I was barefoot, shirtless, soaking in the sun while my eyes tried to focus on the spindly carrot sprouts protruding from warm sand, deliberating to discern the carrots from crabgrass that should not really have germinated so early in the spring. The hoe I used was revolutionizing my carrot cultivating technique; it originated with my [...]
Sunday afternoon I contemplated doing something productive, but decided against. Carrot sprouts are slowly emerging in the sand that is still moist after recent rains. My teenaged son wanted to try fishing in one of the drainage ditches that slice through the bottoms near our farmstead, as the river is rising, so I loaded beer [...]
Dramatic climate change never seemed like a debatable topic to me, having walked with bare feet on its direct effects as a child. I can peer out my windows to the west, south, and east, and view ridges of forested hills, all the direct effects of the last Ice Age. This is precisely where the [...]
With the return of sunshine, the acre or so of sand protected from wind by our wooded pasture lot, house, and barn, is heating, drying, and amazing me. Yesterday the official high for our area was 41 F, but my son and I worked in shirt sleeves, bending fourteen foot hog panels into arches we [...]
The week after Christmas the boys, my second ex, and I stayed in the home of Luke and Emily Frey, in Redwood Valley. “The Frey winery?” my mom asked, over the phone. “Howie, Spec’s staying at the Frey winery!” They made me promise to take a bunch of pictures. Turns out my folks, who are [...]
Over the two weeks I was fortunate enough to stay with friends on maybe half a dozen farms or ranches in Mendo, I visited as many folks as possible during the days. Because I was not driving, rather relying on pure hospitality, and this was the winter holiday season, some farms and ranches I really [...]
“Never go in Kincaid Holler after dark,” they always warned us. The Kincaids reinforced the frightened prejudices of the German farmers. From the other side of the river, the farmers they regarded as invaders of their native soil, no doubt, as Grandpa, his brother Alvin, and Uncle Huck had purchased most of the neighboring valley’s [...]
Saturday morning I was trying to sleep in, but the phone rang about eight. It was my current employer, Mort O’Henry. “Spec?” “Man, I didn’t think we were working today.” “No, I’m down at my grandma’s farm. Guess who’s here with me.” I knew it had to be my 14 year-old son, Craig. “Craig and [...]
Let my faithful blue heeler bitch, Lupe, spend the night in the house on Friday night, since son was spending the weekend at a friend’s house. The first thing she did in the kitchen was start cleaning, eating all the food particles that my son and I had squandered to the floor. When that job [...]
For years I always joked that my blue heeler bitch was going to leave me for a guy who had a pick-up truck. I was only half-joking, though, and always harbored a deep anxiety that it could easily happen — any time some friend with a truck stopped by the farm in Boonville to pick [...]
