Place Values

Published Sept. 12, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,” Dorothy chants in the beloved movie, The Wizard of Oz.  She’s about to be transported back to Auntie Em and Kansas, though whether that’s physically or only mentally, we’re never really sure.  It doesn’t matter.  When she opens her eyes, there’s her bedroom and Toto and the whole cast of characters who make up her world.  Suddenly, this place that had no value at the beginning of the movie is worth everything - because she thought she’d lost it.

           

     I think this old movie still resonates with us today because we know the loss of places.  Places can be landscapes seen from afar, rock outcroppings seen up close, the span of a beach or trees towering high above.  They can be wide open spaces, vistas so large they invite you to think universally.  They can be intimate interiors of buildings or houses; they can be a specific doorway or window, or a bush outside.  They can be a combination of all those things, or more.

           

     I am particularly susceptible to the power of places and suffer extensive grief when they are lost.  I didn’t plan it.  I was born that way.

           

     A group I belong to just decided it needs to sell a piece of property to bring in some much needed funds.  I listened to the list of reasons and the realtors’ evaluations of the property values.  But no one was brave enough to talk about the property’s place value and of what will be lost when it leaves our hands, or how we’ll feel if its historic house is demolished.

           

     In the name of the place values, I’m offering up an old poem I wrote in 1988.  Some of you might laugh, but others might cry with me.

Trudy’s Complaint

You!  Bulldozers!

You do this to me all the time.

You take this frame, this plot,

these flowers, this shelter,

these years of witness

to daily, individual joys

and family blunders

and crush them into a splintered heap

good for not so much as firewood.

No jointing is respected,

no adornment,

no omission or pertinent lack,

no historical moment

when a bird or butterfly touched this eave

and caught the light in its wings,

permanently etching in some mind’s eye

the magic of existence.

Nothing!  You leave me nothing

but bitterness

at the trends in our lives. 

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Trudy Wischemann is a sometimes angry poet who writes paragraphs.  You can send her your butterfly sightings c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Fake Farmers

Published Sept. 5, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Leave it to Dinuba farmer Paul Buxman to put his finger on a seemingly minor detail:  Devin Nunes is not a farmer, though his official election documents represent him as such.  Paul’s effort to get the word “farmer” removed from those documents has been defeated by a judge, but his point is worth pursuing.

           

     What makes a person a farmer?  Let me add an adjective here:  a real farmer?  Is it like being an alcoholic or an addict, where the definition depends entirely on the person’s recognition of the fact?   In other words, you might look like an alcoholic or an addict to all of your friends and family, but if you don’t recognize that fact yourself, the definition is moot.  Is being a farmer like that?

           

     Since moving to the Central Valley, I’ve been astounded by how few Californians who work the soil call themselves “farmers.”  The preferred term here is “grower.”  The distinction seems to imply a different color collar.  Farmers’ collars are blue; growers’ collars are more likely white, although I’ve known some growers who actually turned on their own water and sprayed their own weeds.  I often thought a good definition of whether a person is a real farmer might be exactly those two activities.  If somebody else runs your irrigation system and climbs up into the tractor seat, I don’t think you qualify for the blessed “f” word.

           

     Paul wasn’t trying to make the fine distinction I’m trying to make here; he simply pointed out that Devin hasn’t made his income from farming for a very long time.  I’m saying something different:  I think you can make your living from farming and still not be a farmer.  Do you run your farm from behind the windshield of your pickup, or do you actually climb down from the tractor to refill the tank on the spray rig?  From the vantage point of the pickup, you might be informed enough about the farm’s operations to call yourself a grower, but unless you’re out there working in the fields and groves, taking in the knowledge direct experience teaches you, you’re disqualified from the farmer category.  Plain and simple.

           

     Lots of real farmers I know are missing parts of one or more fingers.  A long time ago I thought I might make a photo exhibit of farmers’ and growers’ hands as a way of determining where the line falls between real farmers, who are necessarily operating farms in the smaller size category (say, something under 2,000 acres, depending on the crop?) and the big boys (say, 100,000 acres and up?)  The size of operation is definitely part of this whole definition thing, in case that hasn’t occurred to you yet, dear reader.  How much land you take up, trying to make a living.

           

     Where’s the line between small-scale family farms and large, industrial operations?  How many acres?  People have been asking me that since I started raising the question.  Now I tell them “I don’t know, but somewhere between 2 acres and 200,000 acres, there’s a line.  And we can help decide that.”

           

     Another way might be to ask a person whether they call themselves a farmer at any other time than during elections.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes.  You can send her your farmer definitions c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.