From GENE LOGSDON

Time was, a farmer would feel naked without a pocketknife in his bibs. Even today, it is the handiest tool of all. There is always a bale twine to cut, a splinter in the skin to remove, a fingernail to trim,  a scion to be grafted, a hoof to be cleaned, a pig testicle to be removed, a marshmallow stick to be sharpened, spark plugs to be scraped clean of carbon, an apple to peel, a hide to skin, a seed potato to cut, a lid to pry open, a beer bottle cap to pop off, string holding a sack closed to sever, a hole to be poked in fabric or rubber. It would be fun to hold a contest to see who can come up with the most uses for a pocketknife on the farm.

As boys, we used our knives mainly to play a game we called “mumblety-peg.”  (I have a hard time believing this, but Merriam-Webster says the first known use of that word, mumblety-peg, was in 1647, and that it first referred to what the loser in the game had to do— pull a peg out of the ground with his or her teeth.) The essence of the game was to stand the open knife vertically on arm, head, knee, whatever, and flip it so that the blade stuck in the ground. That’s how I learned that any knife will fall, end over end, and stick into the ground every time if allowed to fall from the right height using only gravity without any extra push or flip. Experienced mumblety-peg players knew that and had rules about how the knife was to be flipped or not flipped. Often it had to be flipped from between two fingers, going consecutively from one pair of fingers to the next. Off an arm, the player might have to execute a double flip before the knife stuck in the ground for the maneuver to be legitimate. We also spent a lot of time throwing our knives at trees so that they would stick like in Tarzan movies. This was a good way to ruin a pocketknife in a hurry.

Any of you readers ever play mumblety-peg? I asked my grandson and he never heard of it.

Today, everyone, country or city, needs a pocketknife handy. Anyone who has to open packages (and that’s everyone) encased in the latest impenetrable plastic wrap, or secured with the latest indestructible tape, soon learns to carry a pocketknife. Especially at Christmas time, when so many gifts come by way UPS etc., technology has devised inhumane wrappings that will yield only to a blowtorch, but can be slit open without too much trouble with a sharp knife. More…

From GENE LOGSDON

Yes. I was reading the Cleveland Plain Dealer the other day when I came across the most intriguing photograph. It was of a dark-skinned woman in colorful clothing with a huge basket of fresh vegetables balanced on her head. Behind her was a large, immaculately neat and verdant garden. Probably someplace in Africa, I thought, but why on the front page of an American newspaper? Then I did a double-take. The caption under the picture said the locale was near downtown Cleveland, and the woman in the picture was a Clevelander from Burundi, Veronika Inabigo, who works with the Refugee Empowerment Agricultural Program. REAP helps refugees adjust to new communities. These refugees were doing what they did in their homeland, that is raise their own food. Their example was helping native Clevelanders understand that they too can gain food independence, even in the city.

I think this is good news, good tidings of great joy this Christmas. All over our cities, vacant lots and deteriorating residential areas are being returned to food production and verdant landscapes. There are the naysayers who worry that some of this soil might be tainted with too much lead or other contaminants, but tests can easily find that out. Although it is rarely pointed out, much of this soil is fairly pristine, not ever having been farmed and not even disturbed except right around cellar excavations. Much of this land went from forest to city with little disturbance except for lawns and landscaping. More…

From GENE LOGSDON

I used to think a lot about starting a Christmas tree farm. Hilly cheaper land could be used and I had some, machinery investment would be low, or so I thought, and the customer would maybe do the work of harvesting.

What stopped me was what I took to be the insane human desire for the “perfect” tree. Every true American is convinced that a Christmas tree must be shaped in a perfect, pyramidal form and so thick with foliage that a flea can’t fly through it. To prune an evergreen tree to this kind of perfection requires hours of hand trimming, often in the heat of the summer. It also requires sprays to combat bugs and sometimes fungal disease, and almost constant mowing around the trees. Instead of a natural grove, a Christmas tree plantation is almost as environmentally hazardous as a corn field.

Then there is consumer fickleness to deal with. Right now in our area, everyone seems to think that the perfect tree is a Canaan fir, which I never heard of until a few years ago. If I started a tree farm now and planted Canaan firs, how do I know but what they’d be out of style by the time I shaved and groomed them to the proper perfection. A blue spruce will grow to near perfection without trimming, but no sir, most of the American public does not, will not, buy a blue spruce. Beats me. (more…)

From GENE LOGSDON

On the subject of old tractors, I am as garrulous as an old soldier recalling his army days, only old tractors are not past history but very much a current event. Most of us ramparts people depend on them.  I own a 1948 WD Allis Chalmers and a 1972 John Deere 2010, both of which run well except the WD’s gearbox is locked up at the moment and needs a visit to the local tractor doctor three miles down the road. These tractors cost me only a small fraction of what new ones of the same horsepower cost and can be kept running indefinitely if you know where to look for help.

In most country areas can be found what I call the Solitary Genius Mechanic who runs a repair shop on his farm. (I don’t know of any women mechanics but would like to.) One I know was for many years a troubleshooter for International Harvester, travelling all of the country to fix machinery that everyone else had given up on. He is also a first rate organic garderner.

The Solitary Genius is a godsend to us ramparts people who operate small farms on the cheap and who don’t know much about mechanics. If you can get your old tractor to him, he can invariably fix whatever ails it. His repair shop may look primitive and junky roundabout, but don’t let appearances fool you. The ones who service farmers in the neighborhood regularly are knowledgeable and fully equipped. They are also delightfully independent philosophers. Most of them don’t charge enough and so I pay more than they ask. Be nice to them; they can be the key to your survival on a ramparts farm. More…

From GENE LOGSDON

The breathtaking photo accompanying this blog post shows a grove of young black walnut trees growing above a lustrous carpet of wild hyacinths in late spring. But what the picture does not show makes it even more wildly beautiful. I would bet that very few readers can guess, in environmental or geographic terms, where photographer Dennis Barnes found this lovely scene. I would never have recognized the locale myself, even though seventy years ago I played many a day right there in that exact spot. You are not looking at some lush tropical jungle, or wild sanctuary in a national park, or institutional arboretum, or wildlife preserve, or refuge far from the haunts of humans.  The location is a nondescript patch of Ohio farm country only a few yards away from a world of gullied corn fields. Seventy years ago it was open, park-like woodland used as sheep pasture and had been used that way for about another 70 years. The sheep kept new trees from coming in and limited the growth of wildflowers and brush. When the sheep were withdrawn, sure enough new trees and these wild hyacinths, which as children we had never seen, began to return.

At first there was nothing spectacular about this rejuvenating forest, but then Brad and Berny Billock (my brother-in-law and sister) bought the property, cleaned out much of the underbrush that had crept in and encouraged seedling black walnuts to spread out from a couple of hundred year old bearing trees. The Billocks reintroduced sheep but on a careful, rotational schedule. Then the flowers ran rampant through the grove. Botanists tell me that many wildflowers have the ability to remain dormant in the soil for years and then germinate and spring back to life when conditions are right again. More…