We Drill for Will

Farmers Saving Farmers, Redeeming Us All


     Will Scott, Jr., Fresno organic grower of soul food, community farm activist and president of the African-American Farmers of California, is about to go out of business for lack of water.  (For an overview of his efforts, visit www.scottfamilyfarms.net.)  Featured in the Fresno Bee's "Faces of the Drought," Will was quoted as saying  "We're on the verge of losing a lot."  (See also this blog's entries "Drill for Will" and "Approaching Rain" in October.)


     Paul Buxman, Dinuba organic tree fruit grower, small farm organizer and Valley farmscape painter extraordinaire, heard the news and said "The community can't afford to lose this man."  So he's launched a fund drive to deepen Will's well to keep Will where the community needs him:  on his farm. (For two beautiful television reports on this project, visit http://abc30.com/news/drought-hasnt-dried-up-dinuba-farmers-generous-spirit/1010605 and http://abc30.com/news/generous-response-to-valley-farmers-well-fund/1020474/.)  See and hear also Alice Daniel's fantastic piece of radio journalism for KQED's "California Report" at http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/11/07/drill-for-will-get-this-farmer-some-water/. 

    
     For a $50 contribution (roughly equal to one foot of well deepened,) Paul is offering a 16x20 lithograph of either "Approaching Rain" or "After the Rain."  For a $75 contribution, a person can choose one of three 18x24 lithographs:  "Swedish Homestead," "Autumn Afternoon," and "Approach to Reedley."  The lithographs are signed and numbered, wrapped in acetate and backed with museum-quality board, ready for framing.  (For a large view of Paul's paintings, visit www.shinnphoto.com/Paul-Buxman; unfortunately, this blogsite isn't allowing me to insert photos today!)


               We  Can  Help ! ! !  Even us non-farmers ! ! !
    
     Any contribution will be gratefully accepted.  Make your check payable to Will Scott, Jr.  with "Drill for Will" or well fund written in the memo.  Send it to Paul Buxman, Sweet Home Ranch, 4399 Avenue 400, Dinuba CA 93618, and include your name, address and phone number to arrange for pick-up of the lithographs. 


     If you'd like to taste the Buxmans' fruit of their labors, literally, plan on attending their annual Art Show and Holiday Gift Sale, November 27 and 28, featuring Paul's original oil paintings (many new ones this year!), lithographs and art cards, plus farm-crafted foods and gifts from Sweet Home Ranch and neighboring farms.  Enjoy the beauty of the farm, the tastes of home, and visits with neighbors and friends.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes from her adopted home town of Lindsay.  You can send her your ideas to raise money and lower Will's well c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Approaching Rain

For the Oct. 14, 2015 issue of the Foothills Sun-Gazette
    
     Thin blades of bright green grass have come up through the bent-over dry stalks in my backyard this past week, responding to last Sunday’s rain.  It’s amazing how the sight of baby wild oats can produce hope, but it has.
    
    Those thin green blades are an antidote to despair in a way, like taking aspirin for a headache.  We’ve submerged much of our despair about the drought, I think, have tried to hold its head underwater while we wait for good news that it was just a mirage.  Maybe the despair will drown, we think, while continuing on with our lives as if we weren’t under environmental siege.
       
     Drought despair is what Paul Buxman’s project “Drill for Will” washed downriver for me two weeks ago (see last week’s column below.)  Paul has been an antidote to my despair before:  in 2003, after yet another freeze made our small-scale citrus growers want to throw in the towel, he came to our Lindsay Lighthouse Breakfast meeting to embolden the members.  “Just try and do something for 2 hours a day that could bring in some money,” he advised, speaking from first-hand experience as a plum grower too subject to hail.
    
     Paul’s paintings are an antidote to another kind of despair that many of us feel:  that our landscape, our precious, verdant agricultural bread-basket-of-the-world, hands-on-the-plow landscape is vanishing.  It is vanishing:  Bill Preston, the author of Vanishing Landscapes: Land and Life in the Tulare Lake Basin (1981,) can barely stand to visit this place for the pain these losses inflict on his heart.  But Paul, in painting them, has made a testimony to their importance.  Several of his paintings bear this witness in the offices of senators and other government officials in Sacramento and Washington.  “This is a reminder of how you need to vote,” he’s told several elected representatives as he handed over the paintings to their new owners.
    
     “Approaching Rain” is the title of one of the paintings reproduced as lithographs that Paul is giving in exchange for financial contributions to deepen the wells of Will Scott, Jr., the black organic grower and small-farm activist near Raisin City who is in danger of being driven out of business next year for lack of water.  This painting shows a small farm against a darkened horizon that could bring disaster as well as blessing, which we might see differently now after four years of little rain.  “After the Rain,” “Autumn Afternoon,” and “Homestead” (which portrays raisins drying in the sun,) are the titles of the other three.
    
     These four paintings are from the 1980’s and were chosen for reproduction because Paul felt they best represented both his style and his subject.  Normally these lithographs sell for several hundred dollars each.  As a quartet, they represent the passion and skill of this artist/tree fruit grower who knows the lay of our land like no other.
    
     “Man, you’re making history,” an old gentleman told Paul last week while he was out painting over on the Kings River delta.  “No,” Paul said, “but I am recording it.”
    
     Actually, I think the gentleman had it right.  It’s radical, what Paul’s doing by painting landscapes we’re all afraid to acknowledge that we love, and then putting them up for people to see and buy.  It’s radical, handing out the fruit of his labors for free to help save another farmer and small-farm activist who tells people that black farmers’ lives matter, and black peoples’ diets do, too.  It’s even radical to hope that deepening a well will drive off the wolf at that farmer’s door, to hope that there is enough rain approaching to satisfy the wants of many and keep the big boys from sucking everyone’s wells dry.
    
     If making that kind of history appeals to you, send your checks to Paul Buxman, Sweet Home Ranch, 4399 Ave. 400, Dinuba CA 93618.  Make the checks payable to “Will Scott, Jr.,” with “well fund” written in the memo space.  Include your name, address and phone number to arrange for pick-up of the lithographs, one for each foot of well to be drilled (currently estimated at $50/foot.)  Make history and drown despair:  collect all four!

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Trudy Wischemann is a small-farm/rural advocate who writes and sings.  You can send her your ideas for turning drought despair into hope c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Drill for Will

Published Oct. 7, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     I was bottle feeding a kitten on the back step when I heard Paul Buxman’s voice talking into the answering machine Tuesday.  I caught the phone before he finished, wanting to catch whatever wave he was riding.  This one was tidal.

     “Do you know the name Will Scott Jr.?” he asked.  A two-second mental search produced 149 entries for “Will,” “Scott” and “Jr.” but zero for all three together.  When Paul told me some of the details, however, I realized I’d been clipping articles on Will for years.

     Will Scott Jr. is a black organic small-scale farmer near Raisin City who’s been actively getting people back on the land, particularly other black farmers and Fresno’s urban youth.  He started farming 45 acres after he retired from the phone company, growing vegetables once common in the diets of rural black people that had kept them healthy, selling them at the Mandela farmers market in Oakland where those now-urban black folks could benefit.  He organized black farmers in the Fresno area to provide much-needed support, and began training black youth to farm, reclaiming the invaluable parts of their rural roots (go to his website, www.scottfamilyfarms.net, to see some of his efforts.)

     But now his well is going dry.  This year he was able to farm only 5 of his 45 acres, and his future looks bad.  Featured recently as one of the “Faces of the Drought,” he was quoted as saying “We’re on the verge of losing a lot.”

     I don’t think he was referring simply to himself.  The loss of too many of our remaining small farms in this drought, with its uncertainties of water supply in the future and the groundwater robbers and high-dollar land speculators acting like vultures, has been giving me nightmares 24/7, but that awareness is largely missing in the media.  I think his sentence captures it perfectly.

     But Paul Buxman saw or heard that sentence and the facts about his well, and it lit his jets.  Paul doesn’t need a burning bush to get his attention:  the fire burns inside him, fuels his every step.  This one started him on a marathon, and if we follow his lead, we’re all going to finish first.

     “We can’t lose this man,” he said.  “We’re going to raise $40,000 to deepen his well, and this is how we’re going to do it.  I’m going to offer signed and numbered lithographs of four of my paintings, one for each foot of well drilled, which is around $50.  All we need is to get the word out,” noting that’s where I come in. 

     But before I could get one word on paper, Paul had recruited Alice Daniel of NPR’s “California Report” and Dale Yurong of Ch. 30 Action News (to view Yurong’s beautiful piece, go to www.abc30.com and look for “Drought Hasn’t Dried Up Dinuba Farmer’s Generous Spirit.”)  Thirty minutes after Yurong’s piece aired on TV Wednesday, a man drove to Paul’s house with a $100 check.  “I hope this primes the pump,” he said seriously.  He went home with two Buxman lithographs, portrayals of the very human landscape we’re trying to save.  I have no doubt that, before this is over, we’ll be able to drill a well to China if we have to. 

     Why would Paul Buxman go to this level?  Let’s just say it takes one to know one.  Paul began farming organically when he discovered too many friends with cancer.  He organized small family farmers needing support into a marketing co-op called “California Clean,” whose motto is “We won’t charge you extra for not poisoning your food.”  He’s taught urban youth the joys of farming, painting and cooking on his Sweet Home Ranch with his wife Ruth, and participated in innumerable festivals, conferences and workshops concerned for our agrarian future, including the Forum on Church and Land in 1992 (which I have mentioned in this column more than once.)

     How deep will we go?  Together, it won’t take much to Drill for Will the well he needs to keep going.  If you’d love to help and have a piece of this beautiful history to hang on your wall, watch this column for further details or visit www.trudysnotesfromhome.blogspot.com for up-to-the-minute news.  As Paul said, in this drought it’s not hard to paint yourself into a corner, but maybe we can paint Will, literally, out of this one.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who is grateful for this ray of hope.  You can send your rays to her c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.