GARDENING 2024

With the recent warm weather and a break from all the rain the urge to dig in the dirt and plant a few seeds takes a hold of me.   Something in my DNA I guess that always kicks in this time of year.   In my younger years I always planned to have the perfect garden or at least better than what I had the year before--weed free, perfect rows and a bumper crop of veggies, which was usually zucchinis.    Not anymore as perfect is no longer in my vocabulary, now I just take a shovel, turn over the muddy ground, weeds and all, put seeds in the ground hoping for the best.   Peas are the first seeds I stick in the ground as the Stellar Jays sit in the nearby tree looking down on me.  I know what they saying to each other, "hay, look at the human down there sticking those seeds in the ground for us to go dig up for our dinner later when he is gone."    Even putting chicken wire over the newly planted seeds for protection is no deterrent as the next day I see it has been removed.    Maybe they get together with their rat friends during the night to help remove the wire and share in the bounty.   One year I noticed something was eating my climbing string beans.  I placed a motion camera out one night to see what varmint was guilty.   The next day it showed a mouse up the bean stock chewing on a green bean.   At the end of the day my back hurts, my hands are dirty, my boots muddy and best of all, I will have the opportunity to do it all again tomorrow if the weather permits.   

THE PERPETUAL QUESTION WE WERE ASKED AS KIDS

What do you want to be when you grow up?   I remember being asked this question in my early years in grade school.   It seemed to be the first question an adult would ask when you first met them.   If you answered, " I don't know" they kind of frowned at you like something was wrong with you?   In my later years in grade school and high school my answer was, 'I want to be a farmer or do forestry work and that seem to satisfy them.   In my working years farming and forestry was actually what I did.  

If I had it to do over again I would say, "I don't want to grow up, just let me be a kid for now.  

GUNS, PICKUP TRUCKS AND TEENAGE COUNTRY LIFE

The culture for most teenage boys living in small farming towns across the country was and might still be all the same involving driving pickup trucks, hunting and fishing during their free time.  The small northern California town of Willows, where I was raised was no exception.   Hunting pheasants and geese was common in the fall and winter.  Fishing and swimming in the creeks and the Sacramento River were the favorite past time in the summer.   To get to all these places required a pick up truck, since we were beyond the age of riding our bikes.   With a learners permit at the age of 15 and half I learned to drive our 1951 Ford Pickup with a three speed stick shift.   My mother supervised and would let me drive it to the dump whenever our garbage cans were full, usually every two weeks.    After I got my driver license at the age of 16, I was on my own with driving, whenever the pickup truck was available.   On one occasion my friend Alan and I drove out in the hills with our .22 rifles in the truck.  We were driving up the Clark Valley Road and stopped to shot at something from the truck.   All of sudden a California Highway Patrol car pulled up along the side of the pickup and the officers told us not to shot from the truck and drove off ahead of us.   We were so stunned and relieved that we were not issued a citation.  We continued our drive and never touched the guns again until we got home.     

DRY LAND FARMING

There were a few crops raised in the Sacramento Valley of northern California without the need for irrigation.   Barely, safflower and wheat were generally the crops that were planted in the late fall and early spring that were totally dependent on winter and spring rains.    Many of these crops were raised in the foothills along the westside of the Sacramento Valley.   Ground preparation took place in the spring when the soil was easy to turn over with a moldboard plow and left fallow through the summer months.   In the fall the plowed fields were disked, harrowed and planted with barely or wheat during November and December.   Safflower was planted in the spring and only required a couple inches of rain.   Safflower is used for its oil, both in the pharmaceutical business and for cooking oil.   Barley was mostly used as a feed grain for livestock and some for brewing of beer.  Most of the wheat was exported.   In the summer of 1962, I worked for a couple of weeks for Joe Stutz, who was farming on the Holmes Ranch west of  Willows, in northern California.  It was my first farm job driving a D-4 Caterpillar tractor that pulled a grain cart that followed two combines that were harvesting barley on a large field (maybe 200 acres) next to the foothills.   When the combines were full of barley they would empty into the grain cart that would be emptied into a truck that transport the barley to metal bins for storage until taken to market later.  We worked 10 hours days and I was paid $1.50 per hour.   It was hot and dusty work, not to speak of the noise.   At the end of the day and when sleeping at night I could still hear the clanging of the tracks on the Caterpillar tractor.  

Today there is no dry land farming on these lands due to a drier climate.   Some of these crops are raised with irrigation throughout the Sacramento Valley.  

14 HOUR DAYS

 This song brings back memories of farm life back in the 1960's operating some of those old combines in northern California harvesting barley, rice, safflower and milo corn.   Then in my later years working on a grass seed farm near Harrisburg, Oregon operating modern combines in the 1990's.  The one thing that never changed was the long days, many were 14 hour days.   

A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT

Baker Brothers Land & Stock Company was a large family farming and ranching enterprise in Glenn County, California.   They raised rice, alfalfa, barley, sheep and cattle.   The three brothers that owned and operated the business were John, who was the general manager, Deak, the rice dryer and storage manager and Willis, who supervised the labor force of about 12 full-time and 10 seasonal employees.   John had two sons that managed the livestock, Deak had a son, who was the lead mechanic and Willis had a son, who was a pilot. 

In the summer of 1962 John Baker and his son Jack were returning from their sheep ranch in the western foothills of the Sacramento Valley.   John was in his Cadillac car and Jack was following in his pickup truck on their way back to the company headquarters east of the small community of Artois, north of Willows along Highway 99w.   They were traveling on County Road 35 going east and John stopped before crossing Highway 99w with Jack right behind him.   Just beyond the highway going north and south is the Southern Pacific rail road going parallel with the highway with no warning lights or cross arm to stop traffic.   There was only the railroad crossing X sign.   According to Jack, who saw it all, said his dad crossed the highway and looked away from the direction he was driving to wave at somebody he knew in a passing car and ran directly into a passing freight train killing him instantly.   His car was carried down the track a few hundred feet and was a total wreck.   I believe John Baker was 60 years old at the time of his death.   His son Jack eventually took over as general manger at the age of  33 or 34.   

In the summer of 1964 I worked seasonally for Baker Brothers under the direction of Willis Baker doing tractor work, harvesting barley and rice in the fall of 1965 before being drafted into the Army in February of 1966 at the age of 20.    

The John Deere Rhythm Section

The Moron Brothers performing to the rhythm of this old John Deere tractor.   Spent many hours operating one these in my younger days cultivating beans, watching the row marker to stay inline with the furrows during the hot summer days of the 1960's.    The ending reminds me of a mechanical breakdown.

A MAJOR BREAKDOWN

The hitch behind the D7 Caterpillar tractor had a large pin that attached the chisel plow to the draw bar of the tractor.   There were two smaller bolts on the chisel plow hitch that were used to adjust the tilt of the implement.   Two hydraulic hoses were attached to the hydraulic pump on the back of the tractor.  These two hoses went to a cylinder that was used to raise and lower the implement as it was supported by two iron wheels.   These hoses were made of hard rubber with a steel mesh lining in side, since there was high pressure when the hydraulic oil was forced through them.  A chisel plow is basically a ripper used to break up compacted soil.  This particular implement was 14 feet wide with three rows of rippers offset where they were about 12 inches in width between each ripper that were set for 16 inches in depth through hard compacted ground.   The tractor had a 5 speed transmission and could only pull this implement in second gear, so you can imagine the resistance.   

One hot afternoon the two smaller bolts broke while I was operating the tractor.    The two hoses did not break and were strong enough to pull the hydraulic pump off the tractor when the cast iron housing attaching the pump to the tractor broke.   It happened so fast I did not have time to release the hand clutch and prevent the damage.    

PUMPING FUEL FROM THE WRONG TANK

Whenever farm work was being performed in the field with machinery there was usually was a fuel wagon or fuel truck nearby.    These wagons or trucks had duel tanks, one for diesel and one for gasoline or one tank with two compartments.   It was a Friday afternoon and my dad was planning on picking me up from where I was driving a tractor and we were going to join my mother and siblings where they were camping with friends at a campground on Mill Creek.    When my dad drove into the field where I was working he stopped by the fuel truck that had one tank with two compartments and filled his car with diesel by mistake.   It wasn't until after he had filled the tank that he realizes his mistake.   There had been some gas in the car tank and he thought we could drive as far as Chico and put more gas on top of the diesel then drive to Red Bluff and get more gas in the tank to dilute the diesel.   It worked, we made it to the campground with no problems, just a little more black smoke coming from the tailpipe.  

LEARNING THE HARD WAY

Learning how to operate and maintain farm equipment was usually done by the trial and error method.    Very seldom did anybody read an operator's manual or even know where they were at.  Looking back I never remember seeing one.

Many of the tractors made before 1940 did not have electric starters, some required cranking the engine or turning a flywheel to get the engine running.    Most of the Caterpillar crawlers had gas-starting engines to preheat and start the bigger diesel engines.  International Harvester (IH) came out with a diesel engine that started on gasoline and after a few minutes, you could switch it to diesel.   Most of the equipment my dad had was old and used until 1963 when he bought a new IH crawler.   That winter he sent me out to a field where it had been sitting for some time to move it to another field   As I started the engine it sputtered, started for a few seconds then made a clunking sound and quit.   At the time I did not know the water in it had frozen at some point cracking the head causing water to fill one of the cylinders.   When I started the engine on the gas the piston in the filled cylinder compressed against the water bending the rod to the crankshaft.   Once it started the rod broke causing serious damage to the engine.   I was told later that the spark plug for that cylinder should have been removed to allow the water to be pushed out.   How was I to know and who was responsible for not checking for antifreeze in the radiator?

Eventually, it ended up in our shop where we proceeded to take the engine apart.   There were parts all over the place when the IH dealer came to repossess it due to no monthly payments made for the last few months.   They took it all including the nuts and bolts scattered all over the shop floor.   Sure was a good way to clean up the place.

STICKING MY NOSE IN THE WRONG PLACE

 In the summer of 1962, during my high school years, I did a variety of farm work for both my dad and another farmer by the name of Joe Stutz.   Joe was a row crop farmer, growing sugar beets, tomatoes, and beans.    One morning Joe drove me to a field that he was preparing the ground for planting beans.   The rows had been constructed and it was time to fertilize the beds before planting the bean seeds.   The red Farmall tractor he was going to have me operate had two tanks on either side of it with hoses going down to a toolbar on the back of the tractor that injected the liquid fertilizer through steel shanks into the prepared seedbed, six beds at a time.   The fertilizer was ammonia nitrate, very toxic, but there was no mention of that by Joe.    There was never any talk of safety.

Joe gave me instructions on what levers did this and that and pointed to a trailer parked nearby with a large tank on it where I was to fill the tanks on the tractor when they got low on fertilizer.   Joe's parting words were, "give her hell and somebody will pick you up at 5."  Now it was just me, the tractor, my lunch, and a jug of water all alone, a mile from the nearest county road.

As I drove the tractor back and forth over the rows I noticed the tubes on the back of the tractor tanks indicating the fertilizer was getting low, so I made my way to the parked trailer.   The trailer had a small engine on it that operated a pump for filling the tractor tanks with a long hose with a nozzle on it.    After getting the small engine going and putting the nozzle in a tractor tank I could not hear any sound of liquid flowing.   I proceeded to stick my face, nose first toward the tractor tank opening to hear if any fluid was flowing.   In a flash, I was on the ground gasping for air.   It took me a few minutes to gain a sense of well-being and breath again.   It was not the place to be sticking my nose into.   Luckily it all worked out and I continued fertilizing the field without any more mishaps.  

CROSSING the PRINCETON FERRY

One of my fondest memories of farm work was driving a rice harvester 20 or more miles and crossing the Sacramento River on the Princeton Ferry.    It was the Fall of 1965, and after completing rice harvest in Glenn County we moved over to Colusa County to harvest some more fields of rice.   This full track machine weighed 20 tons, had two diesel engines, one to propel the machine and the other to operate the grain separator.  The unloading auger and the 20-foot header used to cut and move the rice into the separator were removed in order to drive on the county roads and not cause traffic problems.    The tracks were made of steel blocks for better traction in the muddy fields and did not harm the paved roads when driven from one field to the next.   A man had to sit upon the grain tank with a wooden pole to lift any low-hanging power lines as the height of the machine was about 20 feet or more.    There was no way for me to see the traffic behind us, so passing vehicles took a risk with oncoming traffic.   When we reached the steep road down to the ferry I feared the machine would slide on the pavement into the river.    The ferry was operated by the county and had a 22-ton load limit.  The ferry operator signaled for me to come on down, so I trusted he had moved these machines before and knew what he was doing.   As I drove onto the ferry he told me to move it all the way to the front in order to allow the back end to lift off the road.    As I moved forward water started flowing across the ferry deck.    This ferry was propelled by a winch pulling on a cable crossing the river.   As the ferry started across the river it was pulled by the current downstream until it lined up again with the road on the other side.   God only knows where we would have landed if that cable had broke.   Once to the other side, the ferry operator had me back the machine to the rear in order to get the ferry up into the road.  Again, the water flowed across the deck.   We made it across and continued on our merry way.  

Rice Farming

 

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.                   

Prelude to Spring

 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?  

What would we do during these uncertain times without planning for our gardens this coming spring? 

Living on Hunter Creek

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.    

Took a look on Google Earth to see what the place looks like today.  All the outbuildings are gone, including the big Willow tree that was out front.   It is just a memory now of long-long ago.

                                              1981-1988

 

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.

A Family Story

 In this story I have mixed some family history with some genealogy.   I must have been 8 or 9 years of age when we made this trip.    

Happy Thanksgiving!

CANADA

 

It took four days to drive from our home in Willows, California to Lacombe, Alberta where my dad was born in 1922.  It was in the 1950’s when we made the trip to a family reunion.   It was all two lane highways back then, no freeways.  The first day we drove to Bend, Oregon, then to Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho and by the third day to Fort MacCleod, Alberta before arriving at our destination at Gull Lake.    Here we stayed in a cabin that did have electricity, but no indoor plumbing, so an outhouse was available and a hand pump outside for water.   My grandparents were there to meet us since they had taken a plane from their home in southern California to Edmonton where they rented a car.   Over the next week there were different relatives coming and going.  Some were descendants of our second great grandfather, Patrick Burke and Bridget (Gallagher), who had migrated from Ireland sometime in the 1840’s to the Ottawa Valley in Ontario where he took up farming.    According to a census in 1851 Patrick’s father, Michael Burke was living with them.  He was born 1777 in Ireland and died 1852 at the age of 75. 

Patrick and Bridget had 10 children, including our great grandfather Edward born 1849, who later married Mary Kenney born 1860 to John Kenny and Ellen Gallagher (not sure the relationship between Ellen and Bridget, maybe cousins?).   Edward and Mary had 9 children and possibly two more that died in infancy.  They migrated to Iowa, then to Nebraska where our grandfather, John Raphael or as we remember him as J. Ray was born in 1894.  Sometime between 1900 and 1910 Edward and family migrated to Alberta to work on the railroads being developed from western Alberta into British Columbia.   Our great uncle Dan was born 1896 in Nebraska.   He told the story about working as a clerk for the railroads as they constructed the railroad down the Frasier River canyon in British Columba.   The crew lived in train cars and one car was used as the kitchen.   He said venison was the primary source of meat as deer were shot from the train.    Ahead of the train was a steam shovel digging out the grade to lay the tracks.   He would describe landslides that would push the shovel into the river and the train would back up to allow another shovel to be moved to the front and continue digging.  

Our grandmother, Agnes (Caldwell) and her family also migrated from Alabama to work on the railroads and sometime around 1915 she met our grandfather and married.   Their first born son, Vernon was born in Alberta, but later died of pneumonia at the age of 11 in southern California.   My grandmother still had two living siblings at the time of the reunion, a sister named Mary and a brother named Gavin.    Mary and her husband had a farm near Red Deer where we stayed one night.  Here again no indoor plumbing.   The outhouse was near the back door of the house as I remember.   Great uncle Gavin was in the hospital in the small community of Rimbey after having a heart attack.   He was not allowed visitors inside, so my dad, grandfather and great uncle Dan talked to him through the window next to the bed he was in.     I remember they all were smoking cigarettes, including the patent as they talked.   Gavin and his wife Anna lived on the family farm near Rimbey.    Anna had all of us over for dinner, with roast beef, potatoes, carrots, green beans and much more, all from her garden.   Gavin Caldwell died a few years later.

In 1968 my grandmother and I went back to Alberta by plane and visited Anna at her small home in Rimbey, since she had sold the farm.  The only others relatives living in Alberta were members of the Foy family in Edmonton, offspring of James Foy and Jane (Burke), an older sister to our grandfather.   There are other descendants of the Patrick Burke family living in Saskatchewan.   The rest of us are scattered in the states. 

Seagulls

 In the Fall of 1965 I was disking a plowed field a mile west of the Sacramento River, near the small community of Ordbend in northern California.   It was one of those pleasant days, the soil was moist and breaking up into a nice seed bed for planting barley after being plowed a few weeks earlier.   It was a day I should have been in class at Chico State College, but preferred being outside sitting on the seat of a D7 Caterpillar tractor pulling a John Deere 16 foot wide disc and making $1.75/hour.  

On the back gang of discs there were a dozen or more Seagulls sitting on the frame with their backs toward me.   They would jump off the frame as worms and other bugs appeared in the newly turned up soil then jump back up on the frame.   At times I would stop the tractor to see their reaction.   They would turn their heads and look directly at me as if they were asking, " why are you stopping?"  

About four months later life abruptly changed after being drafted into the Army after losing my school deferment.

This happened 55 years ago, seems like yesterday.

Some Tillage

 Just started digging potatoes today, use much char, mostly dry land farming here because of limited water supply.  Rabbits ate all our greens, squash and beans survived.  Neighbors had a bumper crop of greens, so we did not go without.

Spent our stimulus money on a new toy for quenching char this next winter--300 gallon water wagon/pump/20 ft hose.  

90 degrees and rising this afternoon 

Stay safe!

Working on a Grass Seed Farm 1996-2000

 In the winter of 1996 I enrolled at Lane Community College near Eugene and took a course of study in Agricultural and Industrial Equipment Technology.   After completing two terms I received a certificate in Diesel Electrical Systems.  An alumni of the course, who was a shop foreman on a grass seed farm out of Harrisburg asked the teacher if any students would be interested in a seasonal job.   I raised my hand and the job was offered to me.   Basically I became the chief grease monkey operating a service truck and running from field to field each morning servicing farm equipment.   This work consisted of filling fuel tanks, checking oil levels, greasing the machines, blowing out radiators and air filters.  Don’t remember doing much electrical work.  Shop work was more of the same working on fork lifts, trucks, machinery in the warehouse and running into Harrisburg for parts once or twice a week.   Most of the equipment was operated by local high school students.   Whenever one of them did not show up in the morning or have to leave before the end of the day it was me that replaced them in the cab of a combine.   This was monotonous work going round and around with four other combines equipped with pickup headers going wherever the windrows took us.    The north wind would be blowing and the dust would follow us, sometimes going ahead of the machine where we could not see much beyond the cab.    By late afternoon my eyelids would start getting heavy and the fear of falling asleep would overtake me, even with the a/c and radio going.   Sometimes I would have to slap myself to stay awake in fear of the combine wandering off course and going in some nearby ditch.    The days were long, 10 to 14 hours depending on the air moisture in the evenings.   At the end of the day there would be some trucks filled grass seed that had to be driven back to the warehouse and emptied.   It would be 10 or 11 pm some nights when I got back home in Eugene.   The next day I would be up and gone by 7 am to beat the rush hour traffic.   My lunch box had enough food for lunch and dinner.   Sunday night dinners were provided by the farm consisting of a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and all the side dishes for those working that day.    It was delivered out in the field to each combine or tractor operator to eat while working.   I definitely don’t care for that stuff anymore.  By mid-August most combine work was done and all hands had to operate a tractor to work the fields in preparation for seeding next year’s crop.   Burning of grass seed straw was no longer permitted and the straw had to be worked back into the ground by plowing, disking, and harrowing until the soil was almost turned into to dust.  This work would end each day by 5 pm and usually completed by end of September when I was laid off for the season.   There was no overtime for this work and during periods of rain the crew was laid off until things dried out, sometimes for up to a week.  If we worked the entire season until we got laid off we received a bonus check near Christmas time.  

I continued doing this job for the next four summers.   One morning in August of 2000, while driving north on I-5 to the farm I missed the Harrisburg turnoff and did not realize it until I saw the sign for the Brownsville Exist.   It was time to call it quits, plus Celia and I were getting ready to move into our house in Cottage Grove and get married in October.    I could not imagine adding another 20 miles to the daily commute.    No bonus check was received that year.

Farming

I recovered this from the original posting to publish it again for those that may not have seen it.    With the high cost of food today, labor shortages and climate change it is worth reviewing. 

 Farming is a risky business.   There is the weather to contend with, the market, and a certain amount of debt load to deal with.   Farmers usually don’t get a monthly income from the sale of their crops, but the bills keep coming in on a monthly basis making it necessary to take out loans.  Payments for crops can be lump sum or paid out periodically depending on the contract between grower and buyer.    It is usually the buyer or market that sets the price, not the farmer.   

Most farms are passed down from one generation to the next along with the same old risks.   There is the high cost of farm equipment, maintenance, fuel, soil amendments, fertilizers, seed, labor costs, insurance, overhead and more.   Profit margins can be slim.   Most of the labor on family farms are the family members and from experience I know they can be overworked and under paid.   Today many family farms are going under.  Personally I saw my own dad take on too big of a debt load where he got behind on payments and had to sell off everything to satisfy the bankers back in the 1960’s.   

Farming is highly mechanized.   Fifty years ago it took three tractors to do what one large tractor can do today.   The only difference back then was the operator was exposed to the weather, the noise and the dust.   There were a few hazards with the job, such as a hydraulic hose breaking and spraying oil on you or a flying piece of metal from some mechanism blowing apart.  Today the operator sits in an air conditioned cab with a radio, maybe a tape deck and the biggest hazard is falling asleep.   

Immigrant farm labor is critical for the crops that can’t be mechanically harvested.   Most the fruits, veggies and meat you see in the market was picked, slaughtered,  processed and packaged by somebody from south of the border.   They might be here illegally or under the H-2A agricultural work visa program and without these people there would be critical food shortages.    You do not see many white people doing this work.   

Next time you’re in the market think about where that food came from and who processed it.  Tomorrow it may not be there.