
Sunday afternoon I decided to take the dog for a walk. Diggery had been locked up all day, while the sheep grazed around the house, and the walking helps relieve the pain in my hips (courtesy of Gleevec). I suppose you could say that we were both in need of a good walk.
So we walked down the road, and around the corner, to a little place where I enjoy frivolous the fantasy of it being my own. It is about thirty acres of abandoned farmland. With the exception of a handful of orange trees about a leaking irrigation valve, and the smattering of struggling survivors scattered amongst the gullies and drainage ways, the trees are all dead and bulldozed, lying scattered about like the bones of the dead from some forgotten battle, fought and lost some time ago. As we picked our way among the bodies, with the cries of Redtail Hawks above us, I thought of how the gullies could be contoured to store water on site. I noted how weeds were struggling forth to life, as the effects of years of herbicide slowly wear off, and wonder if a pasture could be seeded. As Diggery wondered about, sniffing and searching, I thought of how a small stand could be set up on the corner to sell meat and eggs, after I filled the fields with cows, sheep and chickens.
Of course this is, as I stated previously, a frivolous fantasy. The land will be sold to developers and split up into many little plots, upon which many overlarge cookie-cutter houses will be built. Even if I were not flat broke, after half a year on disability, I could not afford the inflated price that the developers will most certainly pay. That is, what they will pay once they begin building houses again.
Nevertheless, I find pleasure in this exercise. That pleasant afternoon fantasy was poignant, if only from the news that it is now becoming quite likely I will some day be able to obtain health insurance, outside my current employment. With my life depending upon a $32,000 a year prescription, plus thousands more in blood tests and doctor visits, such a thing is a prerequisite for even considering farming. It opens up the possibility that some day, if my medicated body does not give out on me and the string of impoverishing events cease, I may have a piece of land and make a living from it.
The stupidity of the "Obamacare" rants I am almost daily subjected to aggravate me to no end. One must wonder what is particularly bad about forcing the healthcare industry into serving those who subsidize it with their taxes, and are subjected to its legislatively enforced inhuman scale and monopoly. It is perhaps not the correct answer to the problem, but it is indeed better than anything the other side has ever proposed…
So, as Diggery and I reluctantly left that piece of neglected land, we continued on with our walk. Unfortunately I noticed that the road had once again been scraped and wet - signs of a road being prepared for "improvement". It seems that even in these hard times the beast does not cease extending its ugly black asphalt tentacles into the countryside. I miss the dirt roads between the groves of citrus and avocado, and the shepherds with their sheep in the hills. I mourn for what we have lost, while watching the little pockets that remain succumb. My Riverside is fading. I pray we leave before it is gone.






