Aging

I have always been a big believer in a cash flow budget. While income statements and balance sheets are important, a small company like Riverview lives and dies on its cash flow. Because of that fact, I have always prepared at least a twelve month cash flow statement. Back in my younger years, I always added about $5,000 to my cash flow budget for car repairs on Pop's vehicle on an annual basis. It would make him furious, but I had the history and facts to back it up as a line item. Have you ever heard the old expression," what goes around ,comes around"? I have become my father, and am now catching hell from Cader IV, Greg, and Jerry.
 But, here's my story, and I'm sticking to it. About three months ago, as I was driving to work from the house on a frosty morning with windshield impaired visibility, a pine tree in my yard suddenly lurched into the side of my Expedition. Then yesterday as I was backing up to turn around, another pine tree suddenly crashed into the rear of this same poor Expedition. Cader asked me, " Dad, doesn't your car have one of those sonar systems that starts beeping if you are about to back into an object"?  I told him that it most certainly does. However, mine must be defective because it never goes beep,beep,beep. Instead, mine goes beep, BAM, at which point it is way too late to stop.Now the smart butts are threatening to bring the dozer down to my house and push down all of the pine trees within a 300 yard radius.
 There was a time in my life when  badly wanted to have a BMW. Now I am willing to drop the "W", and maybe settle for a Sherman Tank.While we do not have HOV lanes down here in the country on these dirt roads, I doubt that I would be able to use them were we to have them. I am noticing a reluctance for anyone to ride around in the woods with me. Rather, they are all volunteering for me to ride with them.
 We will start picking sweet corn on Monday; so y'all start visiting the grocery store next week and buy lots of fresh sweet corn! I will have more to report on the hunting operations later, but everyone on our mailing list should be receiving our summer newsletter by the first of next week at the latest.

Gnats

I read once that the industrialization of the south would never have occurred without the invention of air conditioning. I can believe and accept that fact. As much as I hate to admit it, I grew up in the south before that wonderful invention. All of our homes had high ceilings and attic fans. You can't miss something that you never knew existed; so I was completely comfortable without having a thermostat to turn back on a hot day,Now that I know about the joys of climate control, I am somewhat like the father of a good friend of mine who once said," Lord,please don't give it to me if you are going to take it away". Now folks a hot day down here is a day with the temperature in the mid to upper 90's and a relative humidity in the 60-70 range. It's not the heat that kills you, but that humidity will bring you to your knees. The only bad thing about those conditions I just mentioned is the absolute knowledge that it will get hotter in July and August. July and August in south Georgia can only be endured by a native.Some of us more mature natives try to make ourselves scarce during those months.
 Now if the invention of air conditioning allowed the industrialization of the south, the creation of gnats by the good Lord absolutely assures me that we will never be over populated in south Georgia. I give you Atlanta as an example. Atlanta is above the gnat line in Georgia. If it were below the gnat line, Atlanta would be a city of about 100,000 idiots rather than the several million who live there without having to contend with gnats. Unlike the gnats on the coast of Georgia, our little critters do not bite. If they did bite, there would be a zero population in my part of the world. However, they exist by the billions, and they all have one aim in life--to find the one orifice on your body and get in that opening. We are talking about eyes,ears, noses, and mouths in the case of homo sapiens. Since I now wear hearing aids, a gnat inside my ear sounds very similar to an F-16.
 I guess what really bothers me the most is wondering where the gnat in my mouth just came from. I am around dogs a lot, and tend to notice gnats congregating around dogs' derrieres. That same gnat sees me and heads straight for my mouth. Seeing as how I have observed that gnats tend to prefer butts over mouths, I think that I have come up with a solution all southerners should embrace. Let's slice a hole in our pants rear ends and quit wearing underpants!

Thanks to the geniuses in Washington we are being forced to buy a computer system and software that will track every crate of our sweet corn by the color,the grower,the crate,the field, and the particular planting all the way to your grocery store in your home town. This falls under the federal Food Security Act that evidently was passed by some non-farm politicians. The theory behind this is to protect the American consumer from having their food sources contaminated by a bunch of terrorists. Now think about this folks. We live in a little podunk community where everyone not only knows one another, we also know what model pick-up truck you drive,your family, and a ton of gossip on each individual who lives here. Don't you think that a terrorist would stick out like a fish out of water.

 At any rate, Cader IV and I left Tuesday morning for a 7 hour drive to south Florida to view the system that we have purchased and installed at our operation which is already in operation at Hugh Branch Inc. in South Bay, Fl. Cader IV said to me as we left," Pop,if you will drive from here to Valdosta which is about an hour and a half away, I will drive the rest of the way". Now that sounded like a plan to me since I had my IPad and needed to study for a board meeting. Little did I realize that Cader had evidently always harbored a fantasy of being a race car driver. I'm not certain whether I will be prepared for my board meeting tomorrow or not, but I am certain about two things. I am certainly glad that my Mom taught me to always pack extra underwear for a trip, and I am certain that I will never travel with him driving again without a Xanax in my pocket. Since I abhor my wife's backseat driving and loud breath intakes when I am driving, I never uttered a word. Of course, it is difficult to talk and pray at the same time anyway.

 we made it to south Florida and back safely, praise the Lord ! It was a productive and informative trip. I did want to share one observation with y'all about our trip. After driving through Pahokie, Belle Glade, Canal Point, etc., I have reached the firm conclusion that south Georgia does not have the red-neck market cornered! There are some "Bubba's" in that part of the world that could hold their own with the best I've ever seen.

For the two or three folks other than family who might read my occasional ramblings, I apologize for the lack of writing lately. I have a good reason for that which I will share with you shortly. I have often been asked why I have never written a book. I love to read, and always have a book or two going on my Kindle. It amazes me how great writers are able to string a long story together while keeping me wanting to read every word of it. My mind simply does not work that way. I think that I could be a decent short story writer, but I could never hold out to write an entire novel. Therein lies my reason for failing to post anything lately. This is the time of the year that I begin gathering information and thoughts for our summer newsletter, Summer Scene. I fear that I do not have enough good information to write both it and a blog at the same time without using some or most of the same material.
 However, I am almost finished with my first draft of the newsletter; so I should be able to come up with some new material shortly. One thing that I might do at some point in time is write my memoirs of the years of working here at Riverview as a "social director for the over-privileged", but I need for just a few more folks to pass away first. I do have some stories to tell! Before writing those stories, I keep reminding myself that life is like a jar of jalapeno papers. What I do today might bite me on my butt tomorrow!

We are experiencing the coldest and definitely the wettest April in my memory. Our Albany weatherman said that it is already the fourth wettest April on record, and we have another strong weather system moving in here the middle of next week. I am telling you that it is wet enough on Riverview right now to bog a buzzard's shadow.
 The rain has been great for our spring woods burning program. It definitely lessened the stress on the trees, and the new growth on the ground is sprouting green cover much sooner than normal. However, it has not been so sporty for the sweet corn farming operations. Unless we are growing hydroponic sweet corn due to the fact that a fair amount of our corn is under water at the moment, I have to assume that our yields will be off a good bit. Since all of the farmers in our area are in the same boat,literally and figuratively, maybe we will receive higher prices due to lower yields.
 Our trapping program is in high gear now, and we are having great success now as the trappers have finally gotten smarter than the trapees. We are breaking in a new bookkeeper at the moment, and I thought that she was going to have stroke this morning when she opened an invoice for a gallon of bobcat and a gallon of coyote urine. She had no idea how to code the bill, but was more concerned with what kind of place she worked at that purchased urine. Hopefully, she will stick around. If she does, I can guarantee you that she will see stranger things here. I once had an IRS auditor who did not like me very much for some strange reason. He also did not like or understand what we do here; so he classified us as a circus in his code book. Back in the old days, you could be ugly to those folks. Regretfully, I now fear my government more that I do Russia or terrorists.
 Speaking of terrorism, when we renewed all of our insurance policies, our agent tried to get us to buy terrorism insurance. I just have to tell you that I would consider us a very low value, but well-armed target for an attack. I declined that one, but I sure am glad that we renewed our flood policies. For those of you who visit us annually, you would have a difficult time imagining how high the Flint River is at the moment. We are not ready to break camp and move furniture yet, but we are definitely keeping a wary eye on the Flint. I can still recall my Dad saying to me," Son, dry weather will scare you, but wet weather will kill you". As usual, Pop was right.
 Well, I'm going to put my rubber boots on and mosey on out to the corn field to see how many tractors are stuck at the moment. I will chat with y'all later.

I spent a little time with Chuck this week observing his training program on these little English Cockers that we are integrating into our program as flushing and retrieving dogs. We are very excited about this program, and the few dogs we had ready to go last season were very well received. As a matter of fact, we had several guests who called and requested to hunt with certain dogs rather than guides. That somewhat offended the guides, but they took it with good nature.
 At any rate, the methods being employed by Chuck were so impressive, I asked him if I could send my wife, Martha, up to his facility for a day to see if he could train her to obey commands that good. Chuck, being smarter than he looks responded," Boss, this program has not worked on my wife, and I know that it would not work on Miss Martha. Besides that, I have young children, and need to stay alive for a while longer".
 I then checked in with Andy and Casey to see how our trapping program was going. After they informed me that "something" had drug one of their leg hold traps,chain, and log out of the ground and off into the woods near my house, I am reexamining my daily jogging route.We have caught some coons,possums, and skunks, but we are really after the coyotes. They are wily critters, and we will entice them into the fold in the next few days.
 The last thing that I want to mention is turkeys. I do not know why you turkey hunters get so all fired excited about the thrill of turkey hunting. For the past two weeks, I could have killed all of them I wanted to from my patio with a gun in one hand and a cup of coffee in another. But,like the males of all species, they will get stupid when they get females on their brains. One of my mentors when I was a young man just back at Riverview was a fine old gentleman named Lemuel Boulware. Mr. Lem once told me that he had reached the stage in life where the" Wall Street Journal" excited him more than the Playboy centerfold. I thought to myself," You poor old fellow". Humn, I'm getting closer to understanding that now although these turkeys have not figured it out yet.

spring burning season

This is definitely my favorite time of the year. To me, the control woods burning feels like the beginning of a new year. We rid ourselves of the residue of the prior year, and prepare to watch the new growth burst forth from beneath the majestic oaks and stately Longleaf pines. We have had two excellent days of burning with one very minor exception.
 Late yesterday, as I was enjoying the soothing sounds of the fire crackling through the underbrush blending with the sighs from the big pines as the winds stirred through them, my reverie was interrupted by the sound of a voice on the radio from one of the burning crews saying, "oh S---, the wind is shifting from the west to the south".Our trusty weather forecaster who predicts the weather like I do the stock market was wrong again. Thank goodness at the time we were burning some of our oldest timber that had only light cover underneath, and no damage was done other than to our professional pyromania pride. With just a bit of luck, we will finish up burning this week, and can begin preparing our habitat for another excellent quail hatch in another month or so when the ground cover will be perfect. In the meantime, we will be getting ready to trap our worst  predators that prey on nesting birds.