Lewis, Lovett and I celebrated Miles and Lindsay’s wedding this past weekend. We donned our winter long johns and rain gear to weather some unprecedented rain and cold in the California mountains. We celebrated with old friends, made new ones, drank hot chocolate, and explored an outside world that was familiar and yet different.
We counted 287 growth rings on a Ponderosa Pine stump, learned some new campfire songs and I remembered what it feels like to be surrounded by this group of friends. Thank you Miles and Lindsay for a wonderful celebration and for bringing us all together.
A trip through the California central valley and up into the Sierra Mountains was a beautiful and at times shocking reminder of the connection I see between the food we eat and the world we live in. According to the USGS, “Using fewer than 1% of U.S. farmland, the Central Valley supplies 8% of U.S. agricultural output (by value) and produces 1/4 of the Nation’s food, including 40% of the Nation’s fruits, nuts, and other table foods.”
Being livestock farmers from the North East, it was shocking for Lewis and Lovett to see incredible green fields of pasture or crops surrounded by a crisp brown border of arid landscape where the irrigation sprinklers did not reach. In one particular instance we played soccer on a school soccer field while we waited for some friends, and Lewis noticed how the grass changed behind the goal. He stood with one foot on green lush grass, and the other in a brown dust spot.
“But where do they get all the water?” he asked after we puzzled through the strange contrast.
As we drove up into the hills and mountains we also drove through the remains of a huge forest fire. The North Complex Fires encompassed 318,935 acres, that is close to 500 square miles! Not just entire hillsides, but the entire view from the tops of the mountains were left bare, some with standing burnt trunks and other with the eerie nakedness of clear cut stumps from logging operations that came to salvage some timber from the burnt forest.
We wondered out loud at the complexities of our natural world. Forest fires, turning arid deserts into fertile fields with irrigation and the huge concrete dams holding river water turning river banks into lakes and then back into bare river banks and the water levels continue to sink in drought.
Lewis, Lovett and I arrived back home on the farm after some flight delays and a few hours of sleep. We loaded our first group of pigs, to send to the processor and restock our pork supply. On Thursday an impressive thunder storm left me setting up the generator in the dark and the rain. Friday night I had a music gig followed by a trip to visit our friends at Featherbed Lane Farm to share our meat and story with their CSA members. Saturday evening I went to bed early:)
Freezer Update
After many delays we are hoping Monday will be the day we turn on our new freezer. But we’ve had this hope before, so we’ll cross our fingers.
Reber Rock Farm Blog 