Dirt Farmer

In the interest of not getting to stilted I'm gonna try to play this post a little bit loose and freestyle. My entries lately I think have been short and sweet, focussed on small nuts and bolts of what goes on on this ranch. I want to strike a balance with this blog between sharing details of my experience here in coastal dairyland that you won't always find in the urban professional world, but also just to have fun with writing and throw out some wacky ideas brain borne like so much sea froth.

If your parents were not born here, you are not a local in Tillamook County. I heard a story about this recently. Some years back a local dairywoman married someone from out of the area. They were together for decades, but he was always called "the dirt farmer from Idaho." "Dirt farmer" is a name that cattle- and dairymen give to guys that farm for vegetables. At the end of the Folsom Prison Blues album, the guard/MC says, "and now let me bring to the stage a dirt farmer from Arkansas, Johnny's dad, Mr. Ray Cash!" So "dirt farmer" is what all these local guys called this other out of town guy. I enjoy listening in my mind's ear and hearing them say with sneering respect, "Well, hell, he's just a dirt farmer from Idaho, but he's hung in there milkin' cows for a right long time." In the context of this ranch, where, btw, the rain is hellacious at this very minute, I guess the dirt farmer is your poor correspondent.

Have you ever, dear reader, found some products on your supermarket shelf certified organic by Oregon Tilth? You may well have, even if you live in the hinterlands of Chicago or New York, because they are one of the more prominent organic labelers. I spoke with their farm program rep by phone yesterday and had an initial phone consultation about getting our pasture and my market plot certified. The conversation was helpful. I was going to say interesting, but interesting is such a bland word, paradoxically. O. Tilth has a demonstration farm somewhere at the north end of the Yamhill Valley, I think. A seasoned hay farmer and I drove past it one day this summer. He looked at the gorgeously groomed rows of vibrant crops and said "damn, that is a statement." He was right, especially when compared with all of the dullish farms that the typical American auto journey will lead you through.