I come from a long line of people with soil under their fingernails from playing in the garden or in the fields. My father's parents' families were farmers for a couple of generations before him. He was a nursery owner, landscaper, an agronomist, crop adviser and farm consultant. I learned a ...
This is my second "fresh start" as a blogger for Capper's Farmer. In late May, we were in a car accident that left our little Honda Civic resting precariously on the passenger side on our twisting mountain road that had a steep bank on the "upside" and a steep drop into a canyon on the other. ...
Here in Northern California, months of drought brought creek, river and lake water levels to an all-time low. However, good news came with a light rain on Sunday, Feb. 2, and it’s been raining some every day since. While it hasn’t been what my late father-in-law called a ...
Dear friends of farmers, Larry and I just spent a long weekend at our hobby farm located in southwest Nebraska near the Kansas border. We had a nice few days doing inside tasks that have been on our mental to-do list for some time. The weather warmed up and tried to coax us outdoors, but we ...
On January 17, California Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency in much of the state’s agricultural counties. This has been the driest year on record since they started keeping track more than 100 years ago. In 1976-77, a few years before I married into the family, my husband ...
When my grandparents built their house, they chose the building site to take advantage of a strong, clear-running spring that they had piped into the house. Nowadays the bank providing the mortgage would probably prevent such a thing, but back then I suppose it wasn’t so unusual. I remember ...
The potato patch was big enough to keep boys busy hoeing, and fighting potato bugs. An ordinary tin can about a third full of kerosene, and a small stick to knock bugs off into the can by boys took only as long as the boys attended every plant. One could sprinkle the plants with Paris Green, or ...
In the early hours of morning a shout of "FIRE!" split the yet pitch black of pre-dawn. Hustled from the sultry bed of delayed sleep; backs of hands rubbed blurred eyes at the alarm. The relentless heat and drought of the depression era had kept children and adults from retiring to the ...
The depression era and drought went hand in hand. In fact, the drought years were a contributing factor to the depression era.During the summer of 1934, with temperatures breaking all heat records, my family carried mattresses outside, and we all slept under the open sky each night for two ...
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