On the Road Again

Seed pod, bus window

 

 Low clouds in the Skagit Valley

 

 Vegan chocolate hemp soft serve with golden berries from Healeo, Seattle

Washington tunnel-vision

 

 Mt. Shasta in the distance, I-5 South near Ashland, OR

 

 Siskiyou Summit, I-5 South near the Oregon/California border

Lake Shasta

 

 Toes

Drive Up/First Day at Red Dog Farm

I've arrived at my first farm!  All of the people I worked with today -1 other WWOOFer, 3 permanent staff, and the owner - were all exceptionally nice.  I worked harvesting and bundling radishes and turnips for farmers markets tomorrow morning.  After, I used a hoe to weed rows of onions and weeded patches of strawberries.  The valley that Red Dog is in is filled with pastures, other farms, and private homes.  From my tent I have a clear view of the surrounding mountains and a field of cows neighbor me to the west.  Today it was sunny and warm, perhaps unseasonally so, which made working outside awesome.  I'll take pictures of the farm this weekend and post them soon.

In the meantime, I have some pictures from my drive up here with my dad.  You can click on any of these for a larger image.

View of Mt. Shasta in northern CA

Siskiyou Summit on I-5 just across the California/Oregon border

Driving on the beach in Ocean Shores, WA

On Highway 101 on the west side of the Olympic Peninsula

La Push beach on the west side of the Olympic Peninsula

Panoramic view of Port Townsend harbor, WA

On the ferry to Edmonds this morning to drop my dad off at the Seattle airport

I love the first farm so far!  I'm excited to enjoy some local hiking this weekend and work more come Monday. 

WWOOF News!

A quick update about WWOOF in the news -

• The WWOOF USA website has a swanky new layout and several bonus features, including the option to leave reviews for farms and post information on a discussion board.  Check it out here!

• A few people are in the final stages of editing a documentary on WWOOF farms set to come out later this year.  Interviews, footage of WWOOFers and their work, and insights of the filmmakers are included.  The trailer is available on the WWOOF! The Movie website here!

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In other news - I have made it to Washington state safe and sound!  My car clicked over 82,000 miles today without any hitches (as of yet - fingers crossed!) after a bucolic drive through the back roads and logging towns of southwest WA.  Tomorrow I'm taking the Olympic Peninsula by storm and promise to post photos of my finds.  Lets hope for clear skies, roads, and minds.

"Congress Created Dust Bowl"

Last week I was in a packing, buying, and organizing frenzy attempting to get everything in order for a month long WWOOFing trip.

The morning after senior prom I went on a bike ride with my mom for mother's day and threw my life into the trunk of my Subaru Forester.

Yesterday I drove with my dad from San Diego to Sacramento through hundreds of miles of massive agribusiness farms in the San Joaquin valley.  Between fields and fields of crops was the occasional "Congress Created Dust Bowl" road sign on barren fields which had once been farm land.

Back in 2007 restrictions were imposed on water diverted from the Sacramento rive delta to protect the dwindling habitat of the endangered Delta Smelt, a small native fish.  Agribusinesses were furious they they no longer could irrigate their fields of water-intensive crops and began a campaign of protest which included the signs.

For years agribusinesses and their respective lobbyists have secured the political leverage needed to divert all of the water from northern California they need to irrigate their crops in the dry southern valley.  Left to its own devices, the San Joaquin valley would be full of grasses, occasional oaks, and chaparral.  With modern water diversion techniques, however, the valley is filled with lush, green fields of crops and endless groves of nut and citrus trees thanks to water pumped down from Sacramento.  

It was jarring in a sense to see a grove of perfectly aligned nut trees standing dry and lifeless in a sea of weeds. It almost looked as if fall had come, stripping the trees of leaves and nuts - but oddly in May, when every other grove in the valley was just entering the growing season.  The remnants of orchards were a reminder that many of the crops grown in the southern valley aren't capable of growing in its near-desert climate without the help of human-imposed water diversions.  No matter how hard man can try to alter some ecosystems - like turning desert valleys into fertile farm land - some will flatly refuse to cooperate with corporate demand.

Read about the initial water restrictions which prompted the road signs here.