Between storms this last week did my third batch this winter made from 2 to 4 inch material and wet, 22 inches of rain here since 10/1/2020. Used some cardboard boxes to get it started. Crush it by putting it in empty 40 lbs bird seed bags and drive over it. Between me and the neighbor it goes into our compost.
FARMING IN GLENN COUNTY
CALIFORNIA
1960 -1966
The trottle was wide open on the old D-7
Caterpillar tractor as it pulled a 14-foot wide chisel plow through the burned
rice stubble and heavy adobe soil. The
black dust would be blowing to the south by the north wind. By the end of the day me and the other cat
skinners looked like coal miners after we took off our eye goggles. All night long I could hear the sound of the
tracks clanging as I tried to sleep. The
next day was the same old thing as we raced to get the ground prepared for
another rice crop. The day started out
with pumping diesel fuel into the tractor, giving it another quart or two of
oil, greasing a few fittings, and cranking on the gasoline-starting engine in
hopes of starting the diesel engine. The
most frequent breakdowns during the day usually involved breaking a hydraulic
hose, or the hitch, or having engine troubles.
Hand tools, a cutting torch, welder, and an assortment of parts were
always in the pickup truck for these repairs.
After the ground was prepared and
fertilized the fields were flooded.
Gates were opened along canals, and pumps were turned on to get the
water through the contour levies winding through the fields. The north wind and rat holes in the levies
would cause breaks during flooding.
These were repaired with filling sacks with mud and placing in the
broken dike. Once the fields were
flooded, planes called crop dusters sowed rice seed. During the summer the water level was
monitored and chemicals were applied by crop dusters to kill bugs and
weeds. (Many of these are no longer used
due to environmental and health concerns)
As the rice would grow in the heat of the summer, we would work with
other crops being raised in various fields scattered around the county. There were beans and tomatoes to plant,
barley and safflower to harvest, and fallow rice fields to work up for crop
rotation.
By the first of September, an assortment
of equipment was in the process of being prepared for the rice harvest in 2 or
3 weeks. There were combines, bankout
wagons and trucks to get into operating order for the big harvest. Also, at this time the water level in the
fields was lowered, and eventually shutoff as the heads of rice started to
mature. As soon as conditions permitted,
the harvest was underway with man, machines, and some luck in order to beat the
fall rains.
The first sign of Spring is the arrival of seed catalogs in the mail and all the bags of soil amendments piled in the parking lot of the local Bi-Mart in Sutherlin. This last Sunday our neighbor, Jim brought us a couple of bags of greens from his greenhouse. I have been providing him with biochar to incorporate into their compost and from that he makes a potting soil that beats anything I can buy or put together. Something he learned from his grandmother in his younger days. My gardening abilities are limited by a shortage of water in the summer and an increase of critters eating everything I plant, except potatoes. Last summer my motion camera detected mice climbing the bean supports and eating all the foliage, plus everything else, including what was started in our greenhouse. Even our three cats can't keep up with the varmints. Anybody know of a poison that will not be harmful to our cats?
Did you know that 20% of our DNA comes from Neanderthals? That should give you something different to think about today. Neanderthals may have gone extinct from disease or doing battle with humans. Some may have survived, moved on to better hunting grounds, prospered and their descendants took up residency in all parts of the world with their human relatives. Who knows? Makes me think of some of my Irish and Viking ancestors from the dark ages. Something different to ponder during these uncertain times.
This story has been in the works for awhile. Looking back I can see some humor, but at the time it was anything but humorous, more stress than anything.
There were
chickens, a goat, a black sheep, a dog, a cat, two young children, my wife and
I all on two acres with a big garden and creek frontage. It was the first home we purchased when
conventional home loans had interest rates peaking at 18%. We
bought the place with seller’s financing at 10% and a balloon payment due at
the end of ten years. We had no idea how we would come up with the balloon
payment and at the time didn’t give it much thought. We were so excited to have a place of our own
after living in a government house for two years where gardening or any kind of
alterations to the landscaping was not permitted, because the Gold Beach Ranger
Station is on the National Register of Historical Places, since it was built by
the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1937.
It was a
three bedroom house with a fireplace where we had a woodstove insert
installed. There was a variety of outbuildings consisting of a small three-sided
barn, a pump house, a chicken coup, a greenhouse attached to a building that
had been added on to the back of the house with a garage attached to that and a
woodshed attached to the garage. I’m
sure none of it was constructed in accordance to the local building codes,
which was typical of many country places in Oregon at the time. There
were neighbors to the east and west of us, but only a forested hill across the
county road to the north of the property and Hunter Creek boarding the south
end. We were two miles south of Gold
Beach outside the city limits, but the city did provide water to the homes in
the area. There was a small community of
homes scattered along Hunter Creek, including a small store, tavern, lumber yard
with a hardware store on the old highway off Highway 101, just a mile south of
Gold Beach.
My wife’s
first priority was to have a goat for milk.
This was a learning experience for us both, especially when goats are
herd animals and do not care to be left alone.
The first night the young goat considered us part of the herd and would
whine if left alone. This troubled my
wife and the goat was brought into our bedroom for the night. It did not work out and I don’t remember
much after that episode. One of those
things that has been blacked out of my aging memory. Eventually we got a black sheep my wife wanted
for the wool to supply her with material for weaving. The goat and sheep stayed in the back
pasture with the small three-side barn for shelter from the rain. The company of the sheep seem to satisfy the
goat.
In order to
have a goat that produces milk it must be bred once a year and have an
offspring. This became a yearly
event. We had to load the goat into the
bed of the pickup and drive her up a dirt road in the hills east of Gold
Beach. It was always at night as the
four of us sat in the front of our 1975 Ford pickup and made our way up a muddy
road to an isolated goat farm where an old lady would charge us $20 for having
our goat mate with her Billy goat. All I can recall is driving up to a rustic
looking shack with a light coming from a door window and a wooden fence and
barn with a variety of goats enclosed within it all. The old lady would bring her Billy goat out
to the truck where we had unloaded our goat and the procedure happened quickly
since the Billy goat was more than ready.
It had to have been a learning experience for our two young
children. After a few months and the
birth of the new goat the milking procedure started twice a day. The baby goat would be sold a few months
later. This process continued for the
next four years.
Over the
course of the first year we suffered some setbacks. First the well went dry. It came down to either drilling a new well
or tap into the city water line that was out under the county road 100+ feet in
front of the house. We decided on the
city water source knowing there would be a guarantee of water. This cost us $1000 to have a meter installed
off the road. Getting the water piped to
the house with all the required values was our responsibility and subject to
inspection. I did all this work myself
and it even past inspection.
During the
first winter Hunter Creek flooded the back 40 or the one acre where the
pasture, barn and chicken coup were located.
Early in the morning I had to rescue the goat that was in the barn up to
its belly in water. We kept the goat
and the sheep in the room attached to the back of the house until the water
receded. The chicken’s survived by
staying in the rafters of the coup. With
the wet pasture during the winter the goat developed hoof rot, which required
constant care by trimming and applying a disinfectant. It also became necessary to supplement feed
the goat and sheep with alfalfa hay during the wet season. This required a yearly trip to a feed store
in Langlois, 40 miles north of Gold Beach for all the hay bales we could load
on the pickup. We
stored the hay in the back room behind the house. This room also was where we milked the goat
during the wet season on a milking stand.
There may have been a half of a gallon produced every day.
There were
the never ending projects to do. I
remodeled a couple of the rooms of the house.
There was an old fuse box in the utility room that kept blowing fuses on
a couple of circuits that were overloaded.
We hired an electrical contractor to install a breaker box and rewire
the place to code. The house was on two
septic systems, one for brown water and one for gray water and both were in
need of overhaul. There was a large Willow tree in the front
yard where the drain field was located and the Willow tree roots had invaded
the one and only leech line. Cutting
and hauling firewood from the forest involved many weekends. In
addition to everything else I constructed a split rail cedar fence along the
property boundary on the eastside. After some weekends I looked forward to going
to work on Monday.
It was an
ideal place for children to grow up with the best swimming hole in the
neighborhood during the summer, a forest to build a fort across the county road
and a garden to pick veggies from.
There were summer days when many of the nearby young children would
spend more time at our place than at their own homes. At times we had to feed some of them and
drive them back to their homes where their parents didn’t even know they had been
gone for the day, or didn’t care.
When the new
McKay’s market opened in Gold Beach we entered a drawing for a freezer full of
food. We were shocked when we found out
we had won it. Most the food included was frozen meals, ice
cream and some meat.
When our
children entered school my wife went to work as a teacher’s aide for a handicap
class at the Ophir School 12 miles north of Gold Beach. She
also took extension classes at night in Gold Beach from Southwestern Community
College in Coos Bay. Going back to
school and getting a degree in education was something she always wanted to
do. In the summer of 1986 she enrolled
at the University of Oregon in Eugene and she and the children moved into
university housing that September. Every other weekend I would make the four hour
trip to visit them. With the family
gone I thought I would have more free time to tackle all those uncompleted projects
on the place. During the summer months
I rented out the bedrooms for two seasonal Forest Service employees to stay,
since rental housing was scarce in the community. There was a young man and woman that
became tenants. The woman did her fair
share of housekeeping and cooking. The young
man did very little and always wanted to go to the tavern after work and drink
beer. This caused friction between the two and
heated discussions on who should being doing what. On weekends the young woman had her
boyfriend from Corvallis come visit her.
In the
spring of 1988 I transferred to Cottage Grove to be closer to family. The Hunter Creek house was put up for sale
with a real estate broker and a young couple rented it while it was on the
market. About two months later it sold
for the same price we bought it for in 1981, which was a financial loss
considering all the improvements. The goat and sheep ended up being moved to
farms near Eugene where my wife wanted them to reside. The poor chickens became a meal for some
critters, except for the rooster that escaped to the rafters. I don’t
know where he ended up in the end. The
dog came with me and I don’t remember much about the cat that may have strayed
off or died before the last year on the place. Best of all we did not have to worry about
coming up with a balloon payment after 10 years and my weekends were much less
stressful.
Back in my early days with the Forest Service on the Orleans District of the Six Rivers National Forest we had to go through a chainsaw certification class in order to fall any standing hardwood trees remaining on the clear-cut units before burning the slash. Most these trees were tan oak, madrone, alders or maples ranging in size from 6 to 24+ inches in diameter and 10 to 40 feet in height that survived the logging operation without getting knocked down. The first day of training was spent on safety, saw maintenance and operations. Then we had to go out in the woods and fall hardwood trees on a logged clear-cut unit before getting our certification card. The Forest Service had Homelite and McCulloch saws with 24 inch bars. They were nothing like the modern lightweight saws of today and after a few hours they seem to get heavier as the day went on.
Back in
those days hardwoods were looked upon as an undesirable species. After
the clear-cut units were planted, mostly with Douglas-fir seedlings, the
competing hardwood vegetation had to be eradicated within the first 5
years. This was primarily done by aerial
spraying a defoliant chemical (2-4-5-T) over a 5 year period. In the Vietnam War this was called Agent Orange
which was an orange dye put in a mixture of 2-4-5-T and 2-4-D to show the
pilots where they had sprayed the jungle vegetation below. If I
remember correctly this management practice came to an end on the National
Forests in 1979 due to contamination of streams and the general outrage of the
public living downstream. Shortly
thereafter the forest products industry found a use for these trees as pulp for
paper products, hog fuel for their cogeneration plants and other specialty wood
products. In the
1980’s when the lumber market crashed the chip market for pulp went up because
the mills were not producing enough wood chips as a by-product from milling
lumber. It was these hardwoods trees
that saved some mills from going under.
I can remember South Coast Lumber in Brookings throwing finished lumber
into their chipper along with hardwoods to make ends meet by selling wood chips
to the Menasha Pulp mill in North Bend.
After having my morning coffee I got to thinking of what this next year has in store for us. Always scary when I get into deep thinking, so thought I would share what I know and don't know.
Getting ready to celebrate the New Year. Celia took this picture of me napping the other day, probably going to happen again this afternoon. Don't want to overdo it on New Year eve.
