Raise Your Glasses High!

Got my new glasses today. I’ve worn glasses since I was nine, and, all things considered, I’ve always liked them. When I put on my first pair of glasses, the world became incredibly sharp and detailed. It was amazing, like a gift. I loved it!

So my glasses never bothered me. In college, I tried soft contact lenses, but they irritated my eyes, and I gave them up. They might have become better since then, but I’m not tempted. The only things I liked about contacts were that they never steamed up and were less annoying than glasses in the rain, but these weren’t really important to me.

When I went to a WEITEK reunion a few years ago (WEITEK was a high-tech company in Silicon Valley I worked at after my gig at Activision. Some of its people went on to found nVidea), a lot of the folks there had to hold my business cards at arm’s length to read them. They could no longer focus their eyes at normal reading distances. A passing optometrist would have made a lot of money selling bifocals on the spot!

I dabbled with progressive lenses for a while. These have a transition area between the long-distance part of the lens and the reading part. This worked great on my first pair of progressives, but when I needed a stronger reading correction, it stopped working right. Only a tiny part of the lens worked for any given distance. This was especially annoying on large-screen computer monitors. I started using larger type on my browser (control +) to compensate.

So I broke down and ordered a pair of bifocals for indoor use, from All Family Vision Care in Corvallis. They have a large reading area and the rest for computer use. I sat down at my computer, and man, the type on the screen was huge! Looks like I’m going to have to declare victory.

I’m happy with my new glasses,though they were expensive. You can get affordable glasses, but I never do. I still reach out of that “wow!” experience I had when I was nine, with my first glasses, so I always go for the thin-and-light lenses with the fancy anti-glare coating and, frankly, just about every extra I and the optician can think of. For my outdoor glasses, I always get the spiffy self-darkening lenses that turn into sunglasses in bright light and become clear again in dim light. A pair of lenses usually lasts me about two years and the frames about four.

Reaching “Critical Mess”

You know how it goes: you move into a four-bedroom farmhouse with an immense barn and a seven-bay vehicle shed, and after a few years, all of it is bulging with stuff. Where did it all come from? What’s it doing here? And why can’t I find anything anymore?

So for the first time ever, I’ve rented a huge commercial dumpster (30 cubic yards). It showed up in late afternoon, so I didn’t put much into it today — a couple of broken-down wheelbarrows, the kids’ childhood little red wagon, sadly and irreparably rusted, a tractor gas tank with a hole in it, several decrepit office chairs and other defunct furniture. Soon the balance will shift as more farm stuff gets put in — rusted-out feeders and the like.

In case you’re wondering, it’s going to cost me roughly $300 to have the dumpster delivered empty and then taken away full, more or less depending on how long I keep it, since there’s a $16 daily rental fee on top of everything else. I’m sure I can fill it, so the issue is, “How fast can I fill it?” If I can fill it fast, I save on rent.

The driver who delivered it, interestingly enough, used to live here on Norton Creek Road when he was in high school. I keep running into people like that. Seems a little strange, since there really aren’t many houses here, but it seems as if everyone lived here once upon a time!

A lot of our clutter is recyclable. I’m pretty sure that Allied Waste will separate out all the iron and steel with an electromagnet, so I may not go to the trouble of recycling it myself — not if the price of scrap metal is as low as I think it is. It’s a long drive to the scrap metal dealer, and I don’t see the point of burning lots of gas to recycle scrap metal unless it’s a money-maker! I can recycle cardboard and such locally. Other stuff can go to Goodwill and other local nonprofits.

The dumpster has metal doors at one end, so you can carry stuff inside — you don’t have to heave it over the top the way you do on a smaller dumpster. It’s ideal for the kind of large objects that you’d never fit into a regular trash can — things like mattresses, water heaters, or twisted metal roofing from chicken houses that did a tumbleweed imitation during a storm.

And I’ve already found some missing treasures!

Jack and the Magic Beans: A Modern Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a lad named Jack. Jack lived with his mother, and they were very trendy. One day, Jack’s mother said, “Take the cow to the market and sell her, because we’re vegans now.”

Jack protested, because he was fond of the cow and liked milk, too, but his mother insisted. So he went down to the market and traded his cow for some magic beans. The magician had a beard and a tie-dyed robe. He told Jack that they were as perfect a food as a bean could be.

“How perfect is that?”

The magician replied, “Like, they’re just beans, you know? But everybody’s like freaking out over them, can’t get enough of them. Haven’t seen anything like it since those brownies in the Seventies, you dig?”

“But aren’t they magic?”

“Oh, yeah! They grow really big, really fast, and that’s groovy. Still, have you ever eaten tofu?”

“Yes,” said Jack glumly.

But he bought the beans anyway, and took them home to his mother. They planted the beans, and soon they had a huge bean garden in the old cow pasture, with plants so high they almost reached the sky.

Jack’s mother and her friends were thrilled. They could make anything out of the beans: bean milk, bean meat, anything. One even had a recipe for making corn out of beans! True, the beans didn’t taste like milk or meat, and didn’t have the nutrition of milk or meat and were more expensive than milk or meat, but everyone agreed it was better.

Jack missed his cow.

Then one day Jack’s mother said, “Jack, we’re not vegans anymore.”

“Hooray!” said Jack. “I’ll go and buy a cow!”

“No,” said his mother, “You will not. All this is the fault of the giant corporation, and we’re using our money to fight the bean industry.” And she explained how they were going to use political pressure to change the world to be a better and trendier place.

Jack asked, “Can’t we just buy a cow? I liked our cow! Cattle give us milk and meat, and we aren’t dependent on anybody.”

But Jack’s mother was adamant. She and her friends planned a protest march on the giant corporation’s castle, where they would trespass and chain themselves to railings and such, until the giant corporation gave in, or perhaps ate them.

Jack decided that if the law was to be broken, it ought to be broken right, so the day before the protest march he went alone to the giant corporation’s castle, stole a magic harp, and fled far away from retribution and his mother. He bought a farm and some cattle and lived happily ever after.

THE END

Let’s Open the Farmer’s Market on Earth Day

When picking a date for the first day of the farmer’s market season, could you find a better choice than Earth Day?

(Okay, technically Earth Day isn’t until Thursday, but the big blow-out was Saturday, and it was great!)

The market opened in beautiful spring weather and attracted swarms of happy customers. It was like being hit by a cheerfulness bomb! You should have been there.

As usual, the other vendors outdid themselves. Imagine the kinds of produce that ought to be ripe by mid-April, and the quality you’d expect for such early produce. Then multiply it by ten. That’s the Corvallis farmer’s market. All the aging hippies who’ve been in the organic produce biz since the Seventies have gotten really good at it! Competition for quality, variety, and earliness is intense. There were even some local strawberries — six weeks before the regular season.

I sold out of chicken in about ten seconds. Customers know we’re the best! Once we’re in full production, supplies ought to last longer. The eggs held out better, and I sold about 60 dozen, which is excellent for an opening day.

The day was enlivened by the Procession of the Species, a parade that’s always held on Earth Day in Corvallis, featuring kids and adults in animal costumers. That was great!

The Corvallis farmers’ markets are something special. Wish you were here!

Eggs: The Miracle of Spring

Not so long ago, springtime was a difficult time on the farm. You had spent a lot of your cash during the winter, but harvest time was many months away. Spring faced you with your biggest expenses of the year: getting equipment back into shape, hiring extra labor, plowing, and planting.

On top of that, meat is hard to come by, since you thinned your herds in late fall to match the level of fodder you could store over the winter, and all the animals that you could spare are already gone. And you’re even worse off where vegetables are concerned. Anything that doesn’t keep for five or six months is gone.

So there you are: strapped for cash and with an inadequate diet. You can’t even plant a garden yet, let alone harvest from it. What’s a farmer to do?

But do not despair! A miracle is at hand to rescue you from your plight! It’s called — the egg!

Well before planting season, the hens perk up and start laying eggs like crazy. They have to start laying early so that the baby chicks will hatch during a season where the living is easy. And this means that your flock of chickens transforms your farm from an operation where you make money only once a year, at harvest time, to one where you have something to sell every day. And peak production happens right when you need cash the most!

On top of this, eggs are nature’s perfect food, and provide your family with nutrition that was sadly lacking once the cow dried up and the last of the greens were gone. Imagine going from the lassitude of empty pockets and borderline malnutrition to the vitality of cash flow and health! Eggs did that.

And, as if that weren’t enough, in a typical farm family, eggs provided a degree of social equity. Field crops and large-animal operations were considered to be a manly business, while the chicken flock was usually the wife’s domain. She’d tend the flock, market the eggs, and spend the money. Every general store and feed store bought eggs, so eggs were as easy to spend as cash. The humble hen built a lot of equality into a system that didn’t have much otherwise.

You’ve probably guessed already that Easter is associated with eggs because that’s what’s plentiful during the Easter season. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of spring eggs in the old-time farm economy.