October 5, 2008 8:50 AM

 

Saturday Insanity, Soldiers of History, Blessings

Despite a light rain, the farm was packed to the rim yesterday, with all the parking lots full by about 11:00 AM. Even though you might need a parka and an umbrella, I've always liked the drizzly, foggy Saturdays for a cold apple and hot cider weekend. It just seems more like an old world harvest to me. The nice thing about the weather is that our customers seem to expect it; they seem game for it actually. It's a chance to use the L.L. Bean gear out here in California.

I talked to a 30 year marine veteran yesterday in the tavern, along with his wife and son, and he confirmed an observation I've always had about warriors. "Soldiers love history," he said. That's true. Every marine knows the story of Tun Tavern and the origins of a marine officer's sword and the legends of Chesty Puller. ("All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time" or "Don't forget that you're First Marines! Not all the Communists in hell can overrun you!")

America needs a little more Chesty Puller. If Marines know the value of legend, the rest of us should too.

In the public house, we let too many customers in out of the rain, at about 2:00 PM, and we had trouble getting all the food out, so we beg forgiveness of those 2-3 PM customers. Otherwise, the place was really spinning like a top yesterday. I have to admit, that I prefer the "known-quantity" scheduled Riley's Farm day trip end of our business. The arrival of the apple & pumpkin picking crowd is just very difficult, for any team, to manage. Everyone worked very hard yesterday. Thanks, crew!

The weird political season had me feeling a little cynical about America yesterday, and then, at the Harvest Feast, last night, Wendy from Valley Center went out to harvest wine grapes with me, and she said, "who writes the farm journal by the way?" I told her I did. "I love it," she said. I confessed to her it was my therapy: "They say that writing a journal promotes good mental health, so that means if I weren't writing every day, I would be a complete basket case." "No, no, no," she responded. "It's about time someone told the truth."

Thanks, Wendy.

The Harvest Feast features toasts of gratitude. We give away a five pound apple pie to the guest who best expresses his sense of thankfulness for his blessings. There were some great efforts, and then a boy of eleven or twelve stood up. He was there with his entire extended family, who helped quiet down the room as the boy began to speak. He held up his tankard.

"I am thankful," he said, and then he began to hang his head, and hold back the tears.

"Go ahead," his uncle told him, putting a hand on his back. "Say it."

"I am thankful to be in America," he said, "and out of Cuba."

The room grew silent with the enormity of the child's confession. Try as we might, gratitude is not something we tend to feel when nothing changes; it's a function of our lives improving, from going from bad to better. My own children have been taught--as I have been taught--the blessings of living in America, but not one person in that room knew that blessing the way that child did, as we watched him weep.

I asked his family about the story, and they told me his family had applied for a lottery visa, back in 1988, before the boy was born. In America, we hold lotteries to win a million dollars. In Cuba, they enter lotteries to get out of the country. Their extended family, after twenty years, chose to send the boy, and his mother, to America. They chose to save one of their children, to give him a life.

It puts a gratitude "toast contest" into perspective. Given this weird political season, it was the high point of my week.

 

More of the Farm Journal -- October 4, 2008