The Valley Shorn...

A brief interlude of Indian Summer has brought out the silage trucks in full voice. The road shoulders between here and town are a' flutter with corn chips, the litter of fall, if you will. In their defense, the "corn flakes" are organic and by the end of the month the landscape will absorb them.

Stilled as well is the stentorian growl of field 
tractors after turning over the corn stubble and seeding the fields for an early crop of pasture grass.

Gladys and I glide past cornfields barren now of the waving corn that has kept us company all summer. The sight of fields naked but for row upon row of nubby stalks elicits a strange twinge of loss either from the barrenness of the landscape or the sense that one season is about to give way to another. The starkness of the fields puts me in mind of a couplet from the English poet Alexander Pope: "Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy/And shuts up all the passages of joy." 

The farming business is at the mercy of Mother Nature and I take some comfort in the fact the weather gods have granted the Werkhoven dairy operation a short window of dry weather in which to harvest their corn and pasture grass. 

The corn crop of seven hundred plus acres is now a mountain of tractor-packed silage in the silage bunkers. As we pedal by the huge mound, the Werkhoven crew, family mostly, spread huge tarps over the pile and secure them with tire-like weights. The silage will cure and ferment for a few short weeks and then become a daily staple of the herd's diet (locally grown in the cows' backyard) to supplement the alfalfa hay trucked in (with voices, I might add, equally grating) from the hayfields in the center of the state.

Though I've several times been witness to this Valley ritual, I remain amazed at how 1000 acres of corn and grass, the work of spring and summer, can be compacted into an area less than  half an acre, a feat that seems to fly full force in the face of physics....

The laborers seemed only too happy to pause a moment from their work to grant The Ripple a photo or two. But not without a quid pro quo, the surety that their enthusiastic waving will be imprinted on the Valley history in The Ripple's pages. I was only too happy to oblige.... 

  

The Procession of the Equinoxes...

I saw a cartoon the other day--"The Family Circle," I believe--where the little girl shares with her brother that the remaining months of the year all end with "brrrrr," a strange, but apt coincidence--at least for us in the northlands. Just days away from the autumnal equinox, The Farmer's Almanac, that beacon of weather prognostication, has published its 2019 winter prediction. TFA has added a new phrase to the lexicon of ominous wintry weather. Whereas we northern folk have become all too familiar with "polar vortex,"The Farmer's Almanac has forewarned that winter 2019 will be a "polar coaster." But if you live west of the Rockies, rest easy: the "coaster" will target the mid-west and the east coast. The Almanac appears to have smiled favorably on us westerners, predicting a mild winter with near normal temperatures and precipitation.

There are those who scoff at the prescient Almanac. If you are one of the doubters, there are other predictors of bad winters to come. I came across a list of twenty of these old saws the other day and thought I'd comment on some with the Valley in mind.

Number one: "Thicker than normal Corn Husks." Considerable amount of corn in the Valley, fields of which I cycle by often. Normal looking ears of corn to me as I pass. Sweet corn is coming on, too, and the ears I've shucked seem to be no huskier than normal.

Number four: "Early departure of geese and ducks." The Valley's migratory water fowl just commute anymore, don't they?

Number five: "Early migration of the Monarch butterfly." Sightings of these iconic butterflies are rare in the Valley. I've only seen two in the forty plus years we've lived here. And those two, I doubt, were migrating.

Number six: "Thick hair on the nape of a cow's neck." I'll leave that diagnostic to the Werkhovens.

Number seven: "Heavy and numerous fogs during August." No worries on that one. Just a few the last of the month--and light ones, too, gone before mid-morning. Hey, my tomatoes have yet to show signs of late blight.

Number 10: "Early arrival of crickets on the hearth." Crickets? In the Valley? Have you ever seen or heard one? Pantry moths, however: we've had a blizzard of 'em all summer. I'll endure a hard winter just to rid the house of them.

Number eleven: "Spiders spinning larger than usual webs and entering the house in greater numbers." Not this year. Usually I have to bushwhack my way out the front door and into the garden. If I thought they'd set snares for the pantry moths, I'd leave the doors open night and day.

Number seventeen: "See how high the hornets nest, 'twill tell how high the snow will rest." Hornets here nest in the ground. Disregard that one....

Number eighteen: "The size of the orange band on the wooly bear (or wooly worm) caterpillar." I have yet to see one this year. (By the way, after the woolies go through the change, they become an attractive bug, the Isabella tiger moth.)

My favorite is number twelve: "Pigs gathering sticks." If I happen to see Grammy and Charlie heading to the barn with mouthfuls of sticks, all bets are off. I'm heading to Lowe's for their biggest snow shovel....

And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street...

I offloaded Gladys in the Swiss Hall lot around 9:00 a.m. just in time to exchange greetings with Andy Werkhoven. "Good morning, Mr. Werkhoven." "Good morning," Mr. Johnson as Andy flagged down a big Massey Ferguson tractor chopping grass, trailing the conflicting odors of diesel exhaust and new mown hay.

On down the road we ting-a-ling a woman slapping blue paint on the east side of Sam Werkhoven's old place. In full sun, too. Summer painting advice: "Follow the shade, Ms."

A quarter mile later we see Kelly Bolles tractoring a brush hog over his strawberry field. Easier to find those lost strawberry plants?

Off to the south a helix of buzzards soaring higher and higher in a Valley thermal. A good omen for Brother Tim who has a hand launch glider contest today in Carnation. (Buzzards achieve maximum results from a minimum of effort.)

I pass Bill Boyce returning from his early morning reconnoiter in the Valley wilderness area.

On over Riley Slough ("Tualco Slough," the sign reads). The resident blue heron apparently gone fishin' elsewhere.

Bridge construction site was silent this morning. The weekend, perhaps? But then this is a County engineering affair. Nine 103' long pilings for deck support left to drive. Are the other forty-three already resting on bedrock fifty feet below?

On the return leg below Decks' hayfield I come upon a man and his dog out for a stroll. As the dog turns to wait for his master, I discover the four-legged companion is in fact a coyote pup. We startle it from behind and it quickly bolts into the corn. "A young coyote," the walker smiles as we pass. "I just saved your life," I joke.

Andy Werkhoven again, this time piloting the big Massey Ferguson limo, chauffeuring a small boy (grandson, perhaps?) I wave. Andy tries to coax a return wave from the lad but he wasn't having any of it.

Just not much going on in the Valley this morning....

On the Loose in the Valley...

Usually it's midday when Gladys and I take our morning exercise. Midsummer now, the days hotter, so today I decided to take advantage of the cool morning and still air (Gladys hates a headwind). Backing into the Swiss Hall parking lot, I was surprised to see the environmentally sensitive Nancy L chatting with a woman on the Hall's back porch. Out for her walk, I thought, ever vigilant the Valley isn't filling up with trash. As I was offloading Gladys, Nancy L wandered over to share news that four of Werkhovens' calves had escaped and were out and about somewhere in the Valley. "They found one," she said, " but three are still on the loose." I looked across the field to where a band of green stood out above the pasture grass. This summer's corn crop. As I pedaled off, I told Nancy I hoped the calves weren't out there somewhere in the corn.

The corn stalks are chest high or taller and put in me in mind of our trip to the mid-west ten years ago. We had left the main drag to visit South Dakota's Badlands National Park. At one of the "scenic viewpoints" we looked out over what looked like miles and miles of humongous inverted egg cartons. Mountains of mounds and hillocks as far as the eye could see. A sightseer who shared the view with us remarked: "Helluva place to lose a cow." I'm sure those words had been spoken at that site countless times, but they were original to me, and I thought about them again, this time in the context of acres of corn and three stray calves.

On down the road a ways I was glad to see a fellow and three girls insinuating themselves between three spotted calves and the verdant cornstalks. The lost had been found and were now being chaperoned back to the calf pens. "Ah, the escapees," I told the cowherds as I pedaled by. "Just glad they weren't in the corn," the man replied.

As we pedaled by the stands of corn along the river I wondered what course of action Werkhovens might take in the future should more wayward stock wander into the corn. Aerial surveillance? A drone perhaps? It seems like those high tech whirlybirds are everywhere these days. (A couple Saturdays ago a drone was flitting back and forth over the heads of a wedding party at the event venue south of our slim acre; a wedding photographer had taken his art airborne.)

On the return leg I came upon Steve Werkhoven and the three young lady cowherds by the dairy milk house and stopped to fill in the rest of the story. There are many a head of calves at the dairy, and I was curious how they knew some of the herd were missing. One of the girls said someone had seen them running along the road and then out in Decks' hayfield. They were able to corral one but the other three escaped and disappeared. It was then I learned my thoughts had dovetailed into calf recovery. Steve said Decks had a drone, did a flyover of the area, and located the calves sauntering along the riverbank. All that remained was to herd the prodigal bovines back to the calf stalls. Werkhoven told me the dairy had seven hundred acres planted in corn. " A drone might be a good investment,"I told him. "Yeah," he replied, "They usually just hang around the calf barns though," and went on to say they'd have wandered home sometime anyway.

Maybe so, I thought, yet the dairy folks had had to leave their morning routines to retrieve them, hadn't they? Without the aerial reconnaissance they might still be searching. And that seven hundred acres is one helluva big corn maze....

Grammy...Or Charlie?...

It's hard to believe Kelly Bolles' great horticultural experiment, trifling with truffles, (Trifling for Truffles or there's a Fungus Among us in the Valley), is now in its eighth year. I think about his project and those exotic 'shrooms every time Gladys and I huff and puff our way past the oak and hazelnut grove especially planted to foster a crop of the gourmet fungi. Five years, Kelly told me, the earliest he could expect any sort of crop. "If I could just find a truffle like this, " Kelly grinned, configuring his fingers in the shape of a softball, "I'd have it made." Or something to that effect, in other words a gourmet gold nugget....

Whenever I see Kelly these days, I ask for an update. As of this post the Valley's sometime truffle king has yet to unearth a single gnarly corm. I'm no expert on truffle horticulture, certainly haven't done the research Kelly has on the crop, which he geared to the Pacific Northwest truffle industry that's well established in Oregon. My knowledge of the elusive fungi is limited to European truffles, a subject that crops up every so often in the news. For centuries in truffle country, especially France, truffle foragers have used the keen olfactory ability of pigs to locate and root out the treasured mushrooms. In keeping with Old Country tradition, come potential harvest time, Bolles purchased a pair of porcine truffle seekers, but I wonder if Kelly's new help might have put his fungal venture in jeopardy.

Here's where the Valley truffle adventure becomes more interesting. Pigs love truffles just as much as the French gourmand. Once a truffle hog roots up a prize, the pig's handler must pounce on the find immediately before his assistant can scarf it down. I'm sure Kelly was aware a truffle sniffer could and would down the crop if the handler didn't quickly intervene. Perhaps Kelly's research focused on the growing of truffles more than the harvesting of them. Not sure about that, but after the fact, when the pigs were hired on, Bolles learned that a potential truffle hunter has to be trained in the art, training that should begin at the piglet age. Kelly's two pigs? Both mature hogs. And apparently you can't teach an old hog new tricks.

You might say the pocine pair are now a Valley fixture, and as you drive the Lower Loop Road south of Werkhoven corner and happen to see afield what appear to be two large dogs in the vicinity of Kelly's truffle grove, those'd be Grammy and Charlie. I caught them unaware the other day and thought I'd snap a photo, but when I approached, Grammy...or Charlie was having none of it, snorted and waddled briskly off, presenting only his or her porkly backside to the camera.

"How are Grammy and Charlie these days?" I asked Kelly last fall when our paths crossed.  It was flood season and he was worried about them. "They weigh nearly four hundred pounds apiece," he told me. "If we have a flood, I can't pick 'em up...they'll drown. I need to build a critter pad so they can escape should it flood." He has yet to build a higher ground refuge but as it's not flood season, I don't think mounding a pig escape is Kelly's priority.

When I mentioned bacon, pork chops, and cracklin's, Kelly laughed and shook his head. As we pet owners know, naming an animal elevates its status to that of pet, and it appears Grammy and Charlie are now part of the Bolles's household, not likely to become pulled pork or pan fried side meat. But Kelly's always looking for an angle: "Maybe I should train and sell truffle dogs," he chuckled,  "There's real money in that..." as a trained truffle dog has little interest in downing a pricey mushroom. While he's sharing this with me, I'm thinking about Grammy and Charlie, the way they've bulked up, and how I frequently see them rooting about in the truffle grove. Perhaps they're finding more there than cover and shade?

Meanwhile when fall rolls around, Kelly has hazelnuts for sale and even extends the courtesy of a stock tank in which one can dunk his hazelnuts to see which sink or float (the floaters contain no meat). I'll close this post by sharing a question I put to Kelly one day: "How can you tell which is Grammy and which is Charlie; their markings are the same?" "Charlie has tusks," he said,... good information to have the next time I get close enough to snap another photo.

The Glorious Fourth...

The Fourth of July was the memory of a new republic, a bloody babe of destiny, waiting to be filled with soul.

Ross Lockridge, Jr.                                           
Raintree County                                         
                                                                                             

To look at the sweet corn you wouldn't believe it. Independence Day, 2019, and the corn is yellow and stunted, barely ankle high. Looks like"Knee high by the Fourth of July" will have to wait for the next corn season. I tilled up the first planting which yielded a meagerly dozen sprouts out of two rows. The second planting, while well-sprouted, lacks the robust growth corn usually experiences this time of year. But please excuse the corniness. The subject of this post concerns the 243rd birthday of this our Grand Republic.

This Glorious Fourth, I'll spend like last year's: listening to Sousa marches and the patriotic songs rendered by the forceful chorus of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from their "Spirit of America" CD. The pyrotechnics I'll leave to the younger, more adventuresome set; those days of crump, crackle, and boom I've left behind, thankfully with all fingers and limbs intact, hearing only slightly diminished. I'll miss, however, the homemade ice cream and butterscotch brownies.

In honor of the day perhaps I should revisit the Declaration of Independence, brush up on the Constitution of the United States, read some of the fine print. Or perhaps a bit of Thomas Paine.... (Seems to me the pamphleteer's messages are currently--and sadly--foreign to the powers that be.)

But no thanks. On this celebratory day I can't think of a more patriotic thing to do than pull my favorite novel from the bookshelf, the only novel this confirmed reader has read twice, flip through the pages to my favorite passages (my copy bristles with sticky notes), and revisit the grand panoply of our Great Republic in the latter half of the 19th Century.

Raintree County is a sprawling novel. And at times a brawling novel. (The manuscript Lockridge delivered to Scribner's publishing weighed twenty pounds.) It covers a tumultuous epoch of our country's history, the britches bustin' period spanning the Clay/Polk presidential election of 1844 to  1892, a half decade that saw the Westward movement and the closing of the frontier, the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, and the transcontinental linking of our infant railroad system, "binding ocean to ocean in bands of steel." The fulcrum of the story line is July Fourth, 1892, and the slate of celebratory events scheduled for the day. The story begins with protagonist Johnny Shawnessy preparing to participate in the festivities. Events of the day trigger flashbacks that skip the story back and forth across five decades of history including seven memorable July Fourths. Though successive chapters might record events decades apart, the ending sentence, each incomplete, is skillfully linked to the beginning sentence of the next. This device, though delightful, makes the novel a challenge to read. Every Glorious Fourth I consider it a patriotic duty to revisit Lockridge's epic novel and thus once again...

happy birthday to our Grand Republic. May it thrive and prevail as a safer...and more to the point, saner beacon for the world.

HARD HAT AREA...

Are you familiar with the American folklore hero John Henry? A few days back I was reminded of that legendary steel drivin' man. A rhythmic "clang, clang, clang" from the Valley gave me a welcome pause from the hoe handle. Metal on metal it was. A persistent metallic echo you could almost feel through your feet, beating time as if it were the percussion section for a gandy dancer's chant. "Who or what is pounding away out there?" I wondered and almost immediately remembered an email I'd received from Matt Beebe, The Ripple's down Valley reporter with an update on the Bridge 155 replacement project which began in April (after a two week delay) and is slated for completion by January 13, 2020.

According to Reporter Beebe after the old bridge is demolished, the County's contractors will set fifty-two metal pilings across Riley Slough, deck support for the new bridge. Each piling will be driven fifty feet down to Valley bedrock (as per current County seismic code, I'm sure). The "clang, clang, clang?" A pile driver rending the peaceful Valley air with an irritating cacophony. The construction crew will set the pilings on the north and south banks of Riley but as the slough is a "salmon" fishway (according to Matt, the last salmon he saw in Riley Slough was in 1985 and that at his childhood residence back up Ben Howard Road) workers will defer setting pilings in the watercourse proper until sometime in July--after spawning season, so as to disturb for now, Matt shared, "only the frogs and salamanders."

More news. The environmentally sensitive Nancy L, out for a walk in the Valley, watched in amazement as a truck pulling "the longest trailer I ever saw" hauling four steel pilings slalomed its way to the construction site. We both wonder still how the truck, pilings in tow, was able to negotiate the right angle curves on the upper Loop road. Nancy L suggested I check out the construction site: "There's some mighty big equipment there," she said. So today Gladys--an amazing bit of equipment herself--and I ventured out to gather some news....

Our ride to the construction site was one of contending fragrances...olfactory ambivalence, if you will. As we rolled by Broers' berry fields, the midday sun brought forth the sweet, almost cloying, smell of ripe strawberries. But strawberry fields don't last forever and further down the road Gladys nearly balked as we happened upon Andy Werkoven, boot tops awash in verdant froth and foam gushing from one of the poo poo sprinkler valves. Strawberries and liquid poo, pungent enough to clear the clogged sinuses of an elephant.

We grind to a stop past the "road closed" sign and find ourselves in the presence of "some mighty big equipment." In the shade of a large crane a pair of hardhats were chokering up one of those huge pilings. The more diminutive of the two walked my way. From the look of his battered headgear, I could tell he'd been around the construction trade for some time. "How long are those pipes?" I asked. "Shorty" shot me a proud smile: "103 feet," as if to boast that size does make a difference. (I estimated the diameter of each about eighteen inches.) I shot a few photos and then crossed the lawn of the old Victorian two story to take more shots of the work in progress in and around the slough. A couple of the pilings protruded from their fifty foot bedrock pillows. I noticed workers had installed a miniature caisson to keep the sluggish slough waters at bay and thought: " Frogs, salamanders, and salmon, watch out."

My photo op concluded when Shorty, gesturing toward a tilted up, huge piling, shooed me away from the danger zone. "Wouldn't want you to be on the news," he explained, referencing, I'm sure, some of the crane accidents in the news of late. "I've seen it happen, and it's not pretty."

After Shorty herded me out of harm's way, I asked him if I could wait until the bridge was finished so Gladys and I could continue our ride. "You'd be pretty hungry by then," he chuckled.  I went on to ask about the project timeline, if the work was proceeding as scheduled. The answer? Shorty shrugged his shoulders. I followed up with, "How about cost overruns?" "You have a good day," he said, striding briskly toward the hard hat area. The interview was over.

 And for now that's the news from the Hard Hat area....