifer before you even get one drop of milk and also the grain a cow eats while it’s dry. All that grain was figured in.”
“That makes sense,” Harvey said. “But what did you mean by ‘grain equivalent’?”
“I concluded that the study was conducted as part of the ecology revolution,” Mel answered.
“You mean the environmentalist whackos?” Joe asked.
“I suppose you could say that,” Mel chuckled. “The study’s purpose was to show that we should be feeding people with the grain instead of feeding it to animals – to show it was an ecological, financial, and moral obligation to not feed animals the grain that starving people could eat.”
“You buy that?” Josh asked.
“No,” Mel answered, “I immediately recognized the results as propaganda and missing a very key element.”
“What element?” Uncle Bruce asked.
“The study didn’t take into account the whole ration the cow, sheep or hog ate. To answer Harvey’s question, the grain equivalent was the amount of grain the animal would eat if you replaced every other ingredient in the animal’s diet with grain.”
“You can’t do that!” Larry exclaimed. “It’s not healthy for the cow.”
“We know that,” Mel agreed. “But they had to compare apples to apples. Chickens eat very little grass or other plant matter, while cattle and sheep can be on all forage diets.”
“So I might have guessed wrong,” Mom interjected. “Almost 100% of a chicken’s diet, at least commercially, is grain. They would eat the most grain compared to what you get from them.”
“True, maybe,” Jean offered, “but I’d rather eat two scrambled eggs or a drumstick than a half pound of corn.”
“Agreed,” Mom replied, “So I guess in our operation, it’s advantage cows – we shouldn’t waste so much corn on the chickens.”
“I don’t know if I would reach the same conclusion,” Dad said. “With your chickens not being cooped up and running free range around the farm, they eat insects, weed seeds and pick at the garbage. As they don’t eat much grain, we can spare some for them. Besides, eggs and chicken are a valuable source of protein in our diets. The cows on the other hand, are producing more milk than we can use without additional grain to their ration. They can grow and produce milk on grass, hay, vegetable stalks and pods, cornstalks and husks, at least this time of year.”
“When it gets colder,” Larry added, “both the cows and young stock will need more energy to grow. You see now, they’re getting some grain in the corn silage we have leftover from last fall. That supply might last until late winter at best. Then they will need more grain to grow, at least until new, rich spring grass is available for them to forage. You think about it: cows, sheep and goats might be our saviors through the next few years. We can’t eat all those forages you mentioned like grass and stalks. They can, and in turn produce food that we can eat. They didn’t mention that in the study did they Mel?”
“Of course not,” she replied.
“Bet they didn’t think of the manure either,” Poppop added. “It’s a valuable fertilizer for us to grow more feed for the livestock and food for us. Our yields would drop dramatically without it. Livestock are indeed a blessing to our operation and a solution to our predicament. Heck, goats will even eat bushes and weeds and poison ivy to give us meat and milk.”
Thinking back on that, we later learned that the several goat farms in the neighborhood had continued to prosper and provide food and work for many guests. It made me think how the Israelites survived and even thrived in the virtual deserts of Midian and Sinai and other arid areas of Palestine. Their goats and sheep could convert any scrubby growth into food, not to mention the value of their skins and wool.
“Yes,” Harvey concluded, “our cattle will keep us going. I look at some of the neighbors’ land that was placed in the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. In essence, rented to the government to take it out of production in order to stabilize prices and create cover for wildlife. Almost all those acres are seeded in wild grasses that we can’t eat, but our livestock can. When those agreements were still in effect, harvesting those fields was prohibited; there’s lush growth there. Now with the government inoperative and not fulfilling their side of the contract, that is paying the rent, that makes the contract void. That grass may now be grazed and will become a valuable forage, especially as winter progresses.”
“Bottom line is,” Larry said, “even with all the available forage around, when it becomes harder for the livestock to find it and the temperatures get lower, we should feed some corn to our cattle, and use some for the chickens. What about the hogs?”
“I would say,” Joe answered, “only if we have some to spare. They can grow without it, but when you go to butcher a hog fed milk only, the pork isn’t firm at all and annoyingly difficult to cut. So it would be better if we can spare some.”
“I’m sure we can,” Dad replied. “Fortunately, when we run our hogs with the cattle, the hogs can root through the manure for undigested pieces of grain. And they also find roots and tubers in the fields as well. Hogs around here aren’t totally dependent on us feeding them milk and corn; they convert some inedible materials to food for us, too.”
“OK,” Jean said, “corn for cows, chickens and hogs, and don’t forget us!”
“That’s right,” Poppop agreed, “don’t forget us. But there is one group of animals we didn’t mention yet that needs corn, too.”
“Brutus!” I exclaimed, “the horses.”
“Right,” Poppop replied, “Brutus and the horses at Butch’s. They are going to be doing some hard work and need the energy. Our oat supply is limited, so they need corn. Also when our oxen get to working age, they’ll need more grain as well.”
“And lastly,” Larry added, “we have to save some corn for seed.”
To be continued…… Mort
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