A gardener goes on vacation
I shepherded my garden through our intense July dry spell only to enjoy two days with some rain before the time of my vacation. Happy for rain and happy to get away, I drove south for an hour in intense rain which I hoped found my garden. Three days later, a nice friendly airplane took me to Sonoma County, Calif.
There’s a small town there at the eastern edge of the coastal hills that was originally called Pineville. Legend holds that someone passing through witnessed an impressive bar fight in town and compared it to the conflict on the other side of the world in Crimea. “This is another Sevastopol,” he allegedly said, and the name, slightly altered, remained.
The Sebastopol area for many years was known as the Gravenstein apple capital of the world. Highway 116 into town from the south is called Gravenstein Highway. One elementary/middle school is named Gravenstein School, and among its graduates are a documentary film editor and a cultural anthropologist who studies hunter-gatherer groups in Africa. I would like someone to fund those two combining their talents in northern Congo and hire me as an on-site advisor because I’m full of advice about things I know little about, but I’m not mean like Alex Jones who makes money by lying loudly about things he does not know. I heard he will be repaying some of his pelf, as he should.
I do have experience, however, as a witness seeing picturesque old apple orchards on coastal hills being uprooted, piled up, burned with disregard and replaced with row after row of grape vines. The town’s identity was not totally wrapped around apples, but sort of. Maybe well-established vineyards are easier to maintain than old apple orchards, and maybe that was not the point. For example, I have spent more on wine than apples over the years, and I am not the only one. Visionary investors knew this about me, and they bet on vineyards and my habits, so to heck with apples and history.
Regarding history, apple-juicing parties were delightful. At the edge of an orchard, apples were harvested into boxes and stacked up, and a few at a time apples were fed into the juicer hopper, folks took turns cranking the crank, juice seeped out the spout in front, pulp dumped out the bottom, everybody got sticky, and containers with raw juice went home to freezers. It was a fun party, and you could drink wine all the while if you wanted to, but it wasn’t necessary.
Kids here grew up with juicing parties once or twice a year. Their kids might not. The orchards I tended were not sprayed, but vineyards are. Vineyards typically are clinically straight matrices of vines on wires, so grape juicing at the edge of typical vineyards would lack the ambience of an orchard, plus there’s the possible toxic exposure. It’s a trade-off, and profit motives prevail.
Another development in town has been the rise of coffee. Not the world-famous coffee-selling chains but local entrepreneurs who appeased thirsty early risers. Hard Core Coffee, for example, was an add-on booth attached to an established vegetable stand on the way into town. As time passed, Hard Core blossomed and expanded with a steady stream of loyal denizens while the vegetable stand withered because of competition in town and was eventually torn down. Hard Core now can comfortably accommodate a couple dozen patrons at a time… and Hard Core is not the only buzz provider around. Maybe it’s a city ordinance that any vendor who sells fresh produce must also sell coffee.
But there’s more to this tiny enterprising town! Willard Libby, who graduated from high school here, developed radiocarbon dating (in case you don’t know how old you are). Luther Burbank established an experimental farm here, and wonderful, odd plum trees have sprouted around the area because scrub jays and orioles pilfered Luther’s fruit and took them in all directions for their families.
Veteran story-teller Skip Biavaschi said he encounters Tom Waits while shopping in town, and Nick Gravanites (who produced “One Toke over the Line” and still plays blues on weekends) buys his groceries there.
The Planning Commission long ago insisted that a prospective MacDonald’s franchisee abide by city building codes (muted colors and no arches) but allowed local junk art sculptors Patrick Amiot and his wife, Brigitte Laurent, to install large creative assemblages in front yards on Florence Street.
Because of its charm and constrained city limits, traffic congestion and lack of parking haunts the town just like Eureka Springs. Also, like Eureka Springs, there are artists and musicians on every corner, freedom of expression is encouraged, and organic gardening is a way of life. Maybe I disremember, but I heard that every city council member was a Green Party member, and four out of five are female.
So art, music, food awareness, gardening, historic bar fights and plenty of coffee… Eureka Springs is a joy to visit, but we’re not the only one.