August 2011

Volume 36

It’s hard to believe, but no less so, school starts in a few days. I don’t understand why school administrators haven’t figured out that it cost more to cool a classroom in August than in late May and early June, but it could be that public schools, like big government, have lost touch with reality.

Folksinger/ songwriter, Bob Dylan, asked, "How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died," and I often wonder how many student athletes will succumb to heat injury and/or death before the powers that be accept the fact that August weather in the Deep South is simply too hot for contact sports such as football.

There are likely many more reasons to delay ringing in a new school year until September but apparently all fall on deaf ears. However, it is my considered opinion that all things and persons associated with our public schools would be better served if classes began after Labor Day.

Seldom does a school year begin, that I don’t reminisce concerning my school days. While, I don’t recall my first day of school in 1948, the year I entered first grade in Iuka, Mississippi, it was likely late August or early September. And, I don’t remember whether one had to have had his or her sixth birthday prior to September, October, or some later month, but it’s fair to say the first grader’s birthday fell before January 1, of the new school year.

Starting first grade was a traumatic experience for me, but it would not be the last school related trauma. My childhood was filled with such experiences. I remember older playmates telling me I should be able to count to ten and say my ABCs before starting first grade, or I might be punished by a teacher for not knowing them. I was still working on the alphabet when school started, and as far as I can say, I was never punished for not knowing them.

As I only attended school in Iuka until half-way through the second grade, I don’t remember my teachers’ names. I hardly got to know my first-grade teacher as we only went to school a half day, because there was a teacher shortage. First graders went only in the morning during the first semester and second graders attended afternoons only, with the same instructor teaching both grades. The order reversed for the second semester with students in Grade 2 attending morning classes and Grade 1 going to afternoon classes.

August is a big month for this scribe. My birthday is the sixteenth, and my wife and I celebrate our wedding anniversary on the twentieth. Neither event marks a milestone, this year, but it won’t be long before I reach seventy, and a forty-fifth anniversary is in sight. Of course, at my age, there’s no guarantee I’ll live to see either milestone, but I fully expect I shall.

August will likely be the month Barbara and I begin our inoculations for our out-of-the-country mission trip to Kenya, Africa this October. We’ll be part of an eight-person team traveling on behalf of Pontotoc County Habitat for Humanity to build a Habitat home for a family displaced during the political unrest in Kenya in 2007. Perhaps, I will share more about our plans in the September issue of The Bodock Post.

August is a big month for The Bodock Post, too. This issue, Volume 36, completes our third year as a monthly newsletter. I imagine my co-editor will broach this subject in our September issue as we start our fourth year.

The Bodock Post began in September, 2008 with three editors and are now reduced to two editors, but thanks to submissions by our readers we’re maintaining roughly as many articles per issue as ever. An alphabetized listing of our many contributors and links to their biographical page and their article(s) may be accessed at http://rrnews.org/bp/writers.html.

Several contributing writers have interesting articles in this issue of The Bodock Post. If you have a story or two from your experiences, we’d love to hear from you. Please reference our submission guidelines at http://rrnews.org/bp/submissions.htm.

~ By Wayne L. Carter, Editor

The recent storms in the area and the time without electricity brought back memories of my childhood. We had no electric power until I was around twelve years old.

We lived in a farm community that was well off the beaten path. It was said by some that even if we did get electric power that we would not have enough money to purchase any appliances, or pay the light bill. That was probably true. At least it was true until the end of World War II. That’s when things began to loosen up some from rationing.

I think that carrying a candle from room to room during the power outage was what reminded me of my first twelve years of life. During that time of course we had no candles, or flashlights to carry from room to room. Our only light was from the fireplace that was located in the living room, and a coal oil lamp. Coal oil was a scarce commodity, so the lamp was not lighted until it was completely dark, and even then we had only enough coal oil to burn the lamp for a short time. We did the most of our school studies by the light of the fire in the fireplace.

Our school was located about six miles from the farm where we lived. Darkness arrived early at our house because we were totally surrounded by woods. On rainy days it was actually beginning to get dark by the time we would get home from school. This caused some problems because we always had a herd of about sixteen cows to milk, and probably around thirty cows and calves, and two mules to feed. We did as much as possible while there was still light, but after that it was by lantern which also burned coal oil.

As I look back on those times now, I don’t know how we managed to keep from burning down the barn or house with the lamp and the lantern. I do remember that my two older sisters usually had the duty of carrying the lamp from room to room. They also had to keep the globe of the lamp and lantern clean. I can’t remember why now, but it was always a ritual each night for my sisters to take the lamp with them to get ready for bed. There was not much activity after supper each night. There was a time of sitting around the fireplace for a while, and even listening to the old battery powered radio, but for the most part, daylight was for work, and darkness was for sleep.

The light of the lamp brought back other memories of life without electricity. Now we take the use of electric power for granted, but living without it was a whole different world. Recently I wrote a little story about the battery powered radio. A young man that was listening to the conversation said, "Do you mean that you did not have a television?" That’s when I realized that I was talking about a completely different world than that which he was accustomed to living in. He could not relate to not having electric power, so how could I begin to explain the difference in the way we lived during that time.

For instance, I was only out of electric power for a couple of days during the recent storm, and all of the meat thawed, the milk and ice cream and all of the other perishable food ruined. There was no television, no stove, no heat, no hot water for a shower, no air conditioning, no lights so that I could read the paper or a book, no ice for drinks, no coffee, and a multitude of other things that I can’t even remember.

So how did we get by without all of these things before the days of electricity? The meat was fresh, canned or cured. The milk was kept in a spring or lowered in a jar down into the well to keep it cool. The only ice cream we had was when there was fresh snow. We simply combined some sugar or molasses, milk, and vanilla flavoring into the snow, and that was our ice cream. Fruits and vegetables were eaten fresh in the summer, and canned for the winter months.

We slept by the open windows in the summer to keep somewhat cool. We sat by the open fireplace in the one room during the winter to keep warm as we studied, and had blankets upon blankets on our beds to keep warm while we slept. We were up before the light of day, and in bed early at night. There was never a day off, or a vacation. The cows had to be milked and fed two times a day seven days a week, even on holidays.

The mules pulled our plows and wagons, and our firewood was cut by a cross-cut saw. The animals were fed the corn and hay that we grew, and the cottonseed meal ground from the seed after the cotton was ginned.

My mother cooked on a wood burning stove, and we churned our own butter from the cows that we milked. Sorghum molasses was our only means of sweetening during the most of that time, and our deserts usually consisted of left-over biscuits that my mother would spread butter and molasses over and re-bake.

Were we poor during that time? Not that I can remember. If you compare that time to today, then one might think that we were poor, but we always had a roof over our heads, food to eat, and we had just as much as our neighbors. We knew no other way, and another thing, we always seemed to be happy.

So how did we live without electricity? By the Light of a coal oil lamp!

When the phone rang early the other morning, my mind went on "RED ALERT." Well maybe not Red, but certainly Orange Alert. Have you noticed that these early morning calls are rarely good news?

It’s usually a neighbor telling you that your pick-up truck has rolled down the hill and crushed their bird bath and is now sitting knee deep in their gold fish pond, or your dog is eating their zinnias, or that your air conditioner looks like a giant square snow ball. It seems like my early morning calls are just that way.

If Ed McMahon ever comes to my house to give me the million dollars he’s been promising me for all these years, it’ll be first thing in the morning, and I’ll set the dog on him thinking it’s an aluminum siding salesman.

First thing the other morning the phone rang, "Mister Jones, this is the yard man down in Olive Branch. I’m not going to be able to do the yards there for your mother-in-law’s house anymore because it’s too rough, and I got some wire tangled up in my mower, and the fallen limbs are too numerous, and, and, and…"

My sleep starved brain went into high gear.

"How about if you just mow the front yard and around the house, I’ll get someone with a tractor to bush hog the pasture and the back part?"

It was a quick fix solution, but, it seems that he had already given our "slot" to someone else and this was bye-bye for him. I really think he had taken the job too cheap and then found a more lucrative job elsewhere. Whatever the reason, or excuse, we were without a yard man.

By this time of year, most people in this kind of business have already got their clients lined up and have about all the work they can handle. So I headed out down to her place to see what condition had been left. Pretty much as I had suspected, grass and weeds up to an elephant’s eye, some areas had not been cut this entire season. It looked bad.

With little prospects of hiring someone to do the work I went to the barn to see if I could get any of her lawn equipment to run. Last year, at the end of the growing season the riding mower ran for me and did just fine until it ran out of gas; then nothing. The starter simply would not turn. I surmised it was a malfunctioning "dead man’s" switch, or a wire had disconnected somewhere. Look as I might, I could not find the problem, so I just pushed it into the barn and there it sat all winter.

These newfangled mowers have so many safeguards to keep me from hurting myself that they will hardly run even when all the conditions are met. I started mowing yards for the public when I was nine years old, and some of those early power mowers hardly had a shroud to cover the whirling blade. Somehow I managed to keep all my fingers and toes all these years.

After reading the manual, I found that you have to have the thing in neutral, the blades have to be in the ‘off’ position, the brakes have to be set, and, get this, and you have to be sitting in the seat before anything will happen. Well, even when I had done all this, it still would not grunt. I thought of standing on my head on the seat, but that would just make my face turn red, and still it probably wouldn’t start.

My grand-son-in-law was there in the barn a few days later doing some other chores, and I mentioned the problem with the mower.

He walked around it very casually and quick as a wink he said, "Here’s your problem, this switch here is not making contact."

He wiggled it with his fingers and said, "Try it now."

Wouldn’t you know it; it cranked just as it was supposed to. Don’t you just hate smart-alecky kids? I’d looked at that area a dozen times and never really saw the switch much less that it was askew.

Now I have no excuse, so yesterday I went down to do the dastardly deed. Having formulated my plans, I would mow the tight, hard to get to places with a hand mower and use the riding mower for the larger open areas. I would use the weed whacker to edge along the flower beds and sidewalk/driveway, rake up the overabundance of tall grass and then sweep off the walks, and wash any areas that needed it with the garden hose.

You guessed it; my mind had once again written a check my body could not cash!

To end this tale, I did get most of it mowed, weed whacked, and, in the more visible places, raked and/or swept. I did, however, leave the "Back Forty" for another day. I’ll do it some other day, but today I’m hurting in places that I did not even know were places, I feel that I was run over by that infernal mower and if my sunburns did not hurt so badly I’d go back and give that mower a piece of my mind.

So take it from an old guy, when the early morning phone rings, cover your head with your pillow and go back to sleep. You can rest assured they will call again later; they always do when it’s bad news!

In a necessary recent trip from the hinterlands of suburbia, I had occasion to pass the corner of Getwell Rd. Ext. and Raines. My old van, Bluebird, out of lonI habit, pulled into the parking lot of Tom's BBQ.

I had almost forgotten what real BBQ tastes like. Real BBQ meat, whether pork or beef or sheep or goat, when perfectly cooked and served, is hot, steamy, juicy, smoky, and has a red crispy bark.

Unfortunately the meat cools off within minutes, and cooks destroy the beautiful meat by chopping it into bits. Imagine the difference between a just broken open, foil-wrapped, juicy, smoky shoulder and a minced sandwich of dry, cool meat slathered in sauce and slaw. 

Tom's BBQ served my plate perfectly as requested. It had a nice pile of steaming, pulled, smoky meat. It was juicy with the fat I requested to be included and had nice crunchy pieces of bark mixed in with the pulled juicy white pieces. 

Needless to say, the sauce and slaw, served on the side, were unnecessary. This reminded me of Jacks Creek BBQ in the old days. We ate the pulled, moist, smoky meat straight up, within minutes of being removed from the pit. Again, the sauce and slaw would have detracted from that delicacy.

The best steaks I ever ate were delicately flavored with salt, butter, and garlic. I ate them without sauce and with a fork. The meat is the star and essence of the experience. Thus it should be.

Frankly, what we are served nowadays is bland. The skin and fat have been removed. The meat is minced, is dry, and sits long enough, more than a few minutes, to have cooled off, thus the need for sauce to moisten and warm up the meat. To me, that's a second rate experience at best.

Even the BBQ contests are judging meat prepared that way. The sauce is much too big a part of that for me. In my ideal contest, they would be judging only the meat and there would be a separate category for sauce. 

When the judges come by for onsite sampling, I'd spread out butcher paper and paper towels, tell them to wash their hands and pull up a chair. I’d pour large glasses of lemonade, open a hot, foil wrapped, smoky shoulder, and tell them to dig in, with every man for himself.  

We cooks and the judges would all pig out together and wind up with grease all over our faces and hands up to our elbows. When finished sampling, I'd comment there is some sauce and slaw over on the counter if you still feel you need them. 

That’s the way to do Q. 

My mother played a role in my "worst vacation." It was an indirect role, but it was significant nonetheless. A lot of moms have told their children that they needed to learn to swim before they went swimming. While it sounds ridiculous, it makes more sense to me than the way my mom phrased it.

"You can’t go swimming until you learn how to swim," she would declare with the sincerity of a religious prophet.

The difference is mostly semantic, but Mom’s wording seems to imply "learning" is required before "trying" is attempted. Mom was afraid of water and had a lifelong fear of drowning.

I think the only thing that worried her more than the possibility of her drowning was the possibility of one of her children drowning. So, in the days of childhood when I asked to swim, a time when all my friends were learning to swim, Mom said no. As a teen, when I would have been allowed to learn how to swim, I was too self-conscious of my skinny frame and white legs to be seen in a bathing suit. Plus, it cost money to swim in the public pool, and money for frivolity was something my dad almost never had.

Family vacations for my family were almost non-existent in my childhood, and when we went on a vacation it would always be to visit a relative. We didn’t have any relatives with beachfront property, and, even if we had, playing in the water would have been disallowed until I learned how to swim. I may learn to swim before I die, and I may die learning how to swim. Either way, the learning will probably have to wait until I retire.

Prior to my worst vacation, I had only set foot on a beach one other time, and I think I had both shoes on then. The year of my worst vacation my children were in the 13 to 15 year-old age group. My wife, Barbara, is a worshiper of the triune god, S (sand, surf, and sun). It’s almost like she was touched by a fairy princess once upon a time and must periodically return to the 3-S god for rejuvenation.

Financially speaking, my family was rising out of an economic slump in the early eighties, so Barbara thought the time was ripe for a family vacation. In her mind, there was no better place for a vacation in the continental U.S. than Destin, FL. She arranged for us to rent a condominium for a week, and planned to take along my mother and my sister.

Around ten o’clock in the morning, after our arrival the prior evening, I donned a pair of shorts and a collared knit shirt and hit the beach with the kids. We played paddleball for less than an hour before returning to our room on the seventh floor, where I spent the rest of the day on the balcony enjoying the beauty of the Gulf, the beach, and that of the scantily clad women who were found in great abundance. Because the balcony was shaded from direct sunlight I did not bother using a sunscreen lotion for my exposed feet and legs. By late afternoon, my legs and ankles had a soft glow about them, and within the next hour or so, it was evident I had sunburned.

As a teen, I had spent many hours working outside without a shirt and had often blistered my shoulders and back. However, the pain associated with my legs and ankles was excruciating compared to that of my teen years.

That evening and during the next few days, Barbara purchased several different ointments, lotions, and sprays that were advertised as effective in reducing the pain of sunburn. None helped. I got more relief from ice packs than anything else.

We spent seven days in the condo, six of which I suffered with sunburned legs and ankles. Those six days are remembered as the worst six days of my life. After the first night (Monday) of my sunburn, I could not walk until we departed on Saturday. Only then did I make the journey aided by several Darvocets that Mom had brought along.

While recuperating in the condo, sponge baths kept me clean, but trips to the toilet were dreaded and had to be planned well in advance. Whenever my feet were lower than my buttocks the pain in my ankles was intense, so I had to scoot across the floor to get to the bathroom. Once on the commode, I had to place my feet across the seat of a chair in front of me in order that my feet were on the same level as my rear end.

The rest of our group managed to enjoy their vacation in spite of my suffering. My mother was even photographed on the beach a few feet from the water, but the part of the vacation Mom most enjoyed was using the coin-operated laundry to wash and dry all our towels and clothes. Someone snapped a picture of her doing that, too. Sarah took one of her bad headaches on the day we left, but Mom wouldn’t give her one of the painkillers because she thought I might need them.

I have since accompanied my family to the beach on a couple of occasions, but at no time did I allow any sunlight to fall upon my legs. In addition to the pictures mentioned above are several shots of my blistered legs and feet that I keep to remind me of my worst vacation.

Rose care for August is fairly straight forward and can be slow. This is going to be one of the hotter months and also one of the most humid. Take great care not only to keep your roses watered, but also keep yourself hydrated as well.

During these hot times with little or no rain, roses will need water more frequently. Water in the morning before the temperature gets too high to prevent a high rate of evaporation before the plants can take up the moisture and other nutrients from the soil.

Spraying roses in this heat needs to be done early in the morning to prevent burning or scorching of the foliage. Watering well the day before spraying will hydrate the rose and allow the chemicals and fertilizers to be absorbed into the plant system more readily.

My personal spray regimen seems to work well not only in my garden but gardens that I tend for others, as well. I use one half teaspoon of Honor Guard, three teaspoons of Mancozeb, and two ounces of water-soluable fertilizer per one gallon of water. I spray at least every ten days to help prevent black spot. I recommend that you give your roses a good dose of organics toward the end of August to help them get ready for the fall flush of blooms that come about in late September and early October. All of these products are readily available at local garden centers, home improvement stores, and at your local Co-op.

If you are experiencing insect problems such as aphids, thrips, or spider mites, there are sprays for them also. Thrips, and aphids are easily controlled in most cases with a sharp blast from a water hose or in severe cases I recommend spraying with Spinosad or Permethrin. If you have spider mites, I recommend spraying with bifenthrin. Please read and follow label recommendations and remember more is not better.

Send me an email with your comments and questions and photos of your roses at colorsbytim@hotmail.com or visit me on www.facebook.com/mastergardner

Happy Gardening and keep digging in the dirt.

To many people, especially men, think they cannot sing. However, I have seen boys and men who did not sing, and said they could not sing, when backed into a corner, could sing quite well. Some that said they could not carry a tune in a bucket have found that they could sing.

Many were told early in life by someone, possibly a parent, friend, or relative, that they could not sing. With their own inferiority mind set and with no one to tell them otherwise, they determined that it was useless to even try.

Although I do not sing very well, if I did not sing, as the Bible says, the rocks would sing out in my stead. There is not a time that I can remember when there was not singing, humming, or whistling, coming from my being. True, some of it was not the best, some of the notes were wrong, and what I sang was usually in the wrong key, but I sang nonetheless. Going to milk the cow, feed the hogs, shucking corn for the animals, working in the fields, or factory, a song was there somewhere.

Ballads have always been my favorite, western ballads especially. ‘Streets of Laredo’, ‘Strawberry Roam’, ‘Blue Tailed Fly’, ‘When the Works all Done this Fall’, ‘John Henry’, and many others caught my attention early on in life. Later the Irish Rovers did ‘You’re Never Gonna See No Unicorns’, Marty Robbins did a number of ballads, ‘Big Iron’, and one of my favorites ‘El Paso’ and its sister, ‘El Paso City’. Kenny Rogers got into the act with ‘The Gambler’ and others.

Howard Butcher and I worked together for over twenty years designing homes and our all-time favorite was ‘El Paso’. We even asked questions about the song when we interviewed new job prospects; asking questions like, how many times did the desperado get shot, where was he when he died, and who was there with him? All was done in fun, but as you can see singing played a major part in our lives. Howard and I listened to the radio all day every day. I leaned a little more to popular and he to country western, so we would listen to one station a half day then another the balance of the time. Of course this was back when even popular music was easy to listen too, it had a decent tune and words you could understand, and no screaming guitars.

Growing up in church we had music in every aspect of the growing up years. I remember at age six, singing in the ‘Sunshine Band’. Even in school we sang and had what was called "Public School Music." There were simple musical instruments, symbols, triangles, drums, rhythm sticks and others that would make a noise as we sang; I’m not too sure about the music they played.

In high school, most all the clubs and various meetings had songs. Then there was Glee Club where we got down to the nitty-gritty of singing real notes and harmonizing, what fun.

One year our Glee Club was invited to sing at the "Choral Meet" in West Point, MS. Glee Clubs from all over Mississippi gathered and filled one half, ‘the home side’ of a large gymnasium. That evening when we sang for an audience they filled the other half of the gym and the local radio station was there to air the performance live.

One song that made a great impression on me was "No Man is an Island." Basically saying that no one lives his or her life alone, but what we do affects many others. The words of this song were inscribed on a ship’s bulk-heat during World War II.

> The other song was, "Violins Singing in the Streets." The two basses that went from our school, James Stallings and me, sang together and somehow got behind in the music. Although our part was simple, just Zoom-Zoom, Zoom-Zoom, Zoom-Zoom; after all the host of singers had finished, James and I were still Zooming. It echoed through the rafters and bounced off the wall. We were embarrassed to say the least.

> The third Sunday in June was, and possibly is today, the "Sacred Harp Singing" at Carey Springs Baptist Church, between Randolph and Sarepta, in Pontotoc County, MS. They sing the words and melody, but they have given a name to all the notes and they sing the notes of each song. You have heard of "Doe, Re, Me, Fa, So, La, Te, and back to Doe; well those are the words you sing when the notes are sung. It’s quite interesting to hear four part harmony with each part singing a different note and word.

> Singing schools in rural country areas were common place each summer after crops were laid-by. Kids would come to a church in their community and soak up all the music that could be taught; not only how to sing, but to read and even direct music. Kids loved to sing then just as they do today.

> At seventy-three, I still sing, and although still not very good, they let me occupy a chair in the Senior Adult Choir at our church. Mostly we sing the old-time hymns and minister to residents of Senior Adult Homes, Nursing Homes, V.A. Hospitals and other such places.

> I feel sorry for those who do not at least try to sing. They miss a lot of life by not doing so. We had an old colored gentleman, named "Forty," that drove the truck for us guys on work details in college, bringing supplies, hauling equipment, etc. He was always humming. Never did I come upon him that he was not humming. He was never carrying a tune that I could recognize, but he always had a good disposition and a good work ethic. Was it because of his singing? Not directly, probably. But the day was much shorter, the work less hectic, and the situation less volatile for him or me when music was involved.

> Sing when you’re feeling blue, it’ll help to make the dreams come true.

During one of our few slack times at work, I mentioned something about the milkman who came by our farm when I was growing up.

One of the ladies said, "Oh yes, we had a milkman that dropped milk off at our door every day, but I did not know that they delivered milk way out in the country."

That’s when I realized that we were talking about a whole different sort of milkman. The milkman that I was talking about was the man who came by our farm every day and picked up the cans of milk that we had milked from our herd of cows. I have thought about that some and wonder if the milk that her milkman delivered might have been some of the very same milk that our milkman had picked up and taken to the dairy for processing.

Our milkman came by seven days per week, even on holidays. He was not a very large man, but was kind of tall and wiry. He could handle those ten gallon cans of milk as if they were light as a feather. He drove an old flatbed truck with sideboards. He would stack the cans two deep from front to back. He always picked up two full ten gallon cans of milk, and returned our two empty cans from the day before. I thought nothing about it back then, but I realize now that the old truck had no refrigeration. I suppose that the open truck and the wind kept the milk from spoiling.

There were times that different people would ask the milkman for a ride to town. You see; there was very little transportation for us during the war years. I remember one ride especially well. My mother’s brother was home on leave from the army. He lived with us before he was drafted so he had spent his leave with us. My mother and I rode in the cab of the milk truck that day, and my uncle, who was going back to be shipped overseas rode in the back of the truck. He would assist the milkman at every stop. I could only have been about five or six years old, but I can still remember how the milkman would hand the cans up to my uncle and he would stack them. The other thing that I realize now is that this was probably his last time home. He went in on D-Day at Utah Beach. His last letter was dated July 23, 1944, and we never heard from him again. He was killed at the Battle of St. Lo in France.

Since we had no electricity, I don’t see how that we kept the milk from ruining in the hot summer months. We were about midway of the milkman’s route, and about twenty miles from the dairy where the milk was taken for processing.

During the winter months it was a job keeping the milk that we milked at night from freezing until the milkman came by the next morning. During the summer it was much worse trying to keep the milk from the night before from spoiling until the next morning. There were two ways we accomplished this. First, we had a spring on the back side of our farm. There was no road way back where the spring was located. It was over two hills and located down in a heavy wooded area behind the hill. My father dug out a place in the spring for us to lower the can of milk. He built a wheel barrow designed for the size of the milk can. We would wheel the milk to the spring at night, and go back and get it the next morning just before the milkman arrived. We would wrap the cans of milk in wet tow sacks (burlap bags) until the milkman arrived.

The spring was at least a mile from our house, and over the two big hills. It usually took two of us to push the wheelbarrow. My father and mother handled this chore during the mornings of the school year, but during the summer and weekends it was the responsibility of my two older sisters and me to haul the milk to and from the spring, both at night, and early the next morning.

I do remember a few times that our empty milk can would have a red tag tied to the handle when it was returned. The red tag meant that the milk was spoiled when it was received at the dairy. I remember how upset my mother and father would become during those times. You see, that was our only money during the most of the year. We lived from milk check to milk check.

Electricity finally arrived at our farm sometime about the time I turned twelve, and some things became easier, but my two older sisters, one who was eight years older than me, and one who was five years older than me, lived most of their growing up years on our farm that had no electricity.

After my sisters left home to pursue their careers, there was usually just my father and me to milk all of the cows. We seemed to always have around sixteen cows to milk. We had no milking machines, so the milking was all done by hand. By this time my little brother and sister had arrived on the scene, and they required most of my mother’s time. My brother, even though he was still only about seven when I went into the military, had begun helping with the chores and the milking.

Apparently my father finally ran out of children to help with the milking, because just before I went on active duty with the military, he had a new milk parlor built, and purchased two milking machines.

My father became very sick and was unable to handle the milking of the cows for the last year before he passed away. It’s difficult to believe now, but my little brother, who was only ten or eleven years old, handled all of the milking of the cows until my mother finally sold the farm. I thought that the older children had it tough, but little brother had it worse. But that’s his story to tell.

Composting, everyone is talking, thinking, or going to do it. It is the right thing to do, our ancestors did it and we should be doing it too. Composting is a good way to improve your soil, while disposing of your kitchen, lawn, and garden waste.

Why rake and bag those grass clippings and leaves for the trash man to pick up when you can put them in the corner of your yard along with leaves and vegetable scraps to make rich living soil. You can even add your old newspapers and magazines to the pile, although I would recommend shredding them first. As all this waste decomposes, you are making dirt, which when added to the hard red clay that we have around here will make better, richer dirt.

There are several ways or methods to compost. Out on the Burress Plantation, we have several compost piles going. We have one down at the foot of the hill where we put all the big stuff such as tree limbs and dead shrubs and other larger debris. This pile is for things that don’t decompose very fast.

The next pile is about eight feet by eight feet. This is where we put leaves, grass clippings, and vegetable and fruit scraps. I keep a shovel down by this pile and turn it over every time I add to it or at least twice a week. This pile decomposes relatively fast and I am able to harvest composted soil from it about once a month. I usually add some nitrogen to this pile and about once a month I add a product called Carbon Boost to the pile to help it work a little faster.

The next compost pile is a little closer to the house and is a bin that my Adorable Wife made as an experiment. She took a thirty gallon trash can and drilled one half inch holes in all the sides and also in the lid. The lid is a snap on lid and fits tight to prevent critters from getting in to it. She adds layers of grass clippings, leaves and food scraps to it along with some water about once a week. She rolls the can over once a day to keep it stirred or fluffed. She is able to harvest her composted material on the average about every two weeks.

Last, but certainly not least, is the compost bin that we keep on the porch. This is a big blue tub with a lid that snaps on and is also Wiggles home. We bought a tub and lid which can be purchased at any of the big box stores and drilled one eighth inch holes all in the top. Next we shredded some newspaper and put in the bottom and wet it lightly. Next we added a couple of shovels full of peat moss, then some vegetable and fruit scraps, and this is where we put most of our egg shells and some coffee grounds.

At this point we added about two or three hundred red wiggler worms, tossed in a cup of corn meal and then topped it off with some more shredded newspapers that have been lightly misted with water. We add shredded newspapers and food scraps once a week and toss with a trowel.

This bin will yield about ten gallons of composted materials every six weeks or so that have been enriched with worm poop. This compost, commonly known as worm castings is an excellent organic fertilizer and soil amendment.

In conclusion, I believe composting is something that everyone should be doing. They even make small composting containers that you can use and leave on the kitchen counter. This would be a good item for apartment dwellers to make organic fertilizer for their houseplants. There are many kinds of compost bins available for sale at your local nursery or home improvement center or you can do like Ms. Janet and I do, make your own.

If you have any questions or comments send me an email at colorsbytim@hotmail.com or leave me a message at the Union County Extension Office at 662-534-1916. If you live in my area, you can also tune in to WNAU Radio 1470 on your AM dial Saturday mornings at 8:00 AM where I will take your call for gardening questions at 662-534-8133.

Happy Gardening and keep digging in the dirt and compost, compost, compost.

Man of the year international photo contest: Though in the finals, the U.S. trailed badly, garnering a distant honorable mention. 

 

U.S. Entry

Greece Placed Third

The Winner ~ Ireland

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