On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 5/1/2012
Agrarian Ramblings
If you’ve read very many of these columns over the years, you’ve probably figured out by now what I like best about cycling. First of all, there is just the simple “poetry in motion” of rolling down the road under my own power…the delight in that easy, fluid glide. But after that, the next best thing I get out of cycling--perhaps the biggest thing--is exploring: pushing my wheel on around the next bend, curious to find out what will be revealed over the next hill, down into that valley.
Every ride is a voyage of discovery, with my curiosity coursing ahead of me like a hound on the trail of some wild critter. Sometimes I ride into Santa Rosa or Petaluma or Healdsburg and dawdle up and down the streets of the older neighborhoods, checking out the gingerbread Victorians or the California bungalows. I like to see how folks are fixing the old places up and what they’re doing with the landscaping. That’s one sort of exploration. But more frequently, my voyages of discovery take me out into the countryside. In the rural and semi-rural world of the North Bay, there is far more country than city or suburb, and my home outside Sebastopol is smack dab in the middle of several hundred thousand acres of country, all of it criss-crossed by a spaghetti tangle of little roads. So out into the country I go, chasing along behind my curiosity…
But curiosity would be pretty pointless if all it meant was looking blankly at the world and not wondering about what one was looking at. No, I want to understand what I’m looking at; I want to pry it apart and put the pieces back together in words that make sense to me, in terms I can understand. This may be the curse of the writer: wanting to bundle the world up into bite-sized definitions. But, for better or worse, that’s who I am and what I do. I try to learn the names of the trees and other flora, try to know which wild animals I might run into, and have at least a layman’s grasp of the local geology, the lay of the land. I’m not at expert at any of it, but I have a generalist’s vague and shaky grip on the basics.
On a ride recently though, it occurred to me that there is one huge area in which my knowledge is woefully sparse, and that is the area of local agriculture. Up in the high hinterlands of our region, we have some ruggedly untamed land that might pass for true wilderness. But most of what we have around here is land that has been bent to the uses of one form of agriculture or another. From where I live, any bike ride will have me out amid those agricultural acres, be they vineyards or pastures for sheep or cattle, hay fields, or rolling hills lined out in long, long poultry sheds. And the fact that slaps me upside the head like a wet cow patty is that I know next to nothing about any of it.
Okay, I know a little. We’ve lived in this neighborhood for over a quarter of a century. One would have to be incredibly, snootily stand-offish to have avoided rubbing shoulders with a few people whose lives revolve around agrarian pursuits. I know wine makers and vineyard managers. I know folks who make cheese from the milk of their own herds of goats and cows. I read whatever I see in the local paper about farm life. But it’s all at best second-hand and superficial. And that bugs me, or at any rate, it piques my curiosity. How can I have lived in this community this long, and, more significantly, ridden my bike past these many farms for these many years, without somehow coming to a better understanding of what life is like for the folks who live on the land and make their livings off of it?
It’s as if we live in intertwined, overlaid, parallel universes…easy enough to see, but not so easy to understand. I mean, sure, I know a few of the breeds of cattle I see out there, cropping their way across the hillsides. Everyone knows what a Holstein is…duh. And an Angus…those are the black ones, right? But I doubt I can tell a Jersey from a Brown Swiss. And, more to the point, I have no idea why one dairyman would have all Holsteins and why another might have some other breeds mixed in, grazing the same ground and producing milk that all gets mixed together and hauled off in those shiny tanker trucks. Why do I see them spreading hay for the cows to eat, right on top of what looks like lovely, grassy forage? I haven’t a clue.
As for sheep, I can’t even name a single breed. All I know about raising sheep is whatever I’ve read in a few novels. I see the little lambs in the spring fields, and I think of mint and rosemary and mustard and sharp carving knives. In other words, I understand the ends, but not the means. When does shearing happen? Who buys the wool? How do they decide which lambs go to slaughter and which grow up to be wool producers? Not a clue. Ditto for goats, even though my next-door neighbor runs a few and I visit with them over the back fence almost every day. (I can see them from where I’m sitting right now.)
Wine grapes are by far the biggest cash crop in this region. There’s a reason why they call it Wine Country. $400,000,000 a year in wine grape production in this county alone. As noted, I have friends in the wine business, including some of my regular riding buddies. We talk about the trials and tribulations of each growing season. The too-hot days, the not-rainy-enough seasons, the too-much-rain-at-the-wrong-time problems. Pruning. Yields. Dry land vs irrigated. On and on. I listen politely and curiously and absorb as much as my little brain can hold. But again: all second-hand.
Sebastopol used to be known as the “Gravenstein capitol of the world” and perhaps it still is. Certainly the town still has its annual Apple Blossom Festival. They had it last month. Gravs are the best eating, juicing, and cooking apples ever created. But this region has been supplanted in the commercial apple world by other regions…Central California and Washington and Oregon. The pretty orchards that only a few years ago covered every hillside around town are now mostly torn up and replaced by Pinot Noir vines. At one time, there were 13,000 acres of apple orchards around the town and 25 apple processing plants along the railroad line. Now there are less than 3000 acres of apples and one single plant for handling the harvest. But as one old farmer noted, when replacing his apples with grapes: “My grandfather pulled out Zinfandel vines to put in these trees.” It’s those pragmatic, hard-nosed decisions that define a true agricultural livelihood: yield per acre; dollars per ton.
On one of my first bike rides in the area, back in the mid-80’s, I found a remote country road lined with parked pick-ups. The attraction was an auction in a big barn. I parked my bike and poked my head in the door. It was one of the old apple families selling up, all their equipment being knocked down to the highest bidders. Those hills along Burnside Road are now home to Merry Edwards’ vineyards. Closer to town, just a mile from my place, the same family’s apple-processing plant is now a vast antiques emporium.
Orchards, vineyards, pastures… They’re all around us here. They make up by far the largest percentage of all the land across which I steer my little two-wheeled steed. And yet the inner workings and everyday details of all these enterprises are almost as mysterious and esoteric to me as the experiments of an alchemist.
My lack of knowledge about the local agriculture doesn’t reflect any lack of interest on my part, nor any lack of sympathy with the idea of being connected to the land. We have our own little patch of land here, just outside of town. We have some orchard trees, some piney woods, and a thriving garden of fruits and vegetables, with enough productivity that we’re eating out of the garden all 12 months of the year. When the wife puts up preserves, she slaps on labels that say Fircrest Family Farm. But honestly, we’re just playing at being farmers. We’re gardeners. No matter how industriously we prune and dig and compost, we’re still just dabblers. If we run out of some sort of produce or preserves, we simply buy something at the store. We may not like it as well as home-grown, but neither our lives nor our livelihood depends on the efficiency of our stewardship of our little rural-residential plot. Our dilettante farming has as much to do with real farming as my cycling has to do with riding in the Tour de France.
Cycling? Oh, right: I’m afraid this column hasn’t been much about cycling. Not one single mention of gear inches, nor any armchair analysis of the latest races. No hymns of praise to the diamond frame or the pneumatic tire. But I hope you don’t feel short-changed by that. I hope your interest in cycling also includes a healthy dollop of curiosity about the world that surrounds you as you pedal through it…not only a sense of wonder at what a wonderful world it is, but a sense of wondering how and why it is the way it is. With respect to the life of the farms and ranches and vineyards and orchards all around us here, I am promising myself that I won’t take any of it for granted any longer. I may not ever be a real dairyman, nor a grape grower. I may never have more than a handful of apple trees or a few bees or chickens, but I hope to learn as much as the layman can learn about this parallel universe all around me.
I’m starting that quest for knowledge by doing what writers do: I’m reading. I have the latest annual report from the Sonoma County Farm Bureau up on my screen right now, right behind the page I’m typing. I’ve been reading it and picking up all sorts of useful and useless tidbits about the local farm scene. I fully appreciate that it’s a poor substitute for actually running a farm or winery or other agricultural operation, but it’s probably the best I can do in this lifetime. It’s my little way of paying tribute to the people who live on and work on the land where I do so much of my riding. Perhaps my words here will inspire you to look more closely at the dairies and sheep-cropped hilltops and corduroy rows of vines while you’re out on your next ride…to notice them and to consider the folks whose lives are tied up in those rambling acres of agrarian industry. Where would we be without them?
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net