A Dream of Fog and Donuts

Dispatches from a liminal landscape, an idiosyncratic year in review, and a personal announcement.

I write this centered in a chain of gray, sunless days, in the fallow week betwixt Christmas and New Year’s, the sodden and snowless prairie slopes shrouded beneath a coffin-lid of fog. Wet, heavy air has remained coiled over Northeast Missouri for some time (days or weeks, I cannot tell), like a great, foggy serpent in hibernation. There is no wind, and while sounds struggle to ring through the thick pall of vapor, the silence of unswayed and leafless tree limbs allows for the occasional buck-snort, squirrel chatter, and blue jay scold to penetrate the cold haze.

It rained a half-inch yesterday, and now, in the gray stillness, roosters constantly call from the dim visage of their barn, believing each hour to be dawn. Daily, I mulch the wet corners and greasy, sodden patches of the winter poultry yard, endlessly folding carbon into the miasma of mud, muck and manure. The cows, loafing around their shed, push waste-hay deep into the starving earth with their hooves. In the morning, I pull on muddy boots, greet the dog, pour last night’s hot water out of a thermos into a french press, and begin filling buckets with sprouted oats and cracked corn and soaked feed, as I do every day. The gangs of house sparrows arrive, out from under the eaves of toolsheds and barns and backyard shitters, gleaning the residue of livestock feed. I wonder how many generations of house sparrows this little farm operation has supported over the years. They are consistent in their residency, with springtime fledglings cycling in as old birds cycle out– gone to the hawks and cats and unlucky encounters with cow waterers and rain barrels, an eternally spinning storm of sparrows springing forth from the bird-shit earth to glean and perch, poop and die.

Jays caw distantly as they raid oak tree tops for the few remaining acorns. With so little snow cover, the seed which once littered the floors of these narrow draws is scarce, consumed. After the morning routine of feeding and bedding the livestock, I sit on my haunches in the mud in front of our smoker and struggle to ignite a two-hand load of small sticks. With the winter so warm thus far, I must apply an anti-bacterial layer of woodsmoke to the hams to fend off unwanted mold– a sort of continuation of care for our pigs, even in death. These hams can keep for several months outside, without refrigeration, the flesh and fat built from tree mast and prairie sod undergoing a second gestation, to be resurrected in leaner times to provide further nourishment, to close the circle between soil and stock, hog and herder. But it’s hard to start fires on these down pressure days.

Like the plump line-up of dark-eyed juncos that sit fluffed on the outstretched arms of hedge, I tend to gain a little weight in the winter. It’s a strategy for dealing with the cold, and a natural result of seasonal eating in a temperate climate. Winter food is necessarily rich in fat and carbs, being as though vegetable matter is scarce, and this natural habit of fattening on it, from a time before solid climate control and generalized inactivity is encouraged by traditional winter feasting. And while modern, affluent western world peoples may find themselves a bit-bulked up from the handful of indulgent feasts, meals and parties that are customary this time of year, this diminished adaptation pales in comparison with the solid month of rich eating that folks underwent in these types of climates prior to refrigeration. And so, crouching in the mud, I kindle a damp bundle of honey locust twigs to smoke our hams for the provisioning of our survival, as I do every year. If this winter doesn’t grow cold I may not need the fat, and my metabolism is certainly slowing by a degree. But for now, this is what I know to do, in these doldrum weeks of haze and mud, for as surely as there will be seasons of feasting and fat and the loosening of belts, the lean days of early spring, when we have little more than nettles and eggs, will be a bit more tolerable with the inclusion of some ham.

The cows and goats have returned from their pastures for the winter and stand in their barns near the din of foggy southern light, chewing cud and dropping fertility, their eyes seemingly lost and unfocused in the haze as they rest and fatten, hopefully with calves and kids. I am unable to tell if their distant gaze is penetrating the mist-covered slope and directed towards the stark island of silhouetted trees, the only punctuation mark piercing an obscured landscape, or if they’re just being zen, as usual. In winter they belch and ruminate, chew and urinate, sometimes stand, sometimes lie, their contented breathing and burping the only sound at night, at least when the coyotes are bedded down, blind in the mist.

If the cows and goats are merely contented, the ducks are exuberant, growing fat as they dabble in the mire for dropped pig-corn. We like to say on nasty, wet and mucky days, “It’s a good day to be a duck farmer”. Most years, whole ducks and duck charcuterie are my bread-and-butter. Having lost our entire breeding flock to fox attacks this year, I am having a hard time who, of this batch, will escape the cull and go on to become brood-ducks, and who will pay my lease fees. We have consistently hatched and raised multiple broods of Muscovy ducks for over a decade, and gradually dug into a niche market. We like them because they produce copious amounts of land-based fat without being as complicated to pasture as pigs, I can always sell our surplus, they don’t need costly electrical brooding lamps to raise because the hens are excellent mothers, and believe it or not, we make a fair bit of money on their jewelry quality feathers.

They can, however, be extremely arduous to process, the feathers being quite difficult to pluck. But my lack of enthusiasm for following up on butchering these ducks isn’t just related to labor or the process of making culling choices, but the fact that I’m exhausted by raising animals to sell. The killing takes a toll on me, as does the incongruous marketing and monetization of something tied so closely to my day-to-day existence. I still remain committed to living within the bounds of my relationship with these animals, including the exchange of care for what is ultimately predation, but it’s the mundanity of selling them I’m troubled by. I’m not really sure how else to put it at this time.

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Despite 12 years of chronic self-employment, the week does carry a few prominent punctuation points, helping to discern between the miasma of gray hours. Monday, or donut day, is one.

Zimmerman’s Cafe, is the keystone establishment of our nearest town of Rutledge, Missouri (Population 109 humans and a few sorry looking sheep), and it provides many fine donuts, among other necessities and indulgences. The best ones arrive on Mondays– that’s when Lena May runs the kitchen. If I can manage to get in at opening, they will have a heartening warmth and perfect ratio of give to crumble. They come in a few varieties: cream-filled, Bavarian creme, classic glazed, and if your tastes run a bit eccentric, fruit-filled.

If I’m fortunate to get a fresh one, I like the cream-filled, when the powdered sugar makes small puffs and plumes upon handling, and the indulgent, if highly-processed, whipped filling –some sacred union of white cane sugar and emulsified shortening– holds together the soft hemispheres of fried dough. These don’t keep long. If they are transported further than a few miles, or held in the suffocating strangle-hold of a plastic bag, the powdered sugar becomes sodden, the heavenly, sponge-like structure of the donut itself goes stiff, and the donut-interred cream changes state from an angelic ambrosia to a kind of cloying mayonnaise. I confess that in my otherwise spartan life, I have partaken in this extravagant communion often, perhaps weekly. More pedestrian, practical even, are the standard glazed ones– a treacly ouroboros, sparkling with crystalline skin, the ghosts of a thousand donuts embedded in the traces of fryer-grease that permeate its soft flesh. But there’s no time for donuts today.

The morning coffee and donut scene at Zimmerman’s provides a fairly accurate cross-section of our general populace. In the cafe, the central tables are often crowded with old-timers and row-croppers– less so in winter when the corn and soy boys get an opportunity to snow-bird. Farmers who raise livestock come in and out to get their to-go bag in brisk fashion, leaving little more than a trace of mud, their trucks idling out in the crumbling parking lot. The Mennonite men do not idle or chit-chat in the dining area, but they do sometimes arrange the day’s business near the counter, or read the newly-posted auction fliers for a few moments, while standing with donuts and soft-serve ice cream, even on the coldest days. In the kitchen, behind the counter, or pushing carts full of dry goods and children in the adjoining grocery shop, the Mennonite women, as well, do not idle– that’s for the old-timers and “English” folk sitting in the booths, discussing weather, high-school basketball, who got their corn in, or some damn thing. Like clockwork, like a recurring dream, like ceaseless and unending circles of sugar and dough, over decades, this same exchange of conversation and information, calories and currency has been performed, but always peaking on Monday, when Lena May makes the donuts.

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I have been writing this almanac for two years now. Just like my donut, I try to make it happen every week, and it usually does. It’s usually acceptable, sometimes underdone, and on occassion, really good. I’m gradually learning what folks like to read and what they don’t, but I’d be hard pressed to say I tailor my work towards popularity. I’m happy for the handful of y’all who read the almanac regularly– you could not all fit into any building in Rutledge, and your consistent support of this project helps keep me engaged, observing and writing. Thank you.

After the first year of writing, I felt some amount of consternation. As a writer focusing, in large part, on the seasonality of things located in one small microcosm –an ecologically-focused farm in Northeast Missouri– my fear was that I’d find myself repeating my work, uninspired, out of subjects to write about. Week after week, and donut after donut, I still hold this fear. Within the framework of muddy springs, scorching summers, crisp autumns, frigid winters and all gradients in between, I could be running rings around the same subjects over and over again, plodding through the monotonous fog of familiar fields. Or, perhaps the ring could become a spiral, arching out into new landscapes, new ideas, and yes, new routines. I’ve had something in mind… something I’ve been afraid to make the jump towards. But in a fog like this, it’s expected to make a few missteps into the unknown.

Outside my window, in the ever-dimming afternoon, beyond the collections of sparrow droppings mingling in the mud, is a small garden bed of sorts, filled with loose earth and sand and smothered in wood chips. It is impregnated with a few hundred tree seeds –oak and paw paw, persimmon and hazel and walnut– the next rotation in the spiral. When the ham has been taken down and I move back to my springtime belt-hole, they will germinate, and become my next crop– one which will, I hope, expand beyond this fog-shrouded slope and grow in other places, past my own short lifespan. Where these seeds come from, and where they go to, and the interaction between the past and present upon this branching watershed– this is the book I am writing.

I am writing a book. I would like to have it published (and therefore edited and agented), but first I must write it. It will require some changes in my routine, some few steps deeper into the fog. I will be traveling some for research, preferably by bicycle, to expand and slow the geographic and temporal framework of this project. I hope, somehow, to travel across time, soil, and ecology, towards a fully nourished future, in this time of great climate uncertainty. In order to take this on, the cycle of my survival will necessarily uncoil, spiraling outwards and inwards. I can’t afford to write if I cannot continue to improve as person, at least in relation to those nearest me. I may take a break, or at least a step-back, from what has become an unsustainable amount of responsibility on the farm. I will have to get better at listening to people, and not just birds. I will have to dive into new and uncomfortable situations, perhaps even get over some phobias around making requests of others, and self-promotion. I intend to share snippets of the book with supporting readers, as they become available, and I’ll be looking forward to your honest feedback.

This is a project I’ve been outlining in my brain for the better part of a year, but I haven’t come up with an easy to comprehend pitch for it yet. I hope to bring y’all along for the process from time to time, but fully intend to continue on with this almanac as best as I know how, week by week, donut by donut. I am thankful for this obligation to my readers, and will fulfill it, with the awareness that I may need to restructure things a bit.

The thick blanket of gray haze lies tightly coiled over this worn down slope, obscurring the faint, bare-limbed outcroppings of trees and faded tussocks of grass. The cartloads of carbon I haul to each pen and shed and yard are heavy. My arms burn and my legs shake as I press along the mire, and I move forward, boot by boot, determined to nurture some sweet dirt for spring seeds. Up the hill and and down again, I haul creaking creaking cartloads, until the straw and woodchips and waste hay are all subsumed into the sleeping world of worms and roots. The dogs lay on straw piles, nose to tail, raising their heads on occasion to sniff out the faintest presence of ghostly white tail deer that snort and browse in the draws. The world of fog is unknowable, my footpaths terminating in a density of vapor and flickering shadow. At home, we have no electricity, the powerful sun suffocated, the magical box of lithium which energizes our life gone lifeless in the unceasing and torporous clouds. I receive the majority of my information these days from a hand crank radio, the tail flicks of deer, and the scolding gangs of blue jays.

I came to this place in order to grow food, restore habitat, and embarrassing as it is to admit, maybe help save the planet. Like writing, it’s work that doesn’t pay well, but contains moments of joy. On the smaller end of the scale, I’ve learned how to do these things, by degrees, but the path forward, to making a real, discernible impact, is shrouded in a stubborn fog. Each day, like a dog preparing for rest, I circle this small territory before laying down, awakening for the next circular movement to bring me back to feed buckets and mire, and if I’m lucky, donuts. Greeting the dogs, pulling on my muddy boots, and cinching this tightening belt, I feel some worry that I’m engaged in work that is familiar to the point of total monotony, and unending in its nature. I would rather this ring of labor become a spiral of impact than just a broken circle.

Walking the loop around our chestnut orchard yesterday, I found a broken birthday balloon lying awkwardly among the trees, its pink plastic tether coiled and tangled in the prairie thatch. Of course, I viewed this circumstantial occurrence with a bit of disgust, but also, some small amount of wonder– of all the places this tiny confederation of microplastics could land, it ended up in our orchard. I have seen many balloons lost to the sky in my four decades of life, but never found one returned to earth. Writing this almanac sometimes feels like losing my birthday balloon, and feeling surprised at where it is ultimately found. Your readership is a strange gift to me, and often totally circumstantial in ways that I cannot comprehend. Thank you, and sorry for the trash.

Between the odd, liminal string of days that lies perched between Christmas and New Year’s and the hours of fog and haze that bleed together like a great gray puddle, plus the slightly notable reflection on two years of writing, I’m feeling a bit lost. The fog may not burn off tomorrow, but when it does, I’m likely to score a donut, and maybe see some colors besides gray, ocher, and incongruously pink microplastics. Farming and writing both are activities that sometimes force us into an abyss of the unknown, the uncertain, the opaque, and I don’t believe I’ll stop engaging in them anytime soon. Boot-step by boot-step, and bite by bite, I look forward to wending a different path in these endeavors, and I hope to continue bringing y’all along on the hunt. I hope there’s donuts.

I could follow the conventions of this platform and outline my most notable pieces of work from the past year… but I’m not going to. The “freely available” archives have been expanded to include the past 13 months, so feel free to browse through and check out what you may have missed… see you in another new and challenging year.