After the Storm - August, 2023
I’ve spent more days working on the farm this month than in any August since the late 1980s. Here are a few notes:
Nature displays truly awesome power at times. Here at the farm, the August 7th storm shredded many large trees, splitting some apart with such force as to leave only splintered stumps. After some time spent among the destruction, one tends to resign oneself to it. Move what’s needed, move what you can, and let nature take care of the rest.
The corn crib was blown off of its foundation by the storm. After analysis of the damage, we’ve decided to not spend any money on repairing it. Several of its foundation posts were snapped off at ground level; other damage was visible inside. It’s mostly been a junk room for several decades now; the buzzards have been nesting in some of it (and it smells like it). I took two tractor loads of good soil from inside the foundation walls on the north side, to fill some of the holes in the lawn from the falling tree limbs. We’ll rescue some of the siding wood and some other things.
Old metal: some of the historic metalwork on the farm is still remarkably beautiful and functional: the latch handle on the northwest bay of the corn crib, for instance. The handiwork of an unknown blacksmith who lived in a truly different world.
Sky song: somehow the cloud patterns here are particularly musical, sometimes displaying contrary motion and counterpoint. Invites one to sing along.
Cedar is lovely to cut, both its scent and its color. The branches are heavy, though, especially these from the top of the tree just east of the pond place (which silted in decades ago, and is now a favorite middle-of-the-farm hiding place for deer and others). Floppy heavy evergreen, with bright blue ‘berries’. This is a girl tree: the eastern red cedar is dioecious. This particular tree has the female reproductive structures, which are small, blue-colored, waxy, berry-like cones found at the tips of branches. She was a knock-out in her time; fortunately, not in mine.
Tree species that I have cut this month: cedar, silver maple, elm, ash, hackberry, oak, chestnut, birch, black walnut, white pine, loblolly pine, sumac, redbud, peach, pear, pecan; probably more. Each with its own characteristics of weight, density, tension. Life in its diversity, sap flowing, breathing, moving, breaking, dying.
The large oak on the north side of the highway was felled by the wind, the top of it falling across the highway and hitting the shop (a cinder-block building that has been slowly settling over the last years, and now looks and feels quite dangerous). It knocked down the power line to the building, and we’ve decided that in its current state, it’s not worth it to re-electrify. So I continued the process of moving things out of it, sorting the contents into several categories: 1) USEABLE - save and store in the garage basement; 2) either PARTIALLY USEABLE or HISTORIC or LARGE - save and store in the barn; 3) Small, VALUABLE HISTORIC - store in the smokehouse; 4) METAL RECYCLING; and 5) trash for the landfill. It’s a tedious process, but some of it has been going on for several years. A lesson in perseverance and in letting go. Still, a particular item will trigger a teenage memory, and I’ll hear the call and appreciate the flow of history into this moment.
Message from the past: a handwritten note from my grandfather, from 1983 (one of the summers I spent on the farm with him): “Radial arm saw switch; repaired but doesn’t work properly.” He initialed it, BAB…Benjamin Alvah Blackburn. He would have been 81 or 82 when he wrote that note on the box, and hung it up in its mailing envelope on the wall of the shop, for me to read, 40 years later. Frustration survives, I guess. But he left me more than that.
Sorting old fenceposts: 20 worth saving; a slightly smaller number for metal recycling as they’re too bent or too rusted to ever be put into the ground again. These old ones ARE occasionally used: my brother-in-law and I rebuilt a section of the west field fence earlier this year using only materials found on the farm: posts, wire, fence clips.
Though I appreciate the solitude of the countryside, we’re never alone here: ospreys soar over the lake, buzzards watch, the kingfisher rattles, a deer springs from a fence row, the groundhogs are in evidence, the mockingbirds mock, the crickets sing, the minnows nibble on my back while swimming in the lake (not sure what they find appealing about that).
Muscle memory: some sequences of tractor operations are so automatic that I really have to think when describing them in precise order. In some respects, it’s similar to throwing a dart or stroking a putt: if you think too much about HOW to do it or the exact process, the action is not free and flowing, and the likelihood of success is considerably diminished. Thinking is way overrated…sometimes.
In the moment I dive off of the dock into Douglas Lake, I sometimes recall the wonderful Douglas Adams line from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (I think, paraphrasing): “flying’s not so hard; just throw yourself at the ground, and miss.”
Ultimate detox: 94 degrees with 90% humidity: soak through 3-4 sets of clothes in a day. Still, careful to hydrate, balance work in the sun and the shade, and move at a slow, steady pace. “Sweat glands fully functional, captain.”
The heavy metal hook on the log chain fits tightly into the anchor point on the front of the tractor. After pulling a log or portion of a tree, it’s even tighter, but can (usually) be loosed by a well-placed kick or two with a steel-toed boot. Careful.
On the second last day, I sent a text to my wife and kids: “Sunday afternoon, sitting under the porch with a nice breeze, thunder all around, cleaning chainsaws after the day’s work, sipping an IPA. Just wish any (or all) of you were here…I’ve found paradise.”
- TM, in-flight Knoxville-Denver, 8/28/2023, 11:28 pm
