Note: This is the first of three posts written in Virginia while we were away for the Christmas holidays. I'll upload them to the blog and post date them as appropriate. Christmas ain't over till Epiphany. Merry Christmas, everyone!
I had breakfast this morning with my father-in-law, Jerry. We always go to the same place. Ella B's is a combination convenience store, gas station and short order diner. The food is great as long as you like breakfast meats and friendly banter. You always get both. Well, maybe they would let you order an egg biscuit. But they may look at you a little funny when you turn down the country ham. That's all I'm sayin'.
The food is great. I know that vegetarianism has a great attraction. I spent four or five years of my life living as a veg. But country ham has ever been my weakness. Mmm. Wow (An aside: Trish and I are contemplating going veg again. She read Skinny Bitch. More on that later.).
Ella was glad to see me. She keeps nagging me for pictures of the church. I need to send her something. She's lovely.
Jerry and the other men who gather in the morning at Ella's talk about farming and anything related to farming. Most have other jobs to supplement their incomes. Jerry has worked at the local plant for thirty years and has a couple hundred acres that he farms. That's just how you make ends meet in Huddleston.
This morning the talk was about hay. Many of these guys raise beef cattle. Jerry has about 100 head. Well, with the drought and all this summer, the hay harvest was terrible. Jerry usually gets three cuttings. This year he only managed one. The same is true all around. Jerry has supplemented the winter hay with grain feed, but he's not happy about it. It's expensive. But if you did get an extra cutting of hay this year, you may have hit a gold mine. It's hard to say.
There's a guy up the road a piece selling his rolls of hay for $80 each. This is highway robbery. And much of that hay is rotten and black. Well, this is the speculation at least. It's probably old soy hay ("Bovine tofu?" I ask myself.). They cut down the soy plants and roll it up and sell it as feed. Not a bad notion, but it seems that it's not all that popular with the locals. I have no idea why not.
There's a lot of speculation about hay right now.
Country ham, biscuits and gravy, hash browns and two eggs sunny side up...oh, and hay futures. Pray for rain, people.