Author Archives: DaveR

Asha Deliverance on Les

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Thanks Tom! I too remember that potter’s wheel in the barn, and Les hovering over it with his wild curly red hair specked in white porcelain.
I was the one that etched those pots. He let me carve little figures of people in various yoga positions on his amazing pots because I would get bored if I just sat and watched him hour after hour. I remember him throwing pots on full moon nights and I would dance to the rhythms of the crickets, frogs and whippoorwills to entertain myself. Their music was so thick you couldn’t sleep if you tried, and he would often work well into the night!
Interesting, he chose to fly into his next adventure this past full moon in Scorpio, he being such a definite Scorpio himself. They say Scorpios are like a river. His focus and his work was like the Buffalo River, with a well defined, deep and certain path, and yet wild and free. Fly free Les!
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Tom Graves on Les

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This one really isn’t a ‘live’ memory. It’s kind of a memory of a memory, one that’s always kind of haunted me.

When my kids were about ten and twelve years old, ten years after we left Arkansas and moved back to California, the three of us travelled around the US doing some sightseeing and visiting. We stopped in at Home Farm Arkansas to see Ben.  Wanting to both see the old ‘James Taylor Place’ and show Rose where she was born, the three of us drove over the mountain.  The mountain road was still the same old windy steep rutted dirt and gravel county road.  We drove in the mile and a half or two road that led into the ‘James Taylor Place’. That road was now overgrown, rutted and more washed out than when we’d lived there.  (I must add that driving in that damn road cost me. Over the course of the rest of the eight thousand mile trip, the sharp rocks caused three of our tires to one by one separate and blow out. The first time in a very inopportune moment too: climbing the busy interstate up onto the bridge that ran over the Mississippi River. Ahh, all those good memories)

But I digress.

We parked out in front of the old homestead. The building was now eerily empty and silent. I led my kids down the path beside the now very overgrown and rocky old garden area, to a patch of weeds at the bottom.

That’s about where you were born, Rose, I pointed.

After that I wandered around.

Near the old homestead was the barn. It was a shed really, one half with an open end, and the other a windowed room about fifteen feet by fifteen feet.  The shed was not in good shape and looked like one more big storm and the whole thing would start to come down.

Inside the shed, through the open end, in the back, in the shadows, was the wood platform up about three feet where Dean slept.  I remembered the night he went to bed and noticed movement at the end of his sleeping bag. A copperhead snake was coiled up, most likely waiting for a rodent. He kept the mule food in there, for Jeremiah.

I stepped over to the doorway that led into the windowed room.  When we’d lived there Les had patched the roof over it, built rows of shelves from miscellaneous scraps of wood, and lined the walls with them.   In the center of the room he’d put his kick pottery wheel to throw clay.

The pottery wheel was gone. The shelves were still there. Sitting on them were rows of bowls, plates, cups, and vases of all sizes and shapes. Some of the vases were over two feet tall. Designs were painted on some of them.  Some of them may have been etched too, I don’t remember. The pottery, the clay, was all white. Les had thrown them and set them on the shelves for the first drying. They had two more stages to go: ‘bisquing’ (firing at a low heat) then firing at a high heat.  All of it looked very fragile.

Some pieces of the roof had fallen in and the pottery on the shelves was smashed.  Scattered over the dirt were shards of broken pottery. Most of the pottery was still intact.  And standing upright.  Cobwebs stretched from the ceiling to the pottery, between the pottery, around the shelves.

How bizarre, I thought. Here I am in the middle of nowhere in some secluded little valley, down some barely accessible little road, in some dilapidated shed looking at this hidden sanctuary full of beautiful art work, frozen in time.

Les’s industriousness and creativity was so strong in that room.It was so easy to imagine him bent over his wheel working away.

After that I called the kids, we climbed back in the car and continued on down into the valley so I could show them the Buffalo River where we used to swim.

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Doug Bell on Les

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I’m living La Dolce Vita in a cockroach infested apartment in Boston. Les shows up for a surprise visit in full Frodo ambling free spirit mode, asks if he can take a shower. An hour later the shower is still going. Les emerges looking like a self satisfied cooked lobster. He discusses the wisdom in one of his fave books The LazyBoy’s Guide to Enlightenment & tells me a story of how he was broke and by merely chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo suddenly $50 appeared on the sidewalk. (Like Jobs he always believed in magical thinking.) We reminisce for hours. A good visit. We say our goodbyes and Les leaves for the Green Line (MTA) to start his journey to his brother’s place in New York.  50 minutes later he’s back at my door. He’s had his pocket picked. No more wallet. I think to myself Les, hair out to here, shaggy beard, lambskin jacket, quixotic grin, yeah they must have seen him coming from a mile away.
I’m visiting Les in Arkansas sitting on the front porch. We’re sipping his home brew together like a couple of hillbillies. He gets me laughing and I proceed to spill half my beer. I’m horrified at being a messy guest but Les just sits there rocking his chair & grinning at me. I look down and realize the beer’s just dropping through the half inch cracks between the dusty floorboards & I ain’t exactly in Boston.
I’m sitting in a teepee at the UC Farm with Leonard, Sharon & Les. They’re all laughing so hard about somethin they’re crying. NYC humor to the bone. I don’t get it & feel like a total Scottish goy from the burbs. Dylan’s Mr. Jones. But then again I am sitting in a teepee. (Still pretty much the burbs though.)
 
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One or Two Words

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by Tom

I just have one of two little words to say.

I’m sorry I wasn’t there to say goodbye to you Steve R. It was really great seeing you after 40 years. I must add though, either you are losing your marbles or I’m a liar (a very good posssibility) but I still can’t believe you don’t remember that morning about 40 years ago when I travelled with you (along with the two women from the ride board) from CA to Ohio, and in Kingman Ariz, at the intersection with the Circle K we were pulled over by five wailing cops cars and told, by bullhorn, to get out, put our hands on the roof of your Travellal, while they searched your van and one by one carded everyone until they reached me, and for some reason, bored I guess, gave up and let us go.

Brian, I’m quite sure I can speak for everyone in hoping that what made you at least an hour late both mornings for breakfast, was a sucessful ‘very special moment’ back in your motel room with Roz. (You do still have ‘special moments’ once in a great great while with Roz, don’t you Brian, even at your advanced age?)

Asha, In the 2 days you were here, you hugged me more times than in the entire 3 or 4 years we spent together in SC and Arkansas.
I don’t quite know why but somehow I have this uneasy feeling that should worry me, You don’t by any chance have, like, scabies or something, do you?
Asha, I’d also like to thank you for buying my breakfast, but please, next time would you mind letting me know, before I order, you are going to do it, so I don’t order what I always order when I’m paying -the cheapest special.

Oran, thank you for the personal copy of the book you wrote -‘Fair Food’. So far I’ve read the introduction and already I’m on the edge of my seat wanting to know ‘whodunnit’? (It is a mystery novel, isn’t it?)

Rick, your are forever the dreamer. 40 years ago you told me you weighed 140 pounds and then spent an ungodly amount of time telling me how you were going to gain weight. And now, 40 years later you again told me you weigh 140 pounds and then spent an ungodly amount of time telling me how you were going to gain weight. Boy, I just can’t wait for the next reunion.

Leonard, thank you for putting this thing on. I was never quite sure if you were actually there. Were the guy with the bushy beard wearing the cowboy shirt who walked around with a camera glued to his face most of the time?

Dave Roberts, Thank you for shooing me away from barbequing the chicken. From the way things had been going with me trying to burn my place down, I most likely would have served little pieces of dried up charcoalized chicken if it hadn’t been for you.

I would bring up one or two of the few good points my ex has, but, since she only lives blocks away, I don’t want her then spreading true rumors in the neighborhood of the few good points I have.

Larry, as an independent Pest Management Specialist from the valley, thank you for letting us all know the orchard at the UC Farm is one of the sorriest specimans you have ever seen, that every tree is covered in disease and infested with worms and bugs. My only hope is, it will last at least long enough to let me do what I’ve been doing for the past 25 years -secreting out in my backpack 150-200 pounds of apples every year.
Somehow I feel like I’m owed that.

Steve Holst, Unfortunately I didn’t attend but I heard you gave a very very short speech when everyone was going around the table quickly telling their bios and somehow tying their bios to the food movement. It turns out your very very short speech was a success. The UC Farm has now decided to chuck organic farming and take up the Asphalt Striping Business.
,
I know this list is heavy on the ‘males’, but, after learning, in the 2 days everyone was here, the women managed to have not one but TWO womens group meetings,
AND easily picturing Ayn 40 years ago wielding those big wooden mallets building the equipment shed,
AND being the chickenshit guy I am, I think I’ll keep the list that way.

Jim and Lyn, thank you for your salad. I’d also like to commend you for your  frugal ways. In my fridge there is now, after you made your salad, not only a jar with a little bit of leftover mayo, but another container with, at the bottom, the tiniest amount of leftover salad dressing from your salad I’ve ever seen. I look forward to carefully scraping it out and putting it on the tip of the next carrot I eat.

Who else, I know there are many more juicy pieces of gossip to relate – like Les deciding that from now on out he is going to permanently be 42 years old, to Linda telling us what her 15 year old estrogen filled teenage daughter said after Linda nicely bought tickets for a vacation to Ireland “I’d rather kill myself than go to Ireland!” to Larry describing his new diet, so someone else help fill in.

Well I guess that’s about it then.

Hah. I’ll bet you thought I forgot about you.
Fat chance.

After watching you dump salt, more salt, and soy sauce on my already salted mac and cheese,
AND watching you walk around muttering, after learning that some of the other home farmers now subscribe to the notion that a gluten free diet is good for you, “Don’t they understand! Grain is what got civilization STARTED! WITHOUT GRAIN MAN WOULD NOT BE HERE!” ,
AND, on the ride back to the farm with you from breakfast, you made your two passengers, Eloise and myself, listen to the ding ding ding of the seat belt buzzer for at least the first ten minutes because you didn’t want to wear your goddamn seatbelt,
AND, you wove in and out of traffic, turning right and left without using your turn signal (do you have a gimpy left arm or something?), it is now undisputable you are a CRAZY FUCKING LUNATIC!

Continuing on. The SC contigent made clear they didn’t want any reimbursement, but still a can managed to get passed around. Yesterday we opened it and it contained: one fifty dollar bill, three twenty dollar bills, one five dollar bill, and one one dollar bill.  Now normally I am a very calm, collected, and measured guy, and I know we said we didn’t want donations, but I do have my limits.

After spending all that time preparing the Friday night get together, whoever had the nerve to leave that one lousy stinkin’ one dollar bill in there, we’ve sent the bill off to the FBI to be fingerprinted and when we find out who did it, I warning you, at the next reunion, if you attend, you better bring some antidote for rat poison.

We did have a summit meeting to decide what to do with the money and the idea we came up with is to give it to Asha so she can give it to her TNTC (Too Numerous To Count) children who all seem to be either going to colleges with names like Harvard or MIT, or running companies what are just on the verge of overtaking APPLE as the largest in the world so they can turn it into $100,000 by the next reunion.

Lastly, I agree with Doug that the reunion was like getting hit by a freight train that’s been gaining speed for the past forty years.  I’d like to add, my heart and brain are still in the emergency room on life support systems.

I could actually bore you with some more but my lunch is ready. Since everyone left, for breakfast, lunch and dinner I’ve been having leftover mac and cheese, rice, salad, grapes, chocolate cake and cheesecake. And from the looks of all the pots and pans still in my fridge, and the containers on my kitchen table, I would hazard to guess I’ll be having that same diet for at least the next month or so.

Bucks for the farm

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USDA grant aids organic farming training program at UC Santa Cruz

August 21, 2012

Congressman Sam Farr, D-Carmel, speaks at the UC Santa  Cruz Farm Tuesday, where he announced a $665,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to support the training of beginning farmers in organic agriculture. (Photo by Guy Lasnier)

Training for beginning organic farmers on the Central Coast will get a significant boost from a three-year U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) at UC Santa Cruz.

The $665,000 grant for “Building a Foundation for New Farmers: Training, Resources, and Networks” was announced today by Congressman Sam Farr, D-Carmel, and UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal.

Congressman Farr, who has championed organic agriculture on the Central Coast for more than 25 years, said the grant “recognizes the innovation in organic farming at UC Santa Cruz and the Central Coast.

Organic capital

“The Central Coast of California is the capital of organic agriculture,” said Farr who co-chairs the House Organic Caucus and is the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture. Farr co-sponsored the language that founded the Beginning Ranchers and Farmers Program in the 2008 Farm Bill.

Chancellor Blumenthal said: “Our model is based on a combination of research, hands-on training, and collaboration with Central Coast growers. This grant expands that model and will extend our reach. The USDA is an active supporter of our work, and we’re grateful to have Sam Farr’s leadership in Congress.”

CASFS Executive Director Daniel Press said the grant from the USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture will support CASFS in its effort to expand its pioneering apprenticeship program to train more beginning farmers with an emphasis on increasing access for apprentices with limited financial resources.

“We are tremendously grateful for the support and trust this USDA grant represents,” Press said. “With it, CASFS demonstrates how Americans can recruit and train a new generation of farmers for the 21st century. Through programs like ours, these new farmers will be more diverse – ethnically and economically – than before. They will also learn and use some of the most sustainable and innovative agricultural practices on Earth.”

Collaboration

Three other sustainable agriculture organizations on the Central Coast – all longtime partners with CASFS – are collaborating on the project: the Ecological Farming Association (EFA), the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), and the California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF).

The funds will support the CASFS Apprenticeship and advanced apprenticeship training, scholarships for the beginning and advanced programs, and a revision and expansion of farmer training manuals that CASFS has developed. CASFS will revise its widely used production and marketing manuals, making them available nationwide online for free and at-cost in print.

The four partners will work with other collaborators and beginning farmers – defined as being in the first 10 years of the business – to develop a Beginning Farmer Network (BFN) in the counties of Santa Cruz, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Monterey, and San Benito.

The network will coordinate existing programs and develop new opportunities for the Central Coast’s beginning farmers to receive ongoing marketing and production training through workshops, field days, conferences, and both direct and online mentoring and technical assistance. The partners will also document this model of supporting beginning farmers to share with other organizations nationwide.

Additional support

CASFS has received additional support for the three-year effort to revise and expand its organic farmer training manuals, and to disseminate them online and in print with tailored trainings for agriculture educators in their use.

•    Gaia Fund: $25,000 grant to support the initial phase of the curriculum revision project (2012-2013)

•    USDA Western Sustainable Agriculture and Research and Education program’s Professional Development Program Grant: $98,782 for “Training Manuals and Professional Development Activities for Teaching Organic Farming and Marketing” in 2012–2014, to fund both the revision effort and a tailed set of professional trainings in the use of the materials in five western states

•    True North Foundation: $15,000 to support revision of Direct Marketing and Small Farm Viability: Resources for Instructors curriculum in 2012–2013, along with training apprentices in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) production, administration, and outreach skills.

For 45 years, apprentices at UCSC have learned techniques in small- and medium-sized sustainable organic farming.  Known as the Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture since 1975, the program has graduated more than 1,400 apprentices who have taken their training to start farms, farmers’ markets, and other organic gardening training programs across the nation and globe.

Steve R Speaks

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It was a magical weekend…..from seeing the original beds…to the solar shower…to Tom’s great kickoff party….hearing about what happened after I left…finding out what the farmers did later in life….talking to the apprentices …Sunday morning quiet stroll around the farm…seeing a spider web still heavy with foggy dew…