Country trucks come in three colors: gold, silver, and white. They are manufactured, with few exceptions, by three companies: Ford, GMC, and Chevrolet. As such, my cobalt blue Toyota Tundra stands out like…well, my beard and my brand of farming. Though its dented, dirty, Japanese designed frame and squeaky suspension marks it as […]
The character flaws for which I deserve criticism are many. As a relatively new, relatively young farmer, criticism and its cousin, advice, solicited or not, are industry hazards that I must accept with whatever grace I can muster. I can tolerate criticism of my pig management from an older customer that “had a pig once […]
Disclaimer– Some folks may want to give this post a miss. This post contains fairly graphic descriptions of animal death. I have not spared many details in my description of killing animals on the farm (both processing and euthanizing). I do this not for shock value or because I’ve grown calloused, but because I want […]
“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it…he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do…There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger coaches twenty or thirty miles on […]
-By Claire DuFresne So often I am asked “how” I do it. For those of you who don’t already know, I work as a 6th grade Reading teacher at a wonderful local charter school in Memphis, an hour drive from the farm. I am “on stage” as a teacher from 7:30 am until 4:30pm […]
Much airtime has been given over to the suggestion that if we, as a society, would just learn to argue more civilly, things would be better. Congress would compromise, we’d get through awkward Thanksgiving dinners, and the world would be a better place. My experience as a teacher and as a farmer suggest otherwise. Civil […]
While my first given reason for posting this lengthy political piece is largely selfish (that I find the political to be inescapable), I hope that my second reason adds something small to what purports to pass for our national political conversation. I find myself in the somewhat uncomfortable position of living on both sides of […]
Okay, let’s get political. For weeks, I have steered my attention futilely towards what I believe will be a very entertaining blog post inspired by my recent rediscovery of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. During the week, I structure these posts in my head while moving fences, feeding animals, and constructing and refurbishing animal housing. […]
Every night I make a list. I star the necessary, place tentative question marks next to the aspirational, and mark routine tasks with good old-fashioned dashes. With that, I put my mind at ease, secure in the knowledge that tomorrow is planned. I have succeeded in completing exactly three of these daily lists. Yesterday’s […]
It’s finally over, and things are better. Not perfect, but better. August, in the Midsouth, is universally reviled by farmers. The heat, though no worse than much of June or July, wears out the body and begins to play tricks on the mind. June and July might break heat records, but their days are […]