The bad days are those in which you can’t get outside and do something. In the Ozarks where snow is rare that means cold and rainy days spent inside watching the History Channel or, better, in the garage near the wood stove tinkering. When the ground is soft I can’t make the rounds cutting sprouts or cleaning out the fence rows. Environmentalists will be happy to know that nature has won in the Ozarks. The farmers are gone for the most part and nature is reclaiming what is left. It’s a mess, but the deer like it. Many Californians have retired in the Ozarks and placed expensive houses on cheap acreage, but they are the exceptions and not farmers.
Cutting brush by hand is what the doctor ordered. He believes in exercise and I do necessary farm chores as well. To me a cluttered farm is an inefficient and inoperative farm that can’t sustain the margin needed to buy equipment or fertilizer. When Dad used to take us to Michigan during summer custody, we would marvel at the rich fields of Illinois and Indiana and their tall corn. That’s where the money is. You’re lucky to see corn in the Ozarks. Our biggest crop, rocks, can’t be used because they are of that awful softball variety nobody wants. Is Scotland the Ozarks without the trees?
In the last several months my goal was to continue cleaning up the old external fence lines and eliminating the internal ones because there is no need for them. Most farmers here are hay and cattle people. Don’t let the horse and donkey people fool you. Diversification disappeared with the family farm. I can’t remember when I last saw a chicken. Cattlemen have sold most of their cattle because of the drought, but I sharecrop hay and rent pasture to feed steers, cows, calves, and one gentle old bull.
I’ve come to terms with the Chainsaw from Hell. It’s an old Stihl Farm Pro 026 that had a starting problem for years. Of course, I never needed it much in Lee’s Summit when I lived there. Down here, it’s different. After three trips to the small engine repair shop I found out the hard way that it wasn’t the chainsaw, but me. I had to revisit one of my saw manuals to figure it out. I’m pleased to announce that the problem was an improper fuel adjustment screw setting – my fault. The Chainsaw from Hell is still with me and it generally runs fine although I have to feed it constantly with new chains because of the Black Jack oaks. Sharpening them doesn’t work.
February is fertilizer buying month and it costs thousands. The days of farmers moving west after they drained the fertility of their old places are long gone. I’ll be lucky just to break even, but there’s something about a family farm with hay bales in the field and a rainbow in the sky. This year I’m going to take the Missouri Conservation Department’s advice and replant my creek bottom land with switchgrass and gamagrass, native species that are resistant to drought. The cattle didn’t like the old water grass that had taken over the field.
I pick rocks in March and April after the cattle have cleaned up the place and return to their own pastures. The reason why farmers pick them is to prevent costly machinery repairs when they collide at 2,000 RPMs with the mower blades. The Cherrys have been picking rocks for three generations on this place. An old Ozark farm can be identified by their fields free of rocks. There are piles of them everywhere stacked by hand. I guess when we're gone they'll be just as mysterious as the Indian mounds are.
