Ordinary Things

RAIN. I have been in California since early November, facing sunshine day after day after day. I have gotten used to it. And then today it's raining, and right away I get depressed and I wish the sun was shining, even though I live on a farm and I know we need the rain.

SNOW. LaConner artist Janet Laurel called me at 7:15 this morning. She is an early riser and a high energy woman. I am barely awake at that time, but I welcome her calls, because I am inclined to be gloomy and her voice cheers me up. She said, looking out her window, there was six inches of snow on the ground and it was 18 degrees cold out there -- really cold, but the skies were diamond clear. LaConner is all socked in by the snow.

Janet loves to drive around -- she will zip down to Seattle on short notice, and fight all the way through traffic and then come back hours later and still be energetic for some other project.

But today Janet is housebound -- not by the snow -- but she is confined to her living room sofa, recovering from surgery on her foot. The doctor said, "Janet, stay off your foot, or it won't heal." And she is not allowed to drive her car.

This is not easy for her to do, being so energetic. I said to her "Do you knit or embroider?" She said no. But she's an artist, so I said, "You get a small sketch book and start sketching. That will use up some of your restless energy."

She agreed that was a good idea. We talked about other things for a while and then I said, "Goodbye, I gotta eat breakfast."

But it's still raining. I have to change my farm routine on account of the rain. On most days the first thing I do, upon arising at 6:30 a.m., is put on my coat on and my shoes over my pajamas and walk over to the chicken coop and let the hens out. Then I feed them and gather what eggs might be there.

Then coffee and journal and email and shower and eat.

Then work -- but this is where I am adjusting. Yesterday, knowing the rain was coming, I spent extra time in the garden planting seeds.

I planted shelling peas, 51 days to harvest. I planted turnips in the other row, and I snuck a row of radishes in between, because the radishes will come and go quickly.

I also planted two rows of beets.

I avoided planting carrots. They make a problem for me because the seeds are so tiny, and I think I just have bad luck or some kind of mental block when it comes to growing carrots.

Do you ever have that problem in your garden? Like some vegetable, and you just can't seem to grow it, even if you try year after year?

Tomatoes, for instance. I used to have bad luck with tomatoes, but this year I feel that my luck has changed. This year I am going BIG on tomatoes, Brandywine, Heirloom, Zebra Stripe, Grape-size and a few others. I believe the force is with me. I have the seedlings started in the greenhouse, and I watch them with loving care. The danger is over-watering. If you water them too much you can love them to death. Better to have a little faith and not watch them too closely

But that was yesterday. It's too wet to work in the vegetable garden today. I might plant some more flats of seeds in the greenhouse, but we are running out of space. The greenhouse is close to a 1,000 square feet, but it is full of 3,000 dahlia tubers, all carefully marked and identified, all 200 varieties, all laying in 3 inches of compost on tables -- it's very complicated. I would have to give you a seminar on how to grow dahlias, but this is the commercial part of the organization, so dahlias, and the space to grow them, are the Prime Directive on this little farm, this little piece of heaven by the Ventura River.

We were planning to have a tractor class today. Andy was going to show me the tractor and how it runs -- it's fairly simple, a diesel engine with hydraulic power to the front scoop and power take-off in the rear.

We were going to scoop out and re-arrange the manure pile. It's getting to be quite a pile, considering that we have five horses boarded on the farm. They generate two to three cartloads of manure per day. It's black gold, but it has to composted first, and we need the tractor to up-end the pile.

But it's too wet. Okay, I know what you're saying. If we were really hard-core farmers we wouldn't let a little rain stop us from the tractor work.

Except there are plenty of things to do around here that do not involved getting wet and muddy. My Mom and Dad sent me to college and I am an educated man. So I will apply myself agriculturally but keep my socks dry at the same time.

Ordinary things. I am writing about these ordinary things because the news is full of mass demonstrations and violence across the Middle East. It's scary and it's hopeful, and some young people are having the best time of their lives, and some other young people are wounded and dying, and some other older people, in those blessed countries, are wishing with all their might that it was just back to normal and be quiet and ordinary, like it is here on the farm.

So I am writing about these ordinary things on the farm as a gesture of solidarity to the struggling Arab people -- their countries will get back to being ordinary again, and I hope and pray with all my heart that it's a better place than it was.


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--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog: Frog Hospital

send mail to:

Fred Owens
7922 Santa Ana Rd
Ventura CA 93001

This Writers Life

Kentucky author Wendell Berry courted arrest when he and some friends occupied the Governor's office. Berry objected to the coal mining which strips the mountains of soil, and this kind of civil disobedience was a very strong move on his part, way past his usual comfort zone of essay-writing and speechifying.

Is Wendell Berry a farmer or a writer? Can you be both? Can you do both well?

I heard Noam Chomsky speaking with Amy Goodman on her TV news show, Democracy Now. Chomsky is an important and very intelligent idiot, known for the volume and quantity of his prose. My take is that if you spend enough hours typing you might get something right and Chomsky does.

Chomsky should write less -- you can't be an expert on everything even if you are the smartest guy in Boston.

From Bahrain to Wisconsin. But something is going around, from Bahrain to Madison, Wisconsin. People are in the streets in both places -- is this only a coincidence, or is some there some kind of surging energy coursing across the globe, like a wave about to crash on distance shores, fueled by atmospheric changes we can barely understand?
Is it from the left? the right? forward? backward? I have no read on this.

Brought to you by Facebook. This revolution is brought to us by the faceless billionaires who operate Facebook and Google.

I am glad -- don't get me wrong -- glad that the young people are using social media to get around the current regime in the Middle East. But I warn them to remain skeptical of the new powers and the new media. Use Facebook -- I do -- but don't trust it.

In Wisconsin, the governor is selectively breaking public employee unions. He is targeting the teachers and letting the police and firemen keep their arrangements. I would listen to the governor's argument if he wished to abolish or reduce the power of ALL public employee unions.

One is reminded of Governor Calvin Coolidge in Massachusetts when he broke the police union in Boston in 1919. This staunch stand against public employee unions won him a vice-presidential nomination in 1920, and then he became President when Warren Harding died in office.

At least Coolidge took a consistent and clear position.

But when you pick on the teachers, and let the cops and firemen take a pass -- because they supported your election last year -- well that just stinks of politics, and I oppose the whole thing.

What I read: "Police and fire unions, which have some of the most expensive benefits but who supported Mr. Walker’s campaign for governor, are exempted."

The Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, trouble erupts in Bahrain, and concerned citizens like me rush to Google and Wikipedia to find out where this little island IS. We don't even know where it IS, or what they do there, except it says that the Navy's 5th fleet is based on this little island.

Why is the fleet there, for the fishing?

Let's back up to last week's revolution in Egypt. We all know a little about Egypt. Many Americans have been there as tourists. The pyramid appears on the backside of our dollar bills. Our Biblical heritage depicts stories of the pharaohs, and we older folks can't help but picture Charlton Heston as Moses, leading his people out of Egypt.

We know SOMETHING about Egypt, but NOTHING about Bahrain.

So why is the fleet there? For the oil. We need to bring the fleet home and get off the oil economy. We can do this in five years if we ever really wanted to.

As clumsy and as cynical as our foreign and military policies can be, we meddled in the affairs of Egypt and Israel and helped maintain a broader peace. We have done more good than harm in that area.

But the Persian Gulf is nothing but war, death and oil. And I say get out now.

Okay, that's enough opinion. The title of this piece is "the Writer's Life." That's me, the writer.

Last week on Wednesday, I woke up feeling lonely and I was tired of working on these four acres. I was irritated at my co-workers for no apparent reason.

By the next day I figured it out. I ain't a farmer, I'm a writer.
I don't know how or why Wendell Berry does it, but it drives me nuts. Farming is a clear second choice for me, as a way to make a living. Writing is my first choice, but it always leaves me broke and breathless.

I figured by this time in my life, I would have some modest success, a few books sold, a newspaper column that paid, a writer-in-residence gig -- something. But it didn't happen.

That's why I went back to work at the farm last summer, and glad of it. But I will never be a first-class farmer like Dave Hedlin, the man I worked for back in the Skagit.

I just get tired of it. That's what happened to me last week.

Fortunately, they are not working me to death here at Love House Dahlias. I only work part-time and I can adjust my schedule, so I have begun spending more time at a house in Altadena -- not a farm, but a home filled with books and a darn good high-speed Internet connection. I go there to write.

But I do not like this multi-tasking life, trying to farm and write at the same time. You end up doing poorly at both. I don't know how Wendell Berry does it.

The Seven Storey Mountain is Thomas Merton's autobiography, a tale of his spiritual journey, one of the great confessions, from a man whose confessions are worth knowing.

The confessional genre is the most debased in current literature. People feel compelled to bare their souls in blogs and Facebook rants, and they have NOTHING to say. It's awful.

Well, it wasn't Thomas Merton's fault. We were put on this earth to commit interesting sins -- that is why God does not destroy humankind. I hope we never bore Him.

Merton preached, hypocritically, against worldly fame and fortune. His books were best sellers. He was a media star at the time. Merton was a Trappist monk with a vow of poverty, but the revenue from his book sales made him a great power within his monkish community.

That was his sin -- success and wealth, and he enjoyed it.

I have committed some interesting sins. Those are the ones I find worth writing about. But Merton never "told all" in his confessions and neither will I.

The Style of Leo Tolstoy. I am at page 771 of War and Peace. It is such a wonderful and very long novel -- 1,300 pages altogether, as broad and as deep as Russia.

I was trying to identify Tolstoy's style of writing and became astonished. He has no style! That's why he's so good.

Style has its place with lesser works and lesser writers. I have a style, a way of saying things. But I am going to rise above this. I am going to write like Tolstoy -- with no style, just the story itself. What a grand ambition.

Harvey Blume. Harvey Blume is from Brooklyn and lives there now. I met him in the 1990s when we both lived in Boston. We both attended the Tikkun salon on Sunday mornings, a discussion group of bright Jewish Intellectuals. I especially remember Debbie Osnowitz -- she could speak, off the cuff, in whole paragraphs. But Harvey was a pretty good talker himself.

Anyway, Harvey wrote this piece and I liked it. Boomers -- Part One.

Wendell Berry, Noam Chomsky, Thomas Merton, Leo Tolstoy and Harvey Blume. These are some writers I admire although I did not find anything good to say about Chomsky. These are guys I hang out with. They say writing is a lonely occupation -- not so. I live with these people, learn from them, steal from them, despise them, love them -- and other writers too.


--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog: Frog Hospital

send mail to:

Fred Owens
7922 Santa Ana Rd
Ventura CA 93001

10,000 years of farming in Egypt.

The silt comes down on the annual flood, making the soil fertile. The ancient people began to grow more food than they needed. It was the surplus that made it possible to build the pyramids and the cities that came to follow.

The great city of Alexandria rose at the mouth of the Nile, a center of ancient learning and trade. Learning was possible because with enough food came the leisure to read and write books, and with a surplus of food there was something to trade.

Egyptians traded wheat to the Greeks who would have starved on their soil-poor rocky shores that were only fit for grazing goats.

In later centuries, Egypt became the breadbasket of the Roman Empire.

Trade and knowledge -- it was the farm that made it possible.

Farmers in Egypt and elsewhere tend to be more conservative. The country people, since those early times in Egypt, were very conservative. And in all places and times, in our nation as well, the country people have been more conservative, more old-fashioned, resisting change and clinging to orthodoxy and the ways of their fathers.

The city people work for changes, admire fashion, trends, and ideas, pursue novelties, develop progressive philosophies, concoct startling new theories, and they want to overthrow the established order.

But the city people have always depended on the agricultural surplus from the conservative country side.

That is a curious mutual dependency, which began in Egypt.

So the old Egyptian farmer said, "It would be so much fun to be in a riot and get my fair share of abuse. But I am too old for that now, so I think they should all be arrested."

He did not trust those young upstarts in Tahrir Square, even though he had once felt that way himself.

But everywhere, across Africa, voices rose crying out for change.

In Zimbabwe they heard the call and said, "Dear Mr. Mubarak, When you leave, will you take Robert Mugabe with you?"

In South Africa, they upheld an image counter to the stubborn-ness of Mubarak.

Nelson Mandela was the real hero of African statesmanship. It was not his years in prison, not even his service as a President of a liberated South Africa. No deed was more important than his final choice -- to step down after serving one term. Mandela went home when his job was done, and that made him the best man in Africa.

But Mubarak could not learn that -- he had to be shown the door.

I am glad that Mubarak will stay in the country side, in a resort villa near the Red Sea.. His plea was heartfelt -- "I will die in Egypt."

He may deserve exile or criminal prosecution. Yet it will be a strong testament to the strength of the Egyptian people if they can let him live out his days quietly -- because they no longer fear him.

It's just kind of classy -- if they let him go.

No Jobs for College Graduates in Egypt. They are educated but unemployed, by the millions in Cairo, festering on their Blackberries and iPhones, boiling with knowledge.

This revolution began in Tunisia with a college graduate who got tired of looking for a job that did not exist, an office job where he could wear office casual clothes, like he had seen from videos on YouTube, designing and selling Arabic software.

No jobs existed like that. But he was determined and he borrowed a cart, loaded it with orange and bananas, and began to pursue the noble occupation of fruit peddler.

This man is my hero, I too am a college graduate, I too have sometimes worked peddling fruit.

But this young man was harassed and beaten by the Tunisian police because he had no permit and no money to bribe them.

It was his outrage and self-immolation that sparked the revolution in Egypt.

What this means, and I tell this to the young men and women in Tahrir Square -- you are know free to become fruit peddlers. You can repair shoes, you can open a cafe -- seriously, I'm not kidding.

Because there is no way on earth that any new democratic government in Egypt can provide millions of professional-level jobs to college graduates. It won't happen unless they hire a million more bureaucrats who will then burden the working public with massive taxation and regulation and by doing so, create a government as bad as the one they just got rid of.

No, that won't happen. If the government is good at all, it will stay out of the way, and permit and allow the young people to sell fruit from a cart, and build up the country that way.

That would be a good thing with so many young people wanting to work.

Egypt imports food. Egypt was self-sufficient in food until 1960. And let's not forget the long-term time frame. Egypt was self-sufficient in food for 10,000 years and was often a net exporter. In Roman times Egypt was the most valued province because of the vast wheat crops, harvested for the hungry thousands in Rome.

But not now. Now Egypt imports 40 per cent of its food. The production of food has not kept pace with the increase in population.

Where is the is freedom? Where is the independence, if you can't feed your own people?

So the young college graduates in Egypt had better face this problem squarely. Take your Twitters and your Facebook and your Google and start talking about food independence. That's where the work is.

Grow more food. The future of Egypt depends on better farming.

--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog: Frog Hospital

send mail to:

Fred Owens
7922 Santa Ana Rd
Ventura CA 93001

Out of Africa

Never forget that Egypt is in Africa -- it is clearly and most definitely an African nation. Only look at the map to confirm this fact. The media repeats endlessly the Arabic character of Egyptian culture -- true, but not true enough.

Egypt is African. The great book of the Bible is the Exodus, about going "out of Africa" -- a sentiment repeated endlessly in Jewish liturgy -- "Thank God we are no longer slaves in Egypt."

Thank God we got out of Africa.

Out of Africa -- The title of Isak Dinesen's wonderful book, and the movie of the same name, with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep.

Out of Africa -- the story of the human race, is it not? The human race began in Africa and lived within that vast continent on the savanna for a hundred thousand years, and another hundred thousand years, and we did not leave, expand or evolve until a mere 60,000 years ago -- although scientists keep adjusting that figure up and down, but they all agree -- we came "Out of Africa" and spread across the globe.

And the people of Africa -- always mentally include Egypt, even though it is also Arabic and part of the Middle East -- but the people of Africa endorse the findings of scientists -- that Africa is the true home and mother of the human race.

This all happened before the invention/development/discovery of agriculture, and we need to know what happened before that, before we planted crops and built cities and learned to read and write.

That is what we call pre-history, which is actually pre-literature and pre-agriculture.

Almost all pre-history took place in Africa, where the Nile and the Congo Rivers flow, and the River Niger, and the Limpopo and the Zambezi Rivers flow. Those are the principle rivers.

So, as events unfold in Cairo, I just want to remind people that this is a story about Africa.

Who Cooks for You? I'm going to write a book about Africa, but not until next winter. I'm too busy on the farm right now.

But the book will be about, or developed from, the year I spent in Africa in 1997.

I would like to call it "Out of Africa" or "Exodus" or "Heart of Darkness" but those titles have been taken. Well, I have plenty of time to think of a title.

The book will be classified as fiction. It has to be fiction. There are no facts in Africa -- I never found any. Anything that looked like a fact in Africa turned out to be a mirage, or the first layer of a hidden truth, which also turned out to be a mirage.

All non-fiction books written about Africa are quite dubious, in my opinion.

So the book will be fictional, and one chapter will be titled "Who Cooks for You?" which is the story of my romance and engagement to an African woman.

She -- She -- I'm not even sure of her real name, but I met her near the Matopo Hills, which is clearly, or possibly, the site of King Solomon's Mines, as described by H. Rider Haggard.

You understand? It will be so much easier to write this if I just let it be a fictional story.

These kinds of stories are really necessary for understanding Africa, and understanding the current crisis in Egypt.

Well, I have to go out now and tend the sweet peas and look after the horses. We had a good rain yesterday -- what a blessing.

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--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog: Frog Hospital

send mail to:

Fred Owens
7922 Santa Ana Rd
Ventura CA 93001

Pale Yellow Primroses

I bought seven pale yellow primroses in four-inch pots, to plant on the path to the Johnny.

It was a triumph -- Andy and I moved it yesterday from in back of the barn. It had been sitting there for at least four years. "It was here when we bought the place," Andy said. And the Johnny has been used by itinerant workers who stayed in the bunkhouse. It was cleaned and emptied regularly by a company in Ventura, and that cost $50. A large tanker truck drove into the yard and a cheerful fellow hooked up a long hose and drained the Johnny -- that hardly took five minutes and he was gone to the next place.

All for the better sanitation of these lovely acres by the Ventura River. But it was too far from the bunkhouse to the barn. Our loyal and efficient workers deserved a sweeter moonlit path, should the need arise in the wee hours.

So we figured to move it in back of the bunkhouse, where you couldn't see it, but it was much closer.

Yesterday, we hitched the Johnny to the tractor with a rope and dragged it over. We had to manhandle it into position for the last twenty feet. That took some sweat and strain, but we were close to the finish and almost inspired at that point.

Andy and I were quite proud of getting it done with such dispatch. There it was, the Johnny in a better place. I wiped it down for cobwebs, and I thought we might burn sage to honor the Johnny's new home.

But it was at dinner that evening when I realized the proper and living benediction would be a primrose path. Not a metaphor, heck no. But real pale-yellow primroses glistening in the moonlight on a path from the bunk house door, around the side and then to the back to the Johnny.

So I drove to Wal-Mart on Saturday morning to buy the flowers. It was crowded when I got into the parking lot, I was listening to FM radio -- Live at the Metropolitan Opera from New York. The third act of Rigoletto was just beginning.

I heard the famous aria, La Donna E Mobile as I parked my car. What a thrilling song. The woman is fickle, the tenor cries. She tears your heart and fills your life with beauty but you can never trust her.

How true! But if we die of love, is there a better fate? Yes, leading me down the primrose path with pale yellow flowers.

Well, I guess I'm getting my metaphors mixed up, but it all seems to matter -- the bunkhouse and the loyal crew, the flowers that grace our lives, the determined teamwork between Andy and myself, and the fabulous music that beams across the continent on electronic waves -- live from New York City, connecting us to the wider world.

Serious Work. We actually do some serious horticultural work here at Love House Dahlias. We're not a big player in Ventura County which had more than $1.5 billion in farm sales last year, but we are a part of it, and we are generating real farm dollars. There's a future in this kind of work. I get pretty excited on many days because there is so much to do around here and so much to learn.

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Subscriptions and Signed Copies of the Frog Hospital Book. It used to be that you sent in $25 and did not get much more than my appreciation, but now you get a signed copy of the Frog Hospital book.

This book is a treasure that will still be worth reading ten years from now.

Send a check for $25 to Fred Owens, 7922 Santa Ana Rd, Ventura CA 93001. Or go to the Frog Hospital blog and pay with PayPal.


--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog: Frog Hospital

send mail to:

Fred Owens
7922 Santa Ana Rd
Ventura CA 93001

Rainfall plus news of sweet peas, dahlias, and horses

FARM NEWS

December rains make the Ventura River flow. December's unexpected rainfall has put a lot of water in the Ventura River. It's been dry so far into January, but the river is still flowing.

I was out there this morning to look -- the river is only 150 feet from the motor home where I live on this small farm. So I walked past the arena where the horses are ridden, then through the brush, and across the small round rocks, and I heard the river rushing.

It is such a sweet sound, clear and cold water pouring over the rocks like a mountain stream. Like a real river, which it is.

We are seven miles from the mouth, where the Pacific Ocean waves pound against sand bars, piling up sand to form a lagoon, ideal for pelicans.

I am often driving down to Ventura Point where this river meets the ocean.

A thousand years of rainfall have created a small point, jutting out from the smooth curve of the shoreline.

The point makes long cascading waves with curling tubes -- ideal for surfers seeking long rides.

I come to watch the surfers watch the waves. Surfers wait in their cars for good surf, watching the waves. Then they paddle out and wait and wait -- for the right wave.

This is a great teaching.

I'm going there -- to Ventura Point. I'm going in the next hour, after I finish this report.

Life and work is going well at the Farm. We planted about 8,000 sweet pea seedlings in seventy raised beds. That's a lot of sweet peas.

We cut river cane, which grows like a nuisance in the back of the farm -- but they make good stakes and we needed several hundred stakes, to string up the netting, to serve as a trellis for the sweet peas, climbing to the sky, all 8,000 seedlings in seventy raised beds.

It was a lot of work, but we had willing hands, even during those rainy days in December.

Now we are looking at the sweet peas all tucked in and about to grow as the days turn longer, to bloom and fill the air with sweet scent, to cut and harvest and sell these flowers at the market in March and April.

It's all a gamble. A lot of labor and expense goes into these flowers. A million things could go wrong -- bad weather, a plague of insects, plant viruses, or an invasion of hostile anti-sweet pea aliens from Mars -- all a great risk.

But a tidy profit is a possible outcome as well -- that's our hope.

After the sweet pea harvest, we will plant about 3,000 dahlia tubers. This is the Show, over 200 varieties.

It is the best and biggest spread of dahlias in Southern California. Get some for your garden -- go to Love House Dahlias and see the brilliant colors -- each variety of dahlia is lovingly portrayed on this website.

Horse News. We have a new horse. His name is Maverick, a gelding, 17-years-old, all white.

And very big, a cross between Arabian and Percheron. The Percheron (who, we hope, was the mother) is a draft horse, so that explains why Maverick is so big.

He's a friendly guy, but he gets "mouthy," as they say, wants to give you a little bite, like a love tap, only he has very big strong teeth.

He better not bite me. I told him this morning, "Maverick, if you bite me, I'm going to bite you back. And don't step on my foot neither."

Then I gave him a carrot.

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Subscriptions and Signed Copies of the Frog Hospital Book. It used to be that you sent in $25 and did not get much more than my appreciation, but now you get a signed copy of the Frog Hospital book.

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--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog: Frog Hospital

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Fred Owens
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Requiem for a Farmer

FARM NEWS from Fred Owens
Man dies in torch fire accident on farm

ELTOPIA, Wash. (AP) -- A man was killed in an accident on a farm near Eltopia.

The Franklin County sheriff's office says 75-year-old Everett D. Monk was cutting scrap metal in a field with a torch Saturday when his clothes caught fire. The Tri-City Herald reports he apparently died of burns.

A friend found the body.

That was the news story. Just those few words. It was in the paper last year, but I kept this file because I wanted to think about this man, 75-years-old, and his name was Everett D. Monk.

I thought of calling his people in Eltopia to find out about his life, but I didn't need to do that. I found I could read his whole life story from this news item.

He was out in the field cutting scrap metal with his torch in early December. It was cold out there in the sage brush country.

This was in eastern Washington, with low hills and no trees -- just wheat fields lying fallow in the winter sun.

This is where you could research it -- you can find things on the Internet. You could find what the weather was like in Eltopia on the day that Everett Monk died.

But it was almost surely sunny and cold -- that's the typical winter weather, and it's good working weather.

Everett Monk was 75, but he didn't want to sit around the house. He had been a working man all his life. He grew up on a farm and started doing serious chores every day since he was ten years old.

Starting work at the age of ten, driving the pickup around the ranch and handling tools.

So he worked every day for 65 years, until December of last year, and he wasn't going to just sit around in his easy chair on that last day.

He just wasn't used to that.

Instead he got dressed and went out. There was a "bone yard" -- a pile of rusted out implements and machinery -- but it was a good hundred yards from the house.

The bone yard was a little bit out of sight, and his family was gone to town. There's not that much to do in December on a farm. That's when you have the time to work on some projects -- like making modifications on a piece of farm equipment.

You can't just buy a hay baler and use it, but you need to adapt it to the special conditions of your own piece of land.

Everett Monk knew how to do that, and his welding tools were in the back of his pickup that cold and windy day.

I'm not sure about that -- was the wind blowing? Or was it calm?

Because he began cutting the scrap metal and working in a careful way.

Then the accident happened. Maybe it was calm and then, all of a sudden, the wind picked up, and blew a spark from the torch to the sleeve of his jacket, and he may have been distracted by a sudden noise over the hill, and the spark settled on his coat sleeve and began to burn, and the wind picked up and he was on fire.

He was on fire. And he was shocked. Did he drop and roll on the ground, which is what you are supposed to do if your clothes catch on fire?

I could call the sheriff or the friend who found his body and ask them -- if he just fell down, or if there was evidence that he dropped and rolled on the ground.

But that doesn't really matter too much.

A friend found his body. Everett Monk was dead, after working on the farm all his life. He may have suffered in agony from his burns, or he may have gone quickly from the shock.

But it was over. Everett Monk, the farmer from Eltopia in eastern Washington, may he rest in peace.

He could have stayed in the house on that day in December. He could have just taken it easy, but he was used to working.

In Other News

Homicide in Los Angeles drops to lowest rate since 1967

price of onions in India

Happy New Year,

Peace and joy to you and all your loved ones in 2011

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Being Nice to Chickens

FARM NEWS from Fred Owens, December 18, 2010

Being Nice to Chickens

But first, the Harvest News. Lots of apples in Washington this year -- 102 million forty-pound boxes are predicted. The mind boggles at that huge number of apples, and they didn't just jump into the box.

Somebody had to pick each and every single apple -- hard work. I hope they were paid well, and the farmer should get a profit too.

Red Delicious is still the dominant variety in Washington, followed by Gala, Fuji, Granny Smith, and Golden Delicious.

These are the "industrial-strength" apples that get shipped all over the world. Persons of more refined taste can shop the farmers markets and buy the tastier varieties.

Oranges. Likewise in California, the orange harvest is underway. Yield is predicted to be 93 million forty-pound boxes.

Just to push this point a little farther -- Every orange you ever ate, somebody picked it, had their hands on it before you did.
May that person prosper, and the farmer who hired him deserves a profit.

Quality is good for California oranges this year. More than 85 percent is good enough to sell as fresh. The rest get sold for juice at a lower price.

And the harvest is running two and three weeks late -- that's because of the cool, wet spring that pushed every crop late this year on the West Coast.

It doesn't matter, early or late, eat your oranges every day, and a blessing for the people who grew them.

Ventura County in California. Strawberries are a big crop in Ventura County, where I am now living. Last year, they harvested berries with a total value of over $500 million. It's kind of hard to visualize how many strawberries that is.

I don't have figures for this year, but it should be in that range.

Again, these are the "industrial strength" strawberries that get shipped all over the world. You could criticize their quality, but it would be better to feel grateful that you have berries at all.

There is no machine that picks strawberries. Somebody had to bend over to the ground or crawl on their knees to pick each and every single berry. Hard work -- you should try it some day.

May the strawberry pickers prosper, and the farmer deserves his profit.

Being Nice to Chickens. We have nine chickens on the farm -- to be exact, we have six hens, two ducks, and one bantam rooster.

It's colder now and the hens are not laying so many eggs, but they are the very best eggs you can eat.

I let the birds out of the coop first thing in the morning and feed them. They also get table scraps and whatever they can find by pecking around.

These are well-housed and well-protected chickens. They move into the coop on their own every evening because they know it's safe inside. Nonetheless, someone closes and locks the door, just to be sure.

Lots of critters around here would love to eat a chicken -- hawks, owls, and eagles ready to swoop down. Raccoons and coyotes too.

Chickens are domestic fowl and we protect them, feed them, and gather the eggs.

Now, if you want to buy eggs as good as what we have, you can find them at the farmers market at $3, $4 or $5 a dozen.

You can buys eggs for a lot less at the supermarket, mass-produced eggs, laid by chickens who don't live the life of luxury like ours do.

That is the problem. Now comes the politics. In 2008, by a margin of 63 percent, California voters passed an initiative requiring poultry farmers to be kinder to their chickens, banning the small confining cages that chickens are often kept in.

"They need fresh air, they need to scratch in the air and flap their wings. They need to live like chickens in days of old, when the housewife went to the yard and scattered her scraps of vegetable parings and bread crusts."

By law! By a vote of the people!

I am very suspicious of efforts like this. I believe that the government ought to have a minimum of regulation against cruelty toward animals.

Because the voters, by and large, simply do no know enough about chickens to have an opinion about how they ought to be cared for.

I don't want to sound like an expert or anything, but I know a happy chicken when I see one. and I know the abuse too, abuse that can arise from carelessness or a wicked desire for profit.

But the government can only prosecute the grossest offenses.

Everybody wants the chickens to be happy. No wonder the proposition passed by 63 percent. Who would vote against it?

But it was not properly worded. It should read, "We favor better care and more freedom for poultry and we are willing to pay more for our eggs."

Not that's being honest.

And this kind of thing is happening all over the country anyway -- people are paying more for eggs from free range hens. More and more people are raising their own birds. Search "urban poultry" on the Internet -- it's everywhere. People doing it themselves, and becoming real chicken people.

We're going to have happier chickens, and we're going to be eating better eggs. But it won't happen by law.


--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

send mail to:

Fred Owens
Box 1292
LaConner WA 98257

Back By Popular Demand

A certain lady from Orcas Island has lamented the lack of political content in recent editions of the Farm News. She wants to hear some snap, crackle and pop.

I am not sure what good that would do. Could my remarks possibly improve our nation's circumstance? That is doubtful.

I think it has been good to be quiet for a change. But I have been reading, mostly on the right. My special favorite is the Thinking Housewife, and I often post my own reactions on this blog.

Laura Wood is the hostess at this Internet salon and she invites you to consider a remarkable premise -- that men and women are different, different from each other, or, to put it another way, not the same.

It's an astounding thought, and the discussion is rich. Her conclusions, derived from this premise, are quite conservative, or traditional, as she terms it.

Not me. I'm not conservative. I've decided to call myself a Merry Christmas liberal -- to wit -- I support the extension of unemployment benefits for as long as jobs are scarce.

And how do we pay for that? By jacking up the tax rates paid by wealthier people.

I'm not inviting any disagreement here, I'm just telling you what I think.

That makes me liberal, a Merry Christmas liberal, because I really hate this Happy Holiday nonsense. Christmas is about Christmas, and the other religions can just lay low until it's over. I do not support diversity.

Jews, for instance, have wonderful, meaningful spiritual feasts. Passover and Rosh Hoshannah are world class and deeply impressive, but Hannukah is boring and over-rated.

Kwanzaa is contrived and pointless. And what do the Hindus do in December? Nobody cares.

To be even handed I should now insult Moslems and pagans. Except I do not support "inclusion."

I oppose inclusion. I invite whom I choose to my party, and if anyone was left out, it was deliberate.

Well, that's a part of what I think. Here in California, we have Jerry Brown as the new governor.

Jerry Brown was not the safest choice. In California, being foolish can be the wisest thing to do.

You can hear all about the mess -- the long list of problems. The place is going to hell, it can't be fixed -- just move and get out and put your equity into someplace that isn't so crazy.

Good, I hope all those people leave right now -- maybe they should all go to Texas. Governor Rick Perry would be glad to have them.

But I like California. I'm glad to be here. And I'm going to be a part, a very small part, of what is going to make things better.

That's my attitude -- with a good attitude, you can make plans and solve problems.

And I will keep working on the farm, because that's where a lot of the good energy comes from.

This is another piece from the Thinking Housewife. No politics here, but the very best words to someone facing a life with a chronic illness. I include this because many Frog Hospital readers will find Laura Wood's politics to be very wrong

Laura writes to the woman with a chronic illness

It sounds as if you are thinking about what you
can’t do and not focusing on however little that you can. You have to expect less in every department and remember that no matter how much you can’t do, you are still irreplaceable. Your presence alone matters.

Do as little as necessary to get by. Someday your children will be older and they will help. You should enlist their help as soon as you can. Don’t feel sorry for your children or your husband because they have a sick mother and wife. Don’t feel sorry for them at all. They have you. You have given them life. That is enough. Besides, sickness provides the opportunity for an entire household to slow down and to spend more time talking or doing simple things.

Your illness is not a detour from reality. There’s a temptation to look at the rest of the world, so energetic and vital, and think they are more alive while you live in some kind of lesser, shadow world. This is false. You are more alive at these times than those who are filled with so much vitality. You are closer to the center of things. They cannot see their own mortality and the fact of death. It awaits us all and fortunate are those who see it clearly.

No moment is wasted. No time is lost. You are not on a side path, but on the main road, heading step-by-step to your ultimate destination. When you arrive there, every moment you have loved God despite your misery will be remembered. I don’t say this out of pie-in-the-sky sentimentality or wishful thinking. I say this because it is logically deducible from the facts of our existence, from the laws of nature, from our subjective experience of the world, and even from the love you still feel for your children despite your illness. This love is a form of self-forgetfulness. Where did it come from? It must have come from a Being capable of even more love.

You are confined by illness, but still you are alive and on the move every hour of the day.

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Subscriptions and Signed Copies of the Frog Hospital Book. It used to be that you sent in $25 and did not get much more than my appreciation, but now you get a signed copy of the Frog Hospital book.

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Agriculture is the New Golf

FARM NEWS from Fred Owens

November 29, 2010

"Agriculture is the new golf."

I saw this story in today's Los Angeles Times. Don't mock this notion, it bodes well for the future of farming.

I have spent the weekend in Los Angeles, where new companies have spring up -- they will plant a vegetable garden in your yard, if you don't have the time to do it yourself, and -- going further, because this is Los Angeles -- they will plant and cultivate the vegetables for you.

Then all you have to do is go into the back yard before dinner and harvest some arugula for your salad.

This service is for persons of affluence, and it's a good thing -- they're taking the money they would have spent on golf and yachts and put that money into a more wholesome activity -- their own back yard for growing food.

Back to the Farm. I am leaving Los Angeles in thirty minutes and driving the 68 miles up the coast, back to the farm in Ventura. I had a great time in Los Angeles. I really love this great big city although I can't say why.

Winter. It's been cold here -- in the low 60s with wind chill making it even colder. Still I see some locals wearing shorts and sandals. I figure they simply don't own any pants or shoes, and they just endure the chill when it comes.

New Terms. We say "hobby farm" or "weekend farmer" or "gentleman farmer" -- using these terms to describe people who do not make a full living from their work in agriculture. The implication is that they are dabbling, or doing it for fun. But that is far from the case. These part-timers, as I have known them, do some impressive work of high quality and they deserve a more respectable name -- possibly "artisanal farmer" -- that term has been suggested, but it's too much of a mouthful.

A Short Newsletter is a Blessing. This newsletter is short because my ancient laptop is not working and I must borrow my sister's machine to compose this message. But short stories are good for their own sake -- I should not apologize.

--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

send mail to:

Fred Owens
Box 1292
LaConner WA 98257

On a Farm in Ventura, California

FARM NEWS from Fred Owens

November 15, 2010


I drove 1,312 miles from LaConner to this small farm in Ventura, California. I spent $108 for gas and used two quarts of oil. My old Toyota has had a small oil leak for the past 50,000 miles, but it's not getting any worse. I listened to Books on Tape -- CDs, actually -- and that made the drive very easy.

I have a little cabin for myself on the farm. I am working part-time for my room and board. My hosts, Ann and Andy Dunstan, are really nice people and we get along well. And there is plenty of work to do.

The farm has a website, Love House Dahlias.

Here's how I found this farm. I joined Worldwide Opportunities in Organic Farming, or WOOF. All the kids know about this website. It lists hundreds of organic farms around the country and around the world -- places where you can work for your keep and where you can learn about farming, or just for people who want to travel on the cheap.

Back on the farm. First thing, I get up. I let the chickens out of their coop, collect the eggs, and then give them food and water.

Then I go back to my cabin to drink coffee and do some email -- this place isn't primitive - I get wi-fi from the main house, which is about 75 feet away.

Then I go clean up after the horses in the corral. They have four horses here, being boarded. I am getting to learn a lot of about horses, so this is very interesting.

After that, I go to the greenhouse and right now we are getting ready to plant 30,000 sweet peas.

The sweet peas will be a winter crop to fill in the space left by the dahlias. Dahlias are what they grow here on a commercial scale.

The dahlias are finished blooming for the season and slowly dying. But as long as they stay a little green, they will keep sending nourishment down to the tubers -- so we wait.

We wait until they're finished, and then let the plants sit for a couple of weeks, before we begin the big job of digging them all up -- all the tubers, dig 'em up, bring 'em into the greenhouse, wash and sort them and divide them -- some get sold, some get saved to re-plant in the spring.

That will be a lot of work.

Meanwhile, as we wait for the dahlias to finish, we plant the sweet peas in the trays in the greenhouse to get them started.

The dahlias will come out, the sweet peas will go in the ground -- being legumes, they will fix nitrogen to the soil and help the dahlias to grow. They will also provide spring blooms for sale.

That's the job. Plus feeding the chickens, looking after the horses, and I'm doing a bit of landscape gardening around the place as well.

And there's a vegetable garden to work on. Plenty of things to do on a small place like this.

And so much to learn too -- this is a very different climate and there are so many new plants to learn about.

After work, it's a six mile drive to the beach, where it's nice to go and watch the sun setting...... or six miles into town and various amusements.

Corn Harvest. The US Dept of Agriculture estimates a corn crop of 12.54 billion bushels this year -- the third largest crop on record. Average yield was 154 bushels per acre.

Most of the corn was harvested at less than 15 percent moisture. This is very good, because if the corn is harvested when it's wet, they have to run it through a grain drier and that costs time and money.

Dry corn is the best. What they do is order up a weather forecast and have it rain when the corn's growing, and have the sun shine when the corn is ready to harvest --- right!

Twelve billion bushels! That's a lot of corn -- mainly grown back there in the Midwest. All those farmers in Indiana growing corn year after year after year. Nothing but corn for miles and miles, billions of bushels.

U.S. Grains Council. Corn harvest news comes from this website.

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Subscriptions and Signed Copies of the Frog Hospital Book. It used to be that you sent in $25 and did not get much more than my appreciation, but now you get a signed copy of the Frog Hospital book.

This book is a treasure that will still be worth reading ten years from now.

Send a check for $25 to Fred Owens, Box 1292, LaConner, WA 98257. Or go to the Frog Hospital blog and pay with PayPal.

--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

send mail to:

Fred Owens
Box 1292
LaConner WA 98257

Hazelnuts & Strawberries

FARM NEWS from Fred Owens

November 6, 2010

On my way to California I stopped in Eugene, Oregon, to visit some friends who just bought some acres on the outskirts of town. They have planted trees all over the property -- poplars, cedars, pears, and -- for an experiment -- they planted eleven olive trees.

Olive trees may or may not grow in Eugene's climate, and they may or may not produce fruit -- but you don't know until you try, and my friends won't know for a few years.

Isn't that exciting?

Olives are iffy in Oregon. Hazelnuts are what matter, and Oregon leads the nation with an expected crop of 38,000 tons this year.

Let us attempt to visualize a 38,000-ton pile of hazelnuts -- the mind boggles.

But that's peanuts -- I mean, that's nothing. Turkey is the world leader. The Turks will harvest 630,000 tons this year -- it's a Moslem threat. They will bury us in filberts! Oh No!

Italy is number two and will harvest an expected 100,000 tons, followed by Georgia & Azerbaijan at 85,000 tons.

Okay, the USA is number four at 38,000 tons, but Oregon hazelnuts taste better.

Thinking about all that, I visited a local farm stand and bought a sack of roasted unsalted hazelnuts -- got them for a road sack, because I left Eugene the next day and headed for San Francisco Bay.

Information from the Capital Press. You can find a wealth of information about agriculture in the Pacific Northwest by reading the Capital Press, either online or in print. This weekly journal is published in Salem, Oregon, hence the name -- but the content is all about farming.

Strawberries in California. I drove to Alameda, on the San Francisco Bay, to stay with relatives. We visited the Saturday Farmer's Market just a walk down the street from their house.

We saw such an abundance of late season vegetables. It was the end of summer squash and field-grown tomatoes, but they will have strawberries and raspberries through most of the winter, plus winter greens, broccoli, turnips, carrots, and lettuce. It never ends in this climate.

Don't forget persimmons! Actually, I don't quite understand persimmons, but I respect people who do.

Anyway, I spoke with a woman from Gilroy, the Garlic Capital, the home of the renowned Garlic Festival. She was selling strawberries and raspberries, and proud of her family farm in Gilroy.

"We don't grow garlic anymore. There's only one farm left that grows garlic now," she said.

t's because most of our garlic comes from China these days, more than 75 per cent. Especially if you buy processed garlic -- powder, flakes, minced garlic in oil, and so forth -- it will likely be the cheaper Chinese garlic.

California grown garlic costs more -- and tastes better, a lot of people will say -- but you have to look for it and ask for it.

It's Time to Plant Garlic. While we're on the subject -- now is the time to plant garlic for summer harvest next year. A good catalog supplier such as Filaree Farm will mail you some high quality bulbs to plant in your garden.

Or, at no cost whatsoever, take whatever garlic bulbs are in your kitchen, break them into cloves and plant them somewhere in your garden -- you might do very well.

Like I said in the beginning about the olive trees -- you never know until you try it.

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Subscriptions and Signed Copies of the Frog Hospital Book. It used to be that you sent in $25 and did not get much more than my appreciation, but now you get a signed copy of the Frog Hospital book.

This book is a treasure that will still be worth reading ten years from now.

Send a check for $25 to Fred Owens, Box 1292, LaConner, WA 98257. Or go to the Frog Hospital blog and pay with PayPal.





--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

send mail to:

Fred Owens
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Ode to the Lone Kohlrabi

FARM NEWS from Fred Owens

Nov. 1, 2010

Yesterday day the farm stand closed for the winter. It was sad. The frost came two weeks ago and the flower season ended -- but the fields kept pumping out fresh sweet corn and lettuce, so our shelves were well-stocked right until the last day.

The farm will continue to harvest and sell vegetables to restaurants and other wholesale accounts into November, but the farm stand is closed now and my job is over.

I had an exit interview with management. I said, "I would like to work here next year." They said, "We'd love to have you back."

That would be sometime in April, when the farm stand opens again.

So I will be going to Southern California for the winter, to work at another farm, but it will only be part-time, and I will be taking it easy.

I will be in Ventura, which is about one hour north of Los Angeles, if this was was 1970 when the freeways ran free, but more like ninety minutes to LA these days.

My sister lives in Venice near the beach, and my brother lives way to the east side in Altadena, so I can spend some time with them.

My son also lives in Venice, working at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Santa Monica.

I have lots of family down there, several nieces as well, plus the sunshine.

Oh, they have what they call "winter" in Los Angeles, but it doesn't amount to much.

And the delights of California culture --- this I have to see and comment on. If America has lost its sense of confidence and optimism, then LA is the epi-center of decline

If America was and is a dream to fulfill, then LA is where dreams are launched -- or were launched. Is it over? or will it begin anew?

I want to see for myself.

Otherwise I will be working at this small farm in Ventura County, learning the soil and the climate.

You will notice, perhaps gratefully, that I am not writing about politics these days. We're having a national election on Tuesday, and I have followed these events closely, but I will not comment.

Except to say that it's good to be working on a farm, and I lead by example. I will say this, "Young man, go to the farm and go to work."

There's plenty of work on the farm and you will find it very satisfying. It will truly be a "growth opportunity."

If you're in the city, build a garden. Start today.

Here is my closing video-poem for the last day at the farm stand. It's about the end of things -- as you see the past slip away and you wonder what the future will bring.

Listen to the "Ode to the Lone Kohlrabi" -- it's very short and you will enjoy it.


Subscriptions and Signed Copies of the Frog Hospital Book. It used to be that you sent in $25 and did not get much more than my appreciation, but now you get a signed copy of the Frog Hospital book.

This book is a treasure that will still be worth reading ten years from now.

Send a check for $25 to Fred Owens, Box 1292, LaConner, WA 98257. Or go to the Frog Hospital blog and pay with PayPal.





--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

send mail to:

Fred Owens
Box 1292
LaConner WA 98257

Kim Chee Shortage in Korea

FARM NEWS from Fred Owens

October 22, 2010

Kim Chee is the soul food of South Korea, that fiery concoction made from Napa cabbage and hot peppers, but the crop failed this year because of bad weather, down to half of the usual amount.

Facing a national shortage, the Koreans had to make humble and import cabbage from China, suspending the tariff that usually keeps foreign cabbage out of the country.

This story in the New York Times describes the national custom -- making Kim Chee at home every autumn as a family ritual, but now it's more often bought at the store because people are too busy.

The New York Times story only stated "crop failure due to bad weather." I wanted to know what kind of bad weather -- too much rain or too little rain are the most common causes of a crop failure. Insect damage, or an epidemic of plant disease are other likely causes.

How can I find out? I don't know any farmers in South Korea.

I went to Google to search. I found many news items reporting the same thing -- a kim chee shortage, but no explanation of why the cabbage crop failed.

I checked out the website for the U.S. Embassy in Korea, and I discovered the U.S. Agricultural Trade Office.

Of course! Our farmers export billions of dollars of fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy products to Korea. So naturally we have a trade office there.

(Don't tell the Tea Party about these people -- government employees, waxing fat on our tax dollars, interfering with the free trade of farm products.)

Well, my tax dollars paid for the farm trade office, and I found it useful in providing some statistics.

We export billions of dollars worth of food to Korea -- beef, rice, potatoes, oranges and apples -- everything but cabbage.

I sent an email to the Agricultural Attache Officer in Seoul, and he replied that the crop failure was caused by an excess of rain and a typhoon -- so I had my answer.

One more thing -- we do not export cabbages to Korea, but here in the Skagit Valley we grow most of the cabbage seed that Korean farmers use for their crop.

Pomegranates from Iran. Boy, we're really going to stick it to the Ayatollah now. The market report from our embassy in Korea says:

In the past two years, the U.S has gained a 99 percent market share of imported pomegranates in South Korea due to a devastating freeze and consecutive bad crop years in Iran, Korea’s past top exporter. A great opportunity to secure this market has presented itself as Korean importers prefer the uniformity and consistency of U.S. pomegranates. Pomegranates are increasing in popularity and there is currently not enough supply to meet demand.

So that's the international farm news, here at home:

The Frost Comes. In the Skagit Valley, the hard frost came a few days ago, on a still and cloudless night. The cold sunk in and by early morning the dahlias and zinnias were bejeweled with crystals of frost on their petals - - a beautiful sight, but by noon those same flowers had turned to brown mush, and the floral display is over for this year.

So Much More. I have so much more to write about, but working full time at the farm stand takes up all my energy, and then I'm getting ready to head for California pretty soon.

The farm stand closes October 31, and I leave a few days later.

I kind of miss the scattered and random format of Frog Hospital, but I know it will be good to stick with this more focused effort, so I will continue to write about farming and I hope most of you readers will stick around to see how this develops.

The Largest Kohlrabi in Captivity

FARM NEWS from Fred Owens

October 11, 2010

The frost is not yet on the pumpkin, but on some mornings it feels a little crisp and we all know what's coming.

Watch this video for a detailed report about the weather and the "largest kohlrabi in captivity."

The long-range forecast for the Pacific Northwest is for a cold and wet winter. Nobody is thrilled about that.

You have three kinds of people in this country. The first kind love the rain and it makes them happy. The second kind say they love the rain, but they're lying. The third kind just endure it and try not to complain too much.

I'm one of the third kind, and I'm going to Southern California this winter because I need a break.

A lucky break, it turns out, because that same long-range forecast predicts a warmer and drier winter down south.

So, here's the news.

Grape Harvest, from the Los Angeles Times. California's signature crop, the grape harvest is coming in late. What a surprise! It's been a cool, wet summer from San Diego to Seattle and everything is late.

The article states, "most red grapes remain on the vine statewide, anywhere from 10 days to three weeks later than last year."

Late -- and what can you do but wait.

Here's another quote from the article, more complicated, but intriguing -- if you ask me.

"This is a normal cyclical pattern for La Niña," says Peter Cargasacchi of Cargasacchi Winery in the Santa Rita Hills. "If you were aware of that, you could incorporate farming practices based on the historical patterns of the weather." For Cargasacchi, that meant leaving a cover crop between vine rows to suck up excess winter rainwater, then deficit irrigation to stimulate the vines into ripening — "to give them a sense of urgency," he says.

Okay, this vintner did more than just wait. He was expecting the La Nina pattern to bring cooler, wetter weather. So he planted grass and clover between the rows of grapes to soak up the excessive rain fall.

Then he did deficit irrigation -- this is the sexy part, almost a tease -- meaning he cut way, way back on his watering in mid-summer -- to make those grape vines work harder, to put down their roots deeper, to conserve their energy and not produce too many leaves -- that is, to give them a sense of urgency.

That is highly anthropomorphic, as he put it -- to give the grape vines a sense of urgency.

Do plants feel urgency? Are they like us in some ways? We gather the grapes, we make the wine, and then we drink it.

That spirit, from the earth, comes to us through our palates.

That urgency, from mid-summer, has now, in fall harvest, become a fullness, and a good vintage is expected for 2010.

It's never a sure thing. Urgency is natural. And Harvest-Home is often the reward.

So, that's the farm news from California. I will be driving down that way in three weeks, and this newsletter will have more reports on the vast complexity of California agriculture. I hope you find it interesting.

Subscriptions and Signed Copies of the Frog Hospital Book. It used to be that you sent in $25 and did not get much more than my appreciation, but now you get a signed copy of the Frog Hospital book.

This book is a treasure that will still be worth reading ten years from now.

Send a check for $25 to Fred Owens, Box 1292, LaConner, WA 98257. Or go to the Frog Hospital blog and pay with PayPal.





--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

send mail to:

Fred Owens
Box 1292
LaConner WA 98257

More Farm News

It seems that last week's newsletter went out to only half the mailing list -- due to technical problems and pilot error. But I announced last week that "Frog Hospital," after ten years and a book of the same title, was finished, and I am now writing under the plain title of "Farm News from Fred Owens."

I am working on a farm right now, selling premium organic produce from the market garden, right on the outskirts of LaConner. I can look out the back of the farm stand and see the fields where these vegetables are growing.

I have the easy job, at the stand. I am too told to work in the field. I worked in the field three years ago on the transplanting crew. I lasted five days and I got so worn out that I just couldn't come back to work anymore. That was no disgrace -- everybody else on the crew was thirty years younger than me.

But I became a senior farm worker after that. Now I load the truck every morning at the packing shed. I back the truck up to the cooler and pick out about thirty different boxes of vegetables to sell at the stand -- looking for the very best Swiss chard and English cucumbers and Kohlrabis and not picking the stuff that looks too tired -- that goes to compost or it goes to Kevin's pigs -- but I load the best stuff for the farm stand.

The farm stand is a few hundred yards from the packing shed. So I drive over to the stand and unlock the door, then I unload the thirty boxes -- nothing very heavy. My motto is don't work fast. Fast and farming are two different things.

After I unload the boxes and set them about in an attractive way, then I drive over to the farm office and get the cash register from Mary.

Mary counts the till and keeps track of it all. She has assured me that the I have been keeping the dollars and cents in good order - balanced to the penny one day, she said, and close enough on other days.

First Frost. We have a lot of interesting conversations on the farm. Like when I made a joke on Monday morning, when I traipsed into the office and Mary asked "What's the word today, Fred?"

I said, "Walk softly and carry a big lunch."

They all laughed.

Today we discussed the first hard frost, which will kill all the flowers just like that. Bright blooms turn to brown almost overnight, and it's over for the year. The dahlias, zinnias, yarrows, and delphiniums -- the whole glorious show will end.

Last year the frost came in mid-October, but who knows when it will come this year.

Would that be like your first kiss? Frost is the first kiss of winter, the end of innocence, the nearness of mortality, and the quickening of time.

Frost improves the sweetness of some vegetables, notably the cabbage family. They say to wait until after the frost for the Brussel Sprouts to get tasty.

Some varieties of apple improve with flavor after a frost.

Winter squash seems hardy enough, but actually, a hard frost will hurt the pumpkins, and it is better to get them in storage before that -- if you can tell when the frost is coming.

Why is the frost like a kiss? You don't know when it's coming, but it changes things. And, with an Irish sense of humor, you know that every beautiful thing in life brings us one step closer to the grave.

Think of Orville and Wilbur Wright tinkering in their garage in Dayton Ohio -- not inventing an airplane, not inventing machines that harvest crops more efficiently, but inventing machines and technologies that improve the lot of farm labor.

American farmers are awesome innovators -- I have seen them do that with my own eyes.

Yet they have a blind spot to the comfort of labor, seeming to believe -- "it's hard, it's always been hard, and it will always be hard."

There are a thousand ways to improve the working conditions of the farm worker -- if we decide to focus on that problem.

Most agricultural technologies, beginning with McCormick's reaper in the 1830s, have been "labor-saving" devices, but the main result of these labor-saving devices was to get the workers off the farm and into the big cities to work in giant factories.

We see a different situation today -- an opportunity, if you will -- because so many Americans want to get involved in agriculture. They don't know how hard the work is, but they will find out, and I hope they will not give up, but instead, will finally insist on making the conditions and technology more suitable for the modern worker.

And those improvements will make food more expensive for the American consumer -- a topic I will be glad to address in a future newsletter.

Jane who was reading my Frog Hospital book, came into the farm stand and told me how much she liked my "stream of consciousness."

Well, I tried very hard to put things in an orderly fashion when I wrote the book, but it might only seem orderly to me -- marching forward from point to point and building to a conclusion.

We don't control how other people interpret things we have done. Frog Hospital is widely considered to be "at random."

I guess that's fine. Anyway, Jane is enjoying the book quite a bit.

Subscriptions and Signed Copies of the Frog Hospital Book. It used to be that you sent in $25 and did not get much more than my appreciation, but now you get a signed copy of the Frog Hospital book.

This book is a treasure that will still be worth reading ten years from now.

Send a check for $25 to Fred Owens, Box 1292, LaConner, WA 98257. Or go to the Frog Hospital blog and pay with PayPal.




--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

send mail to:

Fred Owens
Box 1292
LaConner WA 98257

Farm News from Fred Owens

My friend Karen in Alaska asked me what happened to "Frog Hospital" because she hasn't received one in more than a month.

I told her that I wrote the Frog Hospital newsletter for ten years and then wrote a book with the same title and I guess I am finished with that name and that concept.

So I came up with this very plain alternative -- "farm news" -- because that's where I have been this past month -- working at Hedlin's Farm on the edge of LaConner.

Specifically, I am working at Hedlin's Family Farm Stand selling premium organic vegetables to friends and strangers alike.

This takes up all my time. I can't complain. The farmer hasn't had a day off since April, but he lets me go home once in a while -- like today, for instance, Sunday morning, I'm sitting around the house drinking coffee.

Since this is the farm news, let's start with the weather -- awful, nothing but rain and overcast for several weeks now, which is bad for the sweet corn but good for the crucifers (cabbages and their relatives)

You can't grow sweet corn without heat and sunshine to make those ears pop out. Customers drive up to the farm stand, get out of the car, trudge across the sawdust to the little shed where I stand behind the cash register and ask me plaintively, "Is there any sweet corn?"

No, I tell them, and how many ways can I say that. "No sweet corn today, but we might have some in a few days. We have corn trying to grow out there, but all we can do is hope for it.

"How about some broccoli? We got boucoup broccoli. Heaps of it, luscious and green. The broccoli thrives in this wet weather."

But they want sweet corn, and they trudge back to their cars with their heads hung down.

I want to sing out, "We have cabbages too. Ten pounders. Solid and crisp. You could make enough cole slaw for your entire Bridge Club."

But they leave, heading down the road to some other farm stand, which might have sweet corn. I don't blame them if they want to keep looking, because they get this idea that it's late August and early September and you're supposed to have sweet corn.

But not this year, not in any abundance....

With the rain, as a way to be happy, flowers sales are strong. We are selling bouquets as fast as we can make them. I am learning to love dahlias. They are just astounding -- ranging from light lemon colors all the way to red darker than a bull fight in medieval Spain.

I can pick the zinnias and yarrows when the stand is not busy. These annuals grow right near the stand, so if I hear the crunch of the gravel, meaning a car is here, then I can get back to the stand and wait on the people.

But the dahlias are too far out in the field. I never go there, except last week, I asked Mary if she could cover for me to give me a chance to walk out to the dahlias and see them all. It was wonderful.

Anyway, I need to talk with the boss about this -- I can't hype the farm stand without coordinating with him, and her, and her -- it's a family farm -- so I will stop for now.

Subscriptions and Signed Copies of the Frog Hospital Book. It used to be that you sent in $25 and did not get much more than my appreciation, but now you get a signed copy of the Frog Hospital book.

This book is a treasure that will still be worth reading ten years from now.

Send a check for $25 to Fred Owens, Box 1292, LaConner, WA 98257. Or go to the Frog Hospital blog and pay with PayPal.

The Old Barn

You can make friends with an old barn. This one was built in 1906 by John Basye's great-grandfather on Beaver Marsh Road in the Skagit Valley, out in the flats where the wind is blowing and the soil is fertile.

You need to watch the video, which is only 90 seconds long, to get a picture of it. This Old Barn.

They're harvesting wheat right now -- farmers loving this hot, dry weather, good for harvesting wheat. Drought in Russia makes wheat scarcer, raises the price. They were looking at $4 a bushel, and some farmers sold their wheat this spring on the futures market at $4 a bushel -- often a smart move -- but not this year. It's gone up to $7 a bushel on the spot market because of the drought in Russia, causing a trading frenzy at the wheat pits in Chicago.

Our Skagit farmers grow wheat as a rotation crop, it's not how you make a living, like potatoes, or seed crops, or berries, but you grow wheat because you cannot grow potatoes every year. And this year at $7 a bushel, it doesn't hurt.

John Basye's barn is getting a new roof. He tore the old cedar shingles off and they can't be replaced. All the cedar has been logged in this territory, and good cedar for roofs would come from Canada at a very high price. Instead, the new roof will gleam with metal, which is a long-lasting material and has reflective qualities, brightening the sunshine and bouncing the rays back into the sky.

Metal roofs ping-ping the rain. It will be a different winter this year with a new metal roof. It will be louder.

Right now, the roof is off and the rafters are exposed to the weather -- for the first time in 100 years, seeing the sky, breathing and drying out in the heat of summer. You can hear the beams groan like arthritic grandfathers.

But this essay is not an exercise in nostalgia, not some hearkening back to the old days when the big trees were logged, and the stumps were blasted out with shovels and dynamite.

No, "This Old Barn" is about the future. You put a new roof on your barn because you're betting on the future. You're betting on one hundred more years of farming in the Skagit Valley, growing food for our children's children's children on broad, flat and fertile acres.

One hundred years from now we will need this barn. Of course, you never know, it's a flood plain. A big enough flood could float this barn away. And there's fire -- the old barn is built of wood. And it gets windy in the flats -- a really strong wind might damage the barn beyond repair.

But you bet on the future when you put on a new roof. There's no sure thing and where else can you put your money?

Please unsubscribe if you don't read Frog Hospital, or if you got on my mailing list by mistake. Even if you are a close personal friend, it won't hurt my feelings.

Subscriptions and Signed Copies of the Book. It used to be that you sent in $25 and did not get much more than my appreciation, but now you get a signed copy of the Frog Hospital book.

This book is a treasure that will still be worth reading ten years from now.

Send a check for $25 to Fred Owens, Box 1292, LaConner, WA 98257. Or go to the Frog Hospital blog and pay with PayPal.

Will they celebrate Gay Marriage at the Ground Zero Mosque?

Will they celebrate Gay Marriage at the Ground Zero Mosque?

I'm getting the issues confused.

But if New Yorkers can tolerate a mosque at Ground Zero, shouldn't it be a highly tolerant mosque?

Back to gay marriage. I've thought about it for about ten years, and I've decided it's a good thing. It really bothered me that judges were interfering with my own thinking on this question, because it is not a matter for the courts to decide.

Marriage is customary, legal, and moral. They all go together and the nature of marriage ought to be determined by the legislature, and failing that, by referendum.

The courts are the very worst place to decide questions like this, and that judge in California is doing no one a favor by ruling in favor of gay marriage -- or against it. He is a usurper against my own voice and I resent it.

It would be much better if people are persuaded, as they can be. Proponents of gay marriage have full access to the political process and can take their case to the people. I expect they will win if they take that course.

But if they keep going to court, the question will remain unsettled for decades. Keep the lawyers out of this, please.

Going to court is always the very, very last option in any dispute.

The Mosque. I was married to a Moslem woman for seven years. She was from Africa. Her ancestral village was in the mountains of Malawi. We visited this village shortly after we were married in 1997. Chembe village it was called, with a small mud brick mosque in the village square, and an ancient bearded imam in a blue robe.

The imam had several tattered copies of the Koran. He sang the call to prayers each morning before dawn -- no loudspeaker and no electricity in this village -- only the haunting call to prayer.

Five or six men would come to the mosque in response to the imam's call.

There were no dogs in Chembe village I liked that, because there was no barking in the night and it was quiet.

There was no alcohol -- not exactly, more of a low key kind of thing. In the evening the women gathered in the cooking hut down the hill. The village chief would invite me to join him at his place where we sat in chairs -- probably the only two chairs in the village.

He would bring out a bottle of rum and we had a drink together. It was fine. We treated each other as equals. I was proud of my life and my American heritage and education. He was proud of his village. I was married into his family and was welcomed in that way.

After some conversation, we would go to the women's cooking hut -- they had a fire going and it was warm in there, and we sat around the fire on mats and talked.

That's really all I know about Islam from personal experience. I think the villagers took their religion very lightly, and I wish we were all like that.

Having said that, the Ground Zero Mosque -- actually I don't know what to think. Legally it's a slam dunk -- they can build it wherever zoning ordinances permit a house of worship.

Otherwise, it's entirely up to the people of Manhattan, who are not likely to notice it amid the roar of commerce and culture

But if they do build it, this mosque should be the center of a mission to Islamic countries, which often forbid the construction or even the repair of churches and synagogues in their lands.

If the mosque is built, it should be a shining example and we should seek reciprocal treatment in Moslem countries. "Allow the free interchange of ideas, welcome our preachers as we welcome yours. Respectful argument is a good thing. We can challenge each other."

I was married to the African woman for seven years, but other than going to Chembe village to visit the graves of her ancestors, we had no more exposure to Islam. She claimed it as an identity, but only that. She had no knowledge or practice of Islam, but was more familiar with Christianity and indigenous spiritual practices -- in the way that Africa people can mix these things all together.

I have learned and thought about Islam since then -- from reading books and newspapers, from knowing about the attacks of September 11, 2001, and our military invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and reading about the endlessly complicated disputes between Palestinians and Israelis -- but I will not let those images intrude on what I actually experienced first hand -- I think I will cherish and remember the evenings with Chief Chembe in his village, a man just like me, except he had two wives.

So we end. And we realize that the Mosque and the question of Marriage are actually related.

And there is a lot to talk about -- if we can keep it out of court.

--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

send mail to:

Fred Owens
Box 1292
LaConner WA 98257

A long, long time ago I picked flowers for my mother. I picked violets and lily of the valley. They grew in the wild area on the north side of our home. I gave the the flowers to my mother and she put them in a vase on the table. She was happy and I felt like a good boy.

The yard was mowed and fenced except for this wild area. The grass wouldn't grow on the north side, so it was left and the flowers just grew all by themselves. I could go out there in the summer and lie down and have my own dreams.

We lived in a white stucco house in the suburbs of Chicago, under the shade of very tall oak trees and elm trees. The high-dappled shade is the best because the air flows smoothly on hot summer days. A white wooden fence ran around the back yard. We played baseball and badminton and left bare spots in the lawn from playing all summer long. Mother grew peonies and roses in the back of the yard, just a small garden, but it was pretty.

In the winter, when the ground was frozen, she had me cover the roses and peonies with oak leaves to protect them through the coldest days. That was an easy chore and I was glad to do it -- only once a year, and then in the spring I would take the leaves away. It was something special I did for her.

Outside the fence, between the fence and the alley, the tiger lilies grew thickly -- day lilies, but we called them tiger lilies because of their bright orange color. They grew wild, all by themselves.

One of my regular chores was taking out the trash, out to the alley. I put the trash bags in a wire basket and lit a match and set the trash on fire. I liked standing in the alley, all by myself, outside the fence, watching the flames in the wire basket -- bright orange flames, but green and blue muted flames from the coated pages of magazines and the wrappers on tin cans.

I liked being out in the alley, outside the fence with the tiger lilies and the unpaved alley way with gravel and mud puddles, where I could have my own dreams. I think this is what made me how I am today.

I hated Little League baseball. I didn't like Lilttle League. They had rules and uniforms and grown ups bossing us around -- they called it "coaching" but I didn't like any of them. I liked playground ball much better. We were kids -- we chose up teams and made up our own rules. We had huge arguments too.

"He was out."

"No, he was safe, I saw him touch the base."

"You liar, he was out by a mile."

So, we had our own arguments, but we didn't need a bunch of stupid grownups hanging around to show us how to play baseball. Geez.

Skateboarding. Kids don't play ball like we used to, they want to be skateboarding. But it's like playground ball --- it's not officially sanctioned with umpires and coaches and stupid grownups. The kids can do it all by themselves on skateboards and create their own form of play.

A few of the skaters in LaConner are known to be ill-behaved. I was told that one of them cursed at the librarian. I could ask the librarian if that was true, but it's bad enough that rumors go around like this. How are the kids going to get a skateboard park this way?

What they should do, the kids that are serious, is have a talk with the smart alecks who cursed at the librarian -- and then beat the crap out of them, because they're messing it up for everybody else.

Just my opinion. These kids want to skate without a lot of adult interference. I know the feeling. I can hardly stand grownups myself. But then you have to make your own rules and enforce them.

I don't tolerate too much attitude in children, but then, looking it at from another perspective, if the worst thing they did is curse at the librarian and leave some trash in the parking lot at the grocery story -- how bad is that? You know, how does cursing at the librarian compare to a drive-by shooting? Pretty light weight stuff.

Unless you're the librarian, who I happen to know and like.

Now, to change the subject:

You Can't Write. This message is for all the new writers who are planning to self-publish their memoirs. You can't write. I know what you heard on the Oprah Winfrey show about how you should express yourself and why your story is valid and strong and worthwhile. It is your story and a true one. That d't mean anybody else wants to hear it.

In the old days you kept a diary and kept it private -- as it should be. Writing, that is writing something of value to a larger group, is a skill and not everyone has it -- like being a carpenter or a farmer. It takes years to get good at it, and not every one can succeed.

So this message is for you, my friend. You are surely very good at something, but it might not be writing.

Let me explain it another way. It's like the difference between gardening and farming. I can garden. I can grow a pretty good garden, but there's no way I can farm. Farming is when you can grow enough food to sell it and make a living at it. But gardening is a past time.

So maybe my few words are put before you to re-establish a boundary between writing as a past time and writing as a profession -- a friendly, but meaningful distinction.

Subscriptions and Signed Copies of the Book. It used to be that you sent in $25 and did not get much more than my appreciation, but now you get a signed copy of the Frog Hospital book.

This book is a treasure that will still be worth reading ten years from now.

Send a check for $25 to Fred Owens, Box 1292, LaConner, WA 98257. Or go to the Frog Hospital blog and pay with PayPal.


--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

send mail to:

Fred Owens
Box 1292
LaConner WA 98257