Crunchy Time

Good morning from Crunchy California.

We never wait until the end of June for summer, it starts here in late April, as soon as the grass on the hillsides starts to yellow. By the time summer is "official," California is dry, dry, dry. The hillsides are covered with crunchy dried grass, the native trees have sealed themselves off in an effort to conserve all their moisture.

Here on our river bottom farmland, there are riparian trees instead of the hardier natives. They don't do so well when the going gets rough. The black walnuts on the levee, after years of lowering water levels, are dying en masse. This means a big problem for the levee district, the trees have to be removed without damaging the levee. It fuels my paranoia. Especially when I see pictures of flooding in Texas, Oklahoma, and now Denver. And flood insurance has gone so insanely high, it's more like extortion.

There are still wonderful things about summer on the farm: sweet corn, tomatoes, tons of other tasty produce. The hens are still laying well, even though we've had some hot days. You can pretty much eat for free this time of year.

I am having my yearly problem with trying to accommodate growing chicks. This year it's even harder because there are few culls. With the avian influenza scourge in the midwest, I can't ship young birds to people who need them. I did call Vladimir this week to see if he can come build me a growout pen, to make a little more space.

In the house, Wesley and Gollie are doing well. Wesley is learning to appreciate company, when we are lucky to have some, and has been happy to just observe people instead of trying to taste their blood. Gollie only poops in an inappropriate place about once a week. (It doesn't take much to make me happy, does it?)

Outside, Biscuit the big tomcat showed up without his tomcat equipment one morning, and with a freshly tipped ear. Someone caught him and had him neutered. Not me, not anyone at Davis Ranch. Interesting. We'll see how this works, I suspect it may not be a good thing. He has already lost a lot of muscle mass.

The stray black female kitty has been showing up on the front porch every morning to share milk and eggs with Biscuit. When he's there, she'll come up to within a couple of feet of me. I think I may eventually be able to touch her. Not sure if that's a good thing. I found pigeon feathers on the lawn last week. I think she might be responsible. I have no shortage of pigeons. They're smart. That won't happen again very soon.

I'm managing to keep the yard green, despite the drought. It isn't taking much water to do that, just paying closer attention to when I turn on the sprinklers. Most of the shrubbery here is well established, it can withstand infrequent watering.

Summer does require me to stay home more than I'd like. The chicks need twice-daily care. On a hot day, the grown birds need fresh, cool water. I keep an eye out for wilty plants and take care of them as they need it.

I have nowhere to go, anyway.

I used to do a lot of camping, hiking and trail riding. That doesn't happen anymore.

Yesterday I waved goodbye to Bob and Anna, who left on a camping trip to Silver Lake in my RAV4, the back seat full of teenagers who have never camped before. (Anna's Prius couldn't accommodate all the kids and all the camping stuff, so we traded cars.)

 I could see a devilish sparkle in Bob's eye. Having worked on 4-H Camp Staff for several years, he's in his element. I'm sure there were lots of scary stories around the campfire last night. Today they've planned a hike. The teenagers left here all shiny-faced, spic and span; they looked more ready for a trip to the mall than to the mountains. I really miss all that fun and can't wait to hear the stories when they get back.

Some of my best memories are of the trip back from 4-H Camp. I always loved having a van full of kids singing those corny camp songs and laughing about things that happened during the week. We'd always stop at a restaurant in Cordelia, just so they could hang out together for a couple more hours. They hated having to part when we got home. Was I being parasitic, feeding off all that joy and enthusiasm? Maybe.

Now I need to grab another cup of coffee and get busy on the Dominique club newsletter. It's going to require a lot of rewriting and gleaning things off Facebook pages (a true nightmare). I spent my working life doing things like this. That doesn't make it easier. I kept putting this chore off and there are just a couple of days left to get it done. It's crunch time.

Albany, Oregon Poultry Show

Wow, no one wants to talk about their medicine cabinets full of the useless, expensive pills that have been peddled to them. Think about that.

In the meantime, here's a report about the poultry show I got to attend in Albany, Oregon a couple of weeks ago. I decided to go to this show because there's no way to tell if there will be poultry shows this fall and winter, due to the avian influenza outbreaks all over the U.S. At this time, there have been no new cases on the west coast since April, and we're free to take our birds and travel. Several midwest states are totally closed down for the remainder of 2015.

It takes about as long to get to Albany from my place as it did to Salt Lake City, Utah. I got up at 3:00 a.m. to pick my friend Katherine up at 3:30 and get her to the airport in Sacramento in time to catch the first flight out to Atlanta, on her way to a month-long road trip adventure. I love to drop people off at the airport.

The birds were all in small cages and ready to go, so it was no problem to snatch them out and put them in their carriers. I took 6 of them: 5 Dominique bantams and a white Old English  Game Bantam cockerel.

From the airport, I took Hwy. 99 to Chico. Got there at 6 a.m. and had breakfast with my brother Jerry and his wife, Maureen (Mo). Jerry was off for a few days to Nevada to help his brother-in-law cut hay. Mo went with me. I'm sure that driving to a chicken show with her gabby sis-in-law wasn't the main attraction. Mo's daughter and her family live just 15 miles south of Albany, in Corvallis. The main attraction was Tessa, the granddaughter.

I think Mo and I travelled well together, and it was sure fun for me. I do it again in a minute.

We got to Albany on Friday at 1:30. I don't know how we did that, it was almost 2 hours earlier than I'd calculated. The show was supposed to open at 3, so we were early.

Like a lot of poultry shows, this one wasn't very well organized. The show club was still putting up cages and didn't have the coop cards on them. You need to see the coop cards to know which cage your bird will be in. We unloaded the birds and left them in their carriers in a cool area of the show room while we went to explore Albany, and so I could check into the hotel.

All shows have an "official" show hotel. They arrange to get special prices for the attendees in trade for the show's recommendation. The official hotels are generally moderately priced and, if there's a restaurant close by, it's a good place to meet other show folks for breakfast.

This is the first official show hotel that was a major disappointment. I have stayed in all sorts of places. Motel 6 suits me fine if it's the only thing available. But this (Budget Inn) was really a creepy, dirty place. While I looked forlornly around the room, Mo giggled and took lots of pictures with her phone. I left my suitcase there and we went back to the show. The plan was to check the birds in and get them set up, then drive Mo back down to Corvallis where we'd have dinner with her daughter's family.

Back at the show, the cages were still not ready. So Mo and I jumped in and started helping with the coop cards. Of course the ones for my birds were the very last off the printer, so we pretty much put all of them up. By the time we got out of there and on our way, it was 6:30. The creepy hotel had been on my mind all afternoon. By coincidence, our route to Corvallis went right past the hotel, so I swerved into the parking lot, Mo ran in, grabbed my suitcase and threw it in the car, and away we went. I planned to get a hotel room in Corvallis instead.

Visiting with my niece, Sarah, her husband Cort, and their daughter Tessa was the highlight of the trip. They have a small, comfortable house with a huge backyard. Tessa has 10 laying hens with a wonderful pen and coop her dad constructed. She introduced me to each one, personally. They all have names, and they don't mind being picked up by the kid who loves them. Tessa gathered the eggs and told me which hen laid each different color. She reminded me so much of Bob the Chicken Boy at that age (5). I would take that girl home in a minute. Grandma Mo and I could haul her around to all the shows and help her carry her trophies home. But I don't think her parents want to part with her.

Cort grilled us two different kinds of fresh fish for dinner. I've forgotten one, but the other was salmon. We simply cannot get wonderful, fresh fish like that in Sacramento. It was heavenly.

Tessa loaned me her room that night. I got to sleep on her little bed, with glow-in-the-dark stars on the walls and ceiling. Slept like a log.

I heard the next day, from people who had actually stayed at the show hotel, that it was an exciting place, with lots of drug dealers and cop cars going in and out of the parking lot all night. I didn't mind missing out on that, though I won't lie, I probably would have slept right through it.

I left Mo in Corvallis and spent all day Saturday and Sunday morning at the show by myself. While the show is being judged, there's plenty of time to sit on the sidelines and talk to the other exhibitors. That's the main reason I go to shows, and this one did not disappoint. I met three new people who never travel as far south as California. One fellow was in his 70s. He had spent all of his life showing poultry off and on, he was a treasure trove of information. The other two were an older married couple. I sat with them at the show dinner that night and found myself talking to them often during the day.

I also got to spend quite a bit of time with my Dominique friend, Heaven. She lives 25 miles from the show grounds. We went to lunch on Saturday and had a "medium" shrimp salad. OMG. It was a dinner-plate sized salad that was covered in cocktail shrimp about 2 inches thick. My overall impression of eating in Albany is they give you at least twice the amount of food a person actually needs.

Saturday night I found a room near the show grounds at a Rodeway Inn. It was peaceful and quiet. The next morning I had breakfast, then drove through the Oregon countryside out to Heaven's house to pick up some Dominique Club materials. Driving through Oregon this time of year, with all the green-ness, makes my California eyes happy.

Sunday afternoon, Sarah and Tessa brought Mo back to the show. It was fun taking them down the rows of show cages to see all the birds.

Maureen took this picture. She labeled it "Tessa looking at the birds." I suggested "A bird looking at Tessa" might be more accurate.

I had bought some raffle tickets and we won 3 sacks of chicken feed, two for Tessa's hens and one for my chicks at home.

Sarah, Grandma Mo, and Tessa

Unlike most poultry shows, which get their exhibitors on the way home by about noon, this one didn't release us until 5:00. That would have meant driving through the night and getting home about dawn. Instead, we drove as far as we could get before 9:30 p.m., then stayed at a motel, got up the next morning, and got home early. The birds stayed in their carriers in the car. It had been a warm day, but after sundown it cooled off and they were comfortable.

The birds did pretty well. My show hen, #33, was in fine shape and took not only Best of Breed, but also Reserve RCCL. I got really nice comments from the two other judges who did not judge her class, which was worth more to me than a ribbon any day.

The birds are entering their molt season now. I did enter some in the State Fair. It's at the end of July, but one never knows if there will be anything by that time that isn't missing most of its feathers.

Summer is a hard time in the chicken show business. At least for me, it is. I have way too many birds: 150 chicks, at least 40 adult birds. I need to see how the chicks are developing before I can decide which of the older birds to sell, because I want to keep the best breeding birds. It takes 5 months for me to tell if a chick will be good or not. By that time the place is overrun and I'm going nuts trying to take care of them all. It's usually the thought of fall shows that keeps me going. This year there's no guarantee there will even be any shows.

Advertising

I went to a poultry show in Oregon last weekend. More about that later.

There was a vendor at the show who sells old books and magazines related to poultry and farming. I bought a few and enjoyed reading them during the slow times. You might think there are lots of slow times at a poultry show, but that isn't true. I spent most of my time meeting and talking to new people, folks who never come down to California for a show (or any other reason, if they can help it).

A couple of the publications were from the early 1900s. In the 16-page, December 1915 issue of Practical Poultry Pointers, sample articles were about results of the National Egg Contest, and how artificial incubation is best. There were two pages of advertisements in the back, all for chickens and hatching eggs that breeders had for sale. The type was 8 point. The text was written for adults.

By 1953 the February issue of Country Gentleman was 220 pages. The cover and many inside pages were 4-color. There were lots of advertisements, primarily for farm equipment. The articles were composed in 9 point type, the text was written for adults.

Compare this to a publication today, where most of the ads are for drugs, the articles are either sensationalistic, over-dramatic, or puerile, and the type is at least 10 point.

Let's consider, for a moment, just the difference in advertising.

In the Country Gentleman, there were only 7 small advertisements for medical problems: 

"Musterole breaks up chest colds' congestion in nose, throat and upper bronchial tubes!" (Note the proper use of an apostrophe.)

"If Peter Pain knots you up with muscle aches, quick! Rub in Ben Gay." The accompanying picture shows a little devil with a knot around a man's calf muscles. (These words could be entirely misconstrued these days.)

"When Bill tried to kiss me, I sneezed!" the anguished young lady told her friend. The friend gave her Mentholatum, medicated with menthol, camphor, and other time-tested ingredients.

False Teeth: "Klutch holds them tighter."

"Corns removed by Mosco."

Anti-constipation remedies: Sal Hepatica and Castoria.

All of these products were for conditions that you could SEE, for problems that were REAL. While you might doubt they were actually effectual, none seemed harmful and all were low cost.

When I was a typographer in the late 1970s, I worked on a magazine called California Pharmacy. It was full of ads for medications. Ads you would only see in that magazine, to inform pharmacists. Today, our publications are rags with stories that seem to only be there to separate the drug ads. Are those ads for REAL things? No. A lot of the "conditions" are things that people in 1953 had never heard of.

I snatched this from one of the old magazines.

Somewhere along the line, in the same movement that turned Americans into nothing but consumers, drug companies learned to manufacture "conditions" and sell them to us. It's no wonder our health care expenses are so high, we're having to support the pharmaceutical companies.

How many of you live pill-free lives? Have those pills actually made a significant difference in your lives? Are you taking them just because a doctor said your cholesterol is too high, for example, and the pills brought that down a few points?

Why have we let this happen to us? The conservatives among us bemoan the loss of simpler times, but even they seem to be enthusiastic consumers of whatever Big Pharma comes up with. The liberals complain about big business, but continue to consume their products, as if one can't live without at least a statin, Lisinopril, Metformin, and/or Prozac.

Good grief, folks, THINK about what you're doing. Remember this?

Have we not learned anything?

Quinceanera

I don't go to parties often, especially not big ones. (That's not actually a judgement thing, I'm not often invited.) So it was great to attend a party this weekend that turned out to be more fun than 3 or 4 separate ones put together. My son Bob's girlfriend Anna has a niece, Brenda, who was celebrated in a quinceanera. It's a wonderful way to give a youngster the opportunity to be princess for a day. Here she is as the mariachi band plays for her.

Brenda wore a beautiful long dress and was attended by 6 young men (her court) in suits. Her aunts and uncles, cousins, and other close family also wore formal wear. The rest of us were more casual. Most people only dress up for high school dances, or if they participate in a wedding. What a wonderful demonstration of support and respect when your relatives dress up to honor you. Especially the boys and men.

The boys in Brenda's court sat with her at the head table and performed a choreographed dance with her, complete with an awesome lift at the end. These kids did a great job and had such a positive attitude. A note, in case you think it's cultural differences that account for this: these boys are not immigrants, they were born and raised here, they go to the same schools that your kids do. Imagine trying to get your own 14-16 year old son to wear a suit, sit quietly at a table for several hours, and do a Dancing With the Stars routine in front of a big audience.

The party was as well planned, and probably as expensive as, a wedding. Anna has 4 sisters. I asked how her parents managed with parties for all the girls. "We didn't do that," she said. "We had a choice of either the party or a car, we all chose a car."

The first two hours, we were served dinner at our tables while the mariachi band played, going from table to table. We had shredded beef, rice, and lots of tortillas. At every table there was a liter of Pepsi, one of Fresca, one of carbonated water, and a bottle of tequila (with a bowl of ice and a bowl of limes). People were served as they arrived, which was mostly between 4 and 6. There was plenty of time to visit. Brenda and her court walked around individually and introduced themselves to people at each table, and shook hands with everyone. I saw no sulking in the corner with an iPhone.

It was a good time to take pictures. Here is one of me with my "family": Bob, Anna, and John.

Bob was proud of himself for still being able to fit into the suit he bought when he graduated from high school.

After Brenda and her young men performed their dance, the cake was cut and passed around. No one noticed that Brenda and her aunts and mom and some of the fellows had disappeared until they came back into the room wearing dance costumes. Well, some of us knew about the "surprise" ahead of time, but it was still fun. The dancers had been practicing for over a month. The day before the party, though, Bob said they still weren't quite as good as they could be. He said, "there are two ways to handle this. Either the dancers can have enough tequila ahead of time that they don't care, or we can wait until late in the party after the audience has had enough tequila not to notice."

Neither was necessary, the dancers were very good and made up for any bobbles with their enthusiasm.

This is the dance. Bob and Anna are on the right, toward the back, which is why the camera was often pointed there. The real photographers were in front of me sometimes. 

After the group dance, Brenda danced with her stepfather and an uncle, then lots of people joined them on the dance floor. I thought that would be the finale, but no. Just as the recorded music ended, in came a full 18-piece brass band. I can describe them in two words: enthusiastic and loud. Like an entire high school marching band, inside a basketball auditorium-sized room. Their happy music soon had lots of people on the floor, stomping to the beat. 

By the time I left with the folks I was riding with, it was almost 9 p.m. We were in a happy mood all the way home. The serious partygoers stayed until 11:00 p.m., then many stayed until 1 a.m. to help clean the room and pack up all the decorations and things. 

The best thing about this party, in my opinion, was that it was a family celebration. In this case the "family" included outsiders like Bob, John and I, some of Bob and Anna's friends from Sacramento, 3 Iranians (who actually looked a lot like the Hispanics), lots of older people, and many little kids who showed up in fancy suits and dresses and spent the entire party running around, without incident, and playing on the patio just outside the building. Yeehaw! Good times!