Category: News, etc.

I’d signed up for the meat conference, then in addition signed up for the “pork track” which involved breaking down a hog and making some sausage, salami, etc. What I didn’t realize when I’d signed up for the pork track was that I’d have to miss about 70% of the conference because these things went on concurrently. I can pretty much count on going back next year so I can attend all the sessions because there were definitely some good ones that I’d have liked to attend. But not great loss because the pork breakdown was very good.

When I got to class, it was already underway. I missed the introductions, learning who our instructor was, and meeting the other folks because I was in the hall talking. The last time I was late to a class like this I met SWMBO and got married so I was very wary walking in. I didn’t want to end up married again, that would have been hard to explain when I got home. To make sure I stayed unhitched I tagged in with two guys who were working a table at the back of the room. The class was about 1/3 women which in all seriousness is very good. The entire conference was about 1/2 women in attendance, and probably 60% of the presenters. But in my case, I decided to stay with the boys and I’m glad I did because they both turned out to be very cool people.

The instructor, who worked in a butcher shop full-time, did an excellent job of first showing what was going on, then working the room and checking on everyone.

The conference folks had a large screen TV and someone with a camera always shooting what he was doing so that everyone could see. It worked really well and I was impressed with the forethought in putting that system in place.

Don, one of the guys at my table, was a recently retired chef from Raleigh who’d spent 30 years in the kitchen. He was very adept at breaking down the cuts and did most of the knife work. Because of my back, I elected to take notes rather than take a turn behind the knife which worked out great because I could catch the things Don missed while he was working and the instructor was talking. The end result was our table got the gold star for always being done correctly and first. Go team!

After finishing with pork class, day 1 I skipped the rest of the conference classes and went back to the hotel to rest my back a bit because there was a dinner and cocktail hour.The keynote speaker was Allan Savory and I was excited to hear him speak.

He is somewhat of the father of the movement for healing the land via livestock and grazing and I’d seen his great TED talk years ago (if you’ve not seen it, go watch it now. It’s worth the 15 mins). Back at the dinner, I again ended up in multiple conversations with various people I knew or just met but had lots in common with. It felt more like a family reunion than a conference. Finally Allan started his speech and not 10 minutes in my phone rang and I ended up outside and on the phone for nearly all of his speech. Oh well, from what I saw it wasn’t anything new anyway. Tomorrow was a new day, and we’d be making sausage!

This Monday and Tuesday I spent the day in Winston-Salem at the NC Choices meat conference. There was much consternation over my departure because my back, although better, was still in pretty bad shape and I wasn’t sure if I could make the drive or survive being at the conference all day without a way to lie down. In the end I survived the trip and I was able to participate in about 75% of the conference so all things considered I think I did ok.

I’d asked SWMBO if she and the kids would like to go but she had too much school to get done so I trundled off all by myself to sit in the back of the room and try and absorb something useful. Or so I thought.

Walking in the door, I was greeted by a nice lady who handed me my information packet. She then reminded me that her husband had attended our Bang to Bacon class and had enjoyed it greatly. I was a little shell shocked. I really didn’t expect to be recognized but it was pretty neat. I then headed off in search of the bathroom (I’d been on the road for two hours) and as I was weaving through the crowd I heard my name. I turned and found my insurance agent talking to another gentleman from NCDA and I quickly found myself in conversation with them. Turns out Jack, from the NCDA did marketing outreach for them and handled the Got to be NC program. He promptly asked if I’d registered to be a Got to be NC farmer and I said that indeed had registered and been approved.

Unfortunately I hadn’t done anything else like download the logos, put them on my website, order any signs, etc. I had filled out my listing on their website but that was it. Jack asked if I had any of the road signs yet and I told him I actually wondered how you went about getting one of those signs. Next thing I knew I was walking out with a stack of signs, some of which were about as big as me. Look for me to be hanging signs here shortly now that I’m home.

Once I finally got out of that conversation I made it to the first class I was assigned to, but that is my next post.

On a brighter and sunnier day, it was time for another attempt at taking the recycling to the recycler. The truck and trailer were still all hooked up so all I had to do was to make it there in one piece. I had new tires on the bad side of the trailer and all the air pressures had been checked properly this time. Funny how with proper prep things work out.

This time the trip over was pretty uneventful, other than it was a really heavy load. I was curious to see what the whole rig weighed when I got there.

Almost 40,000 pounds. That’s truck, trailer, and load. The max GVWR of my truck is 33,600 so that is 5,800 overloaded. Now we are licensed to carry up to 67,000 pounds so we weren’t illegal, just overloaded. To put the amount of overload in perspective, that means we were loaded with the equivalent of 5 Suburbans on the trailer instead of the four we thought we were carrying. Oops. It’s not like we have scales on the farm to check these things with. I think the cardboard had absorbed some water from all the rain so next time we know to just load dry bales and we should be ok. I hope.

Unloaded weight, which means we dropped off 20,840 pounds of recycling or four Suburbans. Not bad for a couple of months worth of work. Since the truck should weigh about 8000 pounds, that means our big trailer weighs in at 10,000! It’s supposed to weigh 8000 so no wonder that thing is so heavy to carry. At least now we know our weights on these different vehicles so we can plan better going forward.

And what we earned for the cardboard paid for the tires and fuel. That’s a lot of work to break even. Oh well. Some days you eat the bear. Some days the bear eats you.

As I slowly made my way onto 440 I was gently trying to accelerate to highway speed. I was in the heart of the work zone and people were of course flying. Luckily I’ve learned with a large vehicle you just have to gently make your way in and people will basically get out of the way. Just as I made off the on-ramp, I hit the first bridge. With all the construction, the transitions to the bridges are pretty brutal. With all that weight behind me, it was even worse than normal but nothing like when the trailer tires hit the transition. I heard the explosion more than felt it and knew immediately I’d blown a tire. With all the cardboard, I really couldn’t see behind me to see if I was smoking or throwing chunks. Even better, in the construction zone, there is no shoulder. It’s Jersey barriers right up to the travel lanes. Oh goodie.

I trundled along as best I could in the far right lane, looking for smoke. Fire. People waving at me telling me I was about to explode. That kind of stuff, for over a mile until I could get to Rock Quarry Road and it’s exit. Once I finally made it off the exit I was able to go see what had happened.

If you look closely, you can see that there are multiple holes in the side walls of the tire. It exploded! The inside tire is in even worse shape. I said a little prayer for getting me to the exit without the other tandem blowing because it was now carrying all the weight of that side. I then called a couple of tire companies to find one that could come and change my tires on the side of the road. About an hour later, I had two new tires on my trailer and I limped back home to try another day. I was still struggling with my back and being on the side of the road hadn’t helped it a bit. I went home and got back in the bed and saved recycling for another day. But that’s the next post.

Last week it was time to take our cardboard recycling to the recycler. Normally I take about 5-6 bales at a time but a series of issues caused me to go later than I normally go.

One, Vicente uses our middle sized trailer every single day, pretty much all day. That means it is a pain to get him to stop so I can load, then take the recycling, then hurry back so he can make his next run.

Two, we have a big trailer which will hold more so I don’t need to rush over there, right? I mean I have a dually now so I should be able to load the big trailer and carry more weight with the same fuel basically saving time and money. Then I don’t have to mess up Vicente’s day.

Three, it rained for about a month I think, and I didn’t want to carry all that weight in the rain when the roads are slippery. Safety third ya know.

So last week when it finally stopped raining for five minutes, I loaded up the big trailer as best I could. I was hoping not to double stack the bales and luckily it worked out just perfect.

10 bales fit exactly perfect. Awesome. As is my custom, I stopped at the entrance to the farm and checked the trailer over one last time. I noted that it seemed to be listing to starboard a bit and the tires looked slack. Sigh. Oh well, I’ll stop by Rockside Tire which is just a mile up the road and get them to check the air in the tires. After waiting about 30 minutes, they assured me that the air was fine in the tires and the list I was seeing was because I had a bunch of weight on the trailer. Yeah, it was pretty heavy. I didn’t quite believe them but what else could I do? So I trundled off to 440 to make my trip. That’s when everything went South. But that’s the next post.

Grandma is always doing something with our kids. Most of the time I’m not quite sure what it even is but I know it’s Grandma and it’s good so that is enough for me.

Some years ago, she started planting weird bushes around my house and fussing at me for mowing them down. I didn’t really understand what the big deal was. It’s not like we could eat what she planted. Then bugs started showing up and she and the kids were grabbing them all off and putting them in a terrarium. Something or other about butterflies. Again, I wasn’t really sure what they were going on about. I only catch this stuff in little bits as I walk through the house.

Then I came out on the porch one day to find the kids holding butterflies on sticks like you see above. Lots of butterflies and lots of happy kids. Oh, so that is what you guys were doing all this time. That is so COOL! I don’t know how many butterflies they have raised and released over the years. Lots and lots of them. I still stop and watch each time because they are beautiful.

As I am slowly catching up on past posts, I thought some pictures of sunny days and sunny activities might be appropriate for this rain soaked Friday.

Here in the distillery I was tasting the product right off the still, plain and unfiltered. At 46 proof on the first run it was light, sweet, and relatively good. It tasted like a first run with plenty of congeners still lurking about.

Then he let us try a drop of the second run, pure uncut vodka. This was 196 proof! High enough octane to pour straight into your car and run it mixed with gas.

It was light, sweet, and crystal clean. I was impressed. Maybe I should go see if Dustin has that bottle sitting around and get a drop of the product cut back down to 80 proof and bottled. But before I can do that, I had to deal with my back at the end of this tour.

Even though the walking portion of the tour only lasted about 25 minutes, I was toast. It was all I could do to get back to my truck and I barely said bye to anyone trying to get out the door and able to sit down. I hurt all the way home and when I got home I went straight back to bed and stayed there the rest of the day. It’s really a shame because the rest of the tour looked really neat, and I really wanted to get to speak to everyone there, which was the whole point of going. Oh well, I met some of the main people and I did show my face. I can go back for another meeting later.

Today I have to go take two hogs to the processor which shouldn’t be too hard, and tomorrow I finally get to the doctor. Hopefully this whole thing has subsided by then and I can tell him that I just need a second opinion on what I’ve already done. I’m going to do my best to take it easy again today. Unfortunately this entire thing has pretty much cost me a week of productivity, the most frustrating of which is I couldn’t even sit at my desk and pound out some good posts for everyone. I have lots of material but laying flat on your back and trying to type just isn’t good for the creative juices to flow. Plus I found that when I’m in pain, my writing isn’t very good. I did try, but everything was terse and there was no humor at all which isn’t me.

So sorry for the long lapse in postings. Hopefully things will get by to what we call normal around here soon enough.

The tour of the distillery was pretty neat. Unlike most distilleries I’ve been to, this one wasn’t set up for tourism. It was a side room built onto a 70s era commercial building. Everything was located in one relatively small room and seemed a rather small operation for the volume of product they were producing. There were two fermentation tanks, both 1250 gallons.

As we toured the room, our tour guide explained the process of going from sweet potatoes to vodka. Having some experience with the process myself, I thought he did a great job. He also allowed everyone to taste a drop of the product at the various stages which was eye opening to me.

Covington Vodka comes from the name of the sweet potato that makes up 99% of the crop in the US, the Covington sweet potato. I’d actually had some Covington Vodka once before as Dustin had bought some when it first came out. He always has the newest toys. I’m not really a vodka drinker since I’d had some experience with vodka in my younger days and pretty much swore it off (ugh, screwdriver anyone?) but I tried a drink he’d made and really didn’t see where it tasted any different than any other vodka. Of course, it was in a mixed drink so really I was tasting the drink, not the vodka.

This was a chance to see and taste the real thing.

On Wednesday, I had a tour planned with the Johnston County Agri-Business Council. Normally with the way I felt I’d have just cancelled but I am the upcoming President of the Wake County Agri-Business Council and I needed to make some connections with our neighbors who have a much more active group than we do. I really had no idea what we were getting into as I’d only learned about the tour a few days before. I headed out early to go meet everyone and fortunately it was at Lazy O Farm in Smithfield.

I wasn’t really sure how I’d handle the tour because I couldn’t really stand for long but Lazy O has a really great facility and we were all comfortably seated  in their barn. After about 45 minutes of conversation, everyone loaded up on vans for the first part of the tour which was to Farmville, NC to Covington Vodka and Yamco.

Yamco is owned by the three largest producers of sweet potatoes in the US. Turns out about 50% of all the sweet potatoes produced in the US come from NC! After learning all about not only sweet potatoes, aseptic bags and shelf life, pumpkins, squash, and all kinds of other low acid products that Yamco handles for major food producers, it was time to move onto the tour portion of the time.

Everyone was given a hair net, which I should have put on my face since I don’t have any hair to speak of on my head but oh well. We then proceeded into the food production side of the facility. Yamco uses a patented and unique process with commercial microwaves (100,000 watt vs the one your kitchen which is 800 watts) and they are able to produce a superior product that goes into mainly baby food but also a whole host of other foods that are on pretty much every aisle of the grocery store. It is a pretty major facility with far reach into our food system. But were were here for the vodka tour.

 

That next morning I had an appointment with the collision place here in Garner to have them look at the bent hitch on my truck.

The whole insurance thing was wonky because the hitch was mine to have inspected, but the trailer was my friends to have his inspected so I felt kind of silly driving up for an inspection of a $20 hitch. It wasn’t till I arrived and was talking to the adjuster that it hit me (I’m kind of slow). My back started hurting the day after the wreck. I couldn’t for the life of me figure how such a small wreck had caused so much pain but it sure seemed to be the case as other than this wreck I’m in the best shape of my life and can pretty much do anything except stand for long periods of time. Now I could barely get out of bed.

We got the hitch straightened out (figuratively, not literally, they gave me a check.) I ran my errands around town and then went back home and got back in the bed. Again, something I never do. I was barely able to get out of bed to take Spork to football practice and then got right back in the bed because Tuesday I had to go to Sanford to pick up a new, to me, stock trailer. That was mostly driving so by the time I got back, I felt pretty much ok and I could stop being useless around the farm. I grabbed our power washer and proceeded to power wash the inside and outside of the trailer, plus the concrete right in front of it. I felt pretty good moving around and was glad I was back on my feet. Then about 2 minutes after putting the power washer down I was in bad pain again. Uh, I over did it. Back to bed because tomorrow is a long day.