Standing On The Edge

Please forgive me for my absence! For the past few months I have been carefully editing a new novel, Edge of Destiny.

We have all found some escape route that has led us through the endless months of COVID, and mine was writing a story about two kids who grow up in a hurry on the eve of World War Two. This is a tantalizing and compelling tale that takes place in a small town which is on the brink of recovery from the Great Depression. Reppen is located in Norfolk County, and its ticket to greatness will be the fast-growing, world demand for Virginia ‘bright leaf’ tobacco. Claudia and Theo are high school seniors that are watching that future crash before them as the Nazi and Soviet threat unfolds in Europe.

They graduate from Reppen High and leave for college quite literally as war is declared by Hitler, September 1, 1939. Over the next year the couple navigate the streets of Toronto, the halls of university, and the growing pressure to enlist and fight, all the while learning about themselves. Claudia is a brilliant girl who up-ends the physics department as she enters that long-established male bastion. Theo, straight off the farm, faces the prospects of joining the RCAF.

Their trajectory comes crashing down when Theo is mysteriously swept away by unseen forces that drop him into the future, 80 years later. He seeks help from amazed and puzzled strangers in a desperate, impossible search to re-unite with Claudia.

This is a story that delivers a narrative about small town life, farming and the grit and reality of urban living. The characters reveal the unbeatable optimism of youth in the face of military conflict and raw, undisguised evil.

My personalized offer for U.S. residents.

In the past, I have marketed my books on Amazon. I found that to be a no-win situation, as the ubiquitous e-commerce giant destroys the economics of investing six months in writing a book. If you think their delivery is free, it’s not, believe me.

Edge of Destiny is available online at Blurb.Com and Blurb.Ca.

I will add, that U.S. readers can order direct from me using PayPal.Me/pmb1267, or mailing me a check. In return, I will personally sign and dedicate your book and get it delivered, pronto! The details are in the enclosed brochure, here.

Agriculture, Culture

At The Edge of Cliff and Water

Twenty-one months into COVID hibernation, we often wonder when we’ll see our kids again. They reside on the other side of the border, a thin imaginary political line of separation. While thinking of that, it dawned on me that we do share some common geography.

Living near the shore of Lake Michigan, outside of Chicago, we share the same water basin as those kids who live in Toronto, on the shore of Lake Ontario. So while we may be some 600 miles distant, I take some comfort knowing that we drink from the same trough.

I am reminded of that wonderful book, Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling Clancy Holling. A young boy dreamed one late winter of sending his small carved canoe “Paddle Person” from the melting ice of Lake Nipigon down into the Great Lakes, and ultimately to emerge in the Atlantic. It’s an excellent illustration of our connectedness by way of the water.

Less well known is our connection due to the Niagara Escarpment. As a boy raised in Southern Ontario, I have always taken the escarpment as one of those unique wonders of Canadian geology. The escarpment appears–and I will elaborate on that in a moment–to originate at the Niagara Falls, the escarpment’s namesake. Being some 170 feet high, the Falls are an incredible sight of raw nature, and have attracted millions over the years to view them, and feel the mist on their cheeks. They drain Lake Erie, and feed Lake Ontario. Back to our young boy, his Paddle Person will plummet over those falls in the story.

What any Ontarian knows is the migration of the escarpment west to Halton County where it turns north, moling through the terrain, eventually emerging on the Bruce Peninsula, which forms the western shore of Georgian Bay. At the northern point, Tobermory, the escarpment slips under water and emerges at Manitoulin Island near Georgian’s north shore. For Canadians, myself included, the escarpment ended there.

Imagine my surprise a few years ago when a friend in Green Bay Wisconsin pointed out that the Niagara Escarpment actually formed Green Bay itself, on the northwestern shore of Lake Michigan. Who knew? Our public education system failed to make that clear, decades ago. Let me just add, that as of thirty years ago, living in Toronto, I had no idea even where Green Bay was. My ignorance of Great Lake geography was woeful. The escarpment arcs in a southwesterly direction from Sault Ste. Marie, and forms a ridge that descends as far south as Appleton in northeast Wisconsin.

Only then did I appreciate the true size and dimension of this iconic limestone ridge. As a frequent visitor to Door County, Wisconsin, I marvel at the escarpment’s height and color. Well I should, as The Door owes its existence to the rugged cliff. The county’s maximum height is around 150 feet above Green Bay, close to that of Niagara Falls. At hundreds of sites along its coast, viewers can see the craggy cliffs that jut out of the waters. Inland, the roads nudge up against the towering limestone and dolomite rocks comprising thousands of distinguishable layers of sea floor, exposed to the air after hiding nearly 400 million years underground.

How did that happen? What made the pre-historic promontory raise its head?

The escarpment’s genesis is a long story told well in a short paragraph. Over a period of some 24 million years, during the Silurian age, an ancient sea was the home of jawed and bony fish and arthropods. They lived, died, and floated to the bottom to be pressed into limestone for the next 400 million years. You can see the remains of these creatures in the cliffs as long flat layers of cream-to-gold colored crumbling rock.

For your confirmation, the Jurassic period was only 200 million years ago. During the last ice age, some 20,000 years ago, the region surrounding the Great Lakes was submerged under a two-mile thick layer of ice. The weight of the ice pack actually depressed the land beneath it. When the ice melted, the weight was removed, and the land popped back up. The melt water helped dissolve much of the outcropping, and the escarpment was revealed. The process is called post glacial rebounding, and it continues even today.

Door County is the beneficiary of this geological epiphany. It is sandwiched between the temperature-moderating waters of Lake Michigan and Green Bay. The 40-mile spit of land is ideal for growing grapes, cherries and apples. The bi-products are wine, pie and cider. This agriculture is very similar to the escarpment in the Niagara Peninsula which also flourishes with similar viticulture and orchards.

We visit Door frequently, and as I stand on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, I think that as far away as Ontario may be, the water, and the cliffs connect us. Living in the Great Lakes region is a wonderfully inclusive thing, and the little Paddle Man proves it.

Thanks for reading! I hope that COVID has not prevented you from seeing your family, but hopefully you have mutual reference points, a star, a TV show, a sports team, perhaps a song that brings you closer together.

Paddle-To-The-Sea was written and first published in 1941. Beautifully written and exquisitely illustrated, its ISBN is 0-395-29203-4.

Agriculture, Wildlife

Fence Wars

The pandemic is winding down, sort of. Despite the restrictions put upon us, I decided early in the spring, that this would be the summer of the flower garden. How much trouble can you get in, if you never leave the yard, right?

*^{A fine summer garden, suitable for replication!}*

To that end, I retrieved pictures of a magnificent Door County Wisconsin garden that I wanted to replicate. Taking this photo in hand to a local nursery, I sought the help of a smiling lady who would identify and select the flowers I wanted to grow. She enjoyed my enthusiasm as I racked up the charges. She joyfully counted up the zinnia, rudbeckia, sweet potato vine, coleus, ageratum, gladiolus, alyssum and countless pots of geraniums. I was envisioning a floral presentation which would turn the heads of any passers by.

While I trailed behind her among the rows of flowering flats of annuals, I couldn’t help noticing the abundant displays of leafy, shade-loving plants as well. Perfect for the crabapple-covered berm in our front yard! So I loaded up on some plants blessed with strange and exotic names like hosta, lilies, caladium, coral bells, heartleaf, and lungwort, and pushed a crowded steel buggy back to the cash register. It was without doubt, the most expensive impulse I had enjoyed in a long time. And the flowers would pay that all off.

*^{The Shastas delivered a mountain of white.}*

I won’t bore you with the earnest labors which followed, turning over the earth in our front, side and back gardens, pulling out the weeds and dead roots from prior year’s efforts. But count on it, the ground was mightily disturbed, and by the end of two weekends, I had planted all the greenery, laid down some delicious fertilizer, and watered.

And waited.

The summer of the flower garden was off to an auspicious start. Every day through May and June I walked the perimeters, pulling out weeds, and smiling as blooms started to appear. Meanwhile, the perennials were covering for any spot not in bloom, so I watched as the shasta daisies blew up into a mountain of white, our bed of roses went wild all at once in multiple colors, evening primrose, sweet william, even our hollyhocks rocketed to new heights outside the fence. The day lilies lining our hedge delivered a marching brass band of orange trumpets. There was no end to the diverse display of blooms, and my dream of the summer flower garden was being fulfilled.

The dream was not mine alone however.

On an early morning stroll through the zinnia patch, I was stunned to find that five of the thirteen plants had been felled like prime pulp wood. The perpetrator left no footprints, but in a brazen attack on our sovereignty, had chewed through the stalks at knee height, bringing them to the ground where they were then masticated into shredded greens. Gadzooks!

I scratched my head at this, and then went to the side garden where the full Door County display had been planned. Calamity again. Three more zinnias, which are the tall variety and much counted on for color, had been trimmed and toppled. But adding to that injury, the same dastardly villain had also chowed down on the sweet potato vine. The vine, when mature, provides a brilliant light green, or a dark purple outpouring to the garden, knee high. It was at this time, lower than a coalminer’s boot.

I recalled a short discussion at the nursery: “Do deer or rabbits like sweet potato vine?” The helpful lady replied, “Well, they are a vegetable, you know.”

*^{Baby bunnies: “Don’t leave the nest!”}*

Galvanized by these assaults I quickly looked for our asiatic lilies and their brilliant orange blossoms. There they were, in shreds like forlorn tears, fallen from their completely denuded and decapitated stems.

It struck me that I had sown my own misfortunes. Back in April, while weeding around one of our hundreds of clumps of narcissus, I spied a small brown furry animal. It was a baby rabbit. Following his mother’s instructions, he was frozen in place, waiting for me to go away. But I didn’t. Looking around, I discovered that this little fellow had disobeyed a greater instruction: “Do not leave the nest!” Indeed, there was a nest, burrowed under the side of one of our roses. It was beautifully made with a soft bedding of warm, sun-soaked leaves, and at that moment, home to three more baby bunnies.

Then, I made the worst error possible. I informed my wife who is an ardent bunny lover, that we had a tiny family of four in our rose garden. After settling her down, and dampening those motherly instincts, I promised to leave the small nursery to itself. Cute little fellows, they were smaller than my fist, and had tiny bunny ears. How could I possibly harm even a whisker on their adorable heads?

*^{The wiley bunny: hungry and crafty.}*

We watched for them constantly, and after a couple of days, they had fled. Occasionally they would pop their heads out from under the back deck, or play a hopscotch game beside the yew hedge. We were entertained as they rolled in the sand–where there used to be a healthy lawn–and laughed as they nibbled on blades of grass.

So I was reconciled to a hands-off policy vis-a-vis the bunnies. As it turned out, one day a gorgeous red fox was skirting around the backyard. Foxes are quite extraordinary. They have sharp, well defined facial features which telegraph high intelligence. And their tail, it floats behind like a giant white-tipped bronze scarf in the wind. But most importantly, though sadly, they love rabbit. From that day on, the bunnies no longer frolicked in the yard. Except for one, whom I suspect is the same one that wandered from his nest as an infant. And he was now the numero uno in our backyard.

I thanked the fox under my breath, and explained to my wife about the circle of life and other esoteric philosophies about food chains, karma and rabbit ragout, which by the way is highly over-rated. We had rabbit once in a Montreal restaurant, and I nearly dislocated my jaw because of its rubbery texture.

*^{Trimmed, just like McQueen would do it.}*

The fox disappeared from our yard, and I saw that my best defense against further intrusions was a fence. I retrieved a sturdy green plastic net fence from the garage, and staked it up around the zinnias. I likewise circled the sweet potato vine in the vain hope it would recover. Returning to discuss my “wall” strategy, I was reminded of my promise.

“You won’t hurt the bunnies.”

“Nope. I am just cordoning off the area. We will co-exist.”

“Good, because they have a right to be here. And I like them.”

“No problem. We’re good.” I smiled and pursed my lips.

Next morning I returned to the garden to view the zinnias. Two more were down. But not eaten. Just snipped off at knee height and abandoned, with the blooms lying on the ground as if their necks were broken.

“What the hell?” I searched again for tracks. I found none. But looking closely, I found a small trap door had been incised through the green fence. Ankle high, the door was opened from the bottom, hinged at the top, and its sides neatly snipped off. “Crap!” I couldn’t believe it. The rodent had cut his way in, like Steve McQueen in the Great Escape. To his credit, he mischievously decided not to eat the flower, but just to kill it, to vex me.

Doubling down, I placed bricks against the hole. “That’ll do it, mister. I am onto you now.”

Next morning, I couldn’t get out to the garden fast enough, and to my dismay, another hole appeared in the fence. And he had cut through three giant marigolds. Rabbits don’t like marigolds. They smell, and they leave orange stains like Cheetos. Still the bunny had struck again.

“Do you know what he’s done now?” I challenged my wife. She responded defensively, “You need to share. They’re hungry too, you know. I think they’re cute.” The fact is I kind of admired the little varmint. The bricks had only egged him on. “I gotta get a better fence!”

ACE Hardware had just the thing– a black plastic, tight mesh fence, 30″ high. I brought it home, and wrapped it around the original green fence. “There. That’ll show ya.” I mumbled to myself. Our summer of the flower garden was getting off to a rocky start, but I felt that there was still time to bring it across the finish line in full bloom. Mind you, the garden was taking on the appearance of a prison yard.

Next morning, I stared out the living room window, wondering if I should even take the regular patrol. “What the hell, may as well.” So out to the yard I went, and carefully navigated among the geraniums to get to the prized zinnias. Almost with silent admiration, I gasped, “Two more down! How the heck did he do that??” I should point out that these zinnias are the “cut and come again” variety, according to the little plastic bookmark that comes with each pot. It dawned on me that perhaps the rabbit could read.

Looking closer, I found a section of the new fence where it did not cover the old green one. And there, like the open door to a rabbit smorgasbord was a perfectly carved opening. The bunny had precisely cut a 3″ x 5″ entrance, leaving no sloppy trim, no hanging flaps. A tech school grad could not have done better. I actually think he preferred the new material.

The surprise of this latest violation was that he had cut down no new flowers. I suspect he wanted to leave them for a later meal. But I am off to ACE again, this time, for a steel fence, and perhaps a 12-volt battery.

My plans for the magnificent summer of the flower garden continue, but I now admit that I have a hidden partner in the operation.

Thanks for reading and sharing! I hope you have better luck with your summer garden!

Agriculture, Culture, Thank You

Orange Ya Glad?

As a kid living in the country we enjoyed a seasonal treat sent to us by my grandad who vacationed at Vero Beach every winter. He sent a bushel of citrus fruit packed in green straw for Christmas. Inside we found dozens of oranges and monster grapefruit, tangerines, and strange little kumquats.

The memory comes back to me now as last Friday the USPS delivered a box to our front door. Puzzled, we opened it to find a similar trove of tangelos. Nearly three dozen, unbidden, but happily accepted. It turns out that a distant friend in California went out to his backyard and picked them for us.

I say unbidden, because we had no idea he lived in Claremont, California, and that his home was built on 40 acres of grapefruit. He sent these along, perhaps as a thank you for a couple of books which I had sent to him. The return of the tangelos was a happy surprise, but the best was yet to come.

We in the north do not grow citrus fruit, or certainly not to eat. I have a few Texas grapefruit plants in a pot taking up the winter sun in the den. They get outside in the summer. These plants will be converted to bonsai. It takes about 25 years, so I am planning on that. But that’s another story.

The tangelos are larger than tangerines, but smaller than oranges. At least these were. In fact, they are hybrid of a tangerine and pomelo, a type of grapefruit. They peel like a tangerine, very easily, and are particularly absent of any pips.

After reading the friend’s accompanying letter, I learned that he picked these from two trees in his backyard. That in itself is nearly astounding. We are forking out $$1.99 a pound for oranges at the grocery store, and he’s growing them wild over the shed out back.

He went on to explain that they are easily peeled, but his preferred entree is chilled and then quartered to be eaten like Don Corleone did in The Godfather. Orange smile!

So, waiting no longer, I grabbed one, and literally popping off the skin, sectioned the fruit into segments and stuffed them into my mouth. One bite, and the juice spurted out like a tomato, and the flavor of fresh citrus exploded in my mouth. The tangelo was sweet and tangy, and rich. I could sense thousands of little vitamin Cs all lining up for a march across my tongue.

We could not believe our good fortune, or the thoughtfulness of our distant friend who marched his product down to the post office for our pleasure. Paying it forward, we bagged up a dozen for an older couple who lived down the street. At their door I assured them these were a sure complement to any COVID vax they might get, a certain cure for scurvy, and twelve doses of pure delight.

Our task ahead is to finish up the box rapidly while these little gems convert to pure sugar.

Agriculture, Culture, Marketing, Thank You

Own Your Burger!

A welcome sign on route 94 into Wisconsin.

One of the great treats of living in northern Illinois is being able to hop over the state line into Wisconsin. The land of beer, cheese, sausage, milk, football, hunting, fishing, camping, farming and hard work is a near infinite portal to the pursuit of happiness.

I need to tell you about just one of those diversions: the Culver’s Butterburger.

In an era when dairy products are viewed as gateway fats, it’s crazy to promote a burger naming butter as a signature ingredient. But in Wisconsin, what else is more appropriate? This burger is not politically correct. It’s frank, and honest.

In fact, the Butterburger is a winning trademarked name that has been touted proudly since 1984. And its sidekick? Fresh Frozen Custard, which is made with, yes, you guessed it, eggs. Not a lot, but they are in there.

The Butterburger is raw culinary honesty at its best. Culver’s makes no bones about promoting the zest and robust fullness of their foods. Yep, it’s got fat, and it tastes good. The Butterburger is a visual treat too. Packed with yellow cheddar, red tomatoes, green lettuce, pickles, and purple sweet onion, it looks like a miniature carnival carousel. It lacks only a calliope and an operator.

The Culver’s bag is all message. “Welcome to delicious”.

We were told about the Butterburger nearly 20 years ago, but never had the temerity to go to Culver’s and try one on. The thought of it repelled. We visualized a hamburger swimming in butter, squirting mayonnaise, dripping juice with every bite.

And then the ads started. We saw Craig Culver, capped and jacketed in blue, coaching the cook staff on the proper way to flatten the fresh beef patty on the grill. It had a family feel about it, and somewhat reminiscent of another family burger business, Wendy’s.

We ordered two sandwiches, well beyond our appetites and good guidance.

But the ads persisted, and one day, they introduced the Butterburger Deluxe Double. Two beef patties, mayo, and all the colorful rest. That was when I learned that the butter was actually brushed onto the bun and grilled before the burger was assembled. Well, that’s not so bad, is it?

So on a hot day in September, we drove to a Culver’s in Wisconsin, just over the line, and against all dining habits and trashing healthful instincts, guiltily ordered up two Deluxe Doubles to go. We waited a full five minutes as they actually cooked the burgers for us, squashing them down just like Craig instructed. Then, presented with a bulging bag of two you-know-whats, we drove like bootleggers off to a neighboring lakeside park to enjoy our feast with some ice-cold beers.

The experience was “our first” of a sort, and it was sinfully delightful. Forbidden foods should be like that. Reaching into the bag, we pulled out two promising, boxed beauties. They looked just like the ads. Sitting down on a bench, we marveled at the sensory delights of a bulging fat, colorful, shameless sandwich, dripping in beef juice and mayo. It was hot, succulent, cheesy, and messy, with chunks of tomato and purple onion escaping out the sides of our mouths. To some it might just be a burger. To me, it was ambrosia.

The sandwich bulges with color, meat and veg, and oozes cheese and mayo.

Just wondering how deeply we had entered into the badlands of fat, I checked the Culver’s website, and found that our Butterburger Deluxe Double weighed in at 810 calories, with 155 mg. of cholesterol. Bad? Eaten every day, not good. But once in a while, I could live with.

Incidentally, I took the fight to Wendy’s and bought a “Double Dave” named after the late Dave Thomas, founder, and felt the experience similar, but lacking the purple onion and extra mayo and raucously celebrated butter, it was a second place presentation. The Double Dave also boasted 810 calories and 175 mg. of cholesterol, but without the hutzpah, the bravado of the Butterburger’s brazen image, it didn’t deliver the guilty satisfaction I felt in Wisconsin.

To some, a burger. To me, ambrosia.

The Culver’s website also gave me a look at the larger picture. It’s a family run, privately owned business, 736 restaurants sprinkled across the midwest and south. Wendy’s has 6,000. The company is HQ-ed in Sauk Wisconsin, a smallish town north of Milwaukee.

Culver’s targets its charitable giving and philanthropy towards agriculture, supporting the education of young farmers with activities in the National Future Farmers of America, Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center, and most intriguing, Cows on the Concourse, in Madison Wisconsin.

Welcome–a burger most proud!

Agriculture, childhood, Culture, Thanks

History Lessons

A swing bridge over Big Creek, long ago.

My hometown of Delhi has a Facebook group site exclusively purposed to recall the days of our youth. Growing up in Canada’s most unique farming community, the premier source of flue-cured virginia tobacco for nearly a hundred years, the Facebook members post daily about their early experiences. They also remind us of what our parents and grandparents did to get us here in the first place. A couple world wars and a hostile political environment in Europe pushed our ancestors to Canada’s open doors, and Delhi was where they landed.

It struck me this past June, as I read the many stories emerging from the 75th anniversary of D-Day that we, as its beneficiaries, have an awakened reverence for what our parents did for us.

RCAF’s finest, off to Europe.

Is it just a function of getting older that we spend more time remembering, or is there a sense of responsibility to our predecessors of not letting them be forgotten?

Lest We Forget

But to my point: we now look back with respect. There is a lady in Delhi who is daily researching and compiling a history and narrative to describe the little town and its inhabitants from decades ago.

Kilnwork: our main stock in trade.

Another gentleman posts documents, clippings, ads, pictures, bills of sale and civic events, clearly from materials he has sought after and kept for posterity.

When my parents passed, we inherited a library of photography and letters, some dating back to the 1890’s. The pictures are eloquent, in their black and white motif, depicting the youth of a different time. Vacations, school, romance, marriage, kids.

1914: Canadian Expeditionary Force

They also include military poses: those ‘before’ shots, getting ready to ship off to some unknown and dangerous place, dressed in perfect uniforms, spotless, neat fitting and inspiring.

The hand-written letters dig below the pictures though, and reveal what’s really going on. I photo-scanned them all for sharing with our family. Unlike Facebook, where our lives are generally perfect, the letters from 50, 75, 90 years ago talk of privations and scarcities. Life in its rawest forms was much more daunting back then, than we would know it today: lining up for rations…looking for materials to sew a dress… finding a place to live… battling an illness…waiting for news of a loved one.

A 16th birthday.

Yet there was a confidence, a resilience and persistence like moss stuck to a wave-washed rock in the shoreline that these ancestors of ours would grin and bear it, and get through it.

We have a neighbor who is writing a book about her father’s service during the war. Her source is the collection of papers and manuscripts which he had written 50 years ago. Within these letters are the details which are news to us today. Who knew? It may be half a century ago, but the revelations are still mind boggling.

My conclusion is that for the Baby Boomers, who are now enjoying retirement, or looking forward to it shortly, we have an obligation to use our spare time to dig up the past.

An expressive lesson in lighting a coal fire.

Our kids need to know the table that was set for us and for them. In today’s digital environment, where every piece of history is accessible, it’s really only there for background, a general context of the times, and only if you have a user-name and a password to see it. What we find in our attics and closet shelves is much more telling. We owe that to our parents, now long gone.

The Diary

My young grandson reinforced in me once of the value of writing it down: “Don’t put it in an email. That’s technology, and it will just disappear. You’ll never find it again.” Out of the mouths of babes…

As an experiment, I started a small diary. This is a 2-1/2 x 4″ moleskin which I keep in my pocket, with pen. Originally I used the book to write down things I didn’t want to forget: passwords, shopping lists, names of bartenders, song titles, movies, plumbing fixtures–you name it. But starting in July, I wrote about my day. Not long windy stuff, but a factual account of my travels. At first it seemed a self-praising pastime. But about six weeks later, I paused to read what was in the diary. The surprise was that I had forgotten most of what I had done, and there it was, in print. Multiply that awakening by 12 months, and you start to realize how much we experience in a year, and then forget forever. It’s like a beige mush of time spent, and little retained.

As a business manager, I regularly advised my staff to write down their accomplishments for the month. “You are going to need this one day. I won’t always be here. Someone will come to you, and ask what you are contributing, and your mind will go blank. Your job security is in the balance. So make a list!”

Thankfully, they did this, and their accomplishments rolled into mine, and we always had a resource to explain our worth to the company.

So I am keeping the diary going, not to explain my worth, but at least as a hard copy reminder for me, or for whomever follows, that this is how life was today.

Thanks for reading and sharing, and thanks too, to Dave Rusnak Sr. and Doug Foster for the images!

Agriculture, Culture, Environment, Science, Wildlife

Marmoration Nation

The Brown Marmorated Stinkbug

I had to laugh when a recent plea came across our Village Facebook page, “Will they be spraying for mosquitos this year?”

The summer’s nearly over. Fall’s coming. Frost on the pumpkin. Mosquitoes??

Skitters may be annoying, a nuisance, bothersome and carriers of West Nile disease, but other than that, well, they aren’t stink bugs.

Last fall we found scads of these penny-sized twirps on the side of our brick ranch, an unsightly rash of brown measles, sunning themselves every afternoon through September and into October. Mindful of the laws of karma, I did not kill them. I flicked them off the sliding door screen and wished them a good life, but somewhere else.

Brown Marmorated Stinkbugs are so named because they have a marbled camouflage suit. Hard to see as they bask on the lilac leaves in the afternoon sun.

Halyomorpha halys: a member of the family Pentatomidae

They also smell.Before understanding what I was dealing with, I smacked one, and as it exploded under my hand, it shot off a dying waft of odor that resembled rotting, moldy underwear, which I say kindly. Understandably, they are not tasty, so lack many natural predators. Crows turn up their noses. It turns out that wasps will go for them. Terrific!

Stinkbugs are unpleasant creatures, only recently making it to our corner of the Midwest in northern Illinois. Apparently they originated in the far east, and hopped a ship to a harbor on the east coast, and with time, they have moved west. Apparently they like soybeans which grow abundantly on a 33-acre field across the highway from us.

Time moved on, and as the snows fell in December, the stinkbug drifted out of our memory. We passed the evenings in front of the fire, catching up on Survivor and other important social studies.

Then, one day in January, a black dot appeared on the family room wall, over the door.

“What the…?” I stared. “That’s a, a, a stinkbug! What’s it doing in here?”

No longer spooked by the ironies of karmic payback, I grabbed the odiferous brown button in a wad of tissue, and walked it off to the toilet for a quick dispatch to the next world.

“Don’t know where that came from, but it’s history.” I flumphed down on the TV couch beside my wife to witness 8 publicity-hungry people attempting to dive into the Pacific ocean to retrieve a key, which would unlock a box of beanbags back on the beach to throw into a basket which would tip over and raise a victorious tribe buff.

Then, looking up over the fireplace, another brown button.

You can guess the conversation that followed, and that eventually, unbelievably, tortuously repeated itself for the next three months as every day, two more bugs appeared in the family room.

Under duress, their natural odor is intolerable.

Somewhere on the outer lining of our house, a gang of stinkbugs was holed up, waiting for spring. We came to imagine that the ringleader would crawl among its cohorts asking for volunteers to go out and check the weather.

Everyday, without fail, two creatures would emerge, quietly, stealthily, and present themselves somewhere in the family room or hallway. They never flew. They just appeared, immobile, prostrate, stuck to a wall. They stood out like 8-balls in a bathtub, and so quickly ended up mummified in tissue and expelled to a plumbing system which hopefully took them to a station miles way from us.

And then spring came, and the bugs one day missed their cue, not showing up. We relaxed, and enjoyed the following months that scrolled through May and June’s fragrant flowers, thick lawns cut weekly, releasing the unforgettable aromas of fresh cut grass. Deep into summer the garden fluttered under the visiting companies of butterflies, mindful robins, cock-eyed, frenetic squirrels and later the incessant, raucous buzzing of the cicadas.

As September arrived, the sun warmed our home on its west side. Stepping out to the deck to light the barbecue, I lifted the lid, and looking up, spotted, there, on the wall, a brown, marmorated, stinkbug!

Stinkbugs: seekers of nook and cranny.

“Cripes! A stinkbug!” I groaned. Looking beyond this unwelcome visitor I found another. And another. “Holy crap! They’re back!” Sure enough, as I walked along the side of our house I spied more than a dozen.

The next day, I obtained a particularly bug-lethal concoction from the hardware store. Mixing approximately 3 tablespoons to a quart of water, I filled up a handheld spray bottle. The solution was 5 times as powerful as recommended.

A crusade of epic proportions

For the balance of September I sprayed every afternoon and every morning, targeting bugs in twos and threes, clustered under the soffit, ensconced in the cracks between the bricks, hiding under the lilac leaves, perched on the window screens, and skittering along the edges of the gutters.

It was a crusade of epic proportions. I had gone through a whole quart of the concentrate, and went back for a second, relishing the daily harvest I was taking on these annoying little bugs. The walls dripped in poison spray as the bugs plummeted to the ground, dead.

You may recall the adventure story, “Leiningen And The Ants” . A plantation owner and his crew are defending the crops from a vast plague of soldier ants that devour every living thing in their path as they march, six-legged, towards the house. Leiningen first attempts to fend them off with a moat. The crafty, unstoppable ants still cross. Next he douses his fields in gasoline to burn the ants, but they forge on. Finally, he floods the entire plantation by diverting the river, only just escaping his own vivisection as the ants pulled him down.

Somehow, I felt like Leiningen, defending house and home, and winning.

Early this October, the weather turned cold and wet, and the stinkbugs were gone. They had vacated the trees, the walls, the gutters, the screens, and the soffit. It was over.

October in Illinois is a flighty month, climate-wise. After raking all the fallen leaves, we were presented with three days of 80’F weather. This past week, I surveyed the yard, and looking up to our gutters spotted more of the bug. Returning to the house, I loaded up another quart of the juice, and like trigger-hyper Terminator in a video game proceeded to decimate the bugs, which by this time numbered a small mob.

“I just finished off 84 stinkbugs!” reporting to my wife, who rolled her eyes. “The sun brought them out, and they got the juice.” I was triumphant. The sides of our ranch looked like a target range for paintball, with little wet splats everywhere.

After lunch, I ventured out to the deck as the sun came around. “Geez!! There’s more of ’em!” I went back to search and destroy mode, and sprayed 135 more bugs. “That’s gotta be it. Just gotta be.” Indeed, it did seem like their rush was finally kaput.

Our yard hosts a forest of mature trees. Closest to the house is a Moraine Locust. This tall giant provides the most generous and pleasing canopy during the summer months. Swinging in our hammock one can gaze up at the millions of tiny leaves that sway effortlessly in the wind like green petals against a brilliant blue sky. It’s an irreplaceable retreat, passing the time, thoughtless and serene.

The summer idyl is over in October however, and that is when the leaves turn yellow, and all one billion of them fall to the ground, and to our roof, settling in golden billows packing the gutters. It is a regular ritual to blast them out of the gutters, and with that purpose, I climbed to the roof, leaf blower in hand, and started the excavation.

A little tank at the bottom of the summit.

Hardly into the first side, and I scan the roof for errant leaves to push over the edge, when before me creeps a stinkbug. Crabbing across the asphalt shingles, it joins another stinkbug. I take a moment to blow it away with the leaves. And then I look towards the peak of the roof, and there is a long train of bugs marching along the summit like Sir Edmund Hillary’s Everest trek, complete with sherpa porters, numbering in the hundreds.

I am aghast.

Stepping up towards them I inspect the shingles at my feet, and watch as stinkbugs enter and exit every little groove in the overlapping sheets. They are everywhere. This is home. Seekers of nooks and crannies, they have found refuge. I walk up to the roof ventilators. These are black, screened aluminum umbrellas which shelter vapor draft for the attic. I tap on one, and 20 stinkbugs explode out from under in every direction like gangsters rousted from a crap game.

The neighborhood is a giant roof garden of marmorated chia pets.

I finish the leaf job, and descending to the deck pause to reflect. Leiningen conquered the ants, but only after torching and flooding his land. Not an option here. It dawns on me, as I survey the gables and rooflines next door, that every house in town is hosting a giant blanket of stink bugs on their roofs like an enormous marmorated chia pet. There is no defense.

We’re done for, until the frost comes, and it can’t come too soon.

Thanks for reading and sharing! The Department of Agriculture sees these as an economic pest. But a solution is hopefully underway.

Agriculture, Culture

A Change In The Clouds

Fall is a month away. It doesn’t seem like long ago that we were pouring fertilizer on a robust lawn before May was half done, satisfied with a green, grassy, house apron devoid of even one dandelion.

Back then, summer was still a month away pretty much, and we had a full agenda of activity including play and travel, romps with the kids, and some quiet moments by a large body of water, soothed by a clement breeze sent from the northwest. The sun was up by 5:14am, the weather folks pointed to clear skies, and to the occasional fluffy batt of clouds, high up and benevolent as they shaded the lawns, fairways, fields and lakes for a moment before moving along.

Driving to Door County in Wisconsin today, I looked at the limestone cliffs which are the mirror image of the Niagara escarpment, running from The Falls north through Tobermory to Sault Ste. Marie and then south to Green Bay. From the road, you see a 100-foot-high cliff, a sandwich of million-year-old seashells, blanketed with a hard-earned topsoil. Above that, the trees, orchards, soy and cornfields richly, generously, spread in every direction.

And above that, are the clouds. Lots of them. Hung against August’s blue sky, they are more intent on passing. Their bases are grey, and the furls are silver, with a blown effect that signals that they are in a hurry to be somewhere else.

That’s when I sense the shift. Our planet, perched on a permanent tilt, has moved along its perpetual path around the sun, and in the process, has changed its shadow settings. The sun rose at 6:07 this morning.

Back here on earth, we are sensing the change, despite all our denials.

As a kid, I didn’t really sense seasonal change. But when I was working age, the bells started to ring.

Back then, early in the morning, in the third week of August, standing at the bottom of a tobacco conveyor belt, there was a wet fog lifting across the cold, grey, sandy fields, revealing countless rows of tobacco stalks stripped to their top leaves. Only a couple more rounds to go.

Last night’s boat was left beside the kiln, ready to sew and hang first thing. As we pulled back the dew-wet canvas, the leaves are warm from their own combustibility, and exude a sweet peppery scent. Their steam escapes into the cool morning air nuzzling my face. Lifting them limp out of the boat, they beg to be hung out to dry, and quickly.

The tying machine folks aren’t the first up. The primers and the boss’s family were out hours before, unloading the neighboring kiln in the dark, gently lifting out 1200 sticks of cured tobacco, placing these on a wagon to be towed off to the barn for storage.

The emptying of a tobacco kiln is a ritual as disciplined as doing your laundry. After a week of careful curing, the heavy, wet, green layers of tennis rackets have baked to a light bouquet of stiff, golden dish cloths carefully stitched to three-foot-long sticks. They rustle, and breathe a moist, musky perfume in the early morning. The grower has to evacuate the kiln promptly, as a new harvest will be hung tomorrow.

As the pickers ride off to the field, our tying team revs up the machine table and the sticks are placed into the moving chain by womens’ hands which moments before were finishing thermos mugs of coffee. They pull in handfuls of tobacco like romaine lettuce for a gourmet chef’s banquet salad.

Off across the yard, the cool dew gives a fuzz to the grass while it drenches my feet, padding back and forth between the tyer and the conveyor. Up above, our kiln hanger has cranked up his radio which he has hung on the red door of the kiln. Sonny and Cher beg us, “Baby Don’t Go”.

It’s late August, and we all feel the harvest coming to an end. Ten more kilns at most. Ten more days.

Finishing up a harvest is a sobering experience. The work started four weeks ago, roughly, the result of four months of careful planning and cultivation. Our clothes are worn and washed out, hands tough, muscles built, our tans are faded, our pockets are full. But as the coolness pervades the fields, and the sun retreats from its July intensity, everyone senses that the job is just about done.

It was numbing, repetitive, demanding, important work, racking up numbers in the thousands, and millions, if you cared to count. Despite its physical demands, tobacco harvest was a time of freedom, too. Just get the product safely packaged; don’t worry about tomorrow.

Now, decision time.

Some of us go back to school. Others will stay on the farm, emptying the kilns. There are jobs in town. There’s canning to do. Still others will go to the next harvest, moving on to pick apples, pumpkins and cabbage.

Overhead, the sun smiles on us, warming our days around noon, and then the clouds move in.

Agriculture, Culture, direct mail, Fundraising, Wildlife

The Forest, The Trees, Or The Beans?

It’s not a secret any more that I enjoy reading direct mail. Not much of a life, you might suggest. Still, it guarantees a walk to the mailbox everyday, and a chat with our favorite USPS mail carrier.

My current discovery revolves around the offer I could not refuse, straight from the Arbor Day Foundation.

These good folks in Nebraska City, Nebraska are on a mission to blanket the country in a thick, variegated quilt of forests. So when they selected me to represent a small portion of the people in Illinois, I was hard pressed to decline.

Why?

Premiums often trump the original product offer for appeal.

It is a fact that in many successful direct mail offers, it is not the product that gets the sale, but the premiums which come along with good behavior. Good behavior in this case is responding quickly, and munificently. In other words, pay up, fast.

The survey is a powerful engagement device, selling all the way.

In return for my promptness, albeit somewhat stingy in retrospect, I might receive Arbor Day’s special rainforest, cool-shade-grown coffee for a year. Wow! I am supporting Starbucks right now, but I can be swayed.

It was with this initial buzz on my coffee nodes that I rushed to complete the Arbor Day Tree Survey, carelessly pushing aside any concerns about what would happen next.

The Arbor Day Tree Survey for Illinois is an excellent example of powerful sales rhetoric.

It helps that I am a tree lover. We live on a third of an acre, and have 17 trees. I feel rich, and enjoy the annual blooms, the blossoms, the pollen, the seed drops, and the mounds of leaves I rake.

Arbor Day is celebrated nation-wide, thanks to the Foundation’s efforts.

I think the survey deftly gets all the right answers from me. It lulls me into a positive frame of mind. I race through the harmless queries.

They ask, ‘have you ever climbed a tree?…when you were a child, did you ever play under or amongst the trees?… did you ever collect leaves, acorns, or pine cones for a school project–or just for fun?’

These questions are softballs, and I hit them all out of the park. “Yes! I climbed a tree! I lived in a tree!…I built a small condominium in a tree!..Yes! I played under a giant Beech as a child!…Yes! I just finished a vast collection of leaves with my grandson! Yes! Yes! I did all of that!”

Sophie’s Choice: pick one. But how?

These are soothing thoughts. For a moment, I slip into a gauzy reminiscence of TV’s defense lawyer Ben Matlock, asking woodsy questions in his unassuming, folksy manner.

But that reverie is smoothly swept aside by a troubling vision of Patrick Jane, the thoughtful, boyish, enigmatic Citroen-driving sleuth in CBS’s TV show, “The Mentalist”.

The questionnaire asks, ‘Which ONE of the following is the single most important function of trees: Providing shade? Providing oxygen? Being a source of beauty? Absorbing carbon dioxide? Filtering water? Saving energy by cooling our homes? Providing habitats for birds and animals?’

Like, how to choose? This is some kind of arboreal Sophie’s Choice, with the bark left off.

The motherlode of premiums: plant your own forest!

Really, the questionnaire does focus the reader to the countless benefits provided by a our forests, here and around the world. So kudos to Arbor Day for the survey approach. It segue’s to some opinion questions, and then asks for a donation which opens the gates for premiums. Big premiums.

Because I have asked for them, I will be receiving 10 Norway Spruce Trees, 2 Fragrant Purple Lilacs, a copy of The Tree Book, and a Rainforest Rescue Calendar.

And the coffee, for a year, I hope.

It turns out that the coffee offer is part of a sweepstakes. The fine print is found on the inside of the envelope. 500+ words in 10-point sans serif type, arranged in block paragraphs with no indents. My hopes of those rainforest-cool-shaded coffee beans are evaporating like dew drops on a hot car hood in July.

The 10 x 14 envelope costs extra, but its impact, complete with faux label does the job: it gets opened.

Speaking of envelopes however… I do applaud the package. It measured 10×14 inches, for no good reason other than to dominate the mail box, and to get my attention. It was printed to look like brown kraft. A knockout on the face presents the image of a label, but looking closely I find it is a varnish over the original white stock, masterfully done. This kit looks impressive, official, and urgent.

The power of data-driven variable imaging: customization.

Inside, there is a personalized letter, and it has a personal note referring to the spruce trees, just right for Libertyville, IL.

Alongside, I find a set of address labels, which are pretty much table stakes in fundraising, but they are optimistically entitled, “Arbor Day Foundation, 2018 Supporter”. That must be me! Their 2018 calendar further alerts me to Illinois’ Arbor Day being April 27th.

The mandatory address labels of fundraising, but tastefully designed.

So, I wait. The trees are coming next spring. The book and calendar, who knows? The coffee, fearfully a long shot. What I do know is that with every delivery, there will be a further prodding and arm-twisting for a gift.

While I am desperately trying to find a place to plant those trees, I’ll give it a thought.

Thanks for reading! If you would like the full appraisal of the Arbor Day Foundation, it is available here, at Charity Navigator.

Agriculture

Tobacco, Gardening and Growing Up

Norfolk County tobacco in its prime.

Gardening is a passion for many. It’s also an education. Living in the suburbs today, I now realize my first summer jobs in tobacco were an education on a grand scale.

But when you are sweating it out along a sandy trail between endless rows of voluptuous green, you don’t recognize the perspective it gives to one’s view of the world from then on.

Let me tell you about growing this insidious, but historic, magnificent plant.

Norfolk County is a sandy-loam, verdant garden on the north shore of Lake Erie. It’s recognizable on any map by the 22-mile spit of sandbar called Long Point that hooks into the center of the lake. Flying from Chicago to Toronto, you can see the milky currents wrapping around it from the air.

Today tobacco is a small fraction of the agriculture in Norfolk, but from the 1920’s up to the ’70s, tobacco farms neatly patched the landscape, rich in wealth and long in work.

The Norfolk growers are proud of their neat and efficient farms.

A 100 acre tobacco farm could furnish a family nicely, provide for a new car every few years, fund college, build barns and also buy a trip off to Florida for a well earned vacation in the winter. It would take a 1,000 acre wheat farm to deliver the same income.

But making that all come together required interminably long work, accented by brilliant sun on hot sandy fields.

In March the greenhouses are steamed to heat and humidify the rich soil for germinating seeds.

By May, millions of shoots are ready for transplanting.

In late March the growers steam the greenhouses, getting them warm and moist to germinate microscopic tobacco seeds which are sprinkled across rich, black dirt like poppy seeds. These grow to 12-inch shoots by May, ready to be pulled and planted.

The shoots are planted from behind a tractor. Two workers, usually women, sit on a frame and feed plants into a steel wheel that parts the sandy soil into a furrow, drops the tobacco plant, and then closes the furrow behind.

You can plant more than 10,000 shoots in one acre.

Early June and school’s out, and summer jobs begin to blossom, just as the adolescent tobacco plants are spreading their first leaves, called “sand leaves”. All manner of weeds try to overtake the tobacco. Our first serious job is to scrape a hoe between each plant, spaced roughly 18 inches apart.

Hoeing: meticulous painstaking work.

It’s 7 in the morning, and we are at the edge of the field. Mourning doves are cooing, off in the bordering woods, and the air is fresh with the scent of dew evaporating on the tobacco.

Hoeing is a walking activity. Wearing a hat, shirtless, and in shorts, I shuffle along a row carefully carving out weeds between the tobacco. There’s a million plants, shared by five workers: me and 4 women.

It’s painstaking work. If careless, the hoe will cut the tobacco plant, which will cost the grower money, and that can be painful.

Most memorable along these interminable rows was the unceasing chatter among the workers, sharing stories from family fortune to family scandal. As the youngest in the group, and as the only male, my role was to listen, and take the jibes from the women.

Do-over: the replanter dropped a new plant and a cup of water into the soil.

Then there’s replanting for dead and missing plants. Toting a six-quart basket with new plants and a water tank strapped to my shoulder, a replanter punches a hole in the furrow, drops a plant down the chute, pulls a lever on the chute and a cup of water is dispensed.

Replanting is my punishment for hoeing a plant under, a week ago.

My recollection of this job is twofold: the rows are unending, and the cold water from the farm’s well, pumped by a windmill, is heavily laced with sulphur. After 10 in the morning, the sun is high. The body dries up pretty quickly, and water breaks were serious and necessary. Gulping down a pint of icy sulphur water is a challenge.

By 3 in the afternoon, staring along the next row, the heat waves make the woodlot at the other end a shimmering green plasma. No matter; we work until 4:30 or so. After a few days of hoeing, the frigid sulphur water tastes sweet.

Long straight lines at 2 miles per hour.

Next, we cultivate. The tractor pulls a wheeled, steel frame manned with two guys, heads down, hands controlling little rakes, zigging and zagging between each plant, digging out a second round of weeds. Great for building your pecs and ceps.

I drive the tractor. This is hot work, roasting slowly over a 6-cylinder diesel Massey Ferguson. So hot and monotonous that I fall asleep behind the wheel. I have driven across three rows before I wake to the scowls and groans of the boss’s sons who are zig zagging behind me.

Stone age cultivator, left by the Tuscarora.

The upside of walking or driving down countless rows is finding a handful of ancient arrow heads and prehistoric farm tools along the way, remnants from the Tuscarora that long since have moved on.

Every day the tobacco continues to sprout new leaves as it shoots skyward.

The flowers are lopped off to encourage leaf growth.

When the plants have mushroomed to shoulder high, we take a brisk walk down the rows topping off the flowers to encourage a fuller plant.

August brings heat and showers, and cooler nights. The tobacco plant has about twenty broad leaves, stands a good 5-6 feet high, 3 feet across, and is rich green and aromatic. The leaves are as large as tennis rackets, and along the stems, they sweat beads of juice which turns to black tar on the hands after a while.

The harvest begins. On my first tobacco summer, 1965, we had 5 “primers”…pickers from South Carolina. They walked the rows, hunched over, pulling leaves, starting with the sand leaves. They earned this name as their bottom sides are coated with sand. It’s seven-days-a-week work, because the crop is an unstoppable force, growing as fast as it can.

Priming: picking the leaves is back breaking work. Nowadays primers ride picking machines.

The primers pull off the leaves, usually about three per plant, and tuck them under their arm until they have a bundle of 30-40 bunched up like stacks of green newspaper. Standing up, they bring the leaves over to a horse-drawn tobacco “boat” that follows in the row.

The boat was on wooden runners, and pulled by a tired horse who probably wondered daily how he ended up here sweating in the field. The primers were sympathetic, but not kind, and pretty course with their language for the old gentleman who didn’t need the work.

My first job was on a farm with horse drawn tobacco boats.

The priming crew will go through the hundreds of rows of tobacco 3 or 4 times to pick all the leaves as they mature.

When the boat is full, at the end of a row, it’s winched onto a trailer and tractored back to the tobacco kiln. In Norfolk, we called them “kills”.

The tobacco kilns were a landmark of Norfolk County.

A typical tobacco kiln stands about 20 feet high, and 25 feet square. Usually covered in green tar paper with red doors, these cube-like structures dot the landscape. Every farm has at least 7 kilns, one for every day of curing required.

Hand tying: a lost art. Each stick carried about 10 pounds of leaves.

But before the tobacco is placed in the kiln, the leaves are sewn onto sticks, each about 4 feet long.

It used to be that tobacco was hand-tied onto the stick. About three tobacco leaves were half-hitched at a time by their stems, by a lady using a continuous string. A good tier could tie about 10 pounds of leaves onto a stick in about a minute.

The tobacco tying machine delivered speed and finished product faster.

Sometime in the 60s, someone invented the more contemporary tying machine. This is a conveyor belt with an industrial stitcher.

Three ladies run the machine. The first pulls a bed of 20 leaves, by their stems, onto the belt, and as the belt moves along, she grabs another set of leaves for the next bundle. Lady #2 would lay down some more leaves, plus a tobacco stick, and pulls some more leaves on to cover the stick. Lady #3 continues laying on leaves as the stick goes by, under a roller, and under the stitcher. It delivers 10 pounds of leaves straddling the stick. All to the rise and fall of a conversation that flows with the chatter of the stitching machine.

The ladies turn out 2-3 sticks a minute.

The kiln hanger strung up 2-3 sticks per minute, skipping across 20-foot-high beams.

These leafy sandwiches are sent up a second conveyor into the kiln. The kiln hanger, who is me, waits at the other end, standing on a shaky row of 2 x 10 boards, loosely resting between two beams, 15 feet above the dirt floor. I grab the stick by its middle, and suspend it in notches between two beams over my head.

There’s enough time to walk on the boards to the notches, place the stick, and get back for the next stick.

Occasionally I miss a notch, or a stick breaks, and it plummets to the ground, crashing on the beams below and landing in a pile of leaves like a great wounded bird, with green feathers everywhere.

When a row is finished, I move the 2 by 10s to another position, either below or above me, and climb into position. The conveyor is moved, raised or lowered. The conveyor jumps into motion. One wrong step and I join the bird.

At the end of the day, all of the doors of the kiln have been closed snugly over the bulging sticks of tobacco. 1200 sticks, 6 tons of tobacco, wet.

A typical kiln holds 1200 sticks. We filled 40 kilns during harvest.

Harvest takes about 5 weeks, finishing after Labor Day, unless we get frost early.

Standing in the doorway of the kiln and looking up, I see a mouse’s eye-view of a beautifully trimmed forest of leaves, in hundreds of orderly rows, hung like romaine lettuce, ready for baking. Early in the harvest, those leaves drop millions of grains of sand, so an upward look usually ends up with watery eyes.

Kiln fires gave a frightening glow across the sky at night.

In the early days of tobacco curing, hot open flame oil burners were lit below the leaves. This is flue-curing. A harvest never went by without a dozen kilns going up in smoke and flames, a spectacular, punishing and frightening sight, all at the same time.

During the 60s someone got the idea to have forced air blown through an external furnace, and into the kiln, removing the threat of fire. A local entrepreneur made a fortune manufacturing the blowers for all the kilns in Norfolk.

The tobacco is flue-cured in the kiln for about 7 days. Warm, dry air is circulated bottom to top among the leaves. By day seven, it is golden and smells sweet and peppery. Each leaf has given up a cup of water, and has shrunk to the dimension of a tired dish towel.

In the late 70s tobacco pickers rode a machine with baskets. No more stoop work, no more horses.

Late after supper on the 7th day, or early in the cool dark morning of the 8th day, a crew brings a wagon up to the kiln, and gingerly unloads the kiln. They gently lay the sticks of tobacco down on the wagon bed, being careful not to damage the leaves. The kiln is ready for a new batch.

I have personally touched, hung, or cultivated every one of the leaves in this kiln. By summer’s end, I have loaded 40 kilns.

The harvest is pulled to the tobacco barn where it will remain until stripping, sometime in November. The sticks and tobacco string are stripped from the leaves which are then bound into bales the size of a kitchen microwave.

I never saw the stripping process, but reportedly, it occurs in a hot, humid room which forces the strippers to shuck off their clothes after a while. The event is aptly named, and there are tales of racy, raunchy humor surrounding it.

The auction house in winter. The product was bought, and exported to the far east.

Hometown Delhi, center of the Canadian tobacco industry.

Sometime in January, the growers take their bales to auction, and there they are sold to cigarette manufacturers like Imperial Tobacco, Rothman’s and MacDonald Stewart, whose Canadian customers prefer the Ontario flue-cured leaf, much different than the tobacco that comes from the southern states. Today, that market has been dwarfed by the far east, where smoking is more popular, and less regulated.

The “dutch auction” is an unusual process. A ceiling price is first established, and then the single hand of a clock spins slowly through descending prices. The first buyer to hit their buy button wins the grower’s lot.

From the auction house the grower’s tobacco is trucked to the factory. In my hometown of Delhi, the Imperial plant was on the south side.

Another planting. The young crop absorbs sun and rain before its explosive growth.

By early February and March the plant was processing tobacco, and when a warm south wind blew across town, there was a pervasive, mildly exciting, sweet earthy fragrance that tickled the nose. Unforgettable, 50 years later.

As I said at the outset, tobacco is a magnificent plant, and troubling too. I have no use for it, and can’t recommend it. Still, a good crop is a work of discipline, and there isn’t a day that those priceless memories of demanding, careful labor, delivering a harvest–a real summer job–don’t come to visit.

And I like to garden, too.

Thanks for reading! This was as long as some of those rows. It’s been years since my days in Norfolk. I can’t forget the smell and feel of the countryside. It’s sweet and distant, and I always like to go back to visit. Who says you can’t go home again?

Phil Brown

"Like triple cream– rich, pungent, a little barnyardy, and spreads easily. A good cheese."

Category Archives: Agriculture

Standing On The Edge

At The Edge of Cliff and Water

Fence Wars

Orange Ya Glad?

Own Your Burger!

History Lessons

Marmoration Nation

A Change In The Clouds

The Forest, The Trees, Or The Beans?

Tobacco, Gardening and Growing Up

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