grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Standlee Hay is for Horses!

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Standlee Hay Company, a family-owned business based in Idaho, grows and manufactures an extensive line of forage products including mini cubes, timothy grass and compressed bales. When the company asked me to use and write a review of its horse feed products, I said SURE! 
Then I thought Wait! I have no horses! 
On our farm we grow crops—cotton, rice, soybeans, corn. No chickens, no cows, no horses… other than a yard full of cats, we never had animals on our farm.
My horse experience is limited to betting on the ponies at Oaklawn Track each spring…
Luckily, I know farmers with horses…
My friend Edra Perry Senter, grew up with cotton and horses. She and her gorgeous horses, Toby, Sue and Tiny, readily agreed to try out Standlee Hay products.

Toby, stubborn and tempermental by nature, typically only eats oats, yet he loved Standlee alfafa hay.

Toby – 13 year old Racking Horse

Look—he was practically grinning…

Toby eating Standlee Alfafa Hay. 
Standlee Alfafa Hay on the left; regular grass hay on the right…

The difference between Standlee alfafa hay and regular grass hay was obvious…

Standlee Hay received a resounding recommendation from Edra and her horses. Heck, they loved it so much, I may see if my schauzers will eat it!
Edra purchased her Standlee products at Orscheln Farm and Ranch in Paragould, Arkansas. For a complete list of products and a retailer near you, check the Standlee Hay website at www.standleehay.com. 

talya

Cottonwood Corner

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J. Montrell-Stark Photography – Cottonwood Corner

Once upon a time there was a race track on the corner. Only a mile from our home, the weekend racing noises filtered into our bedroom window making sleep difficult. Daddy and Arthur Bullion took me with them one muggy summer night. Seeing cars crash and smash was thrilling.

Across the street, an outdoor auction house hummed. People came from near and far to buy and sell junk. Buying and selling junk made folks hungry, so we peddled homemade chocolate cupcakes to raise money for the Halloween carnival. We always sold out.

One magical week a year, the Ferris wheel and bright carnival lights were visible across the field. We watched and waited and pleaded, listening to muffled laughter and music late after suppertime. At last we went.  Momma puked as soon as the Tilt a Whirl stopped whirling. 
We each have one of these places, a wide spot in the road unnoticed by most, a place vibrant only in  our memories.

When the whistle blows, factory workers drive past, thankful another shift has ended. Farmers haul grain to the river without a glance to the rubble where the grocery story stood—the grocery store where Daddy sent me off driving, alone, to buy cartons of Camel, before I was old enough to have a license.

Wrong on so many levels…but oh so right.

Although there’s nothing much to look at now, the weary sign marking the empty spot is a historical marker  to me.

talya

“This is what happened when one left one’s home – pieces of oneself scattered all over the world, no one place ever completely satisfied, always a nostalgia for the place left behind.” ― Tatjana Soli, The Lotus Eaters

Musical Pairing:

Hometown Glory, Adele

F is for Farm

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There are four distinct farm seasons. Planting, Growing, Harvest and WaitingRestlesslyToPlant. Today we are at the tail end of WaitingRestlesslyToPlant season. 
During the long cold season of WaitingRestlesslyToPlant, farmers drive along muddy turn rows, staring at black furrows laid out like fans, willing the weather to warm. They wait and plan and watch the sky counting down to the first day of Planting season when collectively all the farmers exhale, along with their wives and children.
Nurturing crops day and night during Growing season, farmers pray for sunshiny days, then pray for rain, then pray for no rain. So do their wives and children.
Finally, the smell of defoliant fills the southern air. Harvest Season. The most wonderful time of the year. The fields are saturated in white, a sea of snowy cotton.  Golden wheat bends and bows to the earth. Rice hang heavy and dry. Dust flies. Combines roar. Blackbirds watch from a safe distance. The end of another year, another cycle.

At the end of Harvest, farmers are content to have a bit of money left over to plow back into the soil next year.

Farmers toil from sunup to sundown, from can to can’t. They do it because they love it. They do it because they can’t not do it.

talya

The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat…” 

Musical Pairing:
Big Green Tractor, Jason Aldean

Be sure to watch this video above of our farmers from home!
Never A Dull Moment…Fishing for Cotton…
(Senter Farms, Holthouse Farms, Mississippi County, Arkansas)

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!