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A quote: “Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.” ~~ Jordan Peterson
I’ll start with a story …
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Taking the kids out of school caught the wrong attention. So we told them to play dumb and gave them real things to learn at home.
We gathered – families, friends, land. And knowledge that was at risk of disappearing. Books and the ways of doing things for ourselves. Helping each other because we wanted to. I remember when we got the animals. Horses, cows, chickens … my youngest son looked over at where the barn was being built, then up at me.
“It’s really an ark. Right, daddy?”
Maybe “flood” was a metaphor and that time had come again. Pray.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
Cameron says: My son’s eyes were wide. “So this is ours, dad?”
“Yep. Right up to the treeline. You make sure you respect that boundary when you start working out there with me. That belongs to Mr. O’Neil.”
“I promise. And we are gonna grow things now?”
“That’s right. And with luck, we’ll have a decent amount of wheat next year.”
“What about those people from the government who came over?”
I tousled his hair and waved off the question. He did not need to know what we used for fertilizer. Or that Mr. O’Neil is getting some wheat for his help.
Navig8r says: “Wow, Grandpa. You and your Pop on the farm. That must bring back some wonderful memories.”
“Some of the last few until a long time after that. Notice the cool weather clothes. The harvest was ready in July as usual. But the Starbucks intellectuals decided it was time to go Bolshevik and spike a bunch of oil refineries to save the planet. It was a miracle that the weather held out til October when we finally got a ration of fuel to bring in the crop. Most farmers weren’t that fortunate, so grocery shelves got bare. Then the unpleasantness started.”
Cameron says: I hope that the “unpleasantness” in question was directed at the Starbucks intellectuals. -:-)
Good bit of reading though.
On the surface a winery seems worlds away from a dairy farm or a corn and beans operation. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve found out that those of us who grew up in agricultural families have more in common with each other than we do with people from town in our own area.
One of my first memories is my dad leading me through the vineyards in the misty early morning, showing me how to recognize the signs of good health and of trouble in grapevines. By the time I was in middle school, I was doing it by myself and reporting what I found.
But adulthood took me into a life of scholarship. My brother would probably inherit the family winery anyway, so I could be spared to head off to distant lands, to the strange twists of fate that ultimately brought me back to my home state not as a university professor, but as a fighter against the darkness that has taken over our Federal government and cast a shadow across this land.
So I was surprised by a certain nostalgia when Elaine started talking about her own childhood in Iowa, the mornings collecting eggs from the henhouse, the summers working in the garden or cutting weeds and volunteer corn out of beans. After so many years away from my Napa Valley childhood, I suddenly longed for the sight and scent of those vines in the early-morning mists, the first leaves of spring, the tiny clusters of grapes growing through the summer.
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