The hay man came a day early to bale the hay (the rain clouds were gathering) but it was not dry. It was green. Too green.
So with my heart in my mouth I said maybe we can look at it again tomorrow. Maybe it would not rain. The fella sighed with relief. He had called to say he should bale it and felt responsible but I will keep going if you tell me to, he said, but I am afraid it will mold. The old man, his father, looked at the bales we had drawn and shook his head. Stand them on their edge like this he said rolling the bale under inspection to its side. And shake a little salt on, he said. Waving his old working hands across the hay, miming the delicate distribution of salt. Horses don’t like that mind. He said. I don’t have horses I told him, I am growing food here. I seen your pigs out there he said nodding with a gentle smile at the piglets playing leap frog in the fields. I like me some bacon, he said. He hitched at his denim overalls, resettled his straw hat back onto his head and pushed his teeth back into place with his tongue. We’ll be back tomorrow. It might rain. It might not, you never know. But this will burn your old barn down. Best we come back. Leave the baler here son.
And the flash of their truck had barely turned in the track before old man wind began to roll in with his stormy arrogant smirk. Can you see him. Gliding in like Butter would not melt in his mouth. His cap just so.
Smothering the sun and sending bolts of lightening snapping like fingers at my small pursuits. As we ran to bring in the green bales, the wind heaved the tarpaulin up off the Chickens Ark and wind and its thunder sent sheets of metal falling and pigs bolting through the electric fence and around the corner.
The light changed as it fell, into that deep ominous gold, the glistening unreal beauty of it like we were under heavy water. After we had brought in the hay, laid it out and salted its edges. No ride on the Clatter Box for you. After I had wrestled the tarp back onto the Ark and put the sides on, the wind pushing on one side and whipping things back off the other. Not giving me an inch. After I had called all the piglets back into their run and shut their gate. After I had called Mama into the barn. After we had walked through the dark back up to the house and Ton had jumped a gate and landed on a soundless skunk. The smell shooting back. The dog disappearing in despair. It rained.
Well we’ve baled rained-on hay before. The old man had said.
There you are.
Good morning. I have decided to give myself The Challenge. Take control. For the month of September I will only eat what I have grown on the farm. I know that my pork and beef is still walking about in the fields. And I know it has not been the best potato year and I am not milking Daisy. But I need to start somewhere with this. To get an idea of how it can be.
You need to help me name the challenge. Something succinct and to the point.
Now, I am not a masochist so we need to decide what foods (and drinks) will still be OK. My list is : Coffee. Olive Oil. Flour. I will still buy milk from down the road, because milking the cow is part of my plan. This summer she is dry but we can pretend I think. What about my after work beer and a glass of wine with dinner? I still have some pear cider left and I do make my own wine. Like most things I will just eat or drink Less. (When you make it yourself you are more frugal with consumption). I have vinegar in the cellar, all the herbs and vegetables in the gardens. Honey from last year instead of sugar.
The only fruit will be apples and pears (soon) , and the frozen blueberries and strawberries and peaches that I have harvested already.
Eggs, of course we have piles of eggs.
This will only apply when I am home. I will still go out to dinner if invited and things like that. Though this seldom happens anyway. My ultimate goal is to do this for a year (and then the rest of my life) so I feel it is time to have one of a few dry runs so to speak. I thought about doing it for a week, but that is not a long enough trial. Nor is two weeks. At this time of year we really do live off the farm anyway but I have not applied the challenge. So a month it will be. You and I have today to decide what I am allowed to buy, and what I have to push to the back of the pantry, though really I am not sure that there will be terribly much. The farm supplies an awful lot. I am not short of will power so this will be a fun challenge for me. John will join me when he is home, but he works off the farm. Plus I haven’t told him yet!
I need to do it, so I can see where the weaknesses are. And I would love to have you along for the ride.
Have a lovely day.
Off to work I go.
your friend on the farmy, celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
83 responses to “Old Man Wind Brings The Challenge.”
I admire your resolve, and can give you a big, rousing “Go, Celie!” cheer from over here… 😀
Fingers crossed for the hay to dry. Too bad about the storm, but, oh, my! What a sky!
See if Angel can see the man in the clouds, he looks like a train driver! c
When I have been ill and unable to get out to shop (I don’t have a car), I live on what’s left in the freezer, fridge & cupboard. It’s surprising what you can do without for a while. Mind you I couldn’t last a month this way as most of my diet is fresh food (living in the inner city). I usually end up ‘run down’ and very tired with minimal variety in fresh food though.
I think nice olive oil would have to be one of my absolute necessities though. But I could do without flour and don’t use much anyway.
I’ll be interested to see how you manage and what you discover you miss the most. I would have thought living in the country and growing your own food would make it pretty easy to survive – depending on the rain that is.
Yes living out here growing my own food is exactly why i can undertake this challenge, though I will not be eating out of the freezer and pantry, I am going to eating from the fields and the gardens, anything I have put into the freezer and larder is for winter. It is things like rice and chickpeas and watermelon that i will be missing out on. c
I’m sorry to say I had a little laugh reading when Ton landed on the silent skunk. 🙂 That must have been the cherry on your cake of a day! Oh boy. With all the miserable goings on at least you did have the most glorious sky. 🙂 Hey, how about you write a list of available foods and the fellowship could send you a recipe or two, that might be fun and maybe a little variation. I’m def. in for the olive oil, garlic (if you haven’t got it growing), and citrus fruits to keep the cold season away. Also would suggest lentils, beans and such.
I do have garlic from this years post, but I have not grown any lentils or beans.. citrus i will miss, but I have piles of Vit C in the garden. You should have seen Boo and hightailing it back to the house after we smelt that skunk!.. c
When the storms hit here last evening, I quickly checked the map to see if the storm line stretched to you and it looked like you had been spared. From your post, it looks like you got the rain before we did. It just stopped raining again and I’m off to the market before it restarts.
Good luck with The Challenge. You’re right. The only way you can see all, if any, problems is to try it. I’m glad you’ve exempted going out for dinner. It would make getting a meal pretty tricky the next time you come to Chicago. 🙂
I wonder if we should try and find a local ingredients restaurant in chicago.. I shall do some research but I don’t want to be silly with this challenge, I will be adding a lot of good sense too! c
Good luck with the hay. I admire your challenge. It makes me so happy when we don’t need to buy any vegetables. Late July and August are my tough months for that though next year I know we could do it if I plant a whole bed of okra and more patio (shaded) containers of leaf lettuce.
Our lettuce stops in its tracks when it gets hot too, I am sowing another lot today, in the frog garden, i thought maybe I would try and build a shade box for above the lettuce and then later cover that is plastic to extend the lettuce season.. c
Great ideas. I’m putting in the fall stuff this weekend: snow peas, beets, carrots, bok choi, chard, collards, mustard, lettuce, radishes. Okra is still going strong so I’m going to leave it be and when it’s done seed more lettuce.
I really should grow okra, i have never even SEEN it! But it sounds good! c
Lol. I’m not from the south originally so I was not that familiar with it, but I am trying to work with plants that are successful in our climate (unlike my struggles with tomatoes). Like the Malabar spinach vines that I’m also growing during these hot month, okra is designed for north Texas. Peppers too.
somewhere in back of my mind i sort of remember something about salt not being good for pigs, at least not till bacon curing stage, so may want to keep salted hay seprate
i remember growing up on farm,in the 50’s and 60’s, only eating what we grew,milked, or slaughtered, we called it poverty, don’t ever want to do that again
I do understand what you are saying about it being called poverty, the people is those days worked very hard. very very hard. I would hate for my challenge to trivialise or romanticise those times. I do want to see if I can do it though. I will make sure not to feed the salted hay to pigs, thank you for that! c
Your writing has changed dramatically. I didn’t think it was you but there you were. I have a succinct name for the challenge – Vital.
What has changed? Vital.. good word. c
My name for the challenge: The Good Life
That was quite a day you had. I enjoyed words and pictures, having memories of the “shall we/Shan’t we days of haysel.” Good luck with the hay. Vx
Morning Viv darling girl, many of the Fellowship (especially those without blogs) have been asking after you. We have missed your wit! Glad you were able to pop in..Hope you are taking it in easy steps.. c
Your voice has developed an exhausted twang. Worrying. Is all okay within yourself?
Hmm.. is that what Roger meant too? Oh dear. I need to watch that. I am tired for sure, but not exhausted yet.. c
Good. No worries then. xx
I think I will join you 🙂 it would do me good! looking forward to it..
I would LOVE you to join me, that would be fantastic! Though i am immediately thinking that i should have sown my next load of lettuce earlier! c
I wondered if you missed the rain, sorry that you didn’t. Here it was hot and so humid that it just have well have rained. Thinking drying thoughts for today. I’m glad he explained the salting and standing procedure. It is easier to show than explain. Our horse never seem to have a problem with it, but then too that was her only choice in food. She was the Queen (despot) of the heifer pasture so what they ate she ate. The heifers always got the lower quality bales.
Thinking back when I was a kid we pretty much lived off of the farm. Mom canned and froze just about every thing from the garden. She would buy fruit in season and can it as for some reason we never planted any fruit trees. We had bush cherries that were more pit than cherry. Grapes we had for juice and jelly, the same with raspberries and blackberries. We always raised a beef. Pork we bought sparingly because we only had the pigs a couple of years before the milk inspector told us we had to get rid of them or move them to a part of the farm that the cows couldn’t access them. Which was not practical for our farm or the pigs quality of life, no shade, no water source close by, much better opportunity for someone to steal or harass or hurt them. Our few chickens couldn’t free roam either. We would do you-pick apples in the fall and fill our spare fridge. Those would last well into mid winter. The pork was a treat if mom found a sale. She bought mostly paper products, cleaners, baking supplies, bacon, sausage, cheese, cottage cheese (we never made our own dairy products I would love to try that now), bananas, oranges, tuna, lunch meat and bread (mom went through periods where she would make homemade bread, & buns but mostly we ate store bought bread). Very rarely bought fresh vegetables except celery. Oh sometimes a chicken (whole not parts lol) for frying or baking. We would occasionally raise broilers but her butchering crew was not the most enthusiastic participants in that enterprise. I hate plucking with a passion. The big treat for us was tv dinners. They didn’t taste all that great but it was the novelty of the compartment foil plate and putting them in the oven to warm. We were easily amused as children.
I love your photos they bring back so many memories. That is a really nice hay rack, it has a great running gear under it and a nice deck on it. The baler looks like the “new” one dad had. Maybe I am not too old to get back onto a farm.
You have so much knowledge! just imagine your farm. The hay rack is the balers, One day we will get one they are very versatile and being so high, my friend raises her turkeys under theirs, just puts pig panels around it and rolls it across the grass. I am confused as to why someone would say not to have pigs and cows on the same farm. I have read detailed work on rotating cows, then sheep then pigs through fields with piles of chicks following the lot of them. (the fields are rested in between though) They must have been worried about worms. Interesting. I shall read more about it. c
You could call your challenge Simply September! It’s a grand challenge and I know you will ace it, one way or another, because that’s just who you are!
Simply September is a good start, we also need something that says what I am doing. I like it, I will work with it… c
How about Sustainable September? I admire your resolve. It will be interesting to follow your progress,
I am saddened by your rained on hay.
Yet equally encouraged by your trial run of eating only from your farm. I think it is brilliant on your part to do this, Celi. Much better to try it now and find the chinks in your armour. I saw mention of olive oil a couple of times above, to that I would add salt and pepper. I suppose you can live without the pepper and olive oil if you had too, but you need the salt (even if sparingly) for so many reasons.
I was thinking about pepper too, Pepper is one of my favourite tastes, and yes to go without salt in the summer would be silly! c
I hope the sun shines on you today. Do keep us posted on “The Menu” challenge. Would love to know what you cook up. Do you bake your own bread? I think you should be allowed flour ; )
We only eat bread John or I bake, and also i want to be able to make pasta, pastry and pizzas. So yes I agree, we should keep flour. Thank you carla! c
You may buy flour, salt, and sugar.
Sending you sunny thoughts.
Thank you darling, flour and salt for sure! Sugar is still in the maybe box.. I use honey as a a substitute as a rule.. c