Corraled Black Cattle

Little Lake Valley offers wide swathes of pastureland, but I read recently that the dry winter we've been having has slowed the natural growth of grass on the fields and hillsides. What currently look like putting greens ideally should be full of lush grazing by now. At a season not normally requiring it, ranchers have had to purchase supplemental feed for their herds. It's a clear indication of the fragile balance of nature with local economics. The Willits Action Group is exploring what it would take to revive local grain and legume farming, and have started by investing in small scale storage facilities, and offering shares in the commodities to the local population. If the capacity and demand can be put in place, the our area's own farmers might be willing to fill the void.

Birdwatching Horse Watching Bird

Or is it a horsewatching bird watching horse? In either case there's a bird on the fence seen through the barn, and the two could be having a stare-down. (Even if you enlarge the photo, it's hard to see.)

It's easy to imagine that only humans take any pleasure in observing the fauna around us, but I suspect more than a few creatures size each other up, determine the level of threat, watch for patterns of behavior, and might even become amused. Certainly we must be the prime objects of such sport, with the One Who Brings Food garnering a very different reaction than the One Who Walks By or the One Who Shouts. But there's a time for observing, and a time for munching hay.

Double Arrows

The loading dock for hay and other feed from J.D. Redhouse is also the exit passage for their parking lot, so for just a moment or two, we all get to feel like farmers.

Rosehips

A splendid load of rosehips awaits the landowner's harvest near a roadside in the valley. Like most plants in the rose family (apples, blackberries), the fruit of roses is a useful addition to the human diet. While difficult to eat raw (apparently hard and sour), rosehips are loaded with vitamin C, iron, and anti-oxidants. When dried they make a fine addition to herbal tea mixtures, or steeped on their own. They can also be cooked into jams and pies - especially good mixed with other fruit. Of course, they are also pretty just left on the vine.

Hillside Hives

Not long ago, I took a Sunday drive to see what Little Lake Valley had to offer in the autumn sunshine. Out on the Reynolds Highway, on the northeast circuit of the valley, these gleaming white beehive frames caught my eye with their brilliant contrast to the oaks and rocks and bay tree. They make another component of the local food web.

Deliveries Come to an End

Our deliveries from Live Power Farm CSA are due to end next week, for this season. Subscriptions for the next season begin in May. In the interim, the farmer's market will continue indoors, and I expect some cold-weather produce will be available there.

I know I've mentioned the efforts in Willits to develop a more localized economy, not only to keep money circulating among local businesses, but also to build our own food production base in the face of threats to our food security. Willits was featured in a documentary called "Escape from Suburbia" (and may have been in the precursor, "End of Suburbia", but I'm not sure), and I found a promo/excerpt on You Tube called Escape from Suburbia returns to Willits, CA. I know almost all of the speakers, and some even know me. No, I'm not in it, but I hope you'll enjoy seeing this six minute clip anyway. 8^)

Echoes of the Past

About five years ago, an extension to the Mendocino County Museum was completed, crowned with this big barn-like structure called the Engine House. The large matching doors on front and back reveal a punch-through of full scale railroad tracks that connect all the way back to the Roots of Motive Power restoration shed, and their now completed loop track. Roots volunteers were highly instrumental in getting the county to build the structure, and they themselves laid all the track through it. They also bring various pieces of rail equipment into the space for display and special events like the Steam Up I showed you in September.

Back when this building was done, I got talking with a former director of the museum about the structure. He said the design integrates elements from an old barn just on the west edge of town, from nearly a century ago. A then-young man named Mark Walker built the earlier barn with a tilted square window and clerestory section on the roof. Walker died in about 2001 at the age of 107, but had been a rich resource of local history and folk art for the museum's public historians up until then. It was in honor of his contributions that the architecture was made to reflect some of his work. I recently decided to get some photos of the old barn, to compare with the engine house.



The old barn still stands, but like many agricultural buildings of its generation, it is finally deteriorating and may not stand for many decades more. The owners of many of these barns could correctly claim that they were constructed from a single redwood. The ancient trees were gigantic, and redwoods are famously resistant to rot.

Evidence

I spent about an hour on Sunday out around Little Lake Valley, looking for more typical scenes of ranches and woods to photograph. The broken clouds created nice light, and textured skies, which improves the odds of catching something presentable for a quick-clicker like me. I got out of my truck near the Davis Creek Bridge, and grabbed some pastoral images, then looked down at the fence in front of me. It looks like horse hair caught in a barb on the wire fence. It looked too heavy to be human hair, and it was too long to have come from cattle. It must have hurt to pull away from that.

It also did not come from a fantasy creature. I am sad to say that The Willits News recently printed an account of a "b--foot" sighting, written by one of their paid staff "reporters". This is at least the second time this year they have run a story that details someone being taken in by a hoax, and writing it as if the hoax were true, without any sensible research or quotes. I don't fault the people who were fooled, I fault the paper for printing it. If they feel compelled to "entertain" us with this nonsense, they should provide a separately formatted column for such things.

If you find this blog post by Googling b--foot, and feel an impulse to give me descriptions and links of "proof", or to pile on with links to disputations, don't do it. Your speech is not constitutionally protected here, and I will be swift to nuke any such time-wasting commentary. I'm even tired of seeing myself talk about this. Go instead to The Willits News website and comment on their story. That's what you were looking for in the first place. There's a long discussion going on over there, and it has vastly greater numbers of readers than this blog. This picture, above, just shows evidence of a painful moment for the backside of a horse.

On a brighter note, there are some shots of country scenery, photographed at the same spot, on my Overflow blog.

Hope for a New Beginning

Rebuilding national dignity and sanity is a tall order, and can happen only with everyone's participation and care. There is no going back, just forward one step at a time.

This is another view of Little Lake Valley from Willits-Hearst Road, beside an oak tree, with beams of light streaming across Willits in the distance.

Some Close, Some Distant: Half a Year Done

Half a year has passed on Willits Daily Photo, with a mix of details and wider vistas. Like these friendly but silent cattle pictured here, more folks seem to be watching what goes on here than when I started out. In the beginning, I tried to keep my descriptions to a minimum, just wanting the snapshots to stand on their own. I thought this would just be my secret little "thing" to do. But as I began visiting some of the other City Daily Photo Blogs, the pleasures of interacting revealed themselves.

My special thanks today go to some of my first comment-leaving visitors. Jana of Susanville started her City Daily Photo Blog around the same time I did, and it was nice to hear from someone in another small northern California town, but she developed computer challenges, and doesn't seem to blog any more. Benjamin Madison of Victoria, Canada has been an encouraging spirit from very early on, and because our blogs started within days of each other, I consider him my Blog Brother. His photography is really not to be missed, and I am humbled by his kindness. A couple of Kiwis were quick to make me feel welcome; Sakiwi of Hamilton, and Ben of Nelson. They also served to show how unlimited the geography of a blog audience can be. And here I thought the interest in Willits would be limited to the few people in Willits who know me. True to his spirit as the Ambassador of Blogging, Abraham Lincoln (yes, related to that president) came around with generous comments for this new kid on the block. He struggles with the pain of arthritis, yet his comments grace City Daily Photo Blogs the world over, and like everyone, I welcomed his kind notice. Gerald England, of Hyde, England, was also quick to come by and notify me that he was including me in his vast archives of daily photo bloggers old and new. Someone mysteriously named iBlowfish stopped by with good wishes, and when I followed his profile to Cleveland, I was blown away by his stylish photography. I'm sad to see he has stopped, even as he was listed as a Blogger of Note by the folks at Blogger.

I am grateful to all visitors to Willits Daily Photo, and I realize many of you don't leave comments, but check back to see new posts once in a while anyway. My little visit counting widgets tell me that I get around 50 or 60 visits a day, most days now. A good quarter of those are probably just me, but still that's more than I expected when I started. We'll see if I can can keep this up for a full year. Thanks again!

Some more pictures of hay are on my Overflow Blog.

Another Ominous Sign

On the other side of Hollands Lane from the goat farm of yesterday, I found this insect trap attached to a large oak tree. I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the only insect the Department of Agriculture would be looking for is the Glassy-Winged Sharpshooter. The small, leaf-hopping insect seems to have come as far north as Mendocino county by traveling on horticultural supply plants shipped from its native territory. The problem is that it carries a bacteria that kills grapevines. Wine grapes are a huge part of the legal agricultural economy in Mendocino, and many jobs and dollars are at stake. By taking small samples like this, the scientists can get an idea of the types of insects they have in the area, and whether or not they should worry.