Pickup Truck

Farmer Carl says...

If yer gonna barrie a pickup truk, you shuldnt spect it to be perfickt. Speshly if that pickup came from a farm. Sis needed to barrie my truk cuz hers got drowned at the burthday bash at the fairgrounds on account a the flood from the river. Did you hear 'bout that? A cryin shame whut happend to them folks. Them cars is still there and still soakin in the river water.

Anyways, if'n yer gonna ask to barrie a truk, you shuldn't be wanten it to be a fancy truk! It mighta been fancy a long time back, but it shure ain't fancy now! It's been werkin fer a livin. You gotta fergit its rusty and you gotta fergit the windsheels crackted. And pleeeze, don't spect the air condishinin to work. Man, that quit werkin a long time ago. Farm truks ain't for city folks. They jes don't understand.....

You can set my truck on fire and roll it down a hill but I still wouldn't trade it for a Coupe de Ville...(Joe Diffie)

Recall

Do you recall when the meaning of that word was to remember an event from the past? What came to mind when you read today's title, "Recall"? If you're like me that word now means a food product from an industrial supplier has been pulled from store shelves because it has the potential to make people sick.

We hear about food recalls so much now it's becoming commonplace. We are becoming complacent. Think about that for a minute. It's becoming commonplace in the USA for food to be contaminated and make people sick. People are so used to hearing about bad food they shrug and go about their day. That's scary.

The very system that was created to provide safe food for our nation is no longer reliable. The industrialization of food has taken away the most basic expectation, that the food we eat will nourish our bodies and not make us sick.

There is a new word in the dictionary. It's Locavore. Be a locavore whenever you can. It's good for food. It's good for us. It's good for the planet.

Real Milk, Fresh Milk

I don't remember exactly when I made the decision to go to drinking raw milk. I'm sure it was after reading an article about it and the colorful history of milk in general. Maybe it was that Mother Earth News article about factory farms. Maybe it was after reading about the general decline in the nutritional value of food in this country. It doesn't matter anymore. I made the switch to raw, unpasteurized milk. I prefer to call it fresh milk.

Fresh milk is alive with flavor. The feel of it in your mouth is different, wholesome, better. It's a sensation you recognize on an instinctual level. Your body knows how much better it is for you, even if your head doesn't. When I first started to drink it about a year ago, I actually craved it. A true craving. My body found something in this fresh milk it had been missing and needed. I don't know what it was, but the craving has been satisfied and replaced with simple joy in having this wonderful, living food available to me.

Strawberries

This is what's left of the twelve pounds of berries I picked today. I washed, hulled and vacuum packed 7.5 pounds of berries, made crushed sweetened strawberry sauce for shortcakes, gave 2lbs to my sister and her husband, and left the rest for eating fresh.

We're going out again just as soon as we can.....m u s t

h a v e

m o r e

b e r r i e s!

Git yerself a cat

Farmer Carl says......

You shuld get yerself a cat if'n you lives on a farm. A good cat is gonna help you keep those pesky mice outta yer grain and from messin in yer stuff. It don't matter whether it's a tom or a muther cat, cepting a muther cat will give you more cat's but thats good if you gots lots of mice in yer barn. I got a cat whut lives in the barn. He catches them mice real good. You should see him sneekin up on em. They never knowed what hit em. His little black paw goes "whack" and dats da end of da mouse. Git yerself a cat and git rid of them good fer nuthin mice.

Swamp

The swamp. It's a thing of beauty. It's also a creepy, slimy place. It's swimming with life. We find huge, dinner plate size snapper turtles, rope size garter snakes and black snakes as big around as a garden hose. It's said there are massasauga rattlers around here, but we've never encountered one. There are wood ducks, painted turtles, tree frogs, bull frogs, spring peepers, baltimore orioles and redwing blackbirds. We see salamanders, muskrats, woodchucks, turkeys and skunks. In April there was a pair of Canada Geese hanging around. We would see them in the back hayfield, then on the driveway, then in the swamp. Thought for sure they were going to nest, but they seemed to have moved on.