By Alex Haigood

It seems today that the ability to drive a standard transmission is becoming a lost art. In my younger days, if you couldn’t use a clutch, you couldn’t drive. My first three vehicles, two trucks and a car, were all standard transmissions. I would say many young people today have no idea how to drive a car unless it has an automatic transmission.

That probably has a lot to do with the fact that not many stick shifts are made anymore. Everything, even trucks, comes standard with automatic transmissions. There are some sports cars you can still get with a standard, but even those are few and far between.

I knew as a kid that if I wanted to drive and get my license as soon as I could, I would have to learn how to drive a standard. Fortunately, I had a lot of relatives who lived in the country, so I did most of my learning on dirt roads and in the pasture.

I suspect that not many young folks today have any idea what “three on the tree” even means. For the record, that means you had three forward gears, and the gearshift was on the steering column.

I have two memorable stories from my early days of learning to drive a standard. The first was when my dad let me drive a flatbed truck carrying some sheet metal. I popped the clutch a little too fast and almost completely unloaded the truck. We had to back into something to push the material back up on the bed.

The second story involved my uncle, who let me drive while I was on his ranch. I had pulled up to a stop sign on a gravel road that crossed a farm-to-market road. I was stopped on an incline, and my uncle pulled his truck right up behind me. I sat there thinking that when I let off the brake, I was going to start rolling backward into his truck. I sure didn’t want to do that.

So I overcompensated, hit the gas, spun the tires, and threw gravel and dirt all over his truck. All I could see in my rearview mirror was a cloud of dust and dirt. Fortunately for me, he was good-natured and laughed about it. To tell you how long ago that was, he radioed me on his CB and asked if I did that on purpose.

I was fortunate to get to drive early in life in the country and learn the lost art of the standard transmission. Those were fun times. Maybe I need to order me a sports car.

By Tony Dean

Tumble windmillgrass is a short, compact perennial bunch grass that is adapted to almost every corner of Texas.  It can grow on almost any soil, but prefers coarse textured soils. 

The most obvious characteristic about Tumble windmill is its large seed head sporting 10 to 16 laterally spreading branches, each approximately two to six inches long, arranged in one to three whorls.

When mature, the seed head will break off and be caught up in the wind, making Tumble windmill one of the great wanderers of the plains.  It can tumble great distances, spreading itself in the process.  This wanderer seems to like parking in your garage on windy days, as well as dancing around windy corners of buildings and any other place the wind decides to carry it.

Tumble windmill can also spread by short stolons.  The upper leaves are very short, while the lower leaves are often much longer. The leaves are light green with a purplish seed head that fades to pale reddish at maturity.

Tumble windmillgrass provides poor forage for livestock and wildlife, although most grazers will use the forage in early spring when tender.

Since Tumble windmill can grow in poor soil conditions, it is useful as a component for a prairie grass mix used on disturbed areas. This grass does not usually dominate a pasture but can often be found in smaller amounts.  Proper grazing use along with rotational grazing can cause the plant to be replaced with higher successional plants.

Unless you are a fan of Dickens and Doyle, geese probably aren’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think of poultry. But maybe they should be. And the aim of this article is to get you acquainted with the aristocrat of poultry.

Let’s start with the basics. Geese are domesticated waterfowl. Twelve breeds are recognized by the American Poultry Association, but dozens more are available. Much like ducks, all domestic geese breeds descend from two species. The overwhelming majority of breeds originate from Greylag geese (Anser anser). This species is native to Europe and Central Asia. These are the stockier, heavy geese that feature prominently in German fairy tales as a symbol of wealth and which Victorians loved to consume at Christmas. These geese come in various sizes, colors and dispositions. Here are a few examples: Cotton Patch geese are a small, variably-colored, extremely heat tolerant landrace native to the South. These were raised to consume weeds in cotton fields in the days before commercial herbicides. They are quite rare today and lay a variable number of eggs. American Buff geese are medium-sized, tan colored, very docile geese of uncertain origin. They are excellent meat birds. They are decent layers and wonderful mothers. Toulouse geese are the largest breed at up to thirty pounds. This ancient French breed is dark grey in color. They are bred to become very fat and so must be managed carefully to maintain fertility. They are very gentle, but require somewhat more shelter than other breeds.

A native of parts of China, Mongolia and Russia, the Swan Goose (Anser cygnoides) gave us both the Chinese goose and the African goose. Both have large bulbs on their heads and are similarly colored, but are otherwise very different. African geese are quite large, maturing at around twenty pounds and prized for their meat. These gentle giants are often recommended for beginners. Chinese geese are the egg champions of the goose family. They produce multiple clutches in a year, equaling up to a hundred eggs annually. They are small geese with males weighing about twelve pounds and females ten. They are nervous and the loudest breed, but this makes them suburb as “watch geese” and perhaps the best all-purpose breed.

Now that we are a bit acquainted with various breeds, we can find out just why someone may want to keep geese. Before we go over their benefits, you may be surprised to learn something surprising about geese. Geese are so rarely seen in the United States today that they can seem unusual, even exotic. As such, you may reasonably expect that geese are hard to manage, require expensive feeds and must be waited on hand and foot. The surprise is that geese are actually significantly easier to take care of than chickens. In fact, I would venture to day that geese are the lowest maintenance poultry there are.

Geese are unique among poultry in that the vast majority of their diet is made up of grass. Some meat birds are raised entirely on grass. It may be a good idea to supplement their grass with some chicken feed and scratch grains, but you will find that, when grass is plentiful, they will generally not bother with anything else. Geese are excellent pasture birds. A simple wire pen that can be moved every other day is enough to keep them happy. Unlike chickens, geese do not scratch up a yard and are not nearly as messy as ducks. If moved promptly, the area they occupied will swiftly grow back greener, thanks to all the free fertilizer, which they produce in abundance. Few geese can fly with any proficiency and even then, only when they are young. One wing’s feathers can be easily clipped, if their escape is a concern.

Geese are also almost absurdly hardy. They not only love rain, they seldom if ever go inside. Shade and perhaps a windbreak are their only real needs for shelter. In sub-freezing temperatures, they will scorn a shed and simply sit in the snow. There is a reason that goose down is so valued for comforters. It is extremely good at keeping them warm. The clever little birds know exactly when they need to bend down over their feet to keep them warm and hide their heads under their wings for the same purpose. In the summer, geese require shade and access to water at all times, but are otherwise unbothered. Geese keep their bodies very clean and are, owing to a small oil gland and their meticulous grooming, waterproof. They will soil water almost instantly, so do not worry about keeping it clean, just be sure they have enough. Without water, they may die in the heat and regardless (like ducks) cannot keep their bills and eyes clean, which could cause disease. Provide multiple water tubs to reduce fighting. Geese will dig up the mud around their waterers, so they should be moved each time they are filled. They will appear to be eating the mud, but are actually filtering it in the water through the serration in their bills. This is to find food, as well as small rocks for their gizzards. With a bit of caution, geese will weed a garden for you and clean it up at the end of the season.

Geese need little more from you than water, basic protection from predators and grass. In return, they offer a number of benefits.

In the first place, Geese offer a dark, rich, beef-like meat. Geese are often butchered between twelve and twenty weeks old. At this time, their weight will vary by breed, but as an example, the commonly raised meat breed Pilgrim geese will weigh around thirteen pounds. The carcass weight will be about sixty to seventy percent of the live weight. If one cares to process it, goose fat is highly valued in the culinary world and contains almost no saturated fat. It is comparable to olive oil and may be used in the same applications.

Especially if you have selected the Chinese goose, eggs are another offering of your new favorite poultry. These eggs are roughly the equivalent of three chicken eggs. A fried goose egg, sausage or bacon and a pancake makes a very nice dinner or hearty breakfast. Alternatively, you can incubate and hatch goose eggs quite easily. The goslings are so valuable that it’s a wiser financial move to only consume the first couple of eggs laid in the spring, which are usually infertile. Goose eggs are easily candled without any special equipment. Infertile eggs or those that die early on can be blown out and made into painted or dyed eggs.

If you hate waste, and wish to use all but the “honk,” so to speak, the feet are rich in collagen and highly prized in the rest of the world. The liver of a goose is extremely healthy and famous as foie gras. A more familiar byproduct of butchering is down, which can be made into extremely valuable bedding. Be sure to clean and dry feathers carefully first. If raised by hand and handled very often, geese will be quite friendly to their owners and make loyal pets. Some people will actually hold their geese in their laps and gently pluck the down from their flock.

Lastly, geese are often kept as watch animals. Geese are extremely observant night and day and will loudly complain when they see something unfamiliar anywhere in the vicinity. It takes a very short time to learn the difference between the normal sounds of geese and the sound of their panic. Please know that while they may scare away small predators and they are nearly always too big for hawks, a goose is largely defenseless against most predators. Keeping geese near a livestock guardian dog is a great idea. The extremely intelligent birds will rapidly learn the dogs are a source of safety and will alert the dogs to anything they see as a threat. Geese can usually be kept with other poultry without problems. They will not directly protect their avian brethren, but the others will learn to hide when the more observant geese voice a concern. In mixed flocks, the noble geese stride around the yard, aristocracy among poultry.

Geese are immensely versatile, the most low-maintenance poultry there is and should have a place on any property.