Peaches, Pears and Windmills

After we found Old Foothill Road outside of Richland, OR, we headed north following the numbers on the mailboxes. Some of the addresses went up, and the next ones went down. We wondered if those living on the road were curious whether we were lost, or robbers looking for a house where the occupants weren't home. We backtracked a couple more times before getting to our destination.

At the orchard, we met with the owners Robert, Linda and Bentley, their dog. The three of them took us on a tour, while we ate peaches, apricots, plumcots (a cross between plums and apricots), all fresh picked from the tree. It's not easy to take pictures with sticky fingers.

During our tour, Linda told us that six was the record for peach eating. The ones we saw were no ordinary little peaches. The old record of five had been eclipsed earlier that very morning. Linda said we were welcome to try breaking the record, if we wanted. We'd been eating peaches until we popped at Mosier and decided two each was enough, besides we needed room for the plumcots and apricots. After touring and eating our fill, we headed east toward Halfway.

When we arrived in Halfway we drove through town to see what had changed since we'd left. Everything looked about the same as it had, and we were glad. We arrived at our friends' house to find they'd driven in only minutes before from a four day camping trip. While they unpacked their camping gear, and listened to our now out of date phone message, we harvested produce from their garden for dinner.

When I was there last, Tom and I'd started putting an older version of the Mileageman1 system on his Chevy van. I left before the installation was completed and Tom wasn't sure how to finish it, so he plugged it off and hadn't used it. On Monday, we finished the installation.

The next day, Celinda wasn't feeling well and talked about leaving for NM earlier than we'd planned. I wondered how the day would progress and guessed time would tell.

After the sun was up, the day began to look brighter. It hadn't rained like everyone thought it would, and Celinda felt better as the day progressed. Possibly going back a couple of weeks early hadn't been good news, and I was glad that didn't happen.

By lunchtime, things had changed again and we went to our friends' farm in the upper valley, where they farm organically and do it with horses. They also have an internship program for anyone who's interested. You can access information at http://www.ruralheritage.com/apprenticeship/intern_or.htm or mader@pinetel.com.

At the farm we ate raw sweet corn, strawberries fresh off the vine and snap beans that had just been picked. Deborah and Celinda caught up on the years since their last meeting, while I took photos and video of Organic Horsepower farming. I have a lot of video and stills of their horse farming operation and some nice scenery shots of the valley below from their farm.

That night it threatened to rain again, fulfilling its threat at 5:00 am. The rain came down almost horizontal, and anything that was touching the inside of the tent was wet. By 6:30 we were ready to get up, and we started the day in wet jeans. The sleeping bags spent the day drying in the solarium and the tent spent the day drying in the shed.

We stayed a few more days, visited with friends and got reacquainted with the area before going to our next WWOOF farm in Cove, OR, ESE of La Grande.

On the way to Cove, we took back roads in order to see new scenery. We drove through a valley where windmills on ridge tops spun slowly in the wind. West of Walla Walla, WA, there are also lines of windmills slowly turning wind into electricity and pushing it through the grid.

Larry R. Miller is a freelance writer, inventor and photographer. He can be reached at his website www.mileageman1.com