| Dear Readers,
Maybe I’m not sorry as gully dirt
after all. I’m always flagellating myself for lacking ambition, but
maybe I have just misunderstood it. Maybe the ambition I’ve been
taught to admire isn’t the right kind at all.
A couple of days ago I had worn myself
out all day in front of the computer, so before supper I took a
break to feed the pigs. That involves a lot of fussing around. First
you have to dip out soaked rice, carry it to the pigs, pour a little
in one trough first to decoy them off so you can fill the other
feeding troughs without getting pig snot all over your jeans. Then
you have to go back to the barn and set up their food for the next
day, feed Hillbilly and her calf (recuperating in the paddock), and
throw some scratch feed to the chickens.
By the time I finished, dusk was
lowering. Where I was standing in front of the barn is just enough
lower than the corner of the pasture across the road that I could
see our draft horses, Jachin and Boaz, silhouetted against the sky.
That reminded me they were expecting an evening snack.
I scooped a quart of sweet feed out of
the barn and crossed the road. Standing in front of the gate, I
talked to Jachin, trying to teach him some manners. No good, he was
in an uppity mood and Boaz was unapproachable. I opened the gate and
poured their feed into the rubber basin. A few days before we had
moved our Highland Cattle into that bigger pasture because they had
eaten down the smaller pasture. The horses are very picky about what
they eat, and had left big patches of tall grass. I wanted to see
how much of that the cattle had eaten down.
Ahead of my left shoulder the
three-quarter moon was waxing, and over my right shoulder the
evening star was just peeking through the blue-black sky. A sunset
like that one only shows in the fall – the horizon glows red-orange,
pale blue above abruptly shifting to midnight blue. The air was as
crisp as a Granny Smith apple.
I hadn’t walked more than 100 yards
when a burst of drumming wings startled me. In the dusk my
nearsighted eyes couldn’t tell whether they were dove or quail, but
I think they were quail. I went another twenty feet and another
covey drummed the air, curved away, then drifted into
invisibility back in to the earth. All in all I must have flushed 75
to a hundred of them.
The cows’ progress in eating down the
pasture astonished me. Cutting back across the pasture I walked over
the pond dam and past Tartan. After shaking her horns at me, she
graciously allowed me to approach and be sniffed. (Cows are very
formal.)
Crunching on across the pasture I
could just make out Jachin & Boaz ambling toward me. His stomach
full, Jachin had waxed friendly, and approached for me to scratch
his jaw. He and Boaz both like for you to whisper to them. They
followed me back to the gate, probably motivated more by hunger than
affection, but with horses the two are hard to distinguish. Who
cares anyway?.
I stopped at the gate. The sun was
nearly gone, but the horizon still burned red. The moon was bright
enough to cast a shadow. The gentle hills had blackened into
silhouettes against the evening sky.
Now who could think about mutual
funds, or gold and silver, or IRAs, or
geopolitics with all that going on?
Maybe my ambition isn’t really
sorry, maybe it’s just different.
SUPREME COURT APPEAL
Once again, you have humbled me with
your gracious and generous response for help to appeal my money
issue case to the US Supreme Court. By now each of you should have
received a personal thank you, but once again I want to tell you how
deeply I appreciate your kindness and your support.
My attorney, Dr. Edwin Vieira, told me
yesterday (Oct. 10) that the petition for writ of certiorari
was filed Tuesday. Now we can only wait and pray that the court
would accept the appeal.
BEEF PIGANOFF
This is the last pig story, I promise,
but I’m so proud of myself I have to tell it.
Back in 1981 Susan and I bought a
year’s supply of survival food. We’ve hung onto it all these years,
but some things, like dried eggs or milk, must be used and rotated
every 5 years or so. Since it’s out of date and we can’t eat it, I
decided to feed it to the pigs.
I’ve been having a great time every
evening, concocting new "casseroles’ for the pigs, guessing what
will please their palates. The base of the mix is beef, vegetable,
or ham (whoops!) flavoured TVP (texturized vegetable
protein). To this we add potato granules or slices, carrot slices,
cabbage dices, bell pepper, or soup mix. Now they like that
TVP, but a little dehydrated fruit really tickles the porcine
palate. Cabbage dices they only tolerate, and beans of any kind
guarantees they will flip the trough out on the ground, dried
apricots notwithstanding.
Every evening I fill two six gallon
plastic buckets with water and head for the Pig Pantry. This is a
stall we cleaned out in the barn where we installed a big shelf for
the dehydrated food. There I open up the No. 10 cans and pour it
into the buckets to soak overnight.
Not long ago I struck a big hit with
Beef Piganoff – dehydrated sour cream, elbo macaroni, onion
dices, beef TVP, and just a hint of dried dates. It was, I
discovered from the pig’s reaction next morning, to die
for.
But here’s the really great thing
about raising pigs. No matter how long you have them, no matter how
close you get to them, you will never mind loading them onto
the trailer for that last ride to the butcher. In the end, a pig
remains a pig.
DECLINE OF THE STATE
Last weekend my son Justin and my
friend Randy and I drove down to Auburn, Alabama for a conference at
the Von Mises Institute, "The Decline of the State." It was centered
around Martin van Creveld’s book, The Rise & Decline of the
State, and the Institute had actually brought van Creveld in for
the conference. Longtime readers may remember that I have previously
discussed another very important van Creveld book, The
Transformation of War. There he argues that war as we have seen
it in this century is no longer possible because (1) nuclear weapons
have rendered war unwinnable, and (2) gigantic national armies
cannot defeat guerrillas who can strike and melt away into
invisibility.
His thesis in The Rise &
Decline of the State builds on that foundation. The modern state
differs from all previous forms of civil government because since
about 1650 it has been a corporation, a fictitious juridical
person. The person of the ruler was separated from the organisation
that rules.
But the decline of the state contains
both good and bad news. While for some it may increase personal
freedom, for others it may mean a wave of bloodshed and lowered
standard of living. I’ll explain more fully in the next
Moneychanger.
TENNESSEE HOMECOMING
This weekend (Oct. 13) the whole
Sanders clan (with all three married branches) heads outs to
Tennessee Homecoming at the Museum of Appalachia in Norris. It’s
billed as "one of the nation’s largest and most authentic old-time
mountain, craft, and music festivals. Best of all, they will have
lots of Bluegrass music, with stars like Earl Scruggs, Ralph
Stanley, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, and on and on. If you live
within 300 miles of Knoxville, you ought to climb in your car and
head that way. Otherwise, I’ll have a report for you next
month.
Enjoy the fall!
Franklin
SUSAN’S P.S.
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