 |
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| June 30, 2005 12:34 PM | ||||||
Two journal entries in one day. When I ceased my blackberry reverie, the boys wandered in to tell me a black bear had broken into the dog food last night and snapped off an irrigation riser with its paws, thus creating a small muddy pond, which the boys played in this morning. (Note the toes.) Blackberries--Black Bears. Black bears arriving to eat dog food when the black berries are ripe for the plucking. Don't these black bears read the blackberry page on the web site? What's with this farm anyway? Oh--I did try the blackberry chocolate milkshakes, and they are really, really, really good, but my fourteen year old daughter, Mallory, will never agree. Here's what they look like. They taste even better:
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| June 30, 2005 6:46 AM | ||||||
Yesterday,
Krystle experimented with blackberry recipes. We
tried blackberry smoothies,
blackberry lemonade (below), blackberry-cherry tarts (left), and lattice
top blackberry pie. Today, I'm going to try making a
blackberry milk shake and a blackberry chocolate milkshake.
Mallory, never short of opinions, doesn't think blackberries and chocolate
will agree with each other, but I remain undaunted, having wedged two
berries between chocolate
Last night, at a major supermarket, I scoured the produce section looking for berries just to see what the big boys charge. Not a single berry-red or black--in the store. Don't misunderstand. I'm a huge fan of the modern produce distribution system. I like the fact that at 2:00 AM I can drive down to a well-lighted, clean super-store and buy an actual piece of shrink-wrapped sugar cane or a fuzzy box of fresh kiwis or a cocoanut that was still in its husk eighteen hours ago in Tahiti. But this time, we actually have something you can't get in at least one super-store that I personally checked--blackberries. I don't think I'll be able to sleep
tonight. We are the Order of the Blackberry--you and I. |
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| June 28, 2005 12:30 PM | ||||||
Just returned from an inspection of the berry
patch, and--get this--Mario says they're ready. I believe my four year old
concurs, because he charged the I've been thinking, farm friends, would you come up here on weeknights and pick? (We will be open Saturdays and weekdays as well, but I have the feeling some you might consider making a family, after work outing. What say ye? I'll have prices and picking times posted tomorrow.
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| June 27, 2005 5:28 PM | ||||||
 Mary
and I drove into L.A. to be interviewed on a national radio show today.
Normally, I post pastoral pictures of the farm in an effort to woo you out
here, but today Mary and I endured our once a decade trip into Gotham, in
order to, uh, woo you out here. We pulled off the freeway in a part of town that was boarded up, locked down, and re-decorated by the local youth every night. I kept thinking it would be a really bad part of town to hail a tow truck in-- dressed 
in buckled shoes, stockings, and a three cornered hat.
(Yes, I know it was a radio show. The producers wanted
this to inspire the interviewing host with novel questions.)
That's Mary on the left turning us into the Paramount lot.
When we arrived, we were greeted by a nice young man named Chris, who thanked us profusely for driving in to town and led us to a seat in the hallway, where we watched the engineering crew talk show strategy and how they could merge show-building with one of the crew's upcoming marriage. An Australian woman entered the building and asked one of the producers how things were going. The show was running a little late, he told her, and I was wondering what her segment might be about, but I was seized with a little last minute stage fright, so I didn't ask. As I was called into the studio, though, she called out, "you look great!" (Thanks, pretty Australian lady!) The host of the show was gracious and encouraging. She thanked us for driving in. Mary was quick to claim that she was there for moral support, only, and that she would NOT be answering any questions. We talked about Revolutionary war reenacting, the sort of people who love living history, and the sort of "obsession" some of us have with American history. Before I knew it, the two five minute segments were over, and we were exchanging cards with the host, who asked us about bringing her crew out for dinner. I kept asking Mary, on the way home, almost compulsively, how I did. "You did fine," she said. "But that one line about how beautiful and gracious women look in 18th century clothing. You don't think that offended her?" "No." "So you think I did okay. I mean, really?" "YOU DID FINE." We'll see... |
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| June 26, 2005 9:30 AM | ||||||
 The
first "Summer Hoedown at the Old Packing Shed"
is now history and it was crackling good fun. We met some
great new guests, the Arthurtons, Odoms, Reeders, Roots, Kaplans,
Parkers, and a few that even walked in off the street.
(It's difficult to walk in off the street here; it's something
like counting on steady business from the Lewis & Clarke expedition in
transit.) I was talking to one guest, originally from Alabama, a young family-man and Visual Basic programmer, and he said some of their friends hesitated to come because they were afraid it seemed too corny. Of course! Why haven't I contended with this in my marketing? At one time, when my feuding relations* were running the packing shed, I thought it was too corny myself. After all, we are talking about a square dance--the static, crackling record on a phonograph, your gym instructor standing next to a local contra dancer in a dress that looks like an inverted red carnation, the unbearable forced hand-holding with that tall, skinny kid (me) wearing the UV sun-sensitive glasses, that never go dark or clear, just gray. There you were, wishing you could just go home and watch "Happy Days" and eat mint chocolate chip. Of course! That's what I used to think! But if you see a square dance in an old barn, with a roaring barbecue, steaming corn on the cob, and the sound of the Mill Creek Boys or the Stone Pantry Band charging up the very sunset with their music--it's the difference between a themed restaurant and a feast at Windsor castle. It's the difference between an ocean screensaver and feeling the swirling sea sand between your toes. It's the difference between Junior High and College. For a while there, checking in guests last night, hearing the Mill Creek Boys playing behind me, it was something like 1909 at the old packing shed. The music can do that; it sort of lifts you up and lets you float awhile. From the porch of the packing shed, all you see are fields, dirt roads, pear trees, box elders, and green hills. It might as well be June at the turn of the century--pretty girls in pigtails, boys in their best new shirts, the smiles of a family just in from the orchard, ready to share a Saturday night. In the distance, I see my beautiful wife, with a white apron and her black hair tied up, and I think God is good. Very good. Incredible, really. * P.S. My feuding relations would probably shoot me if I went over there, but nothing is stopping you and they stage a fantastic supper hoedown over at Los Rios. Check it out. Team spirit, heah guys?
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| June 24, 2005 4:05 PM | ||||||
I worked on a period looking farm map all day, actually yesterday too.
You should be able to click on the image at the right to get a larger
version (1.4 MB+). This is just the extreme
western portion of the farm. There's another five or six
hundred acres to the east, but that's the wild country, filled with Huron,
Iroquois, and stragglers from the Pioneer trek.
I'm going to be interviewed on a national radio show next week, and a regional radio show the week after that. A local television station wants to set up benefit dinners here, so that we provide a feast and they provide advertising. My cousin, Samuel Adams, would be with me on this. When the revolution isn't proceeding as fast as you would like, you need to climb up on the soap box and wave your hands around a lot. Sometimes, I feel like I'm selling lemonade on the side of the road. (Alternatively, I could just remember my wife's advice.) |
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| June 23, 2005 8:04 AM | ||||||
 A hand-cart
company of pioneers rolled onto the farm last night.
Scott built 23 of these rigs over the past two months and put them to work
with a group of guests from Carlsbad, California. They
found out first-hand (Wagon Trek
Adventure) what it was like to carry
all of your belongings up winding, dust covered roads, into the high
country, making camp after dark. I walked over to the
summer kitchen as one of the first companies began unloading their gear,
just in time to witness a lithe, pretty young mother stretch her arms to
the sky and yell, "this is so cool!" Right after
that display another woman approached me with an utterly glum expression.
"Where's the food?" she asked--in a way that it made it clear there
would be no jokes about trapping small game. As I was
pondering how to mollify the hungry woman, her pretty, lithe counterpart
in the background let go with another "this is so cool!" The pioneer spirit, it would seem, takes many forms! |
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| June 22, 2005 8:10 AM | ||||||
|
Scott wants me to remind you all that you
need to use the MILE HIGH ENTRANCE if you want to pick
cherries. (There's a
map on the preceding link.) The
pumpkins were planted yesterday. We've got Baby Bears, Tom
Fox, Connecticut Field, Rock Star, and Prize-Winner out there.
We're also planting an acre of sweet corn and an acre of Cherokee Indian
corn--my favorite fall crop. It was the first really hot
day of the year--Summer 2005. The new cabernets are beginning to
swell up. |
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| June 21, 2005 7:29 AM | ||||||
|
Last night, the kids and I watched Wooster &
Jeeves on DVD. (P.G. Wodehouse must have had some
real iron-plated matriarchs in his clan.) More in a bit.
My iron woman has just reminded me the trash truck is here. After Jeeves, I got to thinking: what is a good benchmark for the number of visitors per day to the average small business web site? Right now, we have about 1100 page views a day and about 800 users. (Sometimes we peak at about 1200 users on Thursdays.) Is that good? Bad? I found one article indicating that the average well designed site, (professionally designed as opposed to my home grown site), gets about 17 users a day. Another article indicated the average site gets about 3 visits a day. Yet another article on search engines indicated that the vast majority of search engine phrases--what you would type into Google or Yahoo--are almost totally unique, that if you took a million searches, wrote them each on a scrap of paper, 970,000 of them would be completely different from each other. The other 30,000 searches, I presume, are for needs more commonly held by the great body of web surfers. The other day I was looking for tree wrap, the coils you put around young trees to keep ground squirrels and deer from eating their bark. I might have been the only one on such a crusade that day, but if I typed in "summer vacation rentals," there might be a few thousand looking for the same thing. So... When someone is looking for a place like Riley's Farm, but they don't know that's what they're looking for, how do we remind them that when they sat down to web surf, what they really intended to do was get in the car and drive to Riley's farm and pick cherries? Bear with me here... Years ago, when we were first married and living in Riverside, a friend of mine from Stanford, Barry Munger, dropped by our little place in the wood streets. Barry comes from something like an American royal family--all his brothers and sisters went to Stanford or Harvard. His dad is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's right hand man. I never knew any of this in college, because Barry would walk around, sporting a tattered T-shirt, driving his grandmother's old Chevy, lamenting college poverty like the rest of us. Still, he was one of those friends you wanted to impress for some reason. We were looking around in Riverside for some place we could take he and his girlfriend for dinner. The Mission Inn wasn't open yet, and that would have been too fancy anyway. We were looking for some restaurant that expressed the true essence of Riverside, something buried in an orange grove, with a wine cellar made out of river rock, and mariachis playing underneath a grape-laden pergola. Ideally, a vintage stake bed truck would be perpetually driving down the rows of trees in the distance, full of oranges, and the farm dust would smell like cinnamon. You would also hear, of course, the tinkling of water running out to the orchard in stone lined trenches. The whole thing had to be topped off by some charismatic assembly of local poets and savants, complete with a tavern keeper who once rode with Wyatt Earp. Somewhere in the cool shade of the cantina, you would have the distinct sense that someone was writing a novel. That was the place we were looking for, and, with a slight agrarian shift in the direction of New Hampshire, that's what we're trying to establish here. (We have yet to make, however, farm dust smell like cinnamon.) Nevertheless, now you know that if your version of Barry Munger drops by your house, you make reservations here--or here. But how do I get that to be Google-able? |
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| June 20, 2005 5:30 PM | ||||||
|
Is
this a good idea or what? A cherry pie has its partisan
supporters, but pure cherry can be pretty rich, so I asked the girls to
sprinkle in a few cherries with the apple pie, and I volunteered myself as
the taste tester. (Sometimes they just humor me in the
kitchen with my ideas, but this time, Krystle presented me with the
results just before lunch.)
Pure ruby sunshine on a plate. Sweet apple jelly, tart apples, a sprinkling of cherry, flakey pie crust--a great place for a scoop of vanilla ice cream to take a nap. You were looking for an excuse to come up here and farm it up for a little while. Now's your chance to try a Riley's Farm Cherry-Apple pie. Quick. Before I eat them all. |
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| June 20, 2005 11:50 AM | ||||||
|
I've noticed two things about our dinner
guests: 1) many of them are originally from the east
coast or abroad and 2) they are incredibly gracious with us.
Last Saturday night we made friends with a great couple from New Jersey,
who drove 2.5 hours out here from the San Fernando Valley.
Right behind them was a jolly, Irish chemical engineer and his wife--both
natives of Boston. Across the room was a Riverside
couple, originally from Australia and returning customers.
We do get some native Californians, but we seem to be an east coast
tavern, in terms of patronage, right here Southern California. On the second front, the commentary, nearly uniformly reported by our guests, is one of incredible gratitude for giving them a chance to enjoy a colonial tavern meal, as nearly as we can create it, here, on a working farm. Everyone who arrives can't understand why there aren't more people in line at the door. Your humble tavern keeper shares this awe and wonderment, though with considerably less detachment. By all means, then, um, let's keep this a secret. Don't tell anyone about "An Evening in the Colonies with Patrick Henry" or "Summer Nights at the Old Packing Shed." Don't forward those links and get a trend going. Keep it quiet! I'm serious. |
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| June 19, 2005 11:30 AM | ||||||
 Mary
and the kids made me hash browns, Denver styled scrambled eggs, and cheese
Danishes this morning. I got a whole Costco box full of Heath
Bars, a quart jar of cashews, and yesterday, Mary "duded" me up with new
Justin boots, new western shirts, and a new silk vest. The
kids and I re-discovered the glories of the word "ilk" this morning.
(Some of our friends are of the ilk who don't drink milk.)
That's my dad on the right, just after he joined the Navy in December 1941, right after Pearl Harbor. He grew up on a small farm in a town called Bountiful, Utah, where--at one time, his fathered owned a Studebaker dealership, a laundry, and the farm itself. When the depression hit, his father lost everything but the farm, and Dad had to weed onion fields to get his school clothing money. His paper route required saddling a horse every morning--and he said the January mornings were so cold, he rode with his face down next to the horse's neck to keep clear of the winter blast. When the war hit, he was a twenty-three year old salesmen for J.P. Coates company, traveling through Idaho, Colorado, and the western states. His own father had died six years earlier. He told me that when he heard the news about the war, he stopped the car, turned around, and headed back towards the nearest "big" city, Salt Lake, where he enlisted in the Navy the next morning.. 
In the summer of 1942, five months after
meeting her, he married my mom, Beatrice Winsor, in San Francisco.
They were in a hurry, because there were rumors that Dad would be shipped
out soon. (Those are the marriage license papers in Mom's
hand.) "You see this $5?" Dad said. "That's the last time you're ever going to see it. This is a bad bet. We're going to lose. You're going to lose this money." When the horses came in, exactly as he had predicted, he handed us each $150 with a glee that was only mildly constrained. "That was pure luck," he apologized. "That will never happen again, boys. Never. Remember that." In recounting this story, I think I know something about Dad's success in life, both in business, and I imagine in life. Dad was--and is--a realist. From the time he was saddling a mare in his father's cold winter barn, he expected that the opening of the barn doors would bring with it a broadside of cold air that would chill him right down to the ankles. Dad prepared for the worst--and he was mildly surprised, if grateful, at anything better.. When I was a boy scout, thirteen years old, sleeping high in the Sierras, with Johnny Ballard on one side of me and Curtis Beasley on the other, I could hear my dad approaching, outside of the tent, in the distance. "Warm enough, Jim?" he said. As dad walked away, Johnny Ballard and Curtis Beasley started in on me, without mercy. "I love you, Jimmy!" "Ah, now, I love you, Jimbo." "Did I tell you how much I love you, Jimmy?" The next morning, after pancakes, Dad took me aside. "I'm really sorry," he said. |
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| June 17, 2005 9:35 AM | ||||||
We're about to start a
Revolutionary War Adventure. This summer, we will be
holding these on Tuesday, Thursdays, and Saturdays. We expect
the crowds to be small, so that you'll have most of the farm to yourself,
and a great deal of our staff's attention, so click on the link above and
buy your tickets ahead of time. (It helps us order the proper
number of redcoats and minutemen.) You may
even be able to combine your trip with picking raspberries, pears, or
cherries.Think about this for a moment: you may spend part of this summer at the beach, part of it at a theme park, and--if you're under sixteen years old--you may spend a lot of it in front of a high performance video game. Why not spend four hours of your summer re-discovering America?
Our sentiments exactly. A few of our carping competitors in Oak Glen call us a "theme park," but as Arzo made clear, if we're a theme park, we're a theme park for smart people. Be a smart kid! Be a smart parent! Devote some of
this summer to history, to the wisdom of the ages. (And
don't tell anyone you had fun doing it.) |
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| June 16, 2005 7:16 PM | ||||||
|
Yes, we endured an earthquake today.
The farm is intact. No one hurt, no buildings compromised, no
gaping chasms in the earth's surface, no refugees burning open fires and
bartering for coffee beans. The most exciting thing
about the temblor was a Channel 2 news van at Vons.
I maintain that whenever a natural calamity occurs, there's a part of us thinking, "in two weeks the earth will be ruled by ruthless biker gangs and we will be straining muddy water through bed sheets." Yes, even those of us who live on farms with wheat fields and apple trees and heirloom seed stores think such things--for about the length of the calamity itself--and then we're back to reading u-pick trade magazines. We purchased two baby turkeys today. Lizzy and I examined the little baby wheat kernels. There is a small chance we will be able to bake bread with our own home grown wheat this year. Benita and her kids picked cherries today over at Mile High and brought back a few buckets. We are watching Scott and Benita's kids tonight, and planning an Andy Griffith film festival. God is good.
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| June 16, 2005 6:11 AM | ||||||
|
This time of the morning and a cup of coffee
make me feel something like Isaac Newton pondering the calculus.
The ninety minutes between the 4:30 and 6:00 AM hour are full of "great
moment," with nothing to stand between you and reason.
Theoretically, great marvels of engineering could be construed at this
hour, world-changing screenplays could be penned, and even the silhouette
of a living history village would spring into high relief, because there
is an unspoken covenant of silence with the rest of the world.
They have agreed to sleep, and you have agreed to think.
Theoretically. One of my relations, on the opposite side of the feud, recently accused me of parking a school bus on my nephew's property. (As it turned out, the aggrieved nephew parked the school bus on his property and the feuding relation apologized to me.) During the exchange over school busses, and the ongoing recital of extended Riley family conflict, my feuding relation said, "I don't know when you sleep!" When a feud starts, and conversation stops, you are left free to assume the worst about the "enemy's" motivations; in his mind, I am staying up late at night, hatching ways to bring millions of visitors to Riley's Farm, some of whom might get misdirected onto his property. (Actually, instead of a million guests, I would settle for an extra 12 this Saturday night.) The truth is that we need to make a living, we need to feed our kids, and we need to pay our taxes. I've never understood why those motivations--common to everyone--common to my feuding relation certainly, are not more generously understood and interpreted. It doesn't mean, certainly, that we can be bad neighbors, that we can park our customers on his property, or make noise without restraint, or pile trash on our borders, but it should mean that we can entertain and educate our guests without this constant, carping jealousy. Our feuding relations are talented, engaging people, and there are millions of history loving Southern Californians to go around... I suppose it's one of those problems for
the 4:30 AM hour. |
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| June 14, 2005 5:42 PM | ||||||
|
I walked the farm this afternoon, up to the
water tank and back. We're getting our irrigation system
fixed, so that we can put in more apple trees, more raspberries, and
more corn. Summer seems to have moved in on June and the
ground is drying out; the tractor belts out a big ball of dust
wherever it goes. The wheat is "heading," though it
doesn't seem very tall--probably our rocky soil. Of all
the grains we experimented with, rye seems to have taken to our soil the
best. The blades are about five feet tall.
Rye. Ryely. Riley. He
smiled at his journal entry, wryly.
Stop! Build a memory. |
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| June 12, 2005 10:42 PM | ||||||
|
The crop this year is nothing short of
spectacular. The branches are loaded down with big bold
red clusters, high and low on the branch. Since our farm
is a little higher in elevation, some of the crop is still ripening, but
the first dark, |
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| June 12, 2005 8:48 AM | ||||||
|
Scott called from church for me to go check
on Dad, so I'll post more later... 12:37 PM Back. We
breakfasted with mom and dad, watched some Vikings brutalize our English
ancestors on the history channel, and I read McCullough's 1776 to
Samuel, specifically the chapter on Washington fortifying Dorchester
Heights. He claimed he didn't want to hear any of it,
but he settled in and listened. I have a test to see if the
kids are paying attention. I insert their name randomly
in the text. This time I kept adding "the intrepid
Samuel Riley" after any listing of American officers, and it got a squeal
every time. I'm programmed for a nap on Sundays about
this time. Maybe you could tell...
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| June 11, 2005 10:18 AM | ||||||
Quite a cool few days, really.
We even had a bit of drizzle one night. We planted
our cabernet sauvignon grapes this week, (a modest dozen), and we ordered
our pumpkin seed for this year's patch. The barn
doors were hinged on Wednesday, and Mario promises we should have "buckets
and buckets" of raspberries this summer, per
day. Per Day. A few years ago, Mary and I--at Mary's urging--copied a habit my Brother Scott and his wife took up--DATE NIGHT. We were just starting our business and I didn't think we could afford it, but as the years have gone by, we have grown pleasantly addicted to the tradition. It doesn't always have to include dinner out either. Sometimes, we just go to Costco and buy supplies together. Sometimes--very rarely--we take in a movie. (I keep proposing a drive up along one of the un-patrolled farm roads to, um, watch the whale races at Goldmine Lake, but this usually takes a distant third or fourth to Olive Garden, Applebee's, or the Outback.) The point is that date night is an entirely salutary tradition--and contempt of date night represents anything but salutary neglect. The problem is: where can you possibly go on date night that isn't the same old thing? |
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| June 7, 2005 8:45 AM | ||||||
 We're
running a Father's Day Special on "An Evening in
the Colonies with Patrick Henry." If you purchase two
adult (age 13 & up) tickets, Dad's ticket is free. (The
event is not held on Father's Day, but if you order in time, you can
present him with the tickets, along with your other gifts, the 400 Gig USB
drive, the quart jar of Cashews, and the big coffee table book on Ford
Mustangs.)On June 25, 2005, we're teaming up with the Mill Creek Boys and Freeman and Kathy von Arx to host a beginning of the summer concert at the Packing Shed. This event will feature hayrides, cider pressing, two great bands, dancing, and great food. There's a premium for purchasing early and often. If you purchase your tickets online or over the phone, (909-797-7534) via credit card, the price is $25 for a single ticket and $40 for two. If you purchase at the door, the price is $27.50. A family of four saves $30 by planning ahead! (This is outrageous; I don't know why I let them talk me into it. Take advantage of my foolishness now, before I change my mind.) |
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| June 4, 2005 7:15 PM | ||||||
|
If I could buy a hundred days a year like the
last two I would. It's been clear, sunny and mild;
every time the sun works up a little fury, a cool wind blows down off
Wilshire peak. Samuel caught a rainbow trout, and I eagerly
await dinner. (Not trout, hot dogs.)
That's Freeman House, Kathy von Arx, and Jesse James Cross playing up at the packing shed for Redlands East Valley high school band tonight. We hosted a company party this afternoon, and I was so tired afterwards I slipped into unconsciousness for about an hour in the afternoon. For shame! Mallory has just sent me an intercom message. Hot dogs are ready. I'll be back. Back. The kids and I debated Carly Simon's "You're so Vain." (It was playing on the oldies station downstairs.) Our dilemma: "...you probably think this song is about you, don't you? Don't you?" Well. Isn't it? We finally concluded the narrator is purging herself of feelings for this fellow who flies his Lear Jet up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun and who has taken up the overwhelming bulk of her lyric. Still, when she says "your horse naturally won," I think there is unresolved bitterness here, and that the song still remains about this guy, whoever he is. That's the nice thing about being a hot-dog eating culture snob: you don't need to take up a red pencil and "grade" Handel. It just kind of streams over you in the air, like a fast moving cloud, like something pulsing down from Heaven. You never feel the need to pat Bach on the head and say, "that was really neat, Johann!" It's not just a high culture thing either. Kathy and Freeman play both Corelli and the uncharted folk music of early America and it seems to age better than the stuff I listened to in junior high. Some lessons take a long time to learn. Here I bought a radio in 7th grade to find KHJ on the dial and listen to "Your so Vain," so that Suzanne Meerkreebs wouldn't know me to be the pop culture moron that I in fact was. I suppose this was vanity on my part. |
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| June 2, 2005 8:59 PM | ||||||
 One of my older
brother's sons, Danny, has left the farm to join a very elite branch of
the federal government. He wrote recently, giving us
sketchy details of what sounds like a pretty horrific schedule.
(He hasn't said anything very specific about his weapons training, but I
don't believe his farm-based flintlock skills will be called into use.)
His email is a variation of "king of swing." Can you tell
which one he is in the picture on the right? Can you tell the
G-Man?Danny is a straight-arrow
kid with a sense of humor. He was an eagle scout, a camp
counselor for years on end, and a dedicated wife-hunter--always looking
for the right girl. He managed to do that and
still take good care of grandpa and grandma while he stayed here on the
farm. He has the mark of a self-assured man in
that he never really minds if the joke is on him. In
fact, he seems to invite that sometimes, laughing at himself as loudly, or
more loudly, than anyone else. While he was here
on the farm, he got us addicted to the Kiefer Sutherland "24" series, and
we made Jack Bauer jokes for the better part of the last year.
Whenever there is a farm plumbing problem, we mentally invoke Jack Bauer
and think of Danny Riley. |
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wafers
to good effect.
patch and had to be dragged back out. The clusters are huge and all over
the branch, almost too easy picking. (You want to pick the almost-black,
very soft berries and leave the red ones to sweeten.) 
As Arzo, an 11 year old from Redondo Beach
recently put it, "...I think that is was a very good idea to
build a place like this. Children learn and have fun at the same time..."
fat
fruit is ready to pick, and I was telling Scott that it felt a bit like
being in the middle of a gold rush or an Easter egg hunt. In
some parts of the orchard it looks like rubies glittering through the
green. Cherries: proof of God #54223843.