The Fox Holler Almanac Vol. 1: The Fox Holler Almanac, #1

By Benjamin Bramble

Modern media is full of bad advice on homesteading and agriculture, and the internet in particular, has become a fertile landscape, rich in bullsh*t on these subjects. This book will not help you quit the rat race and live self-sufficiently, nor does it claim to hold any solution for a broken food system, resource inequality, mass-extinction, or a climate careening into a death spiral. But it does admit these things exist. In a world that lays it on thick in order to sell you classes, consultations, and certificates, this book is a bit different; a meager offering of commentary, anecdotes and observations from a year spent living simply and growing food. It will not change your life, but it might get you thinking…

 

In this, the first collected volume of essays from the Fox Holler Almanac newsletter, the reader is entreated to some ecology, history, and experience spent toiling in the dirt. At times poetic, occasionally educational, and hopefully entertaining, volume one of the Fox Holler Almanac is sure to become a niche classic, gracing frigid rural outhouses and holding up wobbly table legs in dozens of dysfunctional homesteads for years to come.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Benjamin Bramble
• Release date: Dec 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223664918

Benjamin Bramble

Benjamin Bramble is a northeast Missouri farmer, orchardist, and traditional skills nerd, living a radically simple life in community. He eats very well and keeps all of his other standards low. 

Book preview

Prologue: Observations on the Nature of Water and Various Manures in Late December 12/28/23

It has been my intention to kick this writing project off with a year-in-review piece, but I’m not sure that I’m at enough of a place of rest to begin that process. Instead I will treat you to some current complaints.

It has been a frigid few days, short of a week. We are in that sweet spot, when water again flows freely from the collection tanks on the barns, but the ground beneath my boots is firm, frozen, and importantly, not mud. Turds of various origins are frozen enough to handle cleanly. The cow pies in particular are not unlike the polished granite stones used in curling. With melting snow and nights below freezing, I’ll likely have access to a vast ice rink for improving my skills in the days ahead.

Seeing as though I’m embarking on a new writing project, and I’m unclear on who my audience is, I may as well thin the herd early and go into a bit of further detail regarding the problems associated with frozen turds. Now, a frozen goat poop is pretty much indistinguishable from one in any other state; it is merely a pebble of digested grass, and can be largely ignored, so long as it is frozen to the soil or barn floor. The problem is when these goat marbles are free-rolling and they become a major slipping hazard. A cow pie, when frozen, becomes a dense and dangerous discus, which can accidentally bludgeon bystanders when unceremoniously tossed without the necessary attention. Yesterday I realized that it was slightly more efficient, if inelegant, to merely pick them up with my mittens rather than awkwardly seizing them with a pitchfork, which works much better on warm leavings. Something about the body geometry, the tines, and the ability for the cow pie to wiggle. The thing to be careful of here, is that sometimes they’re not actually frozen, but quite fresh. I recommend checking for steam.

Our swine herd does its best to be fastidious with their droppings and choose to pick a spot outside their shelter as their communal commode. This makes for an ease of harvest, when necessary. All is good on that front. Chicken manure mostly drops at night, when they’re roosting in the poultry barn, and for this reason I’m able to get away with in-situ deep bedding style composting. I will occasionally clear out frozen chicken leavings by hand in the nest boxes. A frozen bird turd takes on a pointed form, and they can be kinda sharp, believe it or not. The most distressing form of frozen manure, for me, is that which my own body has produced.

For those of y’all who are unaware, we utilize a bucket-based humanure system here. A privy. An outhouse. That is, we shit in buckets. And then the buckets are moved through an effective and safe composting arrangement that I may describe in some subsequent entry. For a decade now, I have refused to integrate the act of posterior evacuation into my indoor life. I figure, if a pig has the common sense to leave its barn to drop a load, so should I. Perhaps one day society will look back on indoor defecation as a brutish and ignorant practice, but for now, bucket-shitting is not as well appreciated a practice as it could be in the affluent Western world.

It is not without its problems, however. Particularly in the cold. Firstly, there’s the discomfort, which can be overcome. We’re getting to know each other a little more here, I may as well tell you that I basically poop first thing in the morning. When it is darkest and coldest. While it’s vital for me to keep my core temperature up throughout the workday, I will forego any form of overall, coverall, or full body suit for my morning ritual. There’s some research out there that I will relate to you third hand about the health benefits of spending a few minutes in deep cold daily, and so I do not rush the process, I relax, I do what I came to do, and I consider the process a form of mindfulness meditation. After that, the coffee is well steeped and I can put on as many pairs and configurations of pants as I’d like. The problem, and I’m going to be graphic in no uncertain terms here, is that things tend to stack up into pillar form this time of year, and buckets have a little less than half their capacity for dung collection in these frigid weeks. Don’t push it, don’t test the capacity limits. Trust me on this one, folks. But onto the frozen state of another form of matter, water.

Much of my time during these brutal cold snaps are spent troubleshooting water for our livestock. Keeping 5 cows in fresh water alone can prove difficult on sub-zero days without the benefit of or desire for an electric immersion heater. Our nearest frost free spigot is maybe 300 feet away. When several days of polar air are strung together like this, that amount of hose can basically be used one time to fill the trough before it becomes choked with ice. Of course, the hose can be cleared of ice with a funnel, several kettles of hot water, and some patience. Often the hot water will overflow the hose and provide the exciting sensation of frostbite and burns on the same hand! In the time it takes to thaw a hose out using this technique, several 25 gallon sled loads of water can be hauled back and forth, and so that is my primary go-to when the tanks are frozen... so long as the frost free spigot remains frost free, which inevitably, it does not.

In addition to the 5 cows, there are two groups of dairy goats, three groups of swine, and around 80 birds in our mixed species poultry flock that also need liquid water twice daily, plus the five to ten gallons our household uses daily for domestic purposes. When the snow drifts are slight and easier to traverse, we probably spend an hour or so daily on obtaining and transporting water in the winter time. The thicker and deeper the snow gets, the longer these trips take. Then there is mixing feed, offering bedding, filling hay mangers, collecting eggs before they freeze, breaking up kindling, hauling firewood, taking off three pairs of pants (six pantses total) to use the outhouse, milking cows in the arctic air, and so on and so forth.

In order to provide fresh water to our livestock, the ice must occasionally be cleared from their dishes and troughs. The smaller vessels can be easily cleared with a hand sledge, but the 130 gallon cattle trough takes a bit more effort, usually delivered with a heavy maul or chipped at with a dibble bar. I will then typically skim the floating ice chunks out with my ungloved hand, as this keeps my mittens dry enough for the rest of the chores. And yet, while some form of skimming tool would leave me less exposed, I figure that if the cows are putting their snouts to it, I can touch it a little too.

Using a wood stove to melt ice or snow is not an efficient choice when we have to provide a bare minimum of 70 gallons of liquid water daily. And I was surprised to learn how much air is in snow...

And so, when folks have the chance to visit our project in the growing season, take a look at all the work that needs to be done and say, At least things slow down for you in the winter time..., I want those folks to know that they are wrong. I may be moving slower, no doubt, and some of the tasks are different for sure, with less daylight to accomplish them in, which is why I have been waking up pre-dawn, making my first sled trip of the day with a headlamp. But life is no less hectic. I am not looking at seed catalogs yet. I have not gotten bored, just exhausted. Looking to the dormant trees and wild seed slumbering in the subnivean soil for inspiration, I soon hope to go to that place of reflection, recuperation, and hibernation, but I’m very much not there yet.

I suppose that my inner romantic thought these winter days would be spent in a rocking chair bathed in the flickering light of the woodstove, surrounded by the bounty of our harvest, maybe doing some handwork, or reading. I do have a rocking chair, albeit one covered in the frozen and manure stained coveralls that I’ll be back inside of later tonight while I finish up evening chores. And as a gentle southerly breeze brings in the humid scent of melting ice and mud, I expect tomorrow’s list of priorities to shift from the cold and hard type to the sloppy and balmy responsibilities of hauling bedding, mulching pig sties, and flinging a few loose cow pies out of the loafing shed.

Moving forward, my hopes for this writing project are to depict a fair and realistic view of this simple, seasonal life. I will warn you of the pitfalls (and other things) I’ve stepped in, I will share what I’d wish I’d learned sooner, and I will do my best to call bullshit on the glamorization of what is often a challenging, arduous, and financially unrewarding lifestyle of choice. I will offer a fair critique of food and farming trends and buzzwords, or at least acknowledge the personal biases I am aware of when doing so. I hope this almanac will serve to both encourage and discourage the right people from engaging in this important relationship between people, land, and food. For me, sustainable agriculture is a joy and a calling, but I suspect there may be some type of unexamined pathology there.

Over time I hope to develop a practice and rhythm as a writer that will primarily serve as a record as well, a document that rolls with the seasons, be they ice season, snow season, mud season, rain season, pretty flower season, hot as hell, or mud season part two. Hold on to your pantses, y’all, it’s going to be a bumpy jaunt in the old turnip cart.

Very truly yours,

BB

Apologia and Preamble: A Land Acknowledgement (of sorts) and Some Thoughts On the Direction of Modern Homesteading 1/5/23

Sweet, gullible me over here, upon the fog-shrouded and manure laden rolling hills of Fox Holler Farmstead, Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, Sandhill Township, Rutledge, MO, 63563. USA. This would be the appropriate place to offer a land acknowledgement, and yet I'm finding it difficult.

It's difficult because these things often ring so hollow... words, which sometimes can carry so much weight and power, fail to truly address the land dispossession, betrayal, and genocide that lead to white settlement here in North America. It's difficult because very little indigenous history and knowledge of this particular region remains in a way that my white eyes can see, and I'm certain that this erasure of knowledge is purposeful. It's difficult because I myself lease this land and am unable to return it to its aboriginal stewards, who were most likely occasional groups of hunters and gatherers. It's difficult, because this last statement is an excuse that white people often express, all the while I do have land access that benefits me and perpetuates people like me.

The homesteading movement has always had a colonial settlement problem. We are largely white and living on stolen land. We derive our livelihood from soil that was purposely looted by way of murder, broken treaties, and treaties made in bad faith. I don't think most homesteaders have reckoned with this in a meaningful way, and I'm not sure what would be more meaningful than returning land to indigenous people and doing the real work of creating and supporting policies that recognize tribal sovereignty, directing resources to tribal people and governments, refusing to appropriate indigenous culture while simultaneously learning from and valuing it, and undoing the harm that white people have caused in this environment.

So, some homesteaders will offer various ways to acknowledge the history of the stolen ground upon which they derive their existence. Perhaps it creates a bit of ease (for them), perhaps it rings true to do so, perhaps it falls short. Others do not do this. Some of them, I suspect, are actively racist. Like when there's a civil war reenactment and somebody's a little too excited to be a Confederate. Look folks, I enjoy Conestoga wagons and floppy hats. I like fresh air and quiet. And I believe that the subsequent waves of settlers that swept through North America after the extirpation and subjugation of indigenous peoples were mostly motivated by ignorance, fear, and the human need to survive and provide, rather than the calculated hatred perpetrated by the U.S. government and associated religious and economic interests. We can take an oversimplified view of how we got here, or we can take a complex and nuanced view, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't change anything if all we ever do is take views.

Modern homesteaders are an interesting cross-section of humanity. They are mostly white, mostly financially privileged enough to engage in what is one of the quickest ways to lose money, and if they make it longer than five years in their activities, they are very stubborn people to boot, and probably very, very privileged. But the similarities soon diverge after that. We have the remnants of the hippie back-to-the-land movement on one hand, and they come in many different flavors of crunchy, from nature-worshiping peace and love types to your standard psychedelic-enhanced weirdos to resource-conscious self-hating aesthetes like myself. Then there's the right wing of the homesteading movement, which covers everything from the Christian homeschool types that sell essential oils and meal plans, folks who can not stop having children, standard libertarian firearm collectors that enjoy good, clean living, right on up to your dyed-in-the-wool end-times preppers. Not a Helen or Scott Nearing among them. I am finding myself increasingly bored with all of them.

If they're on social media, they generally don't explain where their US dollars come from. Sometimes it's from a spouse or partner. Sometimes it's from a trust fund. A lot of times it comes from a media marketing scheme, whereby we are being sold courses and workshops in lieu of real goods and services. I'll be honest with you, mine comes from wherever I can possibly get it, and I will not hesitate to shake you down, gentle reader.

As a lifestyle, homesteading has been very inspiring to me, I'll sheepishly admit. I do not generally engage in things that I don't like doing, and I've been doing this longer than about anything else. Still, even the word, the hashtag if you will, #homesteading, makes me cringe. Like deep in the gut of my soul. In essence, what we're doing here at Fox Holler looks a bit like homesteading, however you interpret that word. There are stacks of firewood, barns full of goats, fields full of cows, a sty full of pigs. We lead a spartan existence, and not only do I have dirt under my nails, but I am excessively filthy a high majority of the time. But as the saying goes, you can only polish a turd so much, and the reality of homesteading, beyond the veneer of photo-edit filters and damn near scripted captions is, if not just a bit unsavory, as bleak an existence as any here in this great extinction event. We hear so much about the value of fresh produce, not as much about all who can't access it. We hear about the peace of mind that comes with leading a land-based lifestyle, but not much about those who haven't been afforded it. Even the difficult days on the farm pale in comparison with the very real trauma being inflicted on the majority of people who are trapped in the more conventional, capitalist economy. Some homesteaders even hold those seething masses in disdain, championing a self-determinism that few can access. And it's understandable to look at the mainstream, rat-race world with contempt. That's what I ran away from. I knew I couldn't do it, that a 9-5 would do more than just kill my soul, it would kill me, physically. Or, more likely, I'd do it myself. I've always dreamt of some return to the mythic, simpler times, even as a little boy. A lot of us "homesteaders''are here because we want to go back.

Back to what?

I do not wish to romanticize or go back to pioneer days, though I admit I think the technology was cool and the manner of dress aesthetically pleasing. The only way forward is through it. A part of that is reckoning with our past. Not coming to terms with it necessarily, but vowing to build a better world. Or we could dismantle the current world. I'm fine with that too. But either way, if the homesteading movement wants to be anything more than selfish and privileged, we have to be looking forward. This is, I contend, an age of resource depletion, exacerbated by climate change, a political turn towards fascism, and complete and utter degradation of the planet and its inhabitants by corporate interests. We can't hide from it, or go back to simpler times. No more than the people native to this place can.

If you are among the privileged few with access to arable land, and are providing very little food to very few people using inefficient techniques as promoted in homesteading media, this is an abuse of that privilege, and irresponsible at this time in history. If you're stockpiling more than you need to the point that it goes to waste, or if you're somehow making a living selling the dream of this to others, well you may be short-sighted at the very least. There's even a good chance that you're kind of a jack-off.

I try not to view progress in terms of the mythic, manifest destiny style Conestoga wagon lurching into the sunset version, but I do see a potential future where people feed and house each other, work together, treat land access as a human right, and somehow cobble together the makings of a functioning culture, both materially and of the heart. I'll admit to being a bit of an isolationist, maybe a little misanthropic even, but that has more to do with my upbringing and my difficulties with attention than anything else. Poor me.

Poor old gullible me, thought I could carve off a chunk of stolen land and live a righteous life fertilized by the sweat of my brow. Turns out that the missing element in all this was cooperation with other humans. And while I admittedly don't like it a bit, I'll try it nonetheless.

I hope to explore this theme a bit more, this interplay inside of me between the rugged individualist and the floundering soul grasping for a handhold in a seething mass of humanity. I will also talk a lot about the weather, and about manure. I can't promise to lay out a blueprint for how to liberate our culture through land-based activities, but I promise I'll be honest. I probably won't always use the right words, or have enough context to truly understand the words I'm using, but I will remain well-intentioned, and do my best to remain open to education. Hopefully more educated and well-intentioned than, say, white settlers in the 1840's.

Outside, the wind is wailing. A chickadee vigorously hones its beak upon the leafless limbs of Osage orange. From my window at my desk I can see five cows standing in the half-thawed muck, grunting and tearing at hay. We all have more work to do in this world than we imagine, or want to do. I'm starting with hauling water.

Ultimately, I am trying to stick to my intentions here, to record an almanac of the homestead year. But I will veer into commentary like this on occasion, whenever I’m struck to do so. Because after all, what is useful information without passion? If I can stick to it, I hope that you, gentle reader, will be left with some honest expectations of the work that needs done. Some of you, no doubt, are growing food, or would like to be. And some of you have other important roles in the creation of a viable life on earth. Like it or not folks, we are determining our future together, and there’s precious little time to look back at the good old days.

Unsettled,

BB

Preservation through Dissemination 1/12/23

It has been an uneventful week here at Fox Holler Farmstead. Or maybe it has been fairly eventful. To be honest, I don't have a good barometer for what constitutes eventfulness anymore. This past week or so has been evented, how about that?

The weather has been unseasonably warm here, for the time being. Our cow, Sugar, continues to belch and bellow about the loafing yard, her belly swaying with calf. She is due this Sunday, but it could be anyone’s guess. Hopefully, the weather will hold for a smooth delivery. I had to euthanize a broken-legged goat, and did the respectful work of preserving his flesh for extra nutrition. Having taken the wait and see approach to lame or ailing livestock, I am confident this was the best and most humane option for all involved. This is the reality of raising livestock. We must contend with the dead stock as well. Does it get easier to kill animals? Well yes, to a point, and I think it best to always come back from that point, and retain some level of empathy and tenderness. Especially with animals I know I will be harvesting for meat. There is no room for callousness in this work, but a dark sense of humor sometimes helps.

It has been my intention to regularly journal for the benefit of this almanac in the evenings, but I am often exhausted and overstimulated by the time I come around to it, and so that hasn't happened. As time passes and we enter this second week of January, those of us who have set some goals for the new year are probably aware of what is or isn't sticking. And then come the justifications, but I will spare you these.

I have begun site work on some new tree plantings. I have pushed through some necessary butchering work. And I took the first few steps in committing to continue gardening, including sitting down and getting some seeds ordered. And that is maybe where I'll begin today.

In the doldrums of abbreviated winter days, when all but a few spare