| Dear Readers
I have a cousin who nearly failed
organic chemistry one summer because the lab professor caught him
sniffing unknowns for the other students. His nose was so accurate
that he could sniff the unknown chemicals they were supposed to
identify as their lab assignment, and then go to the shelf of
reagents and sniff through them one by one until he identified the
same one as the unknown. I ranked it a virtuoso performance
of the smelling art, but the professor was neither amused nor
inspired (Philistine!).
My cousin’s skilful nose runs in the
family. I am nearsighted and somewhat selective of hearing (as my
children delight to point out: "Soap!?" "No, peanut
butter!"). Nevertheless, I am a world class smeller. But
that has its drawbacks. Like the other senses, you can’t just
turn off your nose. The odours of this world assault your
nose and insist on extorting their share of attention.
So it happens every spring that no
matter how tightly I wind up my self control, my nose seduces me
from duty’s straight and narrow path to the shirking dreaminess of
spring. And just about the time one tree or flower plays out,
another more sweetly beguiling takes its place.
About three weeks ago Susan and I were
driving home to the Shoe along the ridge. A smell so sweetly
piquant, so new to me, forced me to stop the car and
investigate. It looked like an apple, but was growing in the
fencerow, a leggy tree. The flowers resembled apple blossoms, but I
had never seen any apple quite like these. Before they fully bloomed
they were closed up like little round bells. The petals were white,
and faded to pink along the tips. We cut several branches and put
them in the dining room, whence they perfumed the whole house for
days.
A few days later Justin and I were
walking the electric fence down the pigs’ hollow, looking for
breaks. Another sweet odour lifted me into the air by my nose. There
in the understory was a tree with a leaf somewhat like a dogwood’s,
but clinging tightly to the flat branches was a white, round blossom
with a spike of a yellow tongue. I have no idea what its name is,
but I could identify that smell again anywhere.
But all of this was just the
beginning. The wild roses (some people call them "rambling roses")
began to bloom two or three weeks ago, just after the blackberries.
Now blackberries just barely smell, but rambling roses fill
the air with sharp sweetness. The wild rose’s sweetness keeps an
edge on it that always saves it from going overboard. You
could never get tired of it.
Then comes the honeysuckle. It’s
great, but it’s like a friend with a very powerful
personality. You love him, but you can only take a little of his
voltage at a time. Otherwise it overamps your system.
Anyway, last night I worked late on
the newsletter. I could hear the hammers still pounding outside
where Justin and Wright and Johnny were working in the solar house.
Unbeknownst to me, Susan had abandoned her newsletter-layout post to
race around the ridges putting mulch on newly planted trees. I gave
up on locating her and headed to the Shoe.
It was after 8:00 but the western sky
still showed a band of blue and yellow and red, and after the day’s
heat the air pinched with a light but pleasant chill. Once I got
past the fence posts that mark the boundary of the Top, the smells
hit me. The honeysuckle was so sweet it smelled almost like grape
juice, but the way grape juice would smell if it weren’t too
sweet and too grapey. Then I’d pass a band of roses, and they
would tug at me. The roses and honeysuckle worked me over until I
reached the pastures before the ridge drops off into Suck Stem
Hollow, where the spicy smell of cows reached out to greet me. I
made the sharp turn off the ridge onto Suck Stem Branch Road, full
of the secret mystery of the damp leaves beside the branch. A little
farther down the spring called from the dark. All this time the
radio was playing one of those almost melancholy and very thoughtful
late Baroque chamber pieces. By the time I reached the turn onto Roy
Haggard Road, I was in a deep and dreamy rhapsody.
About which time I saw headlights in
my rear view mirror.
Closing in fast.
Now at Roy Haggard there is a little
triangle where the roads converge. You can take the first very sharp
turn and fight the too-deep ditch and turn left, or you can go to
the intersection proper and turn left. Since I was driving Susan’s
new and as yet unmarred 1990 Volvo station wagon, I avoided the
ditch. (I also avoid driving the Volvo in the daytime, for fear
somebody will see me in it and assume I am a liberal.)
It was Susan and Zachariah in our 1984
Ford pickup. While I made the turn the long way, they took the short
cut and got onto Roy Haggard ahead of me – laying down a trail of
oil-choked exhaust all the way to the Shoe.
It didn’t matter. My soul was calm,
and about a quarter-mile down the road the pines kicked
in.
MOST FARFETCHED THING YOU EVER
HEARD
When somebody told me you could drive
off flies by hanging up a plastic bag full of water, I laughed. Then
the flies got so bad I tried it. Now I laugh no more. Folks theorise
that the flies stay away because the plastic baggie full of water
looks like a wasp nest. Frankly, I don’t care if the flies think it
looks like Bill Clinton, as long as it keeps them away from the
door. And it does.
KILLING FLIES WITHOUT CHEMICALS
Bearing in mind that some researchers
hypothesise that Mad Cow disease might be caused by organophosphate
insecticides, and that strong chemical insecticides can have
unexpected and untoward side effects, and that we ourselves
eat the animals we raise here, we decided never again to use
chemical fly sprays.
But when you see the swarms of flies
plaguing the poor horses and cows plagued, you have to do something.
Here’s a natural (non-chemical) fly spray we used first last summer,
until Susan waxed too cheap to spring for the crucial ingredient,
eucalyptus oil. This year our renewed determination to avoid
chemical fly sprays sent her flying to the Internet to find
eucalyptus oil in bulk and cheap. Last summer she paid $8 for four
ounces at retail, but this year she bought three gallons for
$145.51 with shipping from New Directions Aromatics, 21 Regan Road,
Unit B, Brampton, Ontario (877) 255-7692 or fax (905) 846-1784; http://208.55.3.192/cgi-local/shoptmc.pl/SID=022422/page=http://www.poyanaturals.com/.
They also carry sizes smaller than three gallons.
The recipe for fly spray comes from
the Rural Heritage website, http://208.55.3.192/cgi-local/shoptmc.pl/SID=022422/page=http://www.ruralheritage.com/vet_clinic?fly_spray.htm.
By the way, I highly recommend you subscribe to Rural Heritage¸
281 Dean Ridge Lane, Gainesboro, Tennessee 38562 – 5039; (931)
268-0655. It’s full of great information every month.
Natural Fly Spray, one
gallon:
4 each sixteen ounce bottles
Avon "Skin So Soft"
5 tablespoons pure eucalyptus
oil
Enough white vinegar to make up
one gallon.
Do not put the eucalyptus oil
into the mixture first, as it melts your plastic bottle. Start with
the Skin So Soft, then add the eucalyptus oil, then fill up to one
gallon with white vinegar. From that gallon of finished spray fill
up smaller spray bottles. Best for large animals is a two-gallon
sprayer.
The spray works for several days to a
week. Before the animals get used to it they probably won’t like it
or stand still for a full application, so apply every day until you
see it working. It will literally kill flies and certainly keep them
off, including cattle horn flies. As far as I can tell, it will keep
off ticks as well, but you have to be careful to thoroughly
spray the animal’s underside and behind the legs.
We have used this spray on horses,
cows, and pigs, but not yet dogs. That, however, is coming
shortly.
SURVIVING TWENTY YEARS
Last month’s issue marked the first
issue of The Moneychanger’s twentieth year. Twenty
years! There were several times during those two decades that I
thought I wouldn’t survive another twenty minutes, let alone
twenty years. We even published one issue from jail, in
December 1996. That June we had just put an issue in the mail the
day before I was arrested for my first vacation in the
Penal Farm, right after the Tennessee Supreme Court refused to
honour the law and overturn my conviction. Never mind – God gave us
all grace to stand, and to continue publishing month by month for
twenty years.
Looking forward to the next 20
years, I pray God will give me the grace to recall Psalm 77’s cure
for fear:
"I will remember the years of the
right hand of the Most Highest. I will remember the works of the
Lord, and call to mind thy wonders of old times."
TEACHING PIGS TO JUMP ROPE
The old proverb says, "Never try to
teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time, and it annoys the pig." I
understand the meaning of this, but in defense of pigs I must point
out Revelation 5:13. "And every creature which is in heaven, and on
the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all
that are in them, heard I saying, `Blessing and honour, and glory,
and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the
Lamb forever and ever’." In that glorious setting of universal
worship, who can doubt that even pigs will be given voice to
sing most harmoniously?
Most people don’t know it, but pigs
can dance. Quite well, as a matter of fact. Young piglets do
it all the time, and larger pigs as their joy overcomes them. I have
seen them before a coming storm, pirouetting on their back legs,
throwing their heads up and down for excitement, ears
flouncing.
But I had never seen a pig jump
rope, at least, not until last Friday.
AN ESCAPEE
Exactly one week before, on the
previous Friday night, our neighbour from down the ridge toward
Still House Bottom came up to report that one of our pigs had
stopped by his house. Justin and the neighbour chased the pig
through the dark, ruining the fence around the garden, and finally
gave up. This was one of those pigs from Princess’ first litter,
weighing now about 280 pounds. One of his sisters just gave birth to
nine new piglets, but that’s a scandal we don’t mention.
So I just gave up on him. If he was
lost, he was lost. If he came back, he came back. I’ve been getting
up extra early to drive Mercy and Christian to school, and I was
about a mile from the top on the Ridge Road when what to my
wondering eyes should appear but our pig. He stood
thoughtfully at the side of the road, noble snout held high, sniffed
the air, then ran across the road and promptly entangled himself in
a pine deadfall. Covered with mud, he showed no signs of remorse or
repentance.
I was in Susan’s famous Volvo station
wagon. There was no way I could get that pig to ride with me. Then I
hit upon a stratagem. Perhaps the pig would remember grand feasting
days of yore, and respond to my call. I rolled down the Volvo’s
window, and began to call softly:
"Soooooo-ee. Pig. Pig.
Pig."
He jerked up his head in recognition.
Gently I nudged the Volvo down the road, calling all the
time.
For the next mile I nursed and teased
him down the road. From time to time he would stop. If you’ve ever
ridden in one of those Swedish coffins, you know you can’t see
anything right behind you, so I could only watch the pig’s shadow in
my rearview mirror. I led him triumphantly through every
intersection and past every distraction nearly to the driveway at
the Top, at which point I remembered dogs.
We currently are enjoying a bumper
crop of dogs, fifteen in fact. We still have three huge
(80 pound) Great Pyrenees puppies left from Cleo’s last
litter, and she just had eight more. (By the way, could any of
y’all use a dog? Cheap?) Then there is her mate, Orion. And
Liberty and Johnny’s Golden Retriever, Molly. And Shawn &
Worth’s yellow Lab who moved in with us when they moved to
Nashville. And every dog that can open his eyes and walk will chase
a pig, given the chance, in the direction just opposite to where you
want him to go.
Susan had just pulled up at the Top
when the pig and I arrived, and was soon joined by Justin, Ellen,
Wright, and Zachariah. From somewhere Princess our sow
suddenly materialised, to make matters worse. At least she was on
the correct side of the fence.
Let us not now drag this out. It was
8:00 a.m. By 9:30 a.m. things had not gone well, and all were
sweating profusely, except the pig. We had finally coaxed the pig
into the right pasture, the one next to the gate to Pig Hollow, and
chased him over every inch of four and a half acres. We had thirty
times herded him near the gate, without once successfully
driving him through. He had bathed and swum and cavorted in
the pond. He had proven Justin knew absolutely nothing about
lassoing. He was impervious to singing and tempting with
food.
What a pig.
About that time Justin came up with a
bright idea. He handed Wright (20) the end of the 50 foot black
nylon rope. They spread out on either side of the pig, and began
swinging the rope up and down to herd him along. At the touch of the
rope, the pig jumped.
And Susan fell out laughing. "They’re
teaching that pig to jump rope!" I have to admit, it did look
like that.
By 10:00 the pig still couldn’t
jump rope, and every attempt to hang him had failed. For once, I
gave up. I had work to do.
A week later, the pig is still in the
pasture. Every morning he is lying by the fence with his relatives
on the other side, waiting for somebody to feed them. A couple of
days ago, however, I hit on the solution that will take him
down. In the pasture under the trees are two pens where we
used to keep pigs. Every day, I put down a handful of corn in the
pen, just enough to whet Pig’s appetite. I checked after the first
day. All the corn was gone. Every day, I will put down a few more
kernels of corn, and by and by Pig will get used to his morning
handout. One day, while he’s munching on breakfast, I will sneak up
and shut the gate behind his wandering carcass. It will be
easy.
Pigs, you see, have a welfare
mentality.
JUNE IN TENNESSEE
We still have two places left
(out of seven) for the Agrarian Challenge I. From Thursday
evening, June 21 (for homemade dessert and plan for the weekend)
through Sunday dinner after church, June 23, we will open our lives
to seven (7) people age 15 to 30, for a look at what it means to
live in the country. They will eat what we eat & work where we
work, whether we’re hauling hay or picking blackberries, and we’ll
share all our experience with them, including church on Sunday
morning. One hundred bucks covers room and board. Nashville is the
nearest airport, so we’ll run a car up there. Thursday afternoon to
pick up anybody who needs it. For more information call us at (888)
218-9226 or send reservation with payment to Agrarian Challenge I, %
The Moneychanger, P.O. Box 178, Westpoint, Tennessee 38486.
JULY IN THE FIELD
In our family we always celebrate July
ninth as a high holiday. July 9, 1991 was the day God delivered
Susan and me and 14 other friends with an acquittal in federal court
(See, "The Most Dangerous Man in the Mid-South" on our website.)
This year marks the tenth anniversary of that Great Deliverance, and
this year we are going to celebrate with a bodacious big
party, the BOGIT Hoedown on July 14, 2001. We have convinced the
12th Louisiana Band to come up and play War Between the
States Period music. Belinda Massengale, who comes with the band, is
the greatest encouragess and dance mistress I’ve ever met. The dance
will begin in the evening, but other events will last most of the
day. We will kill the fatted hogs, our own homegrown hogs, and serve
barbecue dinner with all the trimmings and blackberry cobbler.
Somehow we’ve got to pay for all this, so we’ll ask an entrance
donation of $20 per individual or $50 per family (limited to
relatives of the first degree, please – no eighth cousins twice
removed).
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