Heading North

Follow the water, baby.

My blog postings have been scant for the last several months because there was some big news I was unable to share publicly until it was official, and it's very hard to write about small news when there's a proverbial Big, Life Changing News Elephant taking up major square footage in the living room.

The big story is that in three to six months, we will be leaving California for Corvallis, Oregon, so Big Ag can take a new job where his main task will be planning and development in converting conventional farmland to organic acreage.

We've been working towards the goal of moving north for awhile now, and it was either odd or serendipitous that we somehow ended up in Corvallis, Oregon for the total eclipse of the sun last August 21. We've had plenty of friends and family move to that area, but had never visited. It was a totally unplanned detour on eclipse day (a good one!), and after we visited we couldn't understand how it had escaped getting on our radar before now. 

Did I also mention that my former mother-in-law lived in Corvallis for years and could never get me up there for a visit? Truly, God gnashes his teeth at the hints we don't take even when he spray paints them on our wall. Anyway, the hint was finally taken when, about a month after we'd returned from Corvallis in August, a head hunter contacted Big Ag about a position there. No coincidence, I believe. God can begin his teeth-restoration program now. We finally got the hint.

We've been talking about leaving California for awhile now, as we begin setting ourselves up for retirement. As in most places, the nicest, most temperate parts of California are also the least affordable. And as far as unaffordable goes, this is already one of the most unaffordable parts of the country to live in, so you do the math. You get squeezed from just about every angle.

The other thing is the climate here. Let's be honest, a lot of people come to this area and fall in love with the warm "seasonal triumvirate" -- our mediterranean/desert-like springs, summers, and autumns. They are combined with mild winters (so mild that out-of-control winter wildfires are still possible in December, apparently). 

People who hail from places like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin come here and see heaven in a lifetime of never having to shovel snow again or don a parka in daytime, drinking wine,and sitting on their patios in January. I will stand and confess it now: I am not one of those people. Probably from being a native and having too many 80-degree Christmases growing up in Los Angeles.

Do you sit inside and watch the fire at Christmas time? We do in California, too.

And, as you see above, there's a price to pay for all that hot weather. I believe this geographic region is the canary in the coal mine as far as climate change goes -- we are seeing the hot temperature extremes first. Last summer we had our first 115 degree day, which was bookended by 110 degree days for a few weeks solid.  So, to me, that canary is singing loud and strong at this juncture in time, trying to warn us, although others might disagree. Being in agriculture -- but not as large landowners with established vineyards and fields -- we are lucky in that we can respond to climate change by moving closer to where the rainy weather and water has retreated to. Corvallis receives about 46 inches of rain and four inches of snow a year, it's a definite four-season climate, and there are abundant rivers, streams and creeks. And where there is water, there is agriculture and viticulture, and therefore, to me, life.

Vineyard and winery near Corvallis, in Philomath, Oregon.

Crossing the Cascades by train last week.

And so hopefully now that the cat is out of the bag I can come back here and talk a little more about what's going on. We'll be looking to establish a home in Oregon with our chickens, our vegetable garden, still making soap and preserves and enjoying the home arts. Moving a homestead is not easy, but as so many pioneers have done before us, it is certainly possible (and unlike them, we have professional movers!).

So stick around as we hitch our wagons and head north.

Tomato Death

Ex-tomatoes. RIP.

So my tomato crop this year at the homestead has been a total and complete failure. One of the things I learned in my Master Gardener coursework is that crops that are suffering and dying generally are not infected with disease; most of the time it's our own husbandry habits -- watering trends, over/under fertilizing, or other human factors which have inadvertently killed the ones we love...well, the green ones, anyway.

But for the second summer in a row my tomatoes have fruited poorly (this year not at all) and had a wilting issue, which I now realize is either being caused by fusarium or verticillium wilt. Both are soil-borne diseases that can last for years in soil, and so now I'm faced with fixing the issue, along with buying tomatoes at the farmer's market for the foreseeable future.

It doesn't really matter which wilt it is, fusarium or virticillium -- that's like debating whether getting run over by a Subaru Outback versus a Forester would be worse. The point is you, or in this case my tomatoes, are flat on the concrete at this point, and aren't coming back.

Luckily, since my contaminated soil is in raised beds, I can opt to either replace all the soil or solarize the bed. I'm going to solarize since we're at the height of summer -- spreading some clear plastic over the beds and letting our blistering summer heat do its work, raising the temperatures in the beds to about 160 degrees and killing the fungus...hopefully. 

Next year I will also have to plant VFN-resistant (VFN = verticillium, fusarium and nematode) hybrids instead of heirlooms. Luckily "Better Boy" is one of my favorite hybrids, so I have hope of salsa in 2017. I will miss my heirloom Mortgage Lifters and Pink Ladies though, but I'm taking no chances. It's sad to let those seeds go, but they will live on at the winery in the garden, so all is not lost.

It does make me understand exactly why these hybrids were developed, however. Losing an entire crop to disease is unfortunate for me, but could be catastrophic in the ag sector or on a family farm back in the day when no tomatoes actually meant no tomatoes -- period. 

Heirlooms are beautiful and are all the rage these days, but it's important not to forget exactly why some of these hybrids -- common, easy-to-grow; disease resistant and prolific -- are an important part of the crop world. They get a bad rap but the truth is are sometimes the answer to a prayer.

And I'm already praying for my 2017 crop, believe me. And luckily, my self-esteem got a boost this morning when I was able to can 20 pounds of pickles in the form of relish. So the preserving season has not been a total bust vegetable-wise.

But then there was relish.

And lots of flowers.

Holes and greens

Down in the pasture I've been noticing a a carpet of green and a lot of holes in the ground which have both taken over the uncultivated space at the bottom of our hill.

The greens, of course, are natural grasses and shrubs, a.k.a. weeds, which grow enthusiastically on our property with a tenacity and success that I have yet to match with the trees and vines I plant down there. They're not much of a worry to me, except where they are growing around my berry and grape vines and trees. 

Not willing to apply chemical sprays, I've spent the better part of two days hand weeding around the bases of the trees and shrubs, and have the bleeding arms to prove it. Berries are thorny and very well-defended plants, even when you are trying to help them by removing competitive plants around their bases.

The holes are a bit of a mystery to me, except for the largest ones which are from ground squirrels. There are small ones and medium ones, which could host anything from tarantulas to snakes to field mice.

While the greenery is a simple fix -- pull what's competing with the plants for nutrients and leave the rest -- the holes are a dilemma, because if we are going to have livestock, the holes will have to go.  They are just too much of a hazard to sheep, who could injure or even break a leg by stepping into one.

But one of the basic cornerstones of permaculture is leaving a certain amount of your property to nature and her critters, to do with what they please (within reason). And so I'd prefer to leave the bottom of the pasture to the hole-dwellers, if possible.

This will take some creative fence design, but I think having a balance of cultivated property and wild property is worth it.  As for how to do it, I'm not sure yet...but in the hours I will be spending down in the pasture weeding, perhaps that will give me more than enough time to think about it.

Of course with enough holes and enough greens, I guess I could always open a permacultural golf course, and with the general pathetic-ness of my golf game, the hole-dwellers are probably safe.

Country Snobbery

Over the years of making the transition from urban to rural living, I have experienced the death of a stereotype, sadly.  It's the image I had of "country folk," being 100 percent comprised of simple, honest, optimistic people, living their lives close to the land and embracing their choices while respecting the choices of others.  

Oh, that does happen sometimes, but its by no means something you can generalize about. But the following idioms are, I believe, present in almost every rural place you can find across our great nation.

(This is because, just like city life, there are hierarchies and cliques residing in the country.)

It goes something like this:

Large agricultural businesses often scoff at small farms, claiming they are either hobby farms or "communes run by hippies." (Are there even still people out there calling themselves hippies anymore, by the way?)

Small agricultural holdings, on the other hand, scoff at people choosing to be "yuppies" living "city life."  Although there are always a lot of platitudes about how they totally respect other people's choices, their disdain seeps through their conversation, their writings, and their attitudes when they run into these urban folk.  It's like they just can't quite believe people still choose to live and work in the city, and they treat those people like exotic zoo animals they don't quite understand. (Note:  This is always worse if they themselves actually chose to leave city life at some point for rural living.  Then the mock respect/curiosity/feigned ignorance gets plastered on so thick you could scrape it off with a knife).

People with no land are not immune to this either:  People with no land at all, who shop at the local farmer's market sometimes scoff at the ignorant fools in the grocery store, buying mass produced crap by the cart-load...never mind the fact that it's all they may be able to afford.

The carnivores, who believe eating meat is practically a Biblical mandate talk about vegetarians the way white people used to talk about blacks and commies in the 1950's.....they're all simpletons who just don't get the natural and correct order of things.

Horse people are in their own world and there are cliques within cliques within cliques, drama, gossip and grand plot twists.  Your horse clique is usually you and a couple of other couples who know how to keep horses. Your equine vet and farrier are in this clique too, although they are probably not aware of it.  Everyone else with horses are dangerous idiots, all other vets are incompetent, and all other farriers do nothing but cause horses to founder and develop cracked hooves. 

All that being said, you may ask why anyone would want to embrace rural life with all this mock elitism going on.  Well, it's worth it because, at a certain age and maturity level, you see these opinions for the prejudices they are -- held only by some (unfortunately) very vocal minorities -- and just live your life, not worrying what other people think.

You survived high school.  You can probably survive the country.