I want you to look at that delicious bowl of pasta pictured here.

This is what I tossed together for dinner tonight, because it was quick, easy and nutritious, and all of the ingredients except the pasta, olive oil, salt, Parmesan cheese and Aleppo pepper were local.

Very local, in fact–everything else was grown right here in Athens county.

The onions, squash and garlic came from Rich Tomsu’s organic farm. Shade River farm supplied the organic sweet pepper, tomato and fennel. Green Edge Gardens, another organic farm, grew the fresh shiitakes, and the absolutely delicious chicken breast (one, shared between four people and a baby) came from Bridlewood Acres. Oh, and the chevre was made by Chris Schmiel of Integration Acres, and the spot of cream that went into the sauce came from Snowville Creamery, which is one county over from us in Meigs county.

And the wedding bouquet-sized bundle of basil that got turned into pesto came from up on my deck. I have so much of growing so lushly up there I swear you’d never know I cut any.

So, what is my point, other than bragging about how grand it is to live in Athens, Ohio in the summer where you can get amazingly fresh, delicious, organic food?

Well, it is this. With all the local goodies I listed above, we ate organic pasta.

From somewhere else. (And I have no idea where–it is a product of the USA, but there is no telling where the wheat was grown. Probably in several different states.)

And ounce for ounce, we ate just as much pasta as we did everything else.

So truly, while we can eat like kings on the local bounty here in Athens, there are still significant gaps in our food supply–it is difficult to impossible to find locally grown staples such as grains and grain products and dried beans. This is not only a problem here in Athens–it is endemic to the way in which the United States food supply works. Staples tend to be grown in large farms which practice monoculture, with each staple being grown wherever the climate is best for it, and then it is shipped all over the country, and the world, for that matter, after they are harvested and processed.

But a pair of farmers here in Athens wants to study the feasibility of growing staple grains and legumes here in Athens county, and the USDA has given them a grant to do just that.

Brandon Jaeger and Michelle Ajamian are using a grant from the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) project of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), to test the feasibility of growing staple crops such as grains and beans in southeast Ohio.

According to the Athens News’ front page feature story, the first crops to be tested during the next two growing seasons include buckwheat, millet, amaranth and quinoa, plus azuki beans, a highly nutritious Asian type of legume, and flour corn. Both the beans and corn are growing this year, and the pair plan to sell the corn to The Village Bakery where it will be ground and made into fresh tortillas.

I applaud Jaeger and Ajamian’s work, and I hope that they have good results and high yields in their test plots. I’d love to be able to buy locally grown grains and beans myself, and I am hoping that what they discover with these varieties will be applicable to the growing of more familiar staple crops such as wheat, oats and any number of native dried bean varieties.

In fact, the only flaw I can see in their plan, is that while I love quinoa and azuki beans myself, I hardly think it is likely that a bunch of Athenians switching from eating pasta made from wheat and refried beans made from pintos or black beans to the more esoteric varieties these farmers are testing. Sure, the adventurous vegetarians, vegans and hippies among us will dive in with gusto, but the more conventional sorts will likely pass these offerings by, no matter how nutritious they are.

For one thing, not many people know how to cook quinoa, amaranth, or millet.

Cornmeal, we know from, but millet–to most Appalachians, that stuff is birdseed.

And, local these grains and beans might be, but I know that I won’t give up my rice or my red beans for anyone, because, well–I like them too darned much. (And the likelihood of anyone successfully growing rice in Athens county is pretty low, so I figure that one of my non-local foods is just going to have to be rice.)

But the point is, as much as I love trying new things and being an adventurous cook, I doubt I would ever, unless forced into it, switch from eating wheat, rice and corn-based foods to the lesser known grains listed above.

I might integrate these ingredients into my pantry, but they would be additions, not substitutions, for the staple items already in place.

My solution is this–in addition to trying out the new and different staple foods, why not continue the experiment with more familiar grains and beans?

I know for a fact that wheat grows pretty well in Ohio, and I figure that since our second largest cash crop in this state is soybeans, why not try to grow some pinto beans, black turtle beans or red beans. Horticultural beans grow beautifully here, and they dry perfectly, as do Christmas limas–I still have some in my pantry grown by a local farmer last year, so why not give other, more familiar legumes a shot, too?

That said, I wish these intrepid farmers luck and a grand harvest. I hope that they do find a combination of staple grains and beans we can grow easily here in southeastern Ohio, ones that are not only nutritious and delicious, but also familiar enough to the average eater and cook to give them a try.

Oh, and look for a recipe for the pasta dish above tomorrow!

When I was a little girl growing up on my grandparent’s farm, my least favorite vegetable was beets.

I loathed and despised them–I thought that they tasted like dirt.

Paradoxically, I used to love helping Grandma can and freeze the bounty of our gardens (every year we grew two one-acre plots–enough to feed the entire family) my favorite project was canning beets, even if I hated the way they tasted.

Why was this?

Because for whatever reason, I was intoxicated by the smell of cooked beets, and I found their brilliant rubine color to be be mesmerizing. The fact that packing slippery slices of these brilliantly colored roots tinted my hands pink was a fun bonus. I especially liked helping to make sweet and sour pickled beets–the fragrance of the hot carmine-colored vinegar-sugar pickling liquid was delicious, even if I didn’t like the way it tasted.

And when we were done, the jars, when they were lined up on tea towels on the kitchen counter, looked like jewels or stained glass when the late afternoon sun poured through the window, bathing the cooling beets in golden light.

It wasn’t until I was pregnant with Morganna that I finally decided I liked beets, and it was because of a craving for iron.

I was unable to take the iron supplements ordered by my doctor, because they made me very ill, so in order to avoid anemia–a problem that I have faced my entire life–I was told to eat more iron-rich foods. Spinach was simple, because I love it, and red meat was no problem as I was craving it. Liver should have been a problem for me to eat, as well as beets, for I hated them, but the truth was, my body needed iron so badly, I started craving them. I would smell chicken livers cooking, or liverwurst, and would start salivating. And when I smelled my then mother-in-law cooking sweet and sour beets, I nearly went mad with hunger and started eating them out of the pot before they were quite finished cooking!

They tasted divine–earthy and sweet, and the “dirt” flavor that so repelled me as a child was infinitely attractive when I was pregnant. And their sauce was buttery, sweet and sour at the same time. So delicious! I took to eating beets nearly every day, I loved them so much.

Too bad I had never heard of borscht at that time, or I would have been eating it all the time–beef, beef bones, sauerkraut and beets–I would have been in heaven!

Surprisingly, my love of beets stayed long after Morganna was born and I was finished nursing her. Over the years, I discovered various ways to make beets, ways that made them palatable to even the most vociferous of the anti-beet brigade. I particularly liked introducing baby roasted beets to beet haters presented in a salad with pears and chevre, dressed in a honey-balsamic vinaigrette.

Last night, I had a craving for beets, which was convenient, because I had a little bundle of baby beets in the fridge from Shade River Organic Farm I bought at the Farmer’s Market the week before.

But I didn’t have time to roast them, so I decided to peel them, cut them into quarters and boil them until they were just tender enough to pierce with a fork, but not so tender that they were mushy. Mushy beets, unless we are talking about pureed beets in borscht, just don’t do it for me.

I cooked them in as little salted water as possible, and after they were done, I added about a tablespoon of local wildflower honey, and a half tablespoon or so of balsamic vinegar.

A pinch of salt, and then about a quarter teaspoon of my house made toasted and ground garam masala and a teaspoon of butter finished the glaze for the beets, which I garnished with lacy fresh cilantro leaves.

So simple, and so very like the sweet and sour beets my Grandma made, and yet still, different. The balsamic vinegar added a floral note as did the honey, and the garam masala drew out the earthiness of the beets and embraced them with the warmth of sunny spices.

“Garam masala” means “hot spice mixture” and refers to the warming spices used in Indian foods. It doesn’t necessarily refer to chilies, however, and not every garam masala blend includes chilies. Each family or cook has their own blend of spices that they use, usually toasted and ground in small amounts in order to ensure that the spices are as strongly scented and flavored as possible.

My garam masala blend is made of one teaspoon black peppercorns, 3 cloves, 1/4″ stick of cinnamon, c1 tablespoon oriander and 1 teaspoon cumin seeds, and 2 green cardamom pods, all toasted in a skillet then cooled and ground to a powder. I keep it in an airtight jar on my counter, and use it at the end of cooking whenever I have a dish that needs a little extra something to make it sparkle. You can use your own recipe for garam masala or use whatever commercial blend you like. Penzey’s Garam Masala is pretty darned good if you don’t want to make your own.

These beets make a great side dish for any summer meal–whether you are making American, French or Indian food–they are delicious. They are just as good hot off the stove, at room temperature or lightly chilled, though if you are going to chill them, I suggest using olive oil instead of the butter.

This recipe is only enough to serve one or two people, but you can scale it up however you like in order to make more. Just be aware that the garam masala should be added to taste in larger quantities–spices never ever scale up perfectly by simple multiplication the way other ingredients do.

Baby Beets With Balsamic Honey Glaze and Garam Masala
Ingredients:

Sprinkle with the cilantro leaves and serve either immediately or after allowing the beets to come to room temperature.

There is a reason I haven’t written anything since Monday.

Even though I had planned several posts, I found that I couldn’t write them.

On Monday, my Mom told me that my Uncle John will be selling my grandparents farm, or rather, what is left of it, and moving away.

As she told me over the phone, at first, I was fine. It was the sensible thing for him to do, after all, and well, it must feel odd to live in the same place for most of the years of his life. Most of his childhood and large chunks of his adulthood were spent in that house, and it is a lot of land for him to care for. It isn’t even a working farm anymore, and I thought to myself that maybe he could sell it to someone who would graze a few cows or horses on the pastures that he now has to mow. Maybe someday soon there will be chickens once more scratching in the barnyard and ducks swimming on the pond, dipping their heads and diving for choice morsels.

Those thoughts cheered me for a brief moment.

Then, I realized how much of the tangible touchstones of my childhood I would be losing.

And I started to cry.

I ended up burning the onions I was cooking, I was so sad and distracted.

There are so many memories tied to that place, that piece of ground, that I cannot help but feel as if a door will forever close to have it sold away from the family.

I feel so silly.

But I spent so much time there, so many long summers, so many weekends, that I feel as if it is my true home.

The home of my spirit.

There is a tree that I helped plant, over thirty-five years ago. It was a seedling that sprouted from a berry dropped from the holly tree in my Gram’s little garden near her front door, in Charleston. When the plant grew to be about eight inches tall, she dug it up and gave it to Mom and I to take to Grandma out in the country, for her to plant by her front door. I remember planting that tiny tree, in the spring, and I remember Grandma tending it faithfully for the years it was small.

But it grew rapidly into the most perfectly shaped, conical tree with shining blue-green leaves, and a plethora of deep ruby-red berries. In the winter, with the snow on it and cardinals hopping from branch to branch dining on the waxy, fat-filled berries, it looked like a Christmas card, so perfectly did it express the beauty of the winter season. It was one of Grandma’s favorite trees, and when it produced seedlings, she gave them to neighbors and friends up and down that road, so that grandchildren of Gram’s original tree now grow all over Putnam county, though their line progenitor was ripped from the earth to make a parking lot long ago.

The tree is now probably thirty feet tall–it is much taller than the house, and it is bigger around than I can estimate. It is the grandest holly tree I have ever seen and I cannot help but think that it holds part of the spirits of both of my Grandmothers within it.

To think of losing that tree, to think of it passing into the hands of someone who will not know who planted it, why or when–it still makes me cry. I guess, because I believe that in some small way, Gram, Grandma and I are all alive in that tree.

The woods, the fields, the old garden patches, the forsythia bush, the barn, and the house–all of them echo with voices from the past. Every step I tread there, brings with it a memory.

In the yard, I hear the whisper of children’s voices as the cousins and I play with the neighbor kids rough games that involved a lot of running, chasing and catching. In the barn, I catch the faintest murmur of a long-dead cat pattering across the hayloft, calling to us in deceptively plaintive mews before her head would pop down through the trap door. In the barnyard, there is the call of cattle, and the song of chickens. I used to sing to those cows and chickens, and even the pigs, and on the lonesome wind that is seldom still on that high, lush-pastured ridge, I can hear the ghost of the girl I was, skinny, all elbows and knees, her voice trickling like a stream over rocks.

Part of my soul still lives there, wandering the winding paths in the woods, climbing the steep banks of the creek, laying for hours on the great stones in the bottom lands, watching the endless flow of silvery water shimmer by.

Those were the happiest days of my youth, the days that I stayed there with my Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle John.

Losing that farm to someone who isn’t part of our family is like losing a family member forever.

And then, later, I found out that my mother’s older brother, Uncle George, died in his house, which was built on a chunk of the farm, probably twenty-five years ago. I helped build that house, as did all of us in the family. (We helped build Uncle John’s house, too, when he got married. After Grandpa died, he bought the farm from the estate, and then my Mom and Dad bought his little house, and thus owned their first home.)

I wasn’t really close to Uncle George, not like I am with Uncle John, who is only nine years older than me and in many ways, is like the older brother I never had. But, when we were kids, Uncle George was so much fun, always laughing, always joking. Silly, in a lot of ways, he could always give a smile. After he moved out to his house on a corner of the farm, he used to come over to visit Grandma every day right after work, before going home. And she used to call him, “My Sunshine,” and it was always so sweet to see them together.

I thought about that, and I realized that they are together again.

And maybe, he is happier for it.

I think that when Grandma died all those years ago, it broke all of our hearts a little. She was the soul of our family in so many ways, the light at the center of it, and I think that when she left us, a spark in all of us died with her, and we stopped coming together as much. She was the one who brought us together, and bade us love each other, just as she loved each of us–unconditionally.

All of us never ever came back together like that again after she died. Not until Grandpa’s funeral many years later.

And then, again, last night, at Uncle George’s memorial.

It was odd, looking at my cousin Debbie’s face and seeing her father there, looking back at me. Or, seeing Uncle Jim, and being shocked at Grandpa’s likeness drawn clearly in his face, and his diminished physique. And Mom, a shorter, less quiet version of Grandma, flitting from person to person, holding a hand or clutching an arm, as if to capture a memory or a moment embodied within them before it flits away like a moth fluttering towards the moon.

It was as if they had never left. Perhaps, they never did, only most of us were too blind to realize it.

We came together last night, for a moment to remember other moments, but we all parted again.

We are scattering to the four winds, now, our bodies and spirits like seeds looking for places to rest. We cannot go home again.

Home is not the place it was, and it never, ever will be again.

So, I do hope that whoever buys the farm and Uncle George’s house, has ears sensitive enough to hear the happy laughter of ghost children, the gentle lowing of cows long gone and the voice of my Grandma singing “You Are My Sunshine” to the son whose smile brought joy to her heart in her last years.

I hope that they love holly trees, and that they don’t mind sharing their houses and land with the memories of the past that float and dance on the restless wind like dried corn husks and brown, curled leaves. I hope that they tread lightly, and bring their own love to the land, and make it bloom again, and build their own memories there.

I know that our memories will be glad for the company.

A long time ago, there were two people who grew up to be my father and my mother. They were as different as two people could be, and in fact, some
would say that they aren’t really real people at all, just characters in an unwritten novel.

But, I reckon that they are real enough, because they came together and made me and last I checked, characters in unwritten novels don’t make a great
habit out of procreating amongst themselves.

My father grew up in the city, to a shabbily genteel family of reasonably educated introverts. His father’s family, before the Depression, had been
very well off, so there was still an aura of decayed refinement tot hem….especially to his aunts and uncles.

His father, however, was an alcoholic, and his mother, my Gram, was born very poor, and from a family well known to be opinionated extroverts, so Dad
had an interesting childhood.

It was a city childhood, with baseball in the backlots, paper routes, milk delivery and weekly outings to the movies. His mother was quite
liberated, meaning she could smoke, drink and cuss a blue streak as well as his dad, all the while taking care of five children, getting food on the
table with no budget, make clothes for herself and said children with no budget or patterns, either, -and- work as a waitress if need be. During
prohibition, Gram told me worked as a waitress in a speakeasy…..but that is another story.

So, my Dad took after his father’s family in a lot of ways: he was highly intelligent, well-read and quite intellectual, but in his way, shy. He hated
school, though, so he took to skipping and hanging out in poolhalls where he learned to play pool well enough to hustle by the time he was fifteen. I think this is part of what made him such a good gunner in the Navy, since he was found to have an uncanny instinctive
understanding of the aiming and firing of the big twelve-inch guns on his ship, so much so, that they sent him to training usually only given to
officers in the operation of said weapons.

And, then, there was my Mom, and she was very different from my father. A plain-spoken country girl to the core, she was born in Buffalo, New York,
but her folks moved to West Virginia when she was four. The year she turned four was also when she learned how to drive the family tractor. Her father
worked in a munitions plant in Nitro, West Virginia, while she and her mother and brothers ran the vegetable farm….they sold vegetables by the
truckload, had milk and beef cows, pigs, geese, ducks and chickens.

Mom grew up knowing how to milk a cow, pasteurize milk, castrate hogs, kill and butcher anything, how to grow any plant, and harvest it, and how to
drive anything that had wheels and moved, preferably fast. She also grew up knowing how to devil her mother to distraction, wrestle her older brothers
and knock them into the pigpen, and how best to sneak herself and them into and out of the house for late night drinking forays.

She played basketball in school, and when she had a legal driver’s license, she tricked out her car with the help of an older brother with a genius for
auto mechanics, and then went and raced at a local racetrack. At first, she raced in the women’s races, which were called “Powderpuff Derbies”, and
then, later against the male drivers. She won, too.

All of this went on behind the back of her father, who disapproved of that sort thing for women, and her mother, who was such a good Christian woman
that no one ever said anything bad about her.

So here was Dad, the intellectual introvert, straight out of the Navy, and my Mom, the extroverted closet race-car driver. They met at a honky-tonk by
the name of “The Garden of Eden,” and apparently, it was love, or lust, at first sight.

Mom had her own apartment, and Dad took to basically living there, and his mother noticed an even worse tendency to take up way too much time in the
bathroom grooming. She figured he had a girl somewhere.

A few months after they met, they decided to get married, a decision probably based on the fact that I was thinking about being born. They, being
of adult age and independent means, decided that they had no need to tell their parents.

So, one weekend, they drove off to Virginia Beach, eloped, drove back the next
day, and Dad said, “Surprise, I’m married,” to his parents as he moved officially out of their house to Mom’s apartment.

Mom told her Mom, my Grandma, over the phone, and then brought Dad to her parent’s farm to meet them the next weekend.

Now, as I said, my Dad was sometimes very shy and awkward, and a very reserved person. There was not much hugging and kissing in his family. I
guess they were too stiff and Germanic and formal for all of that stuff, so he was already somewhat uncomfortable when my Grandma greeted him with a big smile and a hearty hug and kiss, and a comment to my Mom about how handsome
he was with his blue eyes, fair skin and ash brown hair. All of her children were dark skinned with brown or black hair and dark eyes, their high cheekbones and sturdy builds pointing to her own Cherokee lineage.

He was more uncomfortable when he shook hands with my Grandpa, a very short, wiry old man whose parents were Welsh and Anglo-Irish immigrants. Grandpa turned his fiery blue eyes up up at Dad, narrowed them and grunted through frowning lips, “We’re about to move the cows. I guess you can come help.”

Mom was enthusiastic, and took off after her three brothers, bouncing and laughing down over the steep hill to the pasture where the herd was milling about in typical bovine fashion.

Meanwhile, Grandpa, obviously having already measured Dad up as a stupid city feller, set him a simple task. He was to wait beside the open gate of
the second pasture, and when the cows came up, he was to usher them into the gate, and close and lock it behind them.

“George,” my Grandpa says, “Now, when these here cows come up,” he said, “There’s gonna be one cow in front. She’s whatchacall the lead cow, and
she’s the boss, you see, do you understand what I am saying, George?”

Dad nodded and Grandpa continued, after spitting a stream of tobacco juice to the ground, knocking a grasshopper from a stalk of grass. “Now this here
lead cow, whatever she does, them other cows, they do it, too. So, you just gotta make sure she goes in that gate, and all them other cows will follow
her slicker’n a whistle, ’cause they are pretty stupid, dontcha see?” Dad nodded.

“Think you can do that for me, George?”

Dad nodded again. Grandpa turned and headed down this steep hill, where the cows and his kids waited.

Grandma sat on the fence, and watched it all, grinning. Dad had no idea why she was grinning. He thought maybe she was just friendly, and so he smiled
at her, and she called out, “You watch out for that cow, there George….she’s a character.”

Dad nodded and smiled charmingly, thinking that no cow could scare him: they were no problem. Didn’t his grandfather make his fortune with a
slaughterhouse, butcher shop and meat packing company? Why he was heir to a line of German butchers, right, and wouldn’t that cow smell that on him?
Sure, no problem.

So, Dad turned and waited. From down below, he heard Grandpa and Mom and her brothers shouting, the lowing of the cows, and finally the thunder of their hooves as they trotted ponderously up the hill.

Well, they crested the hill and he saw that the herd was around twenty head of prime White-Faced Hereford beef cattle.

For those who don’t know from beef cattle, Herefords were the favored beef cattle breed for years in the US, particularly in the southeast. They are
characterized by reddish brown bodies, with white socks, and white splashes on their faces. They are generally of two body types: either tall and rangy
with long legs, or stocky and square with short legs. My grandpa had some of both, but he favored the leggy ones, because he thought that they were hardier.

So, they crested the hill, with, strangely enough, the lead cow in the lead.

She was of the leggy sort, and she was tall. And she was big. And she had horns.

And she had a mean, canny look in her eyes. She stopped at the top of the hill, and leveled that look at Dad, while lowering her head and snorting derisively.

She didn’t look like a character to him; she looked downright evil.

Lead cows don’t get to be lead cows by giving tea parties and telling all the other cows how pretty they are. They get where they are by being the
biggest, smartest, wickedest critters of the herd. (And that is assuming that the herd did not have a bull in residence. Dad was lucky that this herd was currently sans bull. If not, it would have bode ill for him.)

And this lead cow was giving Dad the once over, and had judged him to be nothing she had to worry about, or listen to, for that matter. She pricked her ears forward, just to hear what he might say, while pointing her horns in his general direction.

Dad saw this large creature snorting at him in a semi-threatening fashion,and proceeded to gesticulate towards the gate, in an attempt to usher her
inside. “Come on, girl,” he said politely, “Let’s go in the gate, come on.”

She pawed the earth, lowered her head, snorted, and turned cold eyes upon my father. He wisely ceased his gesticulation and fell silent. With that, she
jerked her head up, and turning faster than anything that big and ungainly had a right to, twitched her tail, and cantered down the hill. The entire
herd of cows, steers, heifers and calves turned and followed her, their thunderous hoofbeats churning up an enormous cloud of red clay dust.

Dad swallowed and glanced over at Grandma who was holding her hands over her mouth to try and cover the fact that she was laughing. Nothing could cover her pink tinged cheeks, shaking shoulders and suspiciously bright eyes, however.

At that precise moment, my Grandpa stepped through the cloud of dust, mad as hell. He stalked up to my Dad with Mom and her brothers trailing him,
laughing openly.

Grandpa stopped in front of Dad and put his hands on his hips, glaring up at his obviously worthless son-in-law. “Dammit George, now what happened? I told you what she was likely to do, and you let her get away with it? Now, you can’t let her buffalo you like that, you need to let her know who’s boss here! You’re a city boy, but you’re still smarter than a cow. You gotta be firm with’em.”

He punched his left palm with his right hand for emphasis.

He looked like he’d rather have punched Dad.

Dad swallowed, head bowed, and nodded. “I’m sorry, don’t know what happened, sir, yessir, I’ll let her know who’s boss, yessir, I’m sorry….”

“Dammit, I gotta go back over that hill and get them cows up here again, and this time, I want you to pick you up a stick and hit her a good one and holler at her, and she’ll go in that gate real docile-like if you do that.”

Fierce gas-jet eyes narrowed and stared up at my father’s grey blue ones. “Think you can do that for me, George?”

Dad nodded, and Grandpa stalked off, impatiently sweeping his arms at his children for them to follow.

The fell in behind him, glancing back at Dad and snickering.

Dad glanced over at Grandma, who by this time had recovered her composure. She nodded at the treeline near the fence. “There’s some sticks there you
can try.”

So, he went and got a stick, about the thickness of his thumb, which considering my Dad is not a small man, is pretty good sized.

Moments later, he heard the shouts, the cows lowing, and thier hooves thundering. Then, there she was, rising up to the top of the hill.

The Cow.

His nemesis.

She looked at the gate and saw -him- again. She shook her head, and pawed the ground, snorting. Her tail twitched impatiently as she stared at this
stupid human who thought he could tell her what to do.

Dad advanced on her, stick in hand, and he half-yelled at her, obviously feeling somewhat silly and ill at ease to be addressing a cow with a
murderous look in her eyes.

Keeping well out of reach of the horns, he sternly declared, “Into that gate, cow, or I’ll hit you.” She huffed and began to turn.

He yelled, “Dammit, I said,” and struck her in the ribs, promptly breaking the stick which turned out to be rotted on the inside.

Apparently, it felt no worse than a fly bite, for all that show of strength did was hasten her progress back down the hill. All of the other bovines
turned tail and followed at an udder-swinging trot.

This left Dad with a nub of a stick and an empty pasture with which to confront Grandpa, who cursed with each step as he trudged up the hill.
Turning to my Grandma for comfort, he saw her clinging weakly to the fence, head thrown back, tears cascading down her face as she laughed.

No help there.

Dad flushed as Grandpa stomped up to him and spat on the ground. “Dammit, George, now that wasn’t no good, she done got away from you again!”

Catching sight of the stick, he grabbed it from my Dad’s hand and broke it between his fingers, exclaiming, “Why, Goddammit, that ain’t no kind of
stick! What the hell is that, no wonder that ole bitch done turned her back on you! When I said stick, I meant a stick, a real hefty one.”

He cast about for something that would fit the bill and came up with a fallen branch that was about the size and weight of a baseball bat. It
wasn’t so much of a stick as a cudgel. He whacked the fencepost with it, and satisfied with its solidity, half threw it at my father.

The veins on his temple were beginning to show as he hollered, “Now take this damned stick George, and when that ole bitch of a cow comes up to you,
I want you to hit her, and hit her hard and show her you mean business and make sure she gets her ass in that gate, cause I don’t want to be chasing
those damned cows back up this hill! I’m too goddamned old for this shit!”

Dad swallowed and took the stick, his hands closing around it tightly.

Clutching it, he nodded, murmuring, “Yessir, I will, I’ll hit her with the stick, nosir, you don’t have to go down over the hill again, nope, I’ll get
them in the gate, yessir, I will.”

Fuming, Grandpa clomped off, not even bothering to motion for his children to follow. They padded after him, with only a few snickers punctuating thier
silence.

Dad hefted the stick, and brandished it like a baseball bat. Baseball he knew from, and the stick almost had the comforting feel of a Louisville
Slugger in his grip. He settled himself to wait, eyes forward, face resolute.

From down below came the shouts, the mooing, the hooves, and finally, the sight of her horns cresting the hill. (Dad swears he heard the theme to “The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly,” playing in his head at that moment. Who am I to argue with him?)

Without waiting for her usual commentary of snorting and pawing, Dad walked up and yelled savagely at The Cow, “Get in there!”

The cow narrowed her eyes and Dad aimed a blow to her shoulder. He pulled the stick back like he was Babe Ruth, and threw his considerable strength
into the swing.

He was concentrating on the swing so much, he didn’t see the cow turn her head as she prepared to return from whence she came.

Roaring, “NOOOOOOO!” at the top of his lungs, Dad hit the cow right between the eyes, full force, with the stick. He hit her so hard, that his bones
were jarred by the impact, and the stick cracked and broke on her head.

She had turned right into the blow.

While my Dad looked on in horror, her eyes rolled and showed the whites, and with the barest of grunts, she fell to her knees. Dad stood dumbly over her, adrenaline pumping, his heart racing, a broken stick drooping in his hand.

The cow sagged from her knees to the ground, and was still.

The other cows, wide eyed, took in this situation, and made a hasty decision. They, as one, dashed into the gate, past my father and thier
fallen leader.

Dad closed the gate, and glanced up at my Grandma, his face white as a sheet.

Grandma was laughing so hard, she had fallen from the fence, and was sitting in heap on the grass, hiccuping and pointing, tears completely obscuring her glasses. She told me years later that she nearly wet her pants, she laughed so hard.

Appalled, Dad walked back over to the cow and looked down at her unmoving bulk, and nudged her with his foot, the murder weapon still broken in his hand.

She did not move.

Grandpa huffed up, and stopped in front of his favorite cow. Frowning, he put his hands on his hips, and stared up at Dad, shaking his head. He
slapped the stick out of his son-in-law’s hand.

“Jesus Christ, George! I told you to -hit- her,” he shouted, “Not -kill- her!”

Mom and her brothers couldn’t speak for laughing, while they watched their red-faced father lean over to check on the fallen animal.

At that moment, she moaned, and scrabbled to her feet. She swayed and took one look at my father, snorted, moaned again, and staggered double-time to the gate. There she waited patiently to be let in.

He opened the gate and beckoned her in. She followed him, quite docile, into the smaller pasture, though she shuffled and shook her head a bit oddly. Dad patted her gently on the rump as she went past, relieved that he had not, indeed, killed a not-quite-innocent-but-favored cow, that day. He swung the gate closed and latched it carefully, then dusted off his hands, folding his arms, and smiled broadly at his short father-in-law who shook his head in disbelief.

As for The Cow, she was fine, if a bit less apt to be aggressive around humans.

She soon lost her status as the leader of the herd, though, not because of her fateful encounter with my Dad.

It was because Grandpa had bought and brought in a new bull, Daniel, who soon asserted his testosterone and became the top bovine on the farm.