If one of the cows gets sick and requires antibiotics, they tag it, isolate it, and sell it separately.
The man and woman who own the farm, Ossie and Mary Betty Kearney, had a wide variety of interests. Ossie showed us the home they had restored and told us about refinishing the old floors with lye-water because the historic preservation commission advised against sanding the floors. He told us a lot about raising cows and pigs, including separating the cows by age into different fields. The Kearneys make sure the cows always have access to grazing-pasture, to water, and to shelter such as trees. To someone who lives in the city, the farm equipment can be riveting (pardon the pun). One of the tractors had a long spear on the front to stab a bale of hay and transport it. And I thought the corral with the electric motor which helps load itself for transport would have been handy when I was traveling while raising my kids...just kidding (not really, but it probably would've been less traumatic than the cattle prod). Because the Kearneys don't use hormones, their cows take a little longer to grow to selling-size, but Ossie and his son still get them to market before they are 30 months old. If you are squeamish, skip to the next paragraph NOW, but I found this fact of farm life fascinating. I asked Ossie what process they use to castrate the male calves since they only need one bull for every 30 cows, and they want the rest of them to become steers for beef. He explained that they use something like a rubberband to tie around the testicles to block the blood flow, and they will just fall off after awhile...no surgery is needed. He said that after a couple of hours, they seem to get used to it; it probably goes numb.
Ossie's wife, Mary Betty, was really interested in historic preservation and had helped to create a book called Architecture of Greene County. She is a great advocate for the "slow food" farm-to-market movement, and was very interesting to talk with. She is an elegant Southern lady with hair swept into an up-do in the back, and very gracious, but not stuffy at all, one who enjoys yard-work and gardening. I can't think of two nicer people to be huddled with in a small room while waiting for the severe weather to pass.
Tornadoes passed through just north of us and just south of us. We were in a 150-year old house and were very lucky they didn't hit where we were. According to the reports, a house was flattened less than a quarter-mile from where we were. And in another direction, the new middle school for the county was destroyed. A barn downtown which had just been moved to a museum site (intended to be used as a downtown Farmer's Market) was nowhere to be found. Phone calls reported that several people were injured in a restaurant in a strip mall when the plate glass blew out of the front window. Trees were down and lots of trailers were either turned over or had roofs ripped off, and there was damage to the greenhouses. Twenty people died in Bertie County, a little further east. Seeing how precarious farming is, with electricity cutting the heat and lights in the turkeyhouses and hearing about some of the damage that weather in general does to crops makes me appreciate even more those whose work provides my food. The tornadoes moved through quickly, but were then followed by more, one after another. Of course the electricity was off until the wee hours of the morning. Ossie stayed up making sure the meat freezers stayed cold, which I suppose he did with generators, working out in the wind and the dark.
Despite the tornadoes, "Buck" and I had a good dinner at a restaurant called Sandpipers (which still had electricity), a good night's sleep in a beautifully appointed room, and a wonderful breakfast in front of a fire on Sunday morning, with excellent company from the hosts and the other guests. Thanks to the electricity being out, we were able to experience the 150-year-old house closer to the way the original inhabitants did--with candles for light, and without any heat. That part was kind of fun. It was great to see how the neighbors chipped in to help each other put tarps over the damaged roofs, gather cows back into fields which had their enclosures knocked down by fallen trees, and so forth. Men with tractors pushed trees out of the roads without waiting for the state highway vehicles to come and do it for them. It was refreshing to witness the self-reliance in this county of only 20,000 people (2,000 of which, I was told, are incarcerated in the three federal and state prisons).
After our Sunday morning breakfast, which was so ample that it lasted us until suppertime, we went to an air show (Wings Over Wayne) at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base at Goldsboro. It was thrilling to see the fighter planes and jets zooming by and demonstrating their maneuvers. It actually made me feel a lot better about paying all that money in federal income tax last Friday. My favorite part of the show was not the Thunderbirds, but the Heritage part that showcased the air force "work horses" past and present: the P-51 Mustang (developed with Britain during World War II and featuring a Rolls-Royce engine), the A-10 Thunderbolt (also known as the Warthog for its ruggedness and "good looks"), the F-4 (called a Phantom or Super Hornet), and the staple at Seymour Johnson--the F-15E "Strike Eagle." According to one of its fans, a Strike Eagle can go from 50 feet above the ground up to 20,000 feet in 15 seconds. All I know it that it sure did it fast! Flying that jet looked like fun jet as the pilot demonstrated its maneuverability. He made a circle with that jet over about a 1400 foot long area. It was very impressive. As the announcer said, "You can't fight if you can't turn tight." The announcer said it enabled the same pilot to turn and strafe the enemy about every 10-15 seconds. To minimize collateral damage, the F-15E is equipped with only a 20 mm Gatlin gun on the front. This is smaller than the 70 mm Gatlin gun on the front of the older Warthog jet, which sprays bullets the size of a Coke bottle. The Warthogs have faces painted on their fronts, which give them some individual personality, and it looks as though a lot of the F-15 pilots are following the tradition.
After the air show, we stopped at Wilbur's BBQ just outside Goldsboro...I think "Buck" said we were at a community called Elroy. Wilbur's is famous in eastern North Carolina because of its eastern-style barbecue, which is different from Lexington-style (the type served near my home). Wilbur's barbecue was delicious and is worth a stop if you are in the vicinity of Goldsboro, but honestly, I like Smithfield's BBQ (which is now a chain) just as well as Wilbur's, if not more, and you don't have to drive to Goldsboro to get it. Still, if you are in the vicinity of Goldsboro, you should try Wilbur's for comparison.
Between the tornadoes and the warthogs, it was more exciting than I had anticipated, especially considering how rural the countryside was. It wasn't exactly tranquil. As we headed east from Raleigh on our way there Saturday morning, it felt like we were riding into the middle of nowhere, but sometimes that's where you have to go to see huge swaths of countryside with cows and pigs. Who could have guessed we'd have so much excitement and fun? Thanks to the Kearneys and the military servicemen and women for a fun weekend! I hope those who suffered the full force of the tornadoes are getting the help they need.
Looking ahead, we are going to the Cook Shack in Union Grove on Wednesday night to see the French band "MaryLou", whose music focuses on American traditional, which I find amazing and amusing because they are not only French but still live in France. When they play there, I wonder if the audience can understand them. It is kind of odd to hear them sing our folk songs with a French accent; for example, "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore" sung very earnestly with a slight French accent. If you want to have some fun, try it yourself! At the Cook Shack, musicians from Asia, Germany, Switzerland, and France regularly attend the Saturday morning jam sessions and evening concerts, so I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that American traditional music has an international appeal among certain people.
