esterday was a great day on the farm.

I was late moving the cows to their new field. They were due to move Sunday morning but I had not yet subdivided the next field. They knew it was time to move and when I passed through their pasture on the way to check on my baby guinea keets, they protested loudly when I wouldn’t let them follow me through the gate. I explained that they would have to wait until after church. They were not pleased.

At some point Saturday night, one of the cows had pushed over the jerry-rigged hatch I had built to keep the keets in the coop. They are really curious creatures and I am sure there was no malice; they just wanted to know what was going on inside the barn. The opened hatch allowed the keets to escape into the pasture. As I tried to gather up the three-week-old delinquents, the cows kept coming over to push and rub on me. Annoying and highly amusing at the same time. I couldn’t keep from giggling as Bonnie knocked me out of a guinea-pouncing squat right into a manure plop.

I had people stop by after church to get vegetables. I gave away tomatoes, potatoes, basil, peppers, artichokes and parsley. Particularly tomatoes. I have them literally coming out the wazoo! (And boy is it painful)

The minister’s wife wanted to see the guineas, so we walked out to the barn to the accompaniment of bovine bellows and other forms of protest. I didn’t completely shut the barn door behind us to Bonnie, the Ayrshire Heifer wanted in Washington state, decided she was going to move herself to the next field whether I like it or not. I was inside the coop part of the barn when she nosed open the door, brushed past the startled preacher‚ÄövÑvÂ¥s wife, and ambled out the other end of the barn into a new pasture, swinging her tail back and forth, pleased as punch with herself.

I joined her in the field and proceeded to cut back the lower limbs of several cedar trees in the new pasture. I like to get the limbs up high enough that I can mow under them without ducking and so that the ticks that like to live in the cedars (the ones not eaten by guineas) have a farther drop if they want to dive-bomb the cattle. The bare trunks also allow more sun penetration, increasing the growth of the undersown grass. Finally, it allows the shadows to shift around during the day so that the cows don’t congregate and pug up one spot. Bonnie watched my chainsaw work curiously in between bites of bluegrass and clover.

Once the lower limbs were out of the way, I strung three electric wires to subdivide the paddock. I usually only run one or two wires (depending on the topography) but will put in all future subdivisions with three wires since I will be acquiring sheep in a couple of weeks. With the gate installed and the electric connections made, I let the boys join bonnie and much adolescent frolicking ensured in the new pasture.

My next job was to tackle the multiflora in the next paddock in the rotation. Over the last couple of years, I have made a serious dent in the stuff, but there is an overgrown fence line, thick with cedars and big multiflora that I haven’t yet conquered. I can’t believe this noxious stuff was once purposefully introduced to farms. Kind of like Kudzu, I guess.

At any rate, the conventional wisdom is you have to bulldoze the plants and then spray the hell out of the exposed roots and any regrowth with herbicide. But I don’t have heavy equipment and won’t use herbicides. So it’s just me and my trusty shovel and pick against Lucifer’s own plant spawn. I use the shovel and clippers to cut the cane at ground level and then go after the thick, woody root crown with a pick. Some of the root crowns are solid wood about as wide around as a five-gallon bucket.

Even after this treatment, the stuff keeps coming back, so part of my every-other-day routine is to shovel out any regrowth in the just vacated paddocks. I do it at the same time that I am refilling the water containers, kicking manure, and checking for other weeds left behind by the cows.

I was cutting, hacking, and dragging vines out of the cedar canopy when my neighbor stopped by at about four o’clock. He had to get his hay up before it rained. Could I help?

Sure, I said.

Farmers will drop most anything to get a crop of hay in the barn before it is spoiled by precipitation. “Make hay while the sun shines” isn’t just a cute saying to us. I figured we would do a couple hours of work. Heh. We didn’t finish until midnight.

I’m no longer at my high-school fighting weight. Throwing the forty-pound square bales onto the back of the trucks and hay wagons didn’t turn out to be too hard (though it was a bit tricky on the fifth row up). What wore me out was walking behind the truck. Bales come out of the baler at about thirty or forty foot intervals. One person will drive a truck down the center of two rows and the bucker will run back and forth behind the truck, throwing (”bucking”) the bales on from either side. This was hard work. If any readers have ever done this job, you know what I’m talking about.

But hard physical labor can actually be fun and I really had a sense of accomplishment when, fifteen minutes after we had closed the barn door on the stacked hay, the skies opened up and a torrential downpour drenched the Batesville environs.

The only downside was waking up at five this morning.

But, tired as I am today, I wouldn’t trade this life for anything. I pity the ants of the world:

He wakes up in the morning
Does his teeth, bite to eat and he’s rolling
Never changes a thing
The week ends, the week begins

…

Driving in on this highway
All these cars and upon the sidewalk
People in every direction
No words exchanged,No time to exchange when…
All the little ants are marching
Red and black antennae waving
They all do it the same
They all do it the same way

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader happened to read the Niall Ferguson piece to which the Minister of Agriculture linked in the post below this one.

First of all, your Maximum Leader wouldn’t categorize it as a man-crush. He would categorize it as a mind-crush. Your Maximum Leader is drawn (like Oprah) to fascinating people. Ferguson is an original thinker and writer. That is why your Maximum Leader likes him. Which leads your Maximum Leader to his second point.

Secondly, Ferguson is completely wrong on this count. People (both sharp intellectuals like Ferguson, and dull cretins like many of the protestors of the Republican Convention interviewed on TV) have been predicting how the re-election of president so-and-so or prime minister whats-his-name will spell certain doom for their party.

Your Maximum Leader remembers how many commentators in 1984 were predicting that the Republican Party had hit its high water mark. Re-electing Reagan would break apart the party along social issues that split the so-called “economic conservatives” and the so-called “social conservatives.”

In 1996 it was the tension in the Democratic party between the Clintonista “New Democrats” and the “Democrats” that would rend the party to peices.

Ferguson’s WSJ peice is one of those great examples of making a historical analogy that really isn’t analogous. But as your Maximum Leader has said before, sometimes you try to draw together a set of historical circumstances, show their congruity to the present, and predict future activity from how the past and present appear to coalesce.

Sometimes the analogy works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Alas people have been making the “The-best-thing-that-can-happen-to-the-Republican/Democratic-party-is-X-loosing-this-election” argument for so long that it is like a clanging cymbal that you learn to ignore.

Parties survive because they are inherently flexible and pragmatic. They also survive the internal pressures of conflicting ideology because they are, at best, loose confederations of more-or-less like-minded people who like to win more than they like to loose. American politicians are not party creatures like politicans are in other countries. They affiliate with parties because that is where the money is. Both parties are “big tents” and contain mulititudes and contradictions. People like (and vote for) politicians who are “their own man” and not craven to party interests. Politicians like being thought of as being “independent” and not beholden to anyone. So the parties just deal with it as best they can.

They aren’t going to split up any time soon.

Carry on.

Since my last post warned of the danger of a Kerry Presidency, here’s one from the other side for the Maximum Leader.

The Maximum Leader is enamored of Niall Ferguson. It is almost a man-crush.

Well, oh great one, your idol thinks a second Bush administration would be disastrous.

This argument might even make the Minister of Propaganda vote Republican.

Talking with a friend and neighbor on Saturday, he argued that a Kerry Presidency would worsen the already problematic problem of military retention and recruitment.

The army is being devastated by the departure of mid-career NCOs and officers as a result of the tempo of deployments*. Recruitment is way down as young men realize that signing the bottom line may result in experiencing combat. My buddy worries that a Kerry presidency would make both problems much worse. Since those who don’t want to make the sacrifices necessary for a military career are either leaving or not signing up, the pool of current soldiers is even more conservative than usual. If they had to serve under Kerry, my friend argues, many would decide that, while they support their country, they don’t want to serve under that commander in chief.

He claimed that a similar increase of retirement/POS/unfulfilled recruiting quotas occurred under Clinton. Is anyone familiar with this? More data please.

* Full disclosure: If I hadn’t already completed my military service, I probably would be joining the exodus. I can’t imagine being separated from my daughter for a year at a time. Condemn me as an unpatriotic coward if you will.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was reading Daniel Drezner’s site and decided to take a quiz that he did. It is a great quiz.

Here is the link to the quiz.

Here is a link to your Maximum Leader’s results. He got 41%. (No cheating by looking at the answers first.)

NB: Your Maximum Leader feels stupid for answering some questions the way he did. In retrospect his answers are just right out…

That quiz was so good, your Maximum Leader decided to take the Political quiz as well. (He was very close on the scale to Margaret Thatcher.)

They are fun quizzes, even if they don’t provide you with some nifty picture to post on your own blog…

Carry on.

of writing a few post and then they get mashed down to the bottom (or into the archives) after the ML write like 5 in a row!

Egad

Back to the trenches….

UPDATE FROM THE MAXIMUM LEADER: Now you know how the AirMarshal feels. Every time he posted something earlier this year it wound up being pushed down the page by something the Minister of Agriculture would write. Alas, them are the breaks in a group blog… But just this once, your Maximum Leader will give you a break. Scroll down. - Max.Ldr.

UPDATE FROM THE MAXIMUM LEADER: Because your Maximum Leader was unusually prolix today, and because the Foreign Minister doesn’t post as much as he should… This post of the Foreign Minister’s was moved to be ahead of your Maximum Leader’s posts today. - Max.Ldr.

In front of me right now is a weizen glass full of beer and a bowl of chilli.
It sounds simple and straight forward, and in a way it is, but then again it isn’t.

German brewing/purity laws, known here as they Reinheitsgebot,only allow beer made from barley, hops, and water. Most Americans have a mythical view of other countries beer as some sort of Nirvana thing but, as in the States, Germany brews some crap beer as well as some outstanding ones (just like the US!).

I usually buy my beer at Getrank Markt (drink store) which is usually attached to a grocery store but is a separate building. In the Getrank Markt, they sell every think from bottled water to Orange juice and all different kinds of German bottle beers.

One cool thing is that, if you buy beer in a “case”, they usually have some sort of toy 18 wheeler with the beer logo on it for free (and the German chick who sells the stuff in the store I go to is HOT!)
Germans drink their beer in particular glasses. There are special glasses for each type of beer.
They usually get wrapped around the axle too if you use the wrong glass.

I miss the Real Ales of the UK. I think this is where most Americans get the idea that the Brits drink warm beer. Its not really “warm”, but about 55 degrees. (which seems warm to most Americans)
The reason they are warmer than US beers is because, they have not been pasteurized and the yeast is still active. If you cool it down too much, it destroys the delicate flavors of the beer.

On the whole, I like the dark thick beers. The best time for these is in the Lent season when everyone is fasting so you get these fortified beers with 6-9% alcohol in them YUM !

I made the bowl of chili a couple of days ago. Every since a bizarre jalapeño eating contest with the other ministers in college, I have been a hot food nut/connoisseur. I start with making some salsa. I usually buy a package of frsh Habaneros, some jalapeños, scotch bonnets, chipotles, and any other HOT pepper I can find in the store and throw them in a blender. At this point my wife leaves the kitchen as the “fragrance” is much like somebody has set off a can of mace in the room. To this I add a few cloves of garlic, some onion and a can of minced tomatoes. Blend that puppy up for a few minutes then simmer over the stove. Its great on tortilla chips and I add this to the top of any chili bowl for a real digestive tract burning treat!

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was thinking about Andi taking her sword test on the 11th. And then he happened upon Eric’s quiz results and decided to take this (somehow topical) quiz. Well, your Maximum Leader (true to his ethnic origins) scored thusly:

Claymore, power and strength rule your fighting,
these swords were only used by the non faint of
heart and were weilded by the most fierce
warriors. (Please Vote)

What sword would you use (info and pis on swords as well)
brought to you by Quizilla

So, if Andi were to come after your Maximum Leader and engage him in swordplay (unlikely as it would be) the quiz says he would use a claymore. And likely get chopped to pieces. Lucky that a) Andi wouldn’t do such a thing; and b) your Maximum Leader is a gun-toting maniac and would lay down a stream of deadly lead if anyone were coming at him with a sword.

And in other news that he isn’t sure why he is sharing…

Your Maximum Leader had a remarkably vivid dream last night. In the dream he was walking on the beach in Santa Monica with a young attractive swarthy bikini-clad woman. It was a bright cloudless day with a breeze blowing across the water. We were talking about Edmund Burke and his Reflections on the Revolution in France, while munching on fish tacos. When your Maximum Leader woke from the dream he thought he could smell the sea and taste the fish tacos…

If you are a seer of some sort, feel free to e-mail your interpretation of this dream to your Maximum Leader.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader thanks new addition to the blogroll Brian for this wonderful Søren Kierkegaard quotation.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

And doesn’t Brian have one of the coolest blog titles ever? Memento Moron. Heh.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Since your Maximum Leader was just blogging about Conrad blogging about why people will vote for Bush this post seems topical…

The AirMarshal and your Maximum Leader were speaking on the phone the othr day and politics came up. The AirMarshal made an off-hand comment to the extent that Bush (in his opinion) has demonstrably been a miserable president. Thus his impending vote for Kerry is a vote to replace a demonstrably bad president with someone who will likely become (but hasn’t yet proven himself to be) a bad president.

To your Maximum Leader this was (surprisingly) a compelling simple effective argument. What could be more simple than “Change?” He wondered if this simple compelling strategery had ever been used before? Humm… Oh yeah. This guy used it pretty effectively.

So why isn’t Kerry driving home the message of “change?” It is odd. He is campaigning on not changing so much. (That is when he is talking issues in the first place.) He says he will stay the course in Iraq. He will keep most of the tax cuts. Yada, yada, yada… Kerry certainly isn’t presenting any compelling reasons for anyone to vote for him. His campaign seems to be based on the fact that he is not George W. Bush.

So why not, if your John Kerry, try campaigning on the topic of Change?

While surfing the TV looking for more Olympics coverage, your Maximum Leader caught some of Joe Scarborough’s show on MSNBC. In his segment, Joe’s Real Deal, (who comes up with these segment titles anyway?) Scarborough said that Kerry needed to get off his arse and call James Carville if he really wants to win this election.

NB: Scarborough said that he was going to post transcripts of the show to his website, but as of this moment they are not there.

This was a great suggestion for Kerry. If there is a Democratic operative who has shown that he can win an election, it is James Carville. Say what you want about him (and your Maximum Leader could say plenty - none of it too flattering - except perhaps that his wife is cool), James Carville knows how to win a campaign.

But will Kerry fire his Massachusetts buddies and hire a ragin’ cajun to run his campaign over the last 60 some odd days until the election?

No.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader loves reading Conrad’s blog. He (Conrad) writes so well and fluidly it is disgusting. He regularly posts photos which stiffen your Maximum Leader’s sinews. And he has readers who can best be described as “Hottie.”

All that aside… You ought to go and read over Conrad’s comments on a post from Mark Kleiman. It is a lucid explaination of why many grown-ups are voting for Bush - they are voting against Kerry.

And Conrad’s comments on Alice Cooper are fun too.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader decided to follow a link he saw on Skippy’s site. He was a little disappointed with what he found. But decided to post the results here anyway.

The Ultimate Politics Survey

Describe your stance on:

Abortion: Against

Affirmative Action: Against in most circumstances

Age of Consent: 18 (Which is high in most places.)

Animal Testing: Favour

Death Penalty: Favour (preferably more cruel and unusual)

Downloading Music/Movies: Against

Drug Decriminalization: Favour (mostly Marijuana, not other drugs)

Factory Farming: Against (to the extent that it is possible to eliminate)

Free Trade: Favour

Funding of Arts: Against government funding if that is what this is asking.

Gay Marriage: Against

Gun Control: Against

Immigration: Favour

Hardcore Pornography: Favour, but with some restrictions concerning accessibility

Human Cloning: Against

Miltary Draft: Against

Minimum Wage: Against, to a point. Issue is quite complex actually.

Prostitution: Favour, but in a regulated licenced way. Public health concerns and all.

School Vouchers: Favour

Taxes: This is a stupid question. Taxes are the price of government. You have to have them. If the question is should they be higher or lower than they are, then ask that.

United Nations: Against (But stupid question. The UN as an organization dedicated to “world peace” it is useless. But as a forum for endless chatter and talk accomplishing nothing it is perfect!)

Universal Health Care: Against

War on Terrorism: Favour (Another stupid question. Who exactly isn’t in favour of fighting against terrorists who would like to kill us? One can debate how the war should be prosecuted…)

Welfare: Against, with some qualifications. Some social safety net programs are acceptable.

Take The Ultimate Politics Survey
Get more cool things for your blog at Blogthings

So there it is. Of course your Maximum Leader could have gone into a plethora of mini-screeds on each subject, but in the spirit of brevity he did not.

Carry on.

I am just amazed at some of the creativity (on both sides). I wish I had the time to think this stuff up and execute it.

But why did you have to go and say all that Bull Shi7 about me huh? I wouldn’t want those folks on the left to think I am anything but some sort of raving lunatic….

Speaking of those on the left…. what is Bruce so upset about anyway?

But his pictures are pretty cool.

I don’t want to hear you posting anymore about your slow computer! Next time the ML is around, have him hook all that stuff up for you. Its an Athalon XP1500 processor… not the fastest car in town but it will get you out of the stone age!

Been busy hear in Germany. If you haven’t noticed there is Talk of closing the bases (or greatly reducing) the US footprint here. I know it is cutting my own throat, and conventional wisdom would be to vote the pocketbook and all… but.

I think it is a great idea to realign the bases. The only thing the US Army is doing here in Germany (besides providing me with a hellofa good lifestyle) is pumping BILLIONS of dollars into the local German economy every year.

Kerry says he wouldn’t pull them out… I don’t believe him though. If he has two brain cells working in his noggin’ he should be saying the same thing. I don’t think that bringin em back home is the best choice though.

I say plop a bases down in strategic locations around the world where we could get to the hot spots fast, but also provide economic stimulus and project American Culture to the locals (Nigeria, Poland, Romania, etc).

Word around the base though that any re-alignment won’t happen till 2006/7.

So if you have been thinking about a European Visit to the FM, start planing now!

Back to the Trenches

I didn’t blog at all this summer.

I’m sure many of you were relieved to be spared from the dose of cow genetics sullying your morning cup of Maximum Leader ranting.

My home computer was incapable of sustaining a connection the internet.

I didn’t read Big Hominid all summer; his graphics-enriched lair would crash my puny computer every time. Since then I have tried to catch up with his summer posts, but the Poet Laureate seems to have moved away from the political posts I enjoy so much. Kev, man, when the Dear Leader rants, I need a BigHo smackdown of the pompadour!

I hate to confess it, but the first blog I checked every day (other than Naked Villainy, of course) was “Celibate in the City.”

I was like an OCD housewife hankering for her “Guiding Light.”

I soooooooo wanted this sweet woman to meet a nice guy. I kept checking in for updates on her Irish vacation. Unfortunately, she seems to have recently added “blogs” to the list of things that she is “not the kind of girl who…” list. Nonetheless, if you missed the soapy saga, click on over and scroll back through the archives.

Kilgore’s site reliably incites my computosaurus obsoletus to suffer a Java error aneurysm, but clicking through the error messages was always worth it.

My favorites:

The reminiscence of working in a collection agency amused me to no end.

As someone who has been indoctrinated since birth with the Keiloresque virtue of keeping one’s thoughts to one’s self, I took sweet, sweet pleasure from:

Once I was talking off a debtor who owed over a thousand dollars for jewelry purchased on credit at 18 percent interest. She never made a single payment. “Quit calling me,” she said. “I’m raising three kids and I don’t have any money.”"Well, where are you working?” I asked.”I am on welfare,” she said, in the same tone of voice that another might use to say I am the head of neurosurgical research at Johns Hopkins University.”On welfare? Sounds to me like the government is raising your kids,” I said.

I liked the essay on cooking to impress in the workplace. While I’m not the effeminate, gammy-handed little pastry chef that Kilgore is, I do understand his motivation. I like to share farm produce with neighbors, family, friends, baby-group members, churchmembers, and work colleagues. I eagerly await the kudos that follow and bask in the reflected glory of my tasty, juicy, beautiful, organic tomatoes. I have also taken to dragging houseguests into the pantry to show off the 93 cans of tomatoes Mrs. Smallholder put up* from one day’s production.

* For those of you who do not hail from the Midwest, “putting up” is another phrase for preserving or canning food. I used it so I wouldn’t have to use the same word twice in the same sentence.

Kilgore’s skewering of The Da Vinci Code earned my applause. People at work kept gushing to me that, as a history teacher, I would just LOVE the darn book. So I borrow it. And hated it. I thought it was abominable paced, poorly written, and massively implausible. The unveiling of the secret villain made no sense whatsoever.

Read the about the roommate train wreck. As someone who was always blessed with good roommates, I’m somewhat fascinated by bad roommate stories. A little bit of me might even wish that I had had a bizarre roommate just for the story value. Maybe I should make something up about the Minister of Propaganda. I did once wake up in bed - naked - with the Foreign Minister, but the story of how I ended up at AA is another whole can of worms.

I think the villainous bloggers should all write their own version of this “brief summary of people I avoid at work.”

Another great idea the Naked Villainy ought to steal (only be sure to call it, please, “research“): “Am I a man?” charts. Heh. I get to make Rob’s matrix.

More to come…