About Us

01-05-2004, 02:04 PM

On 29 Apr 2004 11:46:17 -0700, (Rod Tuomi)
wrote:

I have alot of Farmer's blood flowing through my veins, and I love
this time of year. I enjoy getting the soil ready, planting a garden,
but most of all waitng to see those little plants sprouting through
the soil. I love to watch the plants grow, take care of them, and of
course eat the fresh tasty veggies and fruits that come from the sweat
of my brow.

Rod Tuomi

Your last name pronounced "to me?"

Knew a John Tom Toumi in Mt. Home .. he was in the AF at the base
there, mid-late 60s.. probably 1968-69.

My dad always wanted to farm, but alas after he left his father's
house, he didn't do a lot of it. Worked on the Sands Springs Ranch in
the Thousand Springs area of Idaho. Anne Southern owned it briefly
after they (father and mother.. dad did whatever needed done, mom did
the cooking for the hay and threshing crews and whoever was hired on
for a Doctor that owned it.) It was sold to Southern .. but was
overgrazed by the time she got it, sued for her money back more or
less. Dad talked of a trout stream that was fully contained on the
place, spring originated on the ground, and went underground again
before it flowed out in one of the thousand springs down a hillside to
the snake river.

Dad was relaxed enough and not driven to drive straight home one day
and took the scenic route .. some of his drives scared me half to
death as the little roads he went up were only just wide enough for
the car, and I was looking straight down to the river hundreds of feet
below. When he got up the hill though, he showed me the siphon tubes
they used to pull water up the hill and over into the ditches that fed
the farm and ranch land and their livestock up above the basalt column
"supported" cliffs above the river. The huge square columns left over
from some ancient lava flow look like big square "crystals" stacked at
angles along the cliffs seeming to support all that land above them
keeping it from falling into the snake river below.

Those siphon tubes were amazing to me though, they were taller than I
was.. don't know if I was 8 or 9 or 10, but I was close to .. to over
5 feet tall depending on which year it was and I could have stepped
into them.. and fallen hundreds of feet down them to my death should I
have tried.. but I had a very healthy respect for them and stood well
back as I've always been blessed/curse ability to "see" all the bad
things that could happen in seconds of seeing a situation. Still do,
makes people so mad .. "you're so negative" and I say .. no.. I'm just
aware that fools do a lot of stupid things that cause harm to
themselves and those who then have to go get them. LOL I've never
been a boy scout, but I believe in being prepared!! ;-)

I digress anyway.. that frustrated farmer lived in my father though.
I remember him trying to grow a garden in our "pure sand" land when I
was around 5 or 6 years old. He was so disgusted he never tried to
grow a garden after that, until one summer when I was bored and asked
if I could grow a garden. He said yes, and I went about clearing a
place and started digging. Dad came out and started digging and he
kind of just took over pretty much.. but I kept working when I could.
I remembered we were planting beans and we ran out so I said, we have
a bag of red beans in the house why can't we just plant some of those
to finish out the row..and we did, and something happened that would
not likely happen now! They were pole beans as were the ones we were
planting! In the land of mechanized harvest we live in now, they
would have been bush beans. This was probably 1964 of 1965.

That was the first garden we planted as a family, and the first one
that actually produced well and mom canned green beans all summer and
made pickles I sure wish I could have now! They were 14 day crock
pickles and since I have been pretty much homebound for 10 years, I
didn't get a chance to get them from mom..she pretty much gave them
away along with her huge canning pressure cookers she had all my life
and she got checked and got new seals for and it was still working
fine. *sigh* I ran out of the last bottle of her sweet chunk dills
in the midst of the occasional craving I got for vinegary things..
medium cheddar, miracle whip and sweet pickle sandwiches...so I went
to the store and bought some nalley or vlasic sweet pickles and sliced
the up and put them on the sandwich and took a bite expecting that
same flavor mom's pickles had.. and I was going what the f.....k
happened!? And that's when I found there was no comparison to home
canned food. As I found again when I bought store canned peaches.
blech.

I planted a $6 and change elberta peach tree I bought bare root in one
of those plastic bagged trees they sell in places like walmart now or
lowes or the rite aid "drug store". It was one of the best trees! I
canned 100 quarts, ate some gave some away and some rotted one year.
Cut it down because it sun scalded badly and I thought that was the
end for it. Shouldn't have done it and it'd probably still be out
there because one pit grew into a tree when I was not able to go out
there. It too became so sun scalded it bent over and I figured that
was it for it too! but.. it decided to live and started growing
upward from that 45 degree bend, and the tree trunk healed itself,
it's nearly 100% closed now years later. It started bearing peaches
without having any help from anyone, no pruning and until a couple
years ago, no real irrigation as it didn't get that far over until a
friend kind of dug a little ditch to get some water that way.. well it
so appreciated it.. it GREW .. a quarter of its then size more in one
year!

The peaches are ok, better than some named varieties I'd bought and
planted years before ..that over bore and broke before I got to
support them.. and I didn't care because they weren't very good. This
one's better than them.. which I guess is rare for seedlings to
produce a peach that's even edible.. some are round rocks .. like one
of the trees I'd bought.. it was obviously a failed graft and I was
growing the root stock which golf ball sized and textured "peaches" ..
it was supposed to be a Hal-Berta (hale and elberta) cross that should
have been 1 lb each sized peaches. I might get half a bushel to a
bushel of peaches off it this year if they don't get frozen.

But yes.. my dad wanted to farm, and after that year we grew a garden
and mom canned .. we were poor poor then.. so poor we got church
commodities.. gotta be poor for that. But dad grew a garden every
year he was somewhere he could, and there were only 2 that we were in
that place, until he was 94 and died. I think he was 62 in 1966 and
it was 1965 we'd planted the garden... so he got 30 years to "farm"
his land whatever it was he had, and when he went to rent or buy a
place he looked at the yard and would say he'd take it before he even
looked inside the house. Used to make my mom so mad! If it had a
yard with access to alley or street a garage and outbuildings.. that's
what he wanted! But that last place had ground like the first
one..sandy..nearly pure..and even though he put in truckloads of grass
and other compost and manure over the years, it would burn out pretty
rapidly if he stopped. He tried raised beds, mounds, regular garden,
wide bed, narrower beds, he was never satisfied. Although one year he
planted Giant Noble (nobel?) spinach and it was HUGE ..because it
is.. but also because of all the nitrogen in that ground. Some of
those leaves were a foot long and half as wide!

And as I ramble on and on.. (I need to sleep) I know that I want to
grow so many things just to see what they look like, and taste like.
I would NEVER want to farm for a living though, it's like a gamble
forever, and unless you find yourself a niche market you can't compete
with corporate farms and ranches. If there's a good farmer's market,
you might have a good chance to recoup some of your expenses so you
can do it again. Not something I'd want to have to do.. as I say that
in a position where I can't even plant a garden on my own now.

When I would say what I liked about gardening it always reminded me of
Green Acres and Oliver's (AH LEE VOR as Eva Gabor aka Lisa would say)
speech about the seeds shooting out of the soil.. Eva's Shoosting ;-)
But I'm like that looking for those first sprouts breaking through the
soil. But, I don't like the labor and toil of the ground prep.. at
least not in the situation in which I live. too tight, too small, too
hard to get things into the yard and back to the garden with no alley
access no space to drive back. But, it was a necessary evil and I was
always running late.. as I'm getting to now as my help isn't helping.
But I understand the drive,and how depressed and cranky I get when I
don't get something planted in the yard to watch and water.. and if it
doesn't happen then the yard just becomes a big sucker of money from
my pocket to cut down weeds and grass.

I'll shaddup now and go to sleep I hope. been up since almost 24 hours
ago.

Janice

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