Just a few drops last week in our rain-challenged state. I was surprised when I checked my rain figures that we had 24″ last year, but 41″ the year before. I’m hoping we get more rain this year. The early drops of rain like this are heavenly…the smell…the most wonderful example of this is rain in the Baja California desert. When the rain comes, it’s in big quantities. You can almost watch the desert bloom, and it’s ambrosial.
“The National Heirloom Exposition is a not-for-profit event centered around the pure food movement, heirloom vegetables, and anti-GMO activism. Our first annual event held mid-September, 2011, in Santa Rosa, California, drew more than 10,000 people from around the country and beyond. With more than 70 speakers and 250 natural food vendors, the event was the largest gathering in pure food history! The Heirloom Expo has gained incredible interest among home growers, farmers, school groups and the general public–so much so that it is being called the “World’s Fair” of the heirloom industry!
We are happy to announce that the dates for next year’s event have already been set for September 11, 12, and 13th, 2012 at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa, California.…” https://www.theheirloomexpo.com/
1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa.
Drawing above shows 2 Golden Seabright bantams, the main birds of our current flock.
Got up at 5 AM, took off for points north to visit my friend Louie. It’s a 2-1/2 hour drive that always takes me 4 hours because I dawdle, mostly stopping to shoot photos. Here are a couple of perfect little farm buildings.
“…free-form, hand-built earthen home in western Washington’s Independence Valley is featured on a recent episode of Peak Moment TV. Host Janaia Donaldson calls it ‘a magical dwelling inside the woods.’
The funky, individualistic two-story home was built by Gregory Crawford, who works at nearby Rising River Farm — and travels during the farm’s off season (having no mortgage helps, no doubt). He gained permission to build there by asking the landowner.…” https://shltr.net/gregscob
“An heirloom tomato…is an open-pollinated (non-hybrid) heirloom cultivar of tomato. Heirloom tomatoes have become increasingly popular and more readily available in recent years. They are grown for historical interest, access to wider varieties, and by people who wish to save seeds from year to year, as well as for their taste, which is widely perceived to be better than modern tomatoes. They do however have a shorter shelf life and less disease resistance than most commercial tomatoes…
“…Only two things that money can’t buy
That’s true love & homegrown tomatoes…”
-Guy Clark
Note, the knife shown is my favorite vegetable chopper. It holds an edge forever, and is cheap (under $10!). Made in Thailand and reviewed here on CoolTools.
There are 3-4 places you can eat at the Harris Ranch. I like the the coffee shop best. It’s filled with pictures of the Valley around the turn of the century, as well as farm and carpenter tools and implements. Descriptions of this valley in the old days are heart-breaking. It was so beautiful, not over-farmed, before million-year old aquifer water started being mined to support crops that shouldn’t be growing in the desert. Some of the first grain crops were said to grow 6′ high. Driving down yesterday, things weren’t looking good. Where there were miles of lush fruit trees, you’d know agribiz is sucking unsustainable amounts of water from ever-deeper wells. Ah me. California you were so beautiful.
Shot this photo last night on my way back from radio interview in Santa Rosa. There are farm buildings here and there in the Marin countryside that make me happy. Like this little pump house (on the McIsaac Ranch near Tocoloma), they are perfect in their form/function practicality and grace. A (black and white) photo I shot of this same building over 40 years ago is on page 42 of Shelter (published 1973).
African American’s tenant’s home beside the Mississippi River levee. Near Lake Providence, Louisiana, June 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
“These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. The photographs are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.”
https://extras.denverpost.com/archive/captured.asp
Sent us by Bob Kahn
I love hitting the road in my go-anywhere 8 year old Toyota Tacoma (4×4, stick shift, 5 speed, 4-cylinder) truck, armed with cameras. This time I forgot my Panasonic Lumix G1 serious camera, just had the little Canon PowerShot G95. I breathe a sigh of relief when I get to farm land and I start scanning for pix. After splitting enough oak to fill my truck at my brother’s, I headed up to Middleton and Harbin Hot Springs. There’s something strangely relaxing about the funkiness and occasional white trash homesteads in lower-income counties.
I was reflecting on finding a balance between computer work and the physical world. I love all the email and blogging I’ve been doing lately. It’s an exciting time, what with the popularity of this new book, and sometimes I get so involved here at the Mac that I forget about two necessary antidotes:
1. Working out (including hiking, anything outdoors and physical) for the body. Getting circulation going, stressing muscles, and stretching. I always feel better.
2. Doing something with my hands. Making a table, turning the compost pile, splitting shakes. Deep-down satisfaction to make something with hands.
Funky lightweight farm building looks like it’s floating.
I When I see old farm buildings like this, I think of converting them into places to live. In Big Sur in the ’60s, I lived happily in a converted chicken coop for a year.
Nice steel sculpture at a place with a sign “Art Forms” on Hwy 121, south of Sonoma
