Some Farm Pictures

It's about time I put these photos up. Here you can see the back of the house and the red deck. Joshua is inspecting the old maple, one of about a half-dozen in the front and back yard. He's thinking, "Man, I didn't know trees came in this size!"

Here's another aiming off to the side of the house. In the distance you can see the forest. Within a very short walking distance is Kinnikinnick Creek Conservation Area where I can continue my long walks in the forest, time allowing.

The barn structure is large and in good repair. It could use a good mucking out after stabling 4 full size horses (with apparently sound digestive systems). I'll start a compost heap over there right away and start working on some of that free fertilizer that comes with the house.

Up on this hill I'm going to plant the apple orchard. If I fence off just half of this and use it in the short term, the dimensions are 216' X 336', or approx. 72,000 square feet (1.5 acres). Planting apple trees at 16 feet apart gives me 20 trees per row with 18 rows spaced 12' apart. That's 360 apple trees on just half of the usable orchard space! It's a protected south slope with a fertile clay loam. If I can't grow apples there, I can't grow them anywhere.

Here's another fenced off acre right to the east of the house and sloping down to the road. Very fertile and protected, I could do almost anything with this plot, from an enormous garden to raising alfalfa to feed the livestock. A normal alfalfa yield is 2.6 tons and for goats I'll need less than 1 ton to get me through the winter, though I lose that space for grazing.

As you can see, there's plenty of room for juggling things around and making everything work together in a sustainable way. I have high hopes and now we're just riding out the buying process until close. Meanwhile it's research, research, research to figure out our plans.

My wife, the goat farmer.

While I’ve been covering bees and apple trees, Kat has been researching goats. She has her favorites, for sure, and is now the official goat expert. She knows which goat breeds yield the most meat, fleece, or milk, and can also tell you the healthy body temperature (as measured anally) for an Angora buck. All hail the goat queen!

Sold! To the funny looking man with the bad hair.

Offer, counter-offer … the mercantile side of buying a house is somewhat depressing. Yet the word came back this evening as I was making a big bowl of my famous (well, extremely locally famous) turkey soup. They accepted our offer. The house is ours, well, taking into consideration all the risks between here and there with the lender, but they accepted our offer. I’m doing a victory dance here.

The first morning of being in this new house I’m going to wake up at sunrise and go sit on the hill overlooking the whole farm. Seems like a perfect way to start.

Back to politics ...

So the captured sailors who allegedly drifted into Iranian waters and were captured by the Iranian navy have been seen on Iranian television. The British government has issued a statement saying that it’s “unacceptable to show prisoners on television”. They’re right, of course. The Geneva convention forbids it. However their position is extremely weak. The United States and Britain both have been showing prisoners on television for a long time now, usually marching them around in hoods and with their hands bound behind their backs. So showing a film clip of unrestrained prisoners eating a luxurious meal and smoking cigarettes doesn’t quite compare.

Bee Honey

As part of the farm, I’m reading more and more about beekeeping. It’s always been a passion of mine and I’m crazy to try it, even though the start-up costs are somewhat daunting. Still, if I’m going to throw away some money … that’s as worthy an effort as anything else I can think of.

On various beekeeper blogs and such, everyone is complaining about the low cost of honey due to the massive dumping of cheap foreign honey in our economy. Argentina and China have been selling honey here for below cost  to chains like Walmart and such and the government hasn’t raised a hand to stop them. Honey, however, is a valuable byproduct of pollination, and that pollination alone is absolutely necessary for almost all of the American fruit crops and many other commercial agricultural endeavors. So unless beekeepers can sell their honey at a living wage, they won’t be able to remain in business. Wild bees alone can’t produce the high yields that American fruit growers have come to expect.

It seems to me, however, that there’s one thing that local honey producers have that beats out low prices and 12,000 mile supply chains: local honey. Yes, bees living in your area and making honey from your local plants are better for you. All the flowers and such that produce the pollen that makes allergy sufferers fear this time of year are also feeding the bees, who make honey from that local pollen. I’ve read before that studies show a correlation between the reduction of allergy symptoms and improved health simply from consuming honey local to your region. Maybe that’s what beekeepers should be promoting, no?

 

Following God's Will

So I’ve been worried about the finances of getting into this new home. There’s earnest money (means less of Ernest’s money), the cost of physically moving enormous mountains of mathoms, utility deposits, and a host of other miscellaneous costs to consider. I’ve got some money set aside from this, but I’ve been afraid it just won’t be enough. Both Kat and I are sold on this farm now, and we’re moving forward, but liquid assets free every month is problematic.

I need not have worried. We have prayed that God will make this path clear for us, and so he is. I came across a month-old email in my inbox that I’d never noticed stating that I had received a stock award. I went and looked, and it’s almost enough to cover the earnest money we offered, taking that worry completely out of the picture. There couldn’t be a clearer sign that we are on the path God wants us to follow. I should abandon my worries and just continue working God’s will, as best as my faulty human nature will allow me to.

Found it!

Found the farm we want, and we agreed on the house. We placed an offer this afternoon.

I walked the fence lines and inspected the fields. It’s heavy clover growing on thick clay. Not the best around, but it’s about the best Northern Illinois has to offer. There’s not just an enormous amount of work to get started, but there’s some. Enough to make me feel like I’ve made the place my own. Look for some pictures in the next few days.

Exhausted Househunters

Do you think Neolithic man and his lady cavewoman went all over creation looking for a cave that was just perfect? I’m exhausted. First cave was too small, the second one in a bad state of disrepair. Another one was next door to a Walmart. Finally we’re reconsidering a cave we looked at before. Here’s hoping things go our way.

Another Blessed Day

The sun is shining and me and the good lady wife sat out on the porch this morning for a few private moments before we head off to try and find our new home. The male birds are singing their little hearts out, hoping to impress their own good ladies and some lucky devils are carrying sticks to and fro, no doubt homebuilding. May their nests be blessed with love and safety this year as well.

Out the front porch I can see that the neighbors have had their house wrapped with toilet paper yet again. Ah, spring in the suburbs. Of course the debris is littering my yard as well and I doubt the fat bastard will bother himself to clean it up, but that’s a nuisance for later. For now, nothing is going to break my good spirits.

Wool!

I know that some of you who read this blog are knitting/spinning/wool enthusiasts. I don’t really understand all of that, but I’m trying to figure out whether or not raising rabbits for wool (fur) and meat is a decent proposition. Who would I sell the wool to? Or goat’s wool for that matter. Do you prefer to buy the stuff from wholesalers already dyed or would you buy from a farm, spin it and then dye it yourself if the price was right? How does this process work?

The Three Acre Question, continued

Thanks to all of you who commented on my three acre question. As an update, we're moving around in our search and looking in different areas, so we're finding a lot more property though some of it has completely unsuitable houses on it. We even found one set that had 52 acres, and that was reasonably priced though the home on it was awful. I'm tempted to look at it and see if we can't get a big double-wide hauled out there. One does what one can, right?

Anyway, looks like we can get more land than I thought, if we just look outside of the areas we started looking in. Though we still may end up on a 3 acre plot, I now know that we don't have to.

That said, I'm soliciting for book resources that might help me figure out high intensity farming on small plots of land. Any suggestions?

All Hail the Milk!

There's a dairy that mass produces milk and sells it in glass containers here in Chicago. The milk isn't spectacular, and it's not organic or as good as raw, but it's still better than the crap that comes in the plastic cartons. I've not bought much of it because it's more than twice as much, and this household goes through a LOT of milk. But feeling like a little splurge since I'm back home from Vegas (though I was thoroughly fleeced there), I bought a jug.

Me and the boys poured a round and toasted our future farming success as well as to the hope that someday we can be drinking fresh milk from our own cow. Nikki raised his cup and shouted, "All Hail the Milk!"

He's only six, but the boy gets it.

Three Disconnected Days

I’ve been so busy I haven’t gotten much done in the past three days. Ironic that. I have barely been able to call my wife. A ridiculous lifestyle you’re leading when you can’t even manage that. Probably 400 things I want to blog about but haven’t and now at the critical moment I find I’m not able to do so. However I will talk about my poor roommate, a guy named Wu. Poor Wu drew my name in the roommate lottery for this Vegas trip. No matter how bad everyone else is complaining about their roommate, at least they aren’t poor Wu.

My feet smell bad. Taking off my shoes after walking around in the hot Vegas sun is like a poison gas attack on a subway. His eyes started watering, which may have been a good thing because it limited his vision in the next few minutes when I proceeded to take off the rest of my clothes to get into the shower. I was in the military. I’m not shy. Poor Wu is. He uttered a pitiful little cry before frantically averting his eyes. After my shower, I had used all the towels and still left a substantial body of water (by Nevada standards) on the tile floor. Through this all he didn’t really summon up the courage to complain to me, though he did ask that I shut the door to the bathroom in the future when I need to move my bowels. Poor Wu. In Texas-China relations, I think I may have set us back at least thirty years.

My Three Day Monastic Retreat in Las Vegas

If you’re going to go on a monastic retreat, Las Vegas ain’t really the place. And it’s not really a monastic retreat, but rather a corporate pep rally where we all sit around and waste our shareholder resources and talk about what we’re entitled to but we aren’t getting. However, I’m trying to withdraw from all of that and spend the time in private meditation. Look inward for answers and try and still my mind to a degree to listen to God. It’s time away and there will be plenty of opportunities for solitude since I withdrew from all the corporate activities.

I wish America could see Vegas the way I see it. The ugly tourists so determined to have a good time on their vacation that they are surly and rude to everyone who might get in their path. The hypodermic syringes littering every alleyway. The pornographic pamphlets that litter the sidewalks. Satan walks alongside you, whispering into your ear with every step. Vegas is a carnival of earthly delights to distract us from the realities of living in an unsustainable and decidedly anti-Christian fashion. At the edge of the city, sand starts piling up on the sidewalks as the desert waits to reclaim the stolen land.

Three Acre Question

So research seems to show that 10-12 foraging goats per acre is acceptable and 80 chickens per acre is acceptable, so 3 acres (the right 3 acres) would seem to cover livestock needs for my family, at least. We’re not going to be in the position of selling additional chickens this way, but we can become self-sufficient for ourselves. The 3 acres would need to have at least one of those acres devoted to fruit trees (at the intensive orchard level of 332 trees per acre yielding up to 4-8 tons of apples per acre). Unfortunately, many of those plots we find that are three acres are all triangular or funny shaped. That would become quite aggravating should we try to work with that on a more permanent basis.

We’ll need to make some decisions if we buy a 3 acre plot as opposed to a 5 acre one. The 3 acre won’t let us do multiple things at the same time whereas the 5 acre allows for more experimentation. Luckily, a lot of the research is out there, published by various agricultural colleges and institutes.

Three Acres

Much of the property we’re seeing has an excellent house sitting on three acres. Is that enough? Granted, it’s more than I have now but is it enough to contain me and my agricultural interests for the future? I want a large garden, some small livestock, and a small fruit orchard with a handful of bee hives. Can I fit that into a small space? In reading, I keep coming back to the minimum sustainable acreage which everyone seems to think is 5 acres. I just don’t know about that.

Fallow Time

I haven't been blogging as much lately. I'm entering a fallow time. The hunt for a farm is consuming much of my mind. If you read my wife's blog, you'll notice she calls this the "hunt for the house" and I call it the "hunt for the farm". This pretty much explains the separate ideals we're trying to merge into a comfortable zone for both of us.

I also haven't been writing, but I can take some time away. Tomorrow we look at some more property and maybe we'll even find some we like. We've got a second realtor on the case, one that seems a little more on top of it and who helped us find our current rental home two years ago. Next week I'm off to Las Vegas for a few days on a business trip, which should be a lot of un-fun.

There's a big pot of soup on. Cream of potato and broccoli (because who can choose?).

Life is good, but intense right now.

A lack of intelligence

I got an early call from a customer I’ve been working with all week. The CIO is upset because their problem isn’t fixed. Last night a user complained of the application being ‘slow’ and so the server team rebooted it. I’ve spent three long fist-pounding-on-table days onsite with them trying to explain why they might want to do more than just turn the computer off and on every time there is a problem.

Dream home

7 acres, a nice size house that’s laid out in a way that pleases Kathy. A nice slope that would be perfect for just about whatever I decided to do there, short of growing mushrooms. It’s remote, but not too remote. And while it’s priced out of our range, it’s been on the market for a long, long time due to the very remoteness that we find attractive in it.

I’m praying for guidance that this is the house where God wants us, and perhaps that we’ll also be helping to answer the elderly widow’s prayers that someone come and buy her home. If it’s in God’s plan, then the path will be made clear. If not, then we’ll keep moving until we find what is.

The Path to Imperialism

After I vociferously complained about a particularly odious inter-library loan process my local lending library has adopted, the head librarian told me that there were two seats on the library council open and nobody running for them, so if I wanted to I should put my name down.

I thought about this, but the end result is that I don’t expect to be living here in this city for very much longer. Also, I’m really more of a resistance leader, not a governor. I can rabble-rouse with the best of them but in the end I am strictly an idea man. It’s someone else’s problem to worry about the details. Besides, if I held public office then some things would start having to change. In order to fix the rest of the broken things I’d have to move up to mayor, and then governor, and perhaps even president. After that, possibly imperial monarch of the entire planet.

No, probably best I just let it alone. For the sake of the world.

Bird count

Well, we drove up to Wisconsin to do some house hunting (found some!) so I missed out on a nice afternoon of birdwatching. Today’s total, however, stands at 11.

Welcome to the rest of your life, son.

I went down and got Eli’s birth certificate this morning. Problematic, at best. Those fat old women at the health department are not susceptible to Ernie charm and there’s no way to motivate them to even do their job. Yet the deed is done and Eli has now been transformed from 20 pounds of pink, squirming, Mama’s Little Baby into a legal entity in the United States. He’s a citizen now, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails. He’s now on the future taxpayer rolls and in line to receive whatever social security benefits may survive by the time he reaches an age to claim them. He can inherit property so long as he pays the government their pound of flesh.

At least we still get to hold him.

Where's our food, lady?

The birds seem to be returning and they’re all going straight to my neighbor’s bird feeder, which of course is empty. Sometime when I have some trees, I want bird feeders.

Bird day

American Robin at 9am this morning in the black walnut tree at the edge of the field. Looked like a solo male.

Male house sparrow, 10:30am in the choke cherry tree out the front window. Looks like several of them out there.

European Starling in neighbor's yard, feeding on ground at 12:00pm. Not a positive identification. Black body, smallish, with yellow bill. Purplish or bluish sheen across back and shoulders.

Male house finch at neighbor's feeder in tree at 12:20pm.

Northern red cardinal spotted at top of neighbor's tree during walk from 1-2pm.

Red tailed hawk spotted at top of neighbor's tree during walk.

Flight of Canadian geese headed north during walk.

Mallard ducks in river during walk.

Mourning dove in tree by river during walk.

(9 species so far)

House sparrows

We’ve got a group of house sparrows eating in the choke cherry tree right outside the front window. The tree ended up with literally hundreds of choke cherries, and I looked at one a few days ago and they survived freezing and unfreezing relatively well. The fruits are a bit mushy, but maybe that’s the way sparrows like them. They don’t smell bad (the cherries, not the sparrows) and certainly aren’t rotting. They’re ready to eat for all these returning birds. And what a delight for me to sit here and watch them.

Oh yeah. I’m supposed to be working.

Bah - Why are you wasting my time?

It’s a beautiful day. It’s above freezing. The snow is melting and the sun is shining. There are birds all over the trees outside, returning from their winter abode down south. I’m dying to get out there and see what I can see.

Instead, I’m stuck here answering technical questions for last-minute-morons who are about to get ambushed by the Daylight Savings Time change.

Sometimes I wonder if I want to live a more agrarian lifestyle simply because it’ll put me back outside where I want to be. Farming may be a lot more work for a lot less money, but your office environment is a lot nicer.

Wascally Wabbit

There’s been a rabbit poking around in my yard and garden for the past half hour, but every time I grab the camera he goes behind something or takes off running to some part of the yard where I can’t see him.

So you don’t get to see the fat rabbit whose antics I have been enjoying this morning. Sorry.

More coyote info

Lately we've had a lot of coyote activity. I've been reading up on the eastern coyote, the kind we have here in Illinois, and I think I understand now.

It's breeding season. Coyotes travel in mated pairs or very small family groups. Often individuals roam vast areas and the edges of human habitats. The trio that my wife saw at dawn a few weeks ago were undoubtedly a mated pair and probably one of their offspring. Coyotes mate for life.

Breeding season lasts for a very short time (less than a week) in February and then the gestation period continues until April. The size of the litter will depend on the food supply and the mated pair cooperate to hunt widely and bring down whatever they can.

So all the coyote activity I've been seeing lately is mostly post-mating season hunting runs.

Very cool!

Walk with Me Wednesday

I know it's not Wednesday yet, but I've got a huge assortment of photos from a week of walking that I need to do something with. And I'm not good with schedules anyway.

The middle kid. Yes, that's a lightsaber he's holding. Nikki wishes for nothing more in this world than to have a real, working lightsaber.

This is the eldest boy, making something out of snow. I don't know what he's doing. I rarely understand what he's doing.

In Irish lore, a Red Cap is a malicious goblin. Sometimes that applies to my little tawny-haired nosepicker, but at other times he reaches almost angelic levels of sweetness. Occasionally. Not today though.



I went out to oversee the activities.


We took a nice walk in the field to see what there was to see. Not too far. Little legs have trouble with deep snow and Mama is back in the cabin with some hot cocoa for us all.

I woke up late this morning, but I still managed to go for a long hike by myself. Down by the river I spotted this coyote. (Maximum zoom makes for bad photos)


If I go the length of the Hawk Hollow Nature Preserve then I can cross County Farm road and go into Mallard Lake Nature Preserve. The part of it that I can access on foot from my home is small and consists of mostly a giant landfill, but I hadn't went over that direction before so I crossed under the bridge to do so. Just off County Farm, nestled in a copse of trees, I found this cemetery.


Butting up against the base of the landfill is a small pond, completely frozen over. Standing on the berm to take this photo I froze my nuggets off. Wind blowing across a frozen pond is COLD.


The river blocks forward progress here where I spy a beaver-felled tree. The Mallard Lake preserve is 949 acres, according to their website, but I'm going to have to drive around the opposite direction, I think. Maybe when it's warmer I'll see if there's another way to cross the river and get access to the big section.


My perambulation disturbed a group of Canadian Geese. Sorry, gang. Just passing through.


Here's an old mushroom growing out of a dead tree. Long past its prime, it's not even identifiable. However, I wouldn't eat even prize morels growing within throwing distance of a Chicago landfill.

It was a beautiful morning, despite the foggy gloom and cold. Once again, God rewards me when I stroll through his creation.

Food Thoughts

Is local better than organic?

A tough decision. I think the organic-industrial produce found at Whole Foods is probably not that good of an idea. Who cares if it's pesticide free if it was grown in Venezuela? How does that help those of us still in the firm grip of ConAgra?

This quote really stood out:

"Should I assume that I have a God-given right to access the entire earth's bounty, however far away some of its produce is grown?" asks ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan in his 2002 memoir, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods

No, I don't think that I have that right. Plus, if we don't rebuild our local agricultural systems before we run out of oil, we're going to be in serious trouble. It's time to eat local. In all regards.

My ugly little plant

I picked this up at the greenhouse the other day. Mine doesn't look this good. Syngonanthus chrysanthus 'Mikado' is the scientific name. It's fragile and mine is already dying. Big brown spots on the stems and leaves.

In the future, I won't buy any of these fragile hybrid things. You can't even propagate the damn thing without violating someone's patent.

My friends, THIS is the chihuahua of houseplants.

Turkey Soup!

I don't know what you call this, but in mi casa we call it turkey soup. I cooked a big ol' pot of it last night and I'm looking forward to having it for lunch today, dinner tonight, and maybe some tomorrow if Kat doesn't beat me to it.

3 smoked turkey legs (uncooked)
5 cloves of garlic
2 red onions
8 or so red potato
2 tablespoons of the spice mix of your choice (any Mexican or savory will do. Nothing sweet.)
2 cups of noodles (elbow, spaghetti, whatever)
1 tablespoon of salt
1 stick of unsalted butter

Fill a big pot with water and bring it to a boil. Add salt. Add the crushed and chopped garlic along with all the spices. When water is at a rolling boil, drop in the 3 smoked turkey legs. I let them simmer for 15 minutes and it brought them to an internal temperature of 201 degrees, well past the 165 degree point normally needed.

Turn down the heat and take out the turkey legs. Pull the meat off of the bone and put bite-size pieces (big bites for me, little bites for the smalls) back into the pot, along with any chunks of skin or fat you pull off the turkey leg.

Add the chopped taters and onions and bring back to a rolling boil. Once boiling, add the butter and then let it simmer for about 30 minutes.

Since some of us must be gluten-free, I cooked the noodles in a separate pot and added them in the serving bowls. If you're not gluten-free, drop them noodles in probably at the last 10-15 minutes, or whatever the serving instructions say.

Enjoy that meaty, turkey goodness with friends and family.

Mr. Moneybags

It looks like we may be able to get a home loan on decent terms after all, despite my shaky credit. Yes, not only have I been a borrower in the past, indulging in the sin of usury, but I have been a BAD borrower. Now I'm asking for a little more. The last I hope to get.

Some of you are ahead of me on the path I'm taking. You've already left the city and found a small rural piece of property to raise your family. I'm asking for your advice. How did you do this? What steps did you take?

Today's Activities

Today is the day I do the things for people that I promised to do but haven't. I've been slothful in these things and I need to ask for their forgiveness. The problem is, I didn't want to do these things. Deep down. On the surface I was fine with it, but internally there's some irritation or anger that has made it so easy to put off for another day. I told myself that I'm doing them a favor so they shouldn't complain about how long it takes me to do it.

This isn't their fault. If I didn't want to do it then I should have never agreed, or in one instance, volunteered. Having done so, then I should go at it with a better sense of responsibility than I have shown.

Dogs

Last night I caught a few minutes of one of those kennel shows on television. Don't ask why the idiot box was on in the first place .... it was a weak moment and I was trapped in front of it with a sleeping baby.

On the screen were various of the'toy' breeds in all their bug-eyed glory.

Now my understanding of dogs is that the original form was wolf-like when first domesticated. Then someone originally said, "my dog is fast and your dog is fast so we'll get fast puppies."

But with the toy group, did someone say, "My dog is ugly and yours is ugly so if we keep at it then generations from now some fussy little gay man in a baby blue turtleneck will be able to prance it around a ring."

I guess to each their own. I'm not going to be overly judgmental today. Yet I like dogs that were bred for a purpose, be it that purpose to pull a cart, to guard your house, or to fetch rats out of a hole. Form following function.

The thing to keep in mind, however, is that the further you get away from a wolf-shape and a wolf-design, the more inbreeding that had to occur.

Don't believe in global warming?

In some ways, I think Al Gore and his celebrity lifestyle (and enormous electric bills) has done more to actually discredit global warming than anyone else. I don't know what else we could have expected from a politician, but perhaps some real harm has been done here.

The best argument that skeptics can come up with against global warming is that we can't prove it's happening. We don't have enough data, they say. We have no way of knowing if it's really occurring or if we're really the cause.

Well, when it comes to global warming, running out of oil, and political collapse ... I have essentially the same take on them:

If you want to live as if these things will never happen, then you had better be right.

Fuzzy Seeds

Well, the coffee filter method for germinating seeds didn't work out very well. After 8 days, only a few of the pepper seeds showed signs of germination (tiny little feelers sticking out from the expanded seed hull) and the others had grown mold.

I put the pepper seeds in a soil mixture and watered them heavily. We'll see if that works to sprout anything.

The potato plants I put in water are doing well. They now have a pretty decent root system and have changed color from that sickly flesh-color to a more natural green. One of them has little leaves beginning to unfold. The problem is that the potato itself is rotting in the water and a hairy fungus looking thing is spreading out across them. Not sure how to resolve that at this point other than putting them in the ground, and I have no ground to do so. It's under 2 foot of snow right now. I might could make do with a pot for now and transplant them later on in the spring. May try that.

It's a lazy weekend. We're trapped by the weather so I'm not going anywhere. Time to get some writing done as well as time spent with the family. Life is good.

A snippet

I thought I'd share with you a brief bit of one of my stories. This is from Year of the Wendigo. Mekwi, a Penobscot Indian, is telling the heroes how he acquired his grasp of English. (Pardon the lack of indentation. HTML doesn't lend itself well to storybook form.)

“Your English is very good,” Angelo commented after a time. The terrain had leveled out and left him breath for discussion as well as walking.
“An amusing tale, that,” Mekwi said. “When I was a young man I was an idler and a poor hunter, always bothering the young women and getting into trouble. My father noticed that I was alike to the missionaries who also plagued him and thus sent me far away to seminary school in Philadelphia.
“I walked there for many days and upon arriving, found that the white man would not teach me, even of his God, without payment. White men do very little without payment, I have found. I could not return to my village and face my father, so I stayed and exchanged work for knowledge. I did work for the white men in the school that the lowliest squaw would not do and in exchange they taught me of their God.”
Angelo’s jaw dropped. “You went to a seminary school in Philadelphia?”
“Yes,” Mekwi said, mildly amused at the Italian’s restating of the facts. “But it was no good. I left after a year.”
“Why is that?” Tobias asked, following along behind Angelo.
“One day, their chief came to me and said, ‘John’, for that was the white man’s name they had given me. He said, ‘John, you are neither a very good student nor a very good Christian. If you wish to stay here you must try harder.’”
Angelo laughed out loud and Mekwi turned and gave him a perplexed look. Motioning for him to continue, Angelo stifled any future outbursts.
“I asked him what I must do to become a good Christian,” Mekwi said. “He replied that I must act charitably towards my brothers, not chase women, not drink alcohol, and give up tobacco.”
“Noble goals,” Tobias said.
“I thought about it the entire night,” Mekwi replied. “I thought about what I had learned about the white men and what I had observed in my time in Philadelphia. Eventually I decided that if white men who were born to it could not become good Christians, than I, as an uncivilized Indian, had little chance of ever becoming one either. When the sun came up I had left my white man’s clothes and name behind and started out towards the mountains and my people.”
Angelo could control himself no more and was laughing so hard he had to sit down. Mekwi looked nonplussed and Tobias stood there calmly, only a thin line of his smile betraying his thoughts.