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What you can do on the farm this week
(May 31 - June 3, 2005)
At Colonial Chesterfield, you can participate in a Revolutionary War Adventure, (call 909-797-7534 for reservations), or visit the colonial bakery (open M-F 9-4 PM).    At the Crossbow Mining Company, you can sign up for a Gold Rush Tour by calling Ryan Cross at 909-790-5852.     The Old Packing Shed bakery is open for pies and treats weekdays as well.      NOW IS THE TIME TO buy a ticket for "Evening in the Colonies with Patrick Henry!"   The next available dinner of the year is June 18, 2005.
WE WILL BE CLOSED MEMORIAL DAY, MAY 30, 2005

Jim Myers, I guess, was one of those silent heroes.   I don't remember one conversation, during his life, about this experience at all.

God bless, you, Uncle--and all your buddies.

According to California Fish and Game, there are some 24,000 black bears in California, and although hunting them is regulated, they are not protected.    My late mother in law, Tula Demetrulias, was walking through the orchard with us one day, and, seeing all the bear scat during the harvest season, observed, "you ought to train these bears to dance.  You could have a whole chorus line.   Mary and I could sew up some tutus."       That--and keeping a bull-are two animal ideas I have not explored.    One Oak Glen gossip, desperate to discredit my ideas for the community plan, started spreading the rumor that I was selling bear hides.    I know this because my nephew walked around the corner right in the middle of her tall tale.    "Jim?"  he said, "he's never even hunted quail, let alone bear."     This is true.    I like talking up the farm to visitors;   I like telling bear stories, even embellishing a few bear stories, but I have yet to hunt a bear, much less make a market in bearskin.     (Having lost entire crops to ravenous, over-populated black bears, I don't mind if a few, here and there, are hunted legally, but  the idea that this Stanford geek is running around the farm with a butcher knife in his teeth, flinging pelts across the sales counter is too much, even by Oak Glen standards.)

You have to remember that Oak Glen was the home of the legendary--and I do mean legendary--Blackie Wilshire.     Stories have a way of getting larger than life around here, especially between competitors.       (Wait a second;   a black bear just crawled under my desk.   I'll be right back.)

Anyway, back to planet earth.    The boys and I purchased some cabernet sauvignon vines today--following up on our successful grape arbor experiment.    The little vines we planted last year our absolutely loaded with grape clusters, and I'm hoping to see them come to full, purple fruition this year.    Grapes are irrefutable proof of God #50314332.   

We also purchased some new alder trees which grow fast and furious up here.    #50314333.    

That's Chelsea Roble holding up one of our new creations--the Sally Lunn Hand held pie.   (See above left as well.)   When we first opened, Mary always wanted to create a hand-held meat pie that you could carry around in the orchards with you, and--thanks to Janice Ballinger, one of our bakers--we now have it.    It is a slightly sweet egg bread, very densely textured, with ham or roast beef and cheese baked inside the dough.    Hot from the oven, it's the kind of old world delight that makes you just want to sit back in your chair and fall asleep!    (I know.   I just finished one...)           

For those of you calling and emailing about cherries, we should have some news soon.   I have asked Scott for an update, and I will post it here as soon as I receive it.

We took Dad (87 years old) to look for a digital camera last night.   This was an adventure in retail, complete with a sales clerk sporting ear rings up both sides and porcupine hair angled towards the customer (dad) at a menacingly acute angle.     I remember shopping for cars with my dad, and since Dad spent his life in sales, it was entertaining to watch him with young car salesmen.     Dad would pay cash, put 35,000 miles on a car and come back for another the next year.     Pity that breed of car salesman who operates under the assumption he is doing the customer a favor, who preens and adjust cuff links and adopts a look of deep compassion by taking $100 off the sticker price.    Dad left those guys crying in the parking lot.    

Dad never bought the showy stuff either.   At church, the lawyers and doctors would drive BMWs and Mercedes.    One dentist drove a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow to Sunday School.  Dad was the first one in our circle to buy a Honda Accord.   

"That's reverse snobbery," a Basque businessman in our church told me.   "Your dad could buy and sell these guys twenty times over and look at that stinkin' little Honda Accord next to Sorenson's Cadillac.   It's an outrage,"  he said, snickering only slightly.

Last night was just a preliminary venture into digital cameras.    With Dad, the first time around involves showing a certain amount of contempt for the product,  so we had to frown and interrupt a lot.    Perhaps, next time Dad will walk home with a digital camera.

For Dad's love of the bargain, and fair salesmanship, there is also this story to tell: 

When Dad was a young salesman, he had a mentor who made a fortune selling hair care to the emerging drug and grocery chain stores of the 1950s and 1960s.    This business titan--call him Howard--loved to buy and raise carrier pigeons, and by the time Howard was in his fifties, his company was running itself.    He flew his own plane around the country and would stop in on my mom and dad on their then rural San Gabriel home.   (In those days you could keep horses and raise chickens in Arcadia, California.)     As it turned out, one of the greatest breeders of carrier pigeons had a small ranch in Arcadia.    Howard flew in, dropped by my parents, and said, "Ray--we're gonna buy some pigeons.   C'mon."

Dad got in the car and drove off with his friend, and--at that time--the source of his greatest income.      When they stopped in on the pigeon farmer, Howard started right in on the birds.   "You call these champions?    They look sick.    They look dead!   I flew all the way from Texas to see these things."     At first the man defended his birds, but by the time Howard was done with him, he had sold them, cages and all, for next to nothing.

Dad didn't say anything during the exchange, but he was livid.     When they got back in the car, Howard asked, "What's wrong, Rile?"    

"That's how he makes his living!    He sells those birds and you just stole them!"

Howard paused, then frowned.    Dad was the California representative for his company, and Dad made the lion's share of his income selling Howard's products.    It was a gutsy thing to do.

"Rile?"   Howard said.
"What?"
Howard pulled out his pocket book, and took out $500.    This was easily five times the market price of the birds.    "Take that into him--and don't tell anyone."

So dad saved the little bird farmer's profit that day and Howard began calling my Dad a "Pilgrim."   At sales meetings, Howard would say, "did you guys know that Riley's a pilgrim?"

"He is!   An honest to goodness pilgrim!"
 

Yesterday, we drove down to Herkey Creek near Idlywild and sat out under the pine trees for a while.   We meet occasionally with a group of families to have worship and study on Sunday, and we miscalculated the amount of time it would take to get up there from this side of the mountain, so we got there just in time to sing Old 100th.   

The wheat grass is coming up strong and I don't believe the raspberries have ever looked better.    We have good reports on the size and health of the cherry crop as well.       The pumpkin field is ready to plant.    More later.

I'm back.    The place is beautiful when it's under cultivation--green raspberry patches, corn coming up, shady orchards, ponds, streams.    In the early evening, even when we've had a warmer day,  it's cool and captivating with the sunset coming in through the valley.    There's something deeply satisfying about eating dinner with a field of corn swaying in the distance.   

Beyond the aesthetics, though, we're trying to pioneer a family experience here that is more challenging, and satisfying, than the average jaunt through a museum.    Let me give you an example:   suppose--at fifty-two years old--you decide you want to try your hand at playing the fiddle.    Before buying your $250 practice fiddle and searching out a teacher, what if you could spend a day in a Riley's Farm fiddle workshop--actually try your hand at an old barn fiddle and see if you're up to the challenge?        Suppose you've had a hankering to learn an old world skill--quill and ink calligraphy, stone masonry, raising an herb garden.     Would you sign up?      Would you take that class with your children?      It's difficult being a one-man marketing team?    Help!     Write me a long letter on the subject, or even a short one.    What would you like to see in our summer programs?

In the years before the American Revolution, John Adams wrote that he visited a small country tavern, and found himself seated next to four hearty farmers.    In the flickering candle light, he listened to one farmer exclaim, "they have come for John Hancock's ship--the Liberty.   The British customs men have taken her." 

"What of it," said another farmer.   "I don't have a ship."
"But you have cattle," said another farmer, "and if they can come for John Hancock's ship, they can come for your cows."

 After a silence, the last farmer set down his tankard of hard cider and looked seriously at the other three.   "Then we must fight," he said.    "We must turn back these thieves before there are too many of their party among us!"

When we traveled to Williamsburg this summer, my favorite spot was Shields' Tavern, where old "Mr. Shields" used a chair to stomp around the tavern greeting guests.      As the sun went down, the flicker of the candles brought to mind all those stories from Colonial tavern life--from Mr. Adams' informal survey of the four farmers to the night the Lexington minutemen waited, and partially disbelieved, the reports of arriving redcoats from Boston, as they prepared their muskets in Buckman Tavern.       

The word "tavern" is problematic today.     Some people see a tavern as a place where a lot of older guys drink too much gin, and others see it as a singles' bar.    In 18th century usage, however, the sense of a tavern is closer to an old country store, where news is exchanged, votes are taken, and newspapers are debated.    In some cases, church services were held in tavern, prior to the building of the meeting house--a requirement in many New England townships.     Some were quite grand, as in the case of the City Tavern in Philadelphia, which boasted one of the largest formal ballrooms of its day.     Others were little more than an extra space on the ground floor of a family home.      In either case, they were considerably more personal than a modern restaurant,  and--for the most part--considerably less predatory than a modern fern bar.     Ideas and schemes were hatched in taverns, and we owe many of our liberties  to plans charted out over a trestle table in taverns with colorful names like "The Bunch of Grapes," "Cromwell's Head," or "The White Horse."

In that tradition, then, YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO be the first to take advantage of our grand 18th century Tavern season by buying tickets to our first dinner of the season, "An Evening in the Colonies with Patrick Henry" this May 28th.      You've wanted to do this for a long time.    Make plans now!       
 

We had quite a week--two overnight groups, a full schedule every day, and community plan politics.    We had a bit of lightning storm the other night, and I was up from 1:30 AM to about 6:00 AM doing night watch on the camp.   By yesterday afternoon, I was barely capable of formulating a sentence, and not quite up to putting the finishing touches on a new post card campaign (right),  so we went for a walk around the farm--Mary and I and five of our children.   (Lizzy stayed behind to take a first aid course with our staff.)

There's a kind of spring day here that is both cold and full of spirit, with a lot of pent up rain in the air--wet but not coming down.     The raspberry patch was all mint-droplets and turned earth.    The Oak Trees have full canopies now, and in the half-rain they look like the gates to Sherwood Forrest.     There wasn't a turn of the road that didn't look as though it belonged in a story book.   

"No camera!"  I complained to Mary.
"It doesn't need to be recorded all the time," she said. 
The boys were running ahead and doing weird, elf-like jigs and hops.    The air was like a cold drink.     Mary held my hand.
"Just enjoy it," she said. 
 

How can I put this?     A few members of the community didn't live up to the ideal.

At one point during the meeting, in a direct shot at our establishment, one of our opponents said that "living history farms" should be restricted to those that specifically reenact the past of Oak Glen alone.    I raised my voice and used my best down south accent (have you ever noticed how Southern accents sound, in America, more parliamentarian?) and said, "Mr. Speaker!   I strenuously object!    American living history is entirely appropriate for Oak Glen!"      If our earnest opponent had said, "while we think living history of a broader nature is appropriate, we might want to encourage some local living history as well," I would call that both a needed proposal and one made in the nature of a New England town meeting.    Unfortunately,  our opponents keep making proposals that would both eliminate a majority of our livelihood and deny California school children an opportunity to see their history re-lived.  

When it came to black powder and shooting, my older brother, Dennis Riley, would settle for nothing but an outright ban.      The story of battle reenactments featuring shooting goes back a long way in Oak Glen.    You can see Old West shoot outs at Perrish Pioneer Ranch and Oak Tree Village.    One of Oak Glen's most popular postcards--a cartoon map of the community--shows a Civil War cannon being fired on our upper meadow.      My older brother Dennis--the same one advocating a ban--used to borrow one of our Brown Bess muskets, so that his son, Tim, could fire it off in their school tours. 

For the record, we have never emphasized only battles.    We have our students weave hand looms, press cider, learn 18th century etiquette, and participate in Stamp Act and Admiralty Court dramas.    We have always taken the position, however, that we won't tell the story of the "shot heard round the world" unless we can at least fire a few shots for the students.    We offered Dennis a compromise of 10 shots per day at the Revolutionary War field trip and 10 shots per day at the Civil War field trip.    That would drastically reduce the amount of shooting we do and still give the guests a chance to see redcoats and minutemen, federals and confederates.     We also agreed to abide by the standards of the San Bernardino Noise ordinance by reducing our powder and keeping musket fire well away from the property borders.    Dennis would take nothing but an outright ban.

Old New England!    Old City on a Hill!    Where have you gone??

In the Saratoga book, Ketchum speaks of Benjamin Franklin, past 70 years old, and being sent to Canada on a hopeless mission to win their alliance in the Revolutionary War.   (He wound up paying many of the Continental Congress's debts out of his own pocket.)  Franklin, during the journey, was sure he was about to die, and wrote many of his friends to that effect.    Of course, to our mutual benefit, he survived, and went on to help win a French alliance, after another arduous journey across the Atlantic.     French nobles--knowing one of the wealthiest men in America had risked a hanging crossing the ocean to serve his country--gave him a royal reception, and he went on to another 14 productive years, some of which were spent in penning our Constitution.      

Moral of the story, take it from Ben:   press on!  

The Horseless Carriage Club of Southern California dropped by yesterday, with cars dating back to 1909.    Oak Glen represented quite a climb for them, but they got all the cars up the hill, save one.    Nicholas got to crank start one of them on the way out, and we had the whole crew of them weaving, playing nine-pins, and milking the cow!       The president of the club called the lunch in the tavern afterwards the best touring meal they had ever had.     Thanks!

If your group wants to do something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT on your next day or night out, call us at 909-790-TIME, and we'll put you on the calendar!     

Riley's Farm -- April 2005