Joshua Tolley

While staying on a friend's property we came to know their Highland cows. Most of the herd was moved into the summer mountain pasture, but the vagaries of life and logistics meant one young bull stayed behind, alone. Loneliness isn't any better for cattle than for people, and this bull, dubbed Peanut Butter, wanted friends. Our two year old son obliged, toddling over with a handful of leaves to augment the meager hay available, to stand at the fence next keeping company with his enormous friend. Our visit there ended, but the bull seemed to remember his young friend, grown now to a precocious for year old boy,  the next time we came to the property.

I dream of getting back into milking by hand, if we can make our steep Ozark woodland into something that could support cows. It's well-suited for goats, and our milking Nubian is lovely, but I miss cows.

Looks kinda like ours! Found a few years ago for $100 on Craigslist, our upright grand is about 100 years old and often sounds like it. Economics dictated that I learn to tune it myself if I wanted it tuned, and provided I'm not anticipating concert hall results, my tuning turns out OK. It survived bouncing down the dirt roads on its back on a single axle trailer, and works just great when the humidity in our off-grade Ozark cabin isn't too bad. Just like most wines don't actually get better with age, most pianos don't either, and this one has plenty of creaks and groans and personality. But we can play it and sing around it and enjoy it, and it's a wonderful blessing. Congratulations on getting yours!

Count me among your seven listeners; I listen to every one, from my little off-grid Ozark homestead full of kids and a milk goat and one brand new attempted hugelkultur bed. I long for the day when I'll find my first morel (I'm listening to the next podcast, now), but we had tons of lovely chanterelles last spring and I'm hoping they'll start up again soon. The kids are under instructions to forage some of our many wild yummies to augment at least one meal each day, because we're not growing all the things we'd like to eat yet, but we might as well start eating the stuff that's growing here now.

I grew a few acres of wheat once. We'd dig the kernels out of a couple green heads and chew on them, every so often. The local farmers claimed that with experience you can gauge the progress of the crop by the gumminess of the wad of wheat you've chewed up, but that's a skill I probably won't try to acquire.