Saturday at the Farm

We went to the farm today.  Sheila and I have a routine that I find very enjoyable.  We get up early and then stop at QuikTrip to top off the tank and get a cup of their excellent coffee.  Then, we swing by the Subway on Admiral for one of their flatbread breakfast sandwiches to eat on the road.

We took the pickup.  This is the first time we had driven it for any distance since getting it back from the shop.  For reasons known only to God I guess, it was quieter, smoother and got better fuel economy.  Body work shouldn't have affected any of that.  It can't be all in my head, I calculated the fuel economy when we got back to Tulsa and filled up again and we got almost 23 mpg, about 4 mpg better than the last trip.

We got to the farm around mid-morning and spent until lunch time straightening out the closet in the front bedroom.  I got inertia while we ate lunch and had to finish a particularly sweet episode of Gunsmoke on ME TV Arkansas before I could get going again.  In the afternoon, I installed a new medicine chest in the bathroom and made and installed a new door for the crawlspace.

About 3:00, we took a drive around the pasture.  I have never seen the grass eaten down that low before.  My tenants cows had even eaten the sage-grass down.  They have to be hungry to eat that stuff.  When my dad was raising cattle, we used to joke about spraying sorghum water on sage-grass to makecows eat it.  Usually, with the weather as warm as this, there is a lot better green grass growing down below the sage that they munch on.  We saw spots of green here and there but it was all nibbled close

The ponds are several feet below their normal level.  I checked my grandmothers old dug well.  I saw the bottom of it bone dry for the first time in my life.  I had seen it muddy a few times but never bone dry.  In normal times, the bottom of that well is usually four of five feet below the water table.  In short, we are in the middle of a drought.  A bad one.  A multi-year, soil's gonna blow away if it don't rain soon drought.

By dinner time, we were passing through Sallisaw and as usual had dinner at Charlie's Chicken.  I don't know exactly how to explain to outsiders that the best meal in town can be found at a place that looks like fast food joint but is actually a first class southern/soul food buffet that serves better than average fried chicken, really good smoked meats and a great selection of sides.  This time they had smoked ribs on the buffet.  While I only sampled one since I don't eat red meat, Sheila enjoyed them thoroughly .... with a lot of sauce.

After dinner, I decided to drive up US 64 for a while instead of just getting on I-40.  As we passed Sallisaw Dam, a mysterious force took hold of the wheel and we wound up parked looking at the old dam and remembering other Saturday evenings.  In honor of those other Saturday nights, I swore I would not move the car until I got a kiss and I mean a real kiss, not just a peck on the cheek.

When we left, I stayed on US-64 until Webbers Falls.  It was very pleasant to just drive through the country, looking at the lights in the farmhouses and taking the drive a little slower.  All in all, it was a good day.