Liz Writes Life 7-24-19

July 24, 2019

Liz Writes Life

POW

It should be an interesting Scott Valley Protect Our Water meeting this coming Thursday, July 25, 2019, at the Fort Jones Community Center. Time is 7 p.m. Patrick Jones is lined-up to speak. He is running for the Dist. 1 Assembly seat. I know he is pro-2^nd Amendment, because he is involved in his family’s “Jones Fort” gun business in Redding. It will be kinda ironic for him to speak at a meeting in Fort Jones – yep. Patrick will take questions from the audience and is ready to discuss a variety of issues.

Erin Ryan, staff for Dist. 1 Congressman Doug LaMalfa, will also attend to give us updates on happenings in WA. D.C. Unfortunately, Kirk Andrus, our Siskiyou Co. District Attorney, let me know he can’t attend. He is needed as a Boy Scout leader for a Mt. Shasta Troop’s annual summer camp. Kirk sent his apologies and hopes to participate in a POW meeting soon.

Also, Richard Marshall, chairman of Siskiyou Water Users Assoc., will share his discussion with the Klamath Compact Commission.

Garden

With these typical hot summer temps, I am unofficially claiming the “dog days of summer” are here. I don’t know who officially makes the claim, so I checked out “dog days of summer” on the internet. Apparently, the rising of the star system “Sirius” in July was noticed by ancient Greek and Roman astrologers. They connected the rising Sirius with the hot days, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs and bad luck. Some ancients also believed the Sirius system sent extra heat down to earth. And, for some reason, the Sirius star had been named the “dog star”. Sirius has definitely risen in 2019.

One thing about the “dog days of summer” is that the vegetable and flower plants grow really well – as long as they get plenty of water. This week my lavender phlox started blooming. I love their fragrance. Also the Echinacea or cone flowers are also starting to spread their drooping, stiff pink petals with the orange middle; and a short, small crop of California poppies are blooming along the fence.

Pumpkins are growing on the vines and, luckily, I found someone who was happy to get last week’s zucchini. Whew! The cucumber plants look really good, but two of the three small cucs I picked to eat were bitter toward the vine-end. They started out sweet at the blossom end. Every morning, they are irrigated. I hope they grow out of it as I need to make several quarts of dill pickles. The volunteer dill plants are four-feet tall and are ready to use.

Challenges

Like most folks, I enjoyed re-learning about the Apollo 11 moon landing as the 50^th anniversary was celebrated last week. I had forgotten there were five additional Apollo missions that landed 10 more astronauts on the moon. I knew it was President John F. Kennedy, who challenged the United States people claiming we could do hard things, but I didn’t realize how much the following U.S. President, Lyndon B. Johnson, truly believed in the need for space travel.

Yep, last week, I watched several shows and read some pretty detailed articles about the Apollo missions. I gained a much greater appreciation of the accomplishment. I was a young teen and remember watching Walter Cronkite on CBS news as he narrated the amazing feat. My grandmother was living with us at the time. She was born in 1888 – the horse and buggy age. She told me once that she couldn’t understand how electricity worked and powered lights, so humans landing on the moon were totally out of her understanding.

I can’t imagine the many things that had to be created, invented and experimented for space travel. Many things did go wrong, while developing the space program, and yet good old hard work, determination, ingenuity and that competition with the Soviet Union saw the advances and success. One article said more than 400,000 people worked to put astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins into space for that July 1969 mission.

Now, I want to mention the huge, gigantic achievement of the Transcontinental Railroad that, ironically, occurred exactly 100 years previous to the moon landing – on May 10, 1869. Uniting the East and West areas of the United States with a train track was also considered impossible. Yet, there were businessmen and engineers who believed. (Yes, some major players were pushed by greed.)

The idea was put to Congress during the Civil War. As you can imagine, there was no money for such an undertaking. Yet, by 1862, young Theodore Judah had surveyed a route through the Sierra Nevada Mts. and wealthy Sacramento merchants formed the Central Pacific Railroad.

The Railroad Act of 1864 doubled land subsidies, but with the war still raging little track was laid. After much discussion (in Congress and elsewhere) Omaha, Nebraska became the starting point for the Union Pacific Railroad and after the Civil War ended the work of laying track began in earnest.

Earlier this month, I visited the Golden Spike National Park at Promontory, Utah and witnessed a re-enactment of the two famous train engines meeting. Utah made a big deal on May 10^th of this year, because it was the 150^th anniversary of the golden spike ceremony that completed the transcontinental track.

A short video explained the difficulty of building tunnels and traversing the Sierra Nevada Mts. Civil War veterans – soldiers from both sides – needed work after the war, so they added to the tremendous amount of laborers. The Union Pacific also utilized Irish, German and Italian immigrants, ex-slaves and American Indians – 8,000 to 10,000 in all.

Since this was after the gold rush and silver boom, Central Pacific Railroad hired several thousand Chinese, who became the backbone of its work force. Over 1,776 miles of desert, rivers and mountains were crossed as the Central Pacific laid 690 miles of track and the Union Pacific laid 1,086.

 Another piece of irony is that about 10 miles from Promontory, where the transcontinental feat was celebrated in 1869, is a company that builds space rocket engines. Its engines were utilized in the Apollo missions 100 years after the driving of the final railroad spike.

Ever forward. Facing challenges. Doing the hard things. Making mistakes, fixing them and forging ahead. As Americans we have an incredible legacy and, yes, future achievements a wait!

Liz Bowen began writing ranch and farm news, published in newspapers, in 1976. She is a native of Siskiyou County and lives near Callahan. Columns from the past year can be found at: lizwriteslife.blogspot.com. Call her at 530-467-3515.

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Liz Writes Life 7-17-19

July 17, 2019

Liz Writes Life

Garden

Yep, summer is here and the garden vegetable plants are growing really well. Nothing like the heat in July! I have heard from several friends that their green beans didn’t come up very well. Not one of mine came up. Guess it isn’t a green bean year. It sounds like zucchini started producing well last week and I will need to start giving mine away. Time to lock your car doors, when you are town!

I looked for the tomato worm that ate a hole in one medium-sized tomato and couldn’t find him. There was no more damage to the other green tomatoes or plant, so hopefully a bird got him.

The one blue morning glory plant has lots of tendrils seeking things to climb. Annual flowers, like the impatiens, are finally taking off and a pink cosmos started blooming. The bright yellow yarrow is blooming along with the yellow coreopsis, orange daylilies, pale pink anemones and giant white Shasta daisies. Hollyhocks are colorful with pink, red and white blooms in the four-foot tall red bee balm and some tiny daisy-like fever few. A yellow glad is blooming in the magenta elephant-head amaranth plants that are three-feet and starting their trunks. The snapdragons have been mostly orange this year, but there are other colors too. The dark-pink taller lamb’s ears are blooming all over the place and the purple alyssum is finally looking good.  Oh, and the variegated yellow and magenta dahlia is blooming. I just love flowers!

Debate

There is a chance to get to know most of the candidates that are running for CA. Assembly Dist. 1 special election seat. You can attend a debate that will be held this Friday, July 19, 2019 at the Montague Community Center at 7 p.m. I learned there are now four Republicans running and one Democrat for the seat that was vacated by Brian Dahle, when he won the Dist. 1 Senate seat in June.  The debate is hosted by the Siskiyou Co. Republican Women Federated and the Siskiyou Patriots. Time is 7 p.m.

For your understanding, the debate is hosted by the Republican Women, whose bylaws explain that only Republicans can be invited. I have been told that all four Republican candidates have been invited and three have confirmed. Those are: Patrick Jones, from Shasta Co., Lane Rickard from Shasta Co. and Joseph Turner from Lassen Co.

Kathy Bergeron will moderate the debate. Each candidate will be given three minutes to introduce themselves and then they will take questions from the audience. At the end, the candidates will be given another three minutes for closing and or rebuttal. This is sure to be informative.

POW

Scott Valley Protect Our Water will hold its monthly meeting on Thurs., July 25 at the Fort Jones Community Center at 7 p.m. Kirk Andrus, Siskiyou Co. District Attorney, will be speaking and Assembly Dist. 1 candidate, Patrick Jones, has also confirmed he will attend and explain why he is running for the empty assembly seat. Public is invited.

Recycling

I gathered up and separated my recyclables last week and then I learned the local recycling company is no longer doing satellite service to Scott Valley. This was news to me. Apparently, there are recycling items that have lost value and it is no longer affordable to provide the satellite service in out-lying areas of the county. CRV will still be paid.

Luckily, “we the public” (mostly me) have finally been trained to recycle and will, hopefully, continue to do so. Bins for glass and plastic are available both inside the Yreka Transfer Recycling and outside their fence on Ranch Lane. We still have free bins in Etna and Fort Jones as well.

I wondered when the recycling problem would hit us as I recall China was taking much of our recycled plastics and other items. But, last summer, it was reported that China was no longer taking the world’s items for recycling. Hum, we do make a lot of garbage now days.

Blackout

You probably heard about the power outage last Saturday night in the heart of New York City’s Broadway area. For most of five hours, 73,000 people were in the dark. Yep, that would be a very scary predicament. Men-on-the-street self-volunteered to direct traffic, police responded to 60 calls from people stuck in dark elevators and Jennifer Lopez had to cancel her concert as did Broadway Shows and other entertainment.

Surprisingly, this was literally the 42^nd anniversary of when the power went out in 1977 to nearly the entire Manhattan area. For a variety of reasons, there was panic and looting that made that situation worse in 1977.

So, why do I bring this up? Yep, you guessed it, this is a great reminder to have some things on hand. Try to be prepared. An opinion piece in the New York Post related that most people don’t have a basic 72-hour kit. And, yes, if I was riding up to my apartment in an elevator, I would not have that kit with me.

But, we don’t live in New York. We live in a rural area, where we should have enough room to store several gallons of drinking water. It is also a good idea to have 10 gallons of water stored in the back of the garage that could be used to flush the toilet. Your pets also will need water and food.

Freeze dried food has become popular. I have some. But, it needs water added, so we should have canned food, peanut butter and crackers on the shelf as well. So, once again, I hope you will look at your cupboards and see what you could eat for several days without going to the store. Then go to the grocery store and purchase more items that you would like to add to that storage. Rotate your food and keep the cupboard full!

Also, we really should have a first aid kit and be aware of our medicines and prescription meds. 

Lighting is important. Besides several flashlights, we should have battery-operated camp lantern. I want to get a solar-powered camp lantern. Hygiene will be important for yourself, family members and cooking. So, keep extra moist wipes around, also hand sanitizer, paper towels and toilet paper.

I try to keep extra garbage bags, cuz they can be used for lots of things as well as the trash. So, there you go – another reminder about having some items in the cupboard and garage that will make a power outage less stressful. At least for a day or two!

Liz Bowen began writing ranch and farm news, published in newspapers, in 1976. She is a native of Siskiyou County and lives near Callahan. Columns from the past year can be found at: lizwriteslife.blogspot.com. Call her at 530-467-3515.

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Liz Writes Life 7-10-19

July 10, 2019

Liz Writes Life

After I reported, last week, that the Siskiyou County Supervisors were able to come up with a balanced budget, things changed during the supervisors’ board meeting on Tuesday, July 2, 2019. Ray Haupt, Dist. 5 Siskiyou Co. Supervisor, reported at the Scott Valley Protect Our Water meeting on June 27, it looked like the budget was going to balance. But on July 2, the board learned that the State of California was not going to pay Siskiyou Co. $1.5 million that it owed through the Payment in lieu of Taxes program.

After the July 2^nd board meeting, Ray told me department staff were instructed to dig-in and find more ways to cut costs. The only department that received a budget increase was Sheriff Jon Lopey’s and Ray said he will likely still receive the increase of $500,000 or $600,000 because public safety is a priority.

Currently, equipment purchases and employee travel have been put on hold.

My comment to this dire situation is to blast over-regulations, which have so drastically reduced the mining and timber industries that they provide little to the county tax base even though the county is rich in those resources. And, I will say it again, the trees must be thinned to healthy stands instead of the over-growth forests burning up.

This is must be pretty disheartening to the supervisors, whose job is to fiscally manage the county and provide needed services to the public.

Ray also told the Protect Our Water meeting that Sheriff Lopey reported there are an estimated 1,500 to 1,700 illegal grows of marijuana (cannabis) in the county private lands, so that number doesn’t include the illegal cartel grows on USFS managed lands.

Regarding hemp – the county still has a temporary ban in place. The reason is because the state must complete its regulations for authorized hemp grows and it has not done it. The state had deadlines in Feb., then April and most recently July 1st and failed to comply with its own legislation.

LaMalfa

Erin Ryan, staff for Dist. 1 Congressman Doug LaMalfa, also attended the Protect Our Water meeting. She first spoke about the “foolishness” of the Democrats hammering about Medicare for all. Congressman LaMalfa opposes Medicare for all and agrees with fellow Congressman Ron Estes (R-KS), who stated that reimbursement rates for rural hospitals would be slashed by 40 percent below current payment rates. This would shutter rural hospitals and clinics.

Estes has been doing his homework and learned that rural hospitals are among the most vulnerable, because they often are relying on Medicare and Medicaid payments and have fewer private people supporting them.

Republicans are fighting for better health care access for rural patients and were able to move several bills through the House Ways and Means Committee. Two bills cleared with strong bipartisan support – The Beneficiary Educaton Tools, Telehealth, and Extenders Reauthorization Act of 2019 and the Republicans also championed the Hearts and Rural Relief Act of 2019.

LaMalfa agrees with the $4.6 billion emergency border supplemental bill that was passed by the U.S. Senate the end of June. In a press release, LaMalfa said the delay tactics used by House Democrats against the measure was shameful, but was “pleased that logic and reason won in the end. This is a good, bipartisan compromise that the President should sign into law in short order. Our folks at the southern border desperately need it.”

Election

Three more candidates have thrown their hats in the ring in the special election for Dist. 1 CA. Assembly seat that was vacated when Brian Dahle won Dist. 1 State Senator seat on June 4^th. Elizabeth Betancourt is a Democrat from Shasta County, who is Chief, Cannabis Permitting and Compliance Unit at Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board. Caitlin Dalby is listed as a “teacher” and no party affiliation. I was not able to find the county where she lives. The other candidate is Lane Rickard, who worked as staff for Ted Gaines, when he was state senator and lives in Shasta County.

Last week, I mentioned the first three candidates who are: Patrick Jones, Republican from Shasta County, who served two terms on the Redding City Council and is a Second Amendment advocate; Megan Dahle, a Republican, and newly elected State Senator Brian Dahle’s wife, farmer and businesswoman; and Joseph Turner, Republican from Lassen County, who served as Lassen County Republican Central Committee chairman.

The election is coming up fast as the sample ballots will be mailed out the week of July 19^th and the ballots on the week of July 29^th. The top two vote-getters in the special primary election on Aug. 27, 2019 will then advance to the Nov. 5^th Special Election. So, get ready to learn more about these candidates and vote!

Garden

Noticed a half-inch deep hole chewed into a medium-sized green tomato and a few extra bites on the side. Looks like a tomato worm and it must be pretty good sized to eat that size of a hole. Gotta get up before the sun and see if I can find him. It surprised me, cuz I haven’t had many tomato worms here. Other places we have lived, they tended to attack in August. So, I was a bit surprised. They camouflage so well, I really have to check from all angles to find them.

I stopped irrigating the garlic several weeks ago and decided to dig them up last week. There are about 10 good-sized ones and six more small to dinky sized. I planted more than 30 cloves and notice that about half of them grow to maturity.

Liz Bowen began writing ranch and farm news, published in newspapers, in 1976. She is a native of Siskiyou County and lives near Callahan. Columns from the past year can be found at: lizwriteslife.blogspot.com. Call her at 530-467-3515.

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Liz Writes Life 7-3-19

July 3, 2019

Liz Writes Life

Boy, certainly appreciated the cooler weather this week. I was able to get more weeding and mulching done, before the higher temps hit. There is a three-inch-long zucchini that has stopped growing, but is still firm. I better pick it, because I have found the first few zucchini sometimes stop growing and go mushy. Hope your gardens and flowers are doing well!

POW

Ray Haupt, Dist. 5 Siskiyou Co. Supervisor, shared positive info during the Scott Valley Protect Our Water meeting held last Thursday night. First, The Nature Conservancy has paid Siskiyou Co. $350,000 for potential lost taxes due to the fact that it sold the Shasta Valley Louie Ranch to the CA. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife and it will no longer be private property. Ray said TNC did this as a “good faith effort” during the escrow process. Ray and Michael Kobseff, Siskiyou Co. Supervisor for Dist. 3, have been working on protecting agricultural and water on the Louie ranch throughout TNC’s ownership and its (previous) sale of water rights to CDFW. This $350,000 is a great win for the county!

Budget

The difficult process of getting the county budget to balance was the major supervisors’ agenda item last month. Nearly all departments found their budget was the same as last year or declined a bit. The exception is the sheriff’s dept, which did receive $500,000 more than last year’s budget.

Fuel reduction

Ray explained the county is forging ahead to utilize state and the federal government programs to help reduce fuel loads and fire hazards. The first one -- and newest -- is the Governor’s (Newsom) Forest Task Force, which prioritizes grant-type of money to do hazardous fuels work on private properties. These grant monies come from the carbon credit initiative tax that we pay at the pump for our gas. Surprise!

These projects are for fuel breaks and thinning – specifically to modify fire behavior. Cal-Fire has prioritized these projects throughout the state and Fire Safe Councils are proposing projects. The county is competing state-wide for grants from $200 million that has been designated for fire hazard reduction. One project has been approved in Siskiyou Co. for the state-identified Shastina area.

To help with this project, our county supervisors asked the Siskiyou Fire Safe Council to put together a Fire Safe Plan to model and map potential fire behavior. This information is now filling-in gaps and aiding a new county-wide task force, which brings government fire agencies, private timber industry and Fire Safe Councils together to identify projects. This Siskiyou Task Force held its second meeting last month. Ray is pleased the group is coordinating its various skills, directions and efforts. “We are well organized,” he said.

Then, there is the federal program called the Good Neighbor Authority, which allows the USFS to enter into agreements with state forestry agencies to do critical forest management work.

Under the Good Neighbor Authority legislation is the Master Stewardship Agreement program. Its goal is to achieve land management for the national forest and better interface with private lands and local rural communities to meet hazardous fuels reduction needs. In other words, the county can enter into an agreement with the USFS to get work done, which the county deems high priority. The county must pay 20 percent of the cost of each project and the USFS pays the remaining 80 percent. Yep, this is a huge savings for the county.

What Ray likes about this program is that it is prioritized locally as the county is the lead. As a result, the county is working on agreements with Klamath National Forest. When the program gets going, it will feed itself as the positive income funds will go into future projects. KNF is 63 percent of Siskiyou Co. land base, so there is lots of interface with rural residents and towns.

To avoid pit-falls, Ray asked three-term Tuolumne Co. Supervisor, Randy Handfield, to come to Siskiyou Co. and explain the good, bad and ugly of these fire hazard agreements to those involved in the process. Tuolumne is the only county that has utilized the program and found success. Siskiyou hopes to be next with a bunch of successes.  

Red flag warnings were discussed and Ray said that through CA. Senate Bill 911, power companies will be required to shut-down power during high fire threats. There are two places in Siskiyou that have been identified for the potential need of shutting-off the power and they are the City of Mount Shasta and the Klamath River corridor between Seiad and Beaver Creek, which will also cut power to Happy Camp.

Ray also explained that through state legislation, power companies were mandated to have power mitigation plans and equipment up-grades by June 1, 2019. Hum, that is a lot of power facilities to address. I wonder if that happened?

Election

With the election of Dist. 1 Assemblyman Brian Dahle to the State Senate Dist. 1 seat, in June, there will now be an election to fill his assembly position. And that election will be here in no time. A primary election in the counties of Butte, Lassen, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra and Siskiyou will be held on Aug. 27, 2019. Yes, that is an unusual time for an election.

I believe the primary election will reduce the candidates to two. Wow, that isn’t much time for candidates to canvas the north state. Then the special election to select the assembly-person will be held Nov. 5, 2019.

So far three people have declared they are running for the assembly seat. All are Republicans. They are Patrick Jones, from Redding; Megan Dahle, of Lassen Co.; and Joseph Turner, also from Lassen Co.

Patrick Jones is a favorite, because of his pro-2^nd Amendment stand, outspoken need for forest health management and pension reform. He served two terms on the Redding City Council and as mayor. I have met Patrick and like him.

Megan Dahle is the wife of Brian Dahle. She has served one term as president on the Big Valley Joint Unified School board and is for better funding for public safety and emergency personnel.

Joseph Turner recently resigned from his chairmanship with the Lassen Co. GOP to run for assembly. He is a veteran of the CA. Army National Guard and will fight against excessive taxes and regulations.

Have a good week and try to stay cool!

Liz Bowen began writing ranch and farm news, published in newspapers, in 1976. She is a native of Siskiyou County and lives near Callahan. Columns from the past year can be found at: lizwriteslife.blogspot.com. Call her at 530-467-3515.

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