I’ve linked to the writing of Andy at The Ladybug Letter before. I first stumbled across him in a link to his history of field greens and spinach during the spinach disaster a year or so ago. I’ve been a subscriber to the newsletter he and his partners put out ever since. Here’s his latest essay…
The truck came with a dog, but I didn’t know that at first. It was 1976. I was sixteen. I didn’t have a driver’s license yet, but I’d gotten a job on a cattle ranch outside of Montague, California, on the high desert north of Mt. Shasta, and my employers gave me a pick-up to use. They also provided me with a horse, a saddle, as much beef as I could eat, and four hundred dollars a month. The first time I hopped behind the wheel and started off down the dirt road, Sis came tearing out of the barn where she’d been sleeping in the hay and chased after the truck barking, incredulous and offended that I’d forgotten her. Sis never completely trusted me after that, and she always slept where she could keep an eye on her truck.
Go check out the rest of the story…Maybe copy a recipe…If you live in that area, buy some veggies…
To my way of thinking, it’s people like Andy and Julia and their “marketing” of their farm produce that are the wave of the future. It’s the same thing coming from Burr Morse and the “News From Vermont:Vermont“ ….
Hello again Maple People,
Our goat and sheep recently busted out of their winter environs onto ‘open range’; there was no more putting it off…the fence had to be fixed. Fixin’ fence is never a job that I enjoy but, what the heck, someone’s gotta do it. Winter’s always rough on fences, especially winters like this past one. Yesterday I found several of the aged boards splintered and prostrate and on the electric section, the bottom wire lay ripped away from its broken insulators. I toggled it up, wishing I had all new materials but that’s the way with farming…you rarely can afford the materials to do a job right. My father was fixin’ fence one time and he came up short of posts. He did what any resourceful farmer would have done…went to the nearest tree and cut out a few. The tree happened to be a willow, a species that grows fast, dies young, and is as prolific as a pair of rabbits.
Dad said the next year when he attended to his fence duties, those improvised fence posts had sprouted roots and, by golly, had become trees!
Reaching out with stories…Telling the history of their place, their people, how they see the world around them. Teaching and informing as they make a case for their products…
Do you have any examples out in your neck of the wood’s? Let me know…I always like a well told story.
