Garlic surrounds the soil…
Walnut in detail…
Category: Southern Humboldt County
All these leaves and their unique structure…
Bring us the Sun and grow up my friend.
We’re waiting for swell.
The magical flying stone tree…
The still life of a vegetable…
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It’s busy in our nursery and orchard during the spring and summer, so we try to get as much work, especially infrastructure, completed in the fall and winter as we can. And that often puts us up against the weather. In Humboldt County, the soil can get pretty clayey and clumpy after the rains and we have been getting plenty of rain. I won’t go into how grateful I am the rain has come, it was only mid-December and the well was still impacted by our summer use. It actually scared us, really shocked us; and now we are instituting any number of water consciousness techniques across the ranch. One of those is the new rigid PVC pipes we are laying in the orchard. The previous pipe system was black poly with endless metal clamps, and endless leaks.
And this brings me back to the weather. Around here, you have to take your nursery labor as you find it and this winter, starting in January, I was lucky to find two very hardworking young men from my local university, Humboldt State. I couldn’t wait on the rain – the job just seemed too big (7000 feet of pipe to lay) and I had the labor – so, the boys and I slogged ahead. Turned out, like a lot of jobs, it was more intimidating in anticipation than in execution. The boys could really only work on the weekends, so we have done a portion of the job each of the last few weekends. Now we have the ditches dug (damn, do I hate trenchers), the pipe laid, glued and the emitters screwed in. Next weekend, I hope to be covering the ditches. We have managed, mainly, to get the work done during dry spells in the weather. It is hard to sling mud – anyway you sling it. The boys are out in the field as I type this (working on a Sunday and in the rain, bless them) inserting the last of the emitters.
I can just see those smother crops I can grow and mow now, poking up through the meadow grass.
Ah, life is good!
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We just had a huge storm here. It was estimated we would get 20 inches of rain in 5 days. That’s 4 INCHES A DAY!! And I think we got it. The rain poured from the sky constantly. Thankfully my power did not go out (miracle). A lot of branches are on the roads, and the river is huge (finally). The tops of the mountains got snow.
Right now it seems to have let up…but the weatherman predicts another storm as big as this one!! Gulp…cross your fingers for us.
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I think I may have mentioned I recently moved into my childhood home. It has two small fruit tree orchards and a large vegetable garden. Only problem is, I can’t plant anything without the deer having a field day! There are multiple places the fence has fallen down and the deer can get in. A few were caused by trees falling, one huge hole was created by PG&E and Davey Tree, when they had to fix a downed power line. And a couple are just simple wear on the fencing itself.
So yesterday my Dad and one of our employees (who is also a great friend of mine) came over to walk the fence line. We cleared a path along the entire thing so it can be accessed when we actually do the fencing itself. We made a parts list aswell. We need over 100 new posts. Almost the entire length of fence needs to have an extension added to the top, bottom or both, and a good portion needs to be replaced entirely.
It sounds like my fence is a complete disaster. But it only took three hours to walk and clear the entire thing. And although a big portion needs to be worked on, a good length of it is just fine.
We are ordering the necessary parts today and hopefully the project will be finished in the next two weeks. I’m going to ask a bunch of my friends to come over and help. Some good food, a little beer, hopefully a day without rain, and the whole fence will come together in a snap.
(BTW, “Creek” is what we call my homestead because of where it is located.)
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In the winter you never know what the days weather may bring until you drive up a mountain. Most of the little towns around here are near the Eel River, and the moisture rolls in from the ocean each night and blankets the valley in a dense fog. Sometimes the fog is really clouds, and the day will stay overcast. But sometimes you can drive above the fog and encounter…
…a sea of clouds so dense you feel you could walk out onto them. Seeing this, you just know what the gods up on Mount Olympus must feel like.
The mist curls and climbs its way up the mountain sides, clinging to the trees in hopes of defeating the suns rays. Failure is inevitable, but no worries, night will bring a second chance for the fog to triumph. As for today…Sunshine!!
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For the past 30 odd years, our community has held the Summer Arts & Music Festival.
I’ve been so many years I can’t even count. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to go for the last few years (I was in Portland) but this year I got to go.
I went both Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday I was there with my friend M for a whole 12 hours. It was great. Beer, wine, music, TONS of people. Everyone comes out for the festival. You’ll run into people you haven’t seen for years. I saw at least a dozen people I went to high school with and haven’t seen in a good 10 years.
This year was bigger then ever. Lots of good food; Indian, Thai, BBQ, NY Pizza, Ice Cream, and the world famous KMUD Iced Coffee (KMUD is our local radio station. My dad has a radio talk-show every third Wednesday of the month. The Computer Guys).
All kinds of beautiful hand crafted art. Paintings, clothes, fairie wings, hair ornaments, umbrellas, aprons, cloaks, wooden spoons, jewelry, the list goes on. I got a few pretty things, here’s what I got.
I had my little Canon PowerShot with me and took a few videos of the Feet First dancers performance. I’m working on getting those videos up on our website, but we’ve never done that before so it’s taking some time. I’ll let you know when they are available because they are definitely worth a quick look. Our community may be small, but we manage to create a boatload of talented young people.
They performed a few excerpts from their recent ballet recital. And of course they had to have the little ‘uns dance for us. They were so cute.
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Life in the country has it’s own rhythm. It’s own “reality” even. Let me explain…
We have two local markets. The one is Garberville is Sentry (it’s actually a Ray’s now but it’s still Sentry to anyone who knows). The store in the neighboring town of Redway is the same way, it’s Murshes but actually it’s ShopSmart. Basically, if you ask a local how to get to the nearest grocery store, you better not be looking for a sign! But then again, neither of the towns are big enough to miss the one market in either of them.
Usually the locals here are considerate and nice. But if a tourist happens to be somewhat annoying (or not even – we don’t really care for tourist even though they do bring in the majority of our clientele) and they ask for directions we will give them the “long way around”. To be honest, I’ve never Actually done this but I’ve certainly been tempted. “Well now you need to turn around just ‘head there, go back through town and take the right after the freeway exit, now continue up that road about say…a mile, maybe it’s more then that, it’s right past the driveway with the large turnaround in front and the old pile of gravel, well the gravel’s gone but it’s that driveway, only don’t take that one…keep going until the ridge flattens out and on the other side you’re gonna take a right onto a dirt road. Keep going that way for about an hour…maybe two if you get stuck behind some cows..and that’ll take you right to Myers Flat.”
(In reality, Myers Flat is about 10 miles/10 minutes North on the Freeway 😉
When we were about 16, M and I heard about an old cemetary that was supposed to be up a road near where she lived. Seeing as we were rather courageous (or stupid, you decide) we wanted to go check it out. So one Saturday we went for a drive. We had no idea where it was supposed to be, we just knew it was out this road…somewhere. We kept an eye on the side of the road and drove. When we saw the first No Trespassing sign we didn’t think anything of it. They are EVERYWHERE here, and so we continued on. Then another passed, and another. Again we kept going, at least we Thought about turning around, but figured we’d come this far and we Really wanted to see this cemetary. After the sixth No Trespassing sign (and I think at least one Trespassers Will Be Shot sign) we decided to turn around. As we made our three point turn I glanced out the window and there it was! The Cemetary! Well of a sorts anyway, it turned out to be nothing but a little pet cemetary. Maybe two kinda sorta headstones all grown over with vines and moss. We laughed, and couldn’t believe we went through ALL that trouble for nuttin’!
Milewide Nursery 