Farming in California: It was just one of those days...

It was just one of those days, you know, where everything was absolutely perfect, yet nothing felt entirely right. There was a sense of greatness, of calmness and happiness in the air. The vineyard’s tone loomed heavily on our minds. What should we do? Should we take out another loan on the vines, graft them to another variety, and delve deeper into the farmer’s void? There's always the promise of the next crop, the next year, the next big successful effort. In reality, farming presents all kinds of difficulties, the likes of which are biblical in nature. Plagues? Yes, you get those. Bugs? Oh, yes, that's absolutely real. Frosts and floods? Those too. Oh, and then there's the prospect of wildfires...vines burn surprisingly well. Can I get an amen?

But back to the question: should we pull out every one of the 26,000 vines, one by one, like good little soldiers that served us so well over the last 15 years? After all, don’t we owe them more, a debt of gratitude for their toil? They produced for a decade, like good light plants—our sweet little “hard to reach sugar” Malbec babies—only to now be plucked from the ground after their good service. Are we to leave them to be burned as firewood instead, after all that? Yes, it is another hard decision, just like choosing which college to attend, or how long you should wait to pull the plug on that life support machine (joking...just joking, people—not comparing grapes to life support plug pulling here in this article...at least not yet).

It is a real question, and one that people around the world face each and every day. Should we try to minimize risk, take on partners, sell out for the sake of safety and security? Should we diversify our capabilities, change industries, figure out a way to share a new form of risk and reward? Should we keep the balancing act up, or sell it all and move to an Ashram, letting go of all things self-indulgent? Should we, shouldn't we, what next? Oh, the ever-ongoing movement of life’s little questions...

Like The Clash said, “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”

Back to the vineyard, as today’s sun was out in the sky, clouds passing by, wind in the trees from the south at about 5 to 10 miles per hour, there, in the moment with a set of Swainson’s Hawks passing over, I felt at peace. Just a week back, as we worked in the field cutting off the cordons, snipping away one by one, being slapped in the face by the canes as we sliced them off, I saw a flock of Sandhill Cranes flying at around 1,000 feet up. I knew it had to be at least that high since I've seen Elliott flying his FPV drone all over up there for the last year and a half. He is a good drone pilot. He will probably be a great pilot one day.

Below them (the Sandhill Cranes) flew a set of four cawing crows, or maybe ravens—who knows at that height; probably a birder would. However, I suspect crows. They had no wispy feather-like hairs at their beak’s edge, and their flapping wings were quieter, less “raven-esque”. I have seen countless ravens on my trips into Death Valley, the Mojave too. My father always took me on trips, as a boy, a teenager, a student, and then as a father with my kids too. He is a good grandpa.

Ravens always act differently than crows. They are a bigger kind of bird, with an attitude, especially when trained by man to beg for scraps, and they look at you, right in the eye. Our big rooster does that too. He is always on the farm, lurching about, waiting in the shadows. Black Rooster, as we call him, stares at you. He is a challenger. Do not stare back. If you walk too close, he will spur you, and he is just a bit of a dick to be honest; a real cock. However, I cannot deny his importance. He saved a hen once. His cockishness saved her life. His ability to be a raging ass, a supreme bully and dick, is the same ability that gave him the superpowers in that moment to fight, and beat, a massive hawk. It was one of those hawks that came down to visit one day. One of those strangers that show up sometimes unannounced in the country. He beat that hawk somehow, leaving it injured enough that it could barely fly away.

Anyway, the lowest flying birds were going west, and they were those crows (definitely not ravens). The Sandhill Cranes were going north and west, mostly in a northwestern direction I would say, but between them was a host of seagulls, spinning in a turbulent fashion, all around in circles, riding some wave of air. There was a huge set of thunderheads in the distance, and on that day an atmospheric river was coming in. I remember thinking and saying, “Things seem strange today.” It was almost as if Alfred Hitchcock was rising up from the dead, bringing to life a resurrection of his film there in Galt, California. Today the same—more atmospheric rivers, more birds, more strange things. These most recent storms are finally producing a little rain. We are only about 10 inches yet in rain for the year, which is still shy of our average 16.5.

My dad has always been a data tracker. Old Mr. Kramer, or Doctor Jerry Curtis Kramer, sometimes called Professor Kramer. Others just call him Curt. His old Uncle Dunk used to call him “Little Curtie.” He was a professor of Geology and Environmental Science, now emeritus. He is also a lifelong farmer, born back in '42, a Vietnam Veteran—from the early days. He is more of the greatest generation than the next. More akin to his parents and older siblings than to his younger siblings, or the boomers. He keeps telling us that if we do not want to keep farming, that it would be okay, but we know better than that. He says we could always do something else instead, but again, we know better than that.

My mother is out each and every day now. She is too old and weak to do much of the heavy lifting around the farm, but thanks to these fancy new clippers that we purchased—she has her robotic attachment and can go on for hours now. She is the cyborg that Elon talked about, capable of way more than she probably even thought. Certainly, she is doing much more than I thought she would be able to do. She is there, day in and day out, working in the field, slicing away the vines. After a hard day’s work, Laurie comes in to cook fried chicken and potatoes, or maybe salad and salmon. She has her supper, my father too, and then the dogs get their share, the cats next, and as night turns to deep night, the raccoons and possums come for the leftovers. Injured animals always find a home with her, and even though her pets are the fastest around, they always live way longer than anyone else’s pets that I know.

Our dog is sick now too, our poor little poodle pup. He probably is just tired from working with us out there all the time. Yes—he too works the vineyard. Day in and out, he shows up with a smile on his face, trying to keep spirits high as hell. Happy-go-lucky is his motto, and it suits him well. He may have eaten too many old grapes, but I am not sure. Maybe he has COVID, like the rest of us. Oh, that—yeah, perfect timing, right? We caught it last week, like the rest of the world it would seem, but thankfully we are feeling good enough to still work. No rest for the wicked indeed.

We lost one of our dogs to grapes once, actually raisins we think, don’t know for sure, but assume. His kidneys failed him, failed us, and so we watched him out of this world, way too early. Old Puck. He was a good dog. That’s life though, farm life especially. It’s a lot of death, and birth, and rebirth too. We all get a second chance here on the farm, even the grapes I guess...The grafting process is not that hard. The roots still live on, and so the plants that we stick onto them will just keep on using the network of hairs and follicles that are now spread all about under the ground. A second chance for them to go on, unless in the end, we decide to just not keep farming, but again, we know better than that.

It is a common story around here. The letter in the mail from our local Ag Advisory Commission states that we are about 15,000 acres overplanted in Lodi, and 100,000 acres overplanted statewide. Not too different is the prediction I heard during the American Ground Water Trust (AGWT) meeting a couple of weeks ago down south, where they said around 1,000,000 acres of land should be fallowed, removed from farming, if we are to address groundwater shortages within the aquifer effectively. We are running out of time; the farmers, the water, the grapes, the land. It’s a choice I guess, should we plant it, fallow it, or just build over it...these are the choices we face in the breadbasket state of California.

It’s not all bad though, choices that is; choices are the options you get to take, the roads that are forked, and with a choice, there is hope, there are options, there are possibilities. Some people right now have very few choices. Some have no choices, like Puck, the dog that died of kidney failure. His time is already up, but then again for him, it’s all easy now, no more worries, no more choices, but again we know better than that.

Back to today’s gorgeous scene...

There she is, standing, clipping away feverishly, my little wife, my Nancy. She is amazing. She kicks ass all day long, every day, beating away the worry of life with comedy. Her comedy is good, it’s rich. She has mid-western humor. Not mid-western nice humor. No—its dark and dry and deep from within the bowels of Chicago. From hanging out in the '90s kind of humor, with a group of boys, like it is from the story of Peter Pan, and they were the Lost Boys, and she was one of them too. There, laughing with me, as we walked out along that last row for the day, as the sunlight went dwindling, with rain now falling, the driving wind started to push both us and the dark clouds past the last lighted trees to the east.

We could see the Sierra Nevada still, with all its white snowy tops, all the way to Tahoe’s peaks, near the edge of the great divide; separating California’s west from its east. The walnut tree in oak alley (as we call it) that had fallen recently, was now gone as we walked back towards the catfish shack. My dad and middle son (Gideon) had sawed it up, after its fall from the last storm. My dad says Gideon (now 12) has made journeyman, and when reminded, Gideon’s face always lights up. They work together a lot more now that Elliott is not on the farm as much. He stopped homeschooling this last year, in order to attend High School in Galt. We miss him on the farm, but it was time for him to spread his wings, like those birds, and fly out for a new view.

Back to the tree though...all that was left now were the small limbs, which had been carried to the fire that was now sparkling away near the tailwater pond. That pond had been built around 1950 to capture the waters as they flooded away and off the land; a form of capture for reuse that was easy to imagine before rules were put in place to stop overland flow from being modified for irrigation uses. It seems though like that is on its way back, with more groundwater recharge needed.

As we continued to walk, we saw a waving flag, the American Flag, on a pole, now placed out in the middle of the vineyard. My two sons and their friend had spent the day making a fort, a fire to stay warm, and multiple food runs. The flag flying high was their doing, their pride of joy in their country. They love their country. They seemed to be ready for what may come, with smiles on their faces, with warnings from the national weather agency of heavy rains and flooding; they were happy to take it on. Nancy and I laughed a bit, and recommended they move their fire a bit farther away from their woodpile, that had been placed under their headquarters for the purpose of keeping the fuels dry. I think they saw our concern as valid, and so we did not have to lament the argument or reasons for why they should be careful when playing with fire. Again—this is life on the farm. Things just are different. One can be told, but sometimes you just have to learn in the form of trial by fire.

This day was a typical day, working, so that we could do more work, so that we could get things done before we needed to go back to our normal “day jobs” and normal work, the work of being geologists, teachers, caretakers, parents, and students. I guess life is what you make of it, and the reason we do this, the reason we farm is that we feel some special thing about being fortunate enough to have the chance to work. We are fortunate. Hardly anyone I know gets the opportunity to do what I have been lucky enough to have the chance to “try to do”.

In my heart, I know in all honesty and with absolute certainty, that I am not the best at what I do, but I also know that I am not the worst. I am just me, and we are just we, and this is just life on the farm here on Bruella Road, day in and day out. It is not always easy, but it is almost always enjoyable, and the people who come to our aid, standing by our side, to help in the ways they can, whatever they may be, have always amazed me. Community, that’s what it is. It's Country, and it’s the People, it’s the Community. It’s a little bit of hard work, but it is always worth it, no matter what the outcome is, no matter how good or bad the crop is, and whatever victory or failure may come, we always learn and grow from it; just like the grapes, the birds, the chickens, the dogs, and one day we too will be dust to dust, ashes to ashes, just as it should be, out here on the land that we all so dearly love.