I hate to claim trailblazer status, but I think it’s only appropriate that youth of today learn about the sacrifices I made growing up as a young soccer player in the South. Recently, I took my three-year-old son to a new park, one that has a battery of swingsets, a half dozen sliding boards, and all the latest in juvenile climbing scaffolding, when I realized the most impressive thing about this park were the ball fields–green, flat, irrigated fields, meticulously lined and delineated for one singular sport, soccer.  This would have been unthinkable in a rural county decades ago, so I’d ..read more

I try to live and let live, but I draw the line on people who put sugar in grits. Just last week I learned that our new county 4-H agent practices that heretical approach to grit cooking, which makes me wonder how effective new-hire drug screenings are if they can’t detect someone who uses such a simple illicit substance as granular glucose in grits. Just think of all the farmers who worked hard to plant, tend, and defend that corn from earworms, all so she could later defile it by sweetening something that should always remain salty. A good helping of salt (enough to raise your blood pressure ..read more

If Energizer ever decides to rebrand, my three-year-old son should be in the running for the new mascot. His battery never depletes. It’s like the boy has a built-in alternator. The more he runs, climbs, and flips the more energy he generates. Eventually, once he finally figures out how to do a backflip off of the top of the couch, I reckon our house will implode. The fact that it is still standing is a testament to how well-built houses were back in 1897.  Sometimes, when I see the slipshod McMansions that the developers are throwing up all around us, I wonder how many generations of chi ..read more

Market day is a downer. Sure, there are a few pigs I was glad to see go, but I don’t think I’ve ever been closer to disavowing bacon than on market day–well, maybe I have, there was that one time I checked my blood pressure after eating a half pack of bacon.  Sometimes when I think about God, the best analogy I can think of is a farmer and a pig. A pig is a smart animal, but most farmers, current writer excluded, are exponentially smarter and somewhat omniscient (at least in terms of the pig’s day of reckoning) and generally benevolent (at least in terms of providing for the pig’s welfar ..read more

Many people these days are raising the alarm about Artificial Intelligence, but they are too late, as evidenced by the fact that Hot Wheels are now self-replicating. Everywhere I step is a new Hot Wheel that seems intent on my downfall. I can’t even get up in the middle of the night without fear that a Hot Wheel will ambush me en route to pee. As a fringe benefit, my employer offers an Accident Plan, a type of insurance that compensates you for fractures, dislocations, concussions, and lacerations. I used to wonder who would feel the need to purchase such a plan, on top of their regular health ..read more

Recently for work I attended a Veteran Farmers’ Conference in Boone, NC. I have long since realized that Asheville is a strange land, but Boone is not far behind. I will say something for the veterans in attendance–you could tell they had been trained extensively in the practice of self-control. Me, not so much. The only thing stopping me, a non-veteran, from storming the stage and wresting away the microphone–to put all of us out of our misery–was the fear that I would lose a fight to a pacifist.  In the speaker’s defense, I don’t think she had the self-awareness to realize how poorly th ..read more

The drought persists. Somehow we missed our 73% chance of rain on Tuesday, which is more evidence that math is fake. Another reason math is fake is because I spent $800 on grass and clover seed this fall, and my truck bed still looked empty and my tires barely bulged under the payload of a few overpriced seed sacks. It’s as if numbers don’t mean anything anymore. In fact, I think my eight hundred dollars would have been more valuable as kindling for my bee smoker. I planted the seed back in early September and it has yet to germinate, which is possibly a blessing in disguise. Had it germinated ..read more

Desperate times call for desperate action. I’ve left my car windows down, painted an outbuilding, and even hung up a few garments on the old clothesline–just to tempt the atmosphere into relinquishing a few rain drops. The whole countryside looks drab, like someone siphoned the chlorophyll out of the pastures and hayfields. We haven’t had any substantial rain since early September. But give it a few months, and the pendulum will have probably shifted and we’ll be boarding an ark. It seems like it’s always one extreme or the other.  Somehow, in their infinite wisdom, the folks who monitor ..read more

I suppose there are advantages to living in a desert. For one, allergy season is probably pretty short. Without vegetation carpeting the landscape, the human immune system must have little to overreact to. Here, in the borderlands between the subtropic and temperate climes, my white blood cells are currently waging war against any trace of pollen trying to invade my pores and orifices. My body’s attempt to expel the invaders has mostly expelled lots of bodily fluids through my runny nose, watery eyes, and rapid-fire sneezes.  The only way to escape allergies Still, I’m trying to find the ..read more

Once in a moment of inspiration, I decided to buy 32 apple trees. Talk about making work for yourself. Now, every winter, the trees need pruning to ensure a bountiful apple harvest for the gluttonous woodland creatures. Between the racoons, opossums, and deer, we probably salvage half a peck of apples for ourselves, enough for Natalie to make a delicious homemade apple crisp each year to remind me of the foolishness of my moment of inspiration. “This better taste good,” she says, “how much did you spend on those apple trees again?” I will be glad when the apple orchard turns seven years old; a ..read more