Fatherhood ages a man; parenthood, in general, does the same.

Before we became parents, my wife and I lived somewhat outside of time. Days and years went by, seasons came and passed, and we went about the business of pursuing degrees and careers oblivious to the passage of time. We got older, but didn’t notice.

Now that we have a little boy who was recently a baby and is about to become a preschool child, we see time rushing through us with the urgency of a spring runoff. As the marks on his growth chart climb higher and his shoe sizes double, I feel the present slipping into tomorrow. If only I could hold on to this moment a little longer…

Folks who live their lives in extended families, with grandparents sharing the same roof or living and laboring nearby their children and their babies and grandbabies, probably experience the passage of time more strongly than those who don’t. They can feel the aging of parents and grandparents when they hold a hand or kiss a cheek. They can see the weakening, shrinking and wrinkling effects of time and recognize that they, too, will follow this course.

My parents and their parents were all raised in families such as these and so were my wife’s relations, but our parents left the family fold like so many other Americans after World War II to pursue their fortunes in far-off places and never returned. We grew up at a distance from our grandparents, seeing them on holidays once or twice a year, and experienced their deaths as sudden disasters rather than as part of the flow of life.

Now that I recognize these things and can see how this kind of lifestyle, divorced from the family farm, has become the norm in American society I wonder if some folks avoid family in order to avoid time. If we live where life’s seasons are less noticeable, as in southern California, will we remain young?

Getting away from family can be liberating, of course, and most of us have been ready, like Huck Finn, to “lit out for the territories” where we’ll be free of obligations and expectations. We’ll also be free of context and history and, perhaps, meaning.

A nation of Huck Finns would be truly independent, each person responsible only to himself and his own self-guided moral code. There would be no taxes, no schools and no government. Life would be a series of adventures lived fully in the moment, with no thought of past or future, because this is all we can be sure of, here and now.

Life, after all, arises from nothing and ends in timeless oblivion….

But that’s not how things are at all! The sun doesn’t rise out of nowhere and set for eternity. It dawns again and again and again. The seasons, the tides and the phases of the moon don’t begin and end, they rotate.

Plants don’t emerge from nothing and die back into emptiness. They rise from the seeds of seeds of seeds of plants whose decomposed bodies help feed them. And, in the same sense, our lives are rooted in a past which emerges in the present to flower and fade tomorrow.

Time, as I see it, is more a circle or a spiral than a straight line, repeating itself endlessly with slight changes in every turn. Parenthood and family don’t turn the clock, but they certainly make its movements more visible.

When my little boy asks, “What’s tomorrow?” I look into our common future and forecast: “Tomorrow will be a lot like today, but with a few surprises.”

• Rural Delivery
• Family Gathering

Plants get sick. They develop soft rot and leaf spot and cankers of all sorts. They suffer ulcerous lesions, mildews, and various wilts and scabs.

Apple trees get fire blight, which blackens their leaves and twigs and is sometimes fatal. Potatoes are susceptible to late blight, as 19th century Ireland learned too well, and grapes are vulnerable to powdery mildew, which nearly wrecked the French wine industry.

In the U.S. alone, there are more than 25,000 known plant diseases causing crop losses of several billion dollars annually.

Figuring out how plants defend themselves against disease and bolstering those defenses has been a priority for agricultural researchers.

Much study has been done on the activation of the “defense genes” which encode the proteins of plant cells with protective functions. Using gene splicing techniques, scientists have learned how to activate the cell’s defenses before a pathogen attacks, an important breakthrough in crop protection.

Yet, while scientists have looked closely at the cells of plants and figured out how they protect against disease, until lately they passed over one peculair aspect of resistance: cell suicide.

When a disease appears on a plant the cells at the front lines often collapse and die. This has been called a “hypersensitive response” because it happens before the cells have actually been attacked.

At the Salk Institute for Biological Studies scientists closely observing the hypersenitive response noticed a buildup of hydrogen peroxide inside the cells.

The scientists watched as the hydrogen peroxide caused a cross-linking of structural polymers in the cell wall, making it tougher and harder to penetrate, much like a self-sealing tire. The chemical also triggered the pre-programmed death of the suicide cells, if you will, and alerted other nearby cells to the presence of an invader.

By checking the advance of the disease and alerting other defense cells, suicide cells give the plant a chance to produce antibiotics and raise other defenses. Their sacrifice, in some cases, makes a life-or-death difference to the plant.

Knowing how the hypersensitive response works will lead to techniques for stimulating it artificially. Plants will soon be genetically engineered to produce hydrogen peroxide in their suicide cells more readily after a pathogen attack.

How this will effect crop protection efforts and food supplies remains to be seen. But unlike attempts to control disease by attacking pathogens, this approach delivers its prescription directly to the plant: Get well soon.

• Rural Delivery
• Sacrificial Cells
• Plant Cell Poster

Moving to the country? You’re going to love it… maybe.

If you are anything like the thousands of folks fleeing the “rat race” of city life each year by taking up residence in some small town or rural county, then you probably have some romantic notions of country life.

You expect to find less crime, less traffic and more friendly faces. That’s possible. But don’t come out here looking for Green Acres or Northern Exposure. There are no Martha Stewarts on these farms. You won’t find espresso bars or vegetarian bistros in most small towns.

All across the country, in rural places from Maine to Mendocino, there are terrible conflicts raging between folks who have lived in these places all their lives and newcomers who want to change them to better meet their expectations.

Some novice ruralites want to look at cows grazing in a pasture without having to smell them. Others expect farms to operate without machinery and harvesting to occur on bankers’ hours. And a few even want to recreate our small town business districts with boutiques and tourist attractions.

These are three of the “Top 10 Ways to Irritate a Rural Community.” The other seven include:

1. Honk If You’re Angry. Hereabouts, when someone honks a horn it’s either because they know you and are honking to say ‘Hello!” or because there’s some impending disaster.
2. Know It All. Until you’ve been around for a few years carefully avoid speaking like a local authority or tour guide.
3. Ignore the Obvious. Local customs are not that hard to figure out if you’ll just take the time to watch and listen.
4. Overpay. Rural economics are different from those in the city. Pay more for than the going rate for a house or tip a waitress too heavily and you disrupt the local economy.
5. Complain. “If you don’t like it, why did you move here?”
6. Give History Lessons. Any sentence with the phrases “Where I come from…” or “Back when I was…” is likely to be received poorly.
7. Phone Your Lawyer. Nuisance lawsuits involving pre-existing farming operations or other businesses are rarely successful, are always expensive, and are certain to make you unpopular.

As for those of us who already live here in the country, we need to talk to these newcomers, get to know them and let them get to know us.

“Good communication builds trust and allows people to discuss problems in a peaceful and respectful way,” says Dr. Timothy Kelsey, assistant professor of agricultural economics at Penn State University. “It helps neighbors learn that you are approachable and interested in their concerns. If a neighbor has a complaint about your farm, it is better that they feel comfortable enough to approach you directly instead of your hearing of it second-hand.”

Newcomers are frightening. Who knows where they came from? Who knows what they are capable of?

The best way to deal with these anxieties is to remember the story of Big Jake. It begins with a cowhand in a small town of the Old West walking into a saloon to quench his thirst. He orders a beer and while he’s standing at the bar waiting for it the saloon doors swing open and a cowboy comes in yelling, ‘Big Jake’s coming!”

Within seconds everyone in the bar clears out, leaving the cowhand standing at the bar waiting for his beer. And sure enough, a huge seven-and-a-half-foot 500-pound cowboy comes swaggering in, tearing out the front door frame with his broad shoulders.

The cowboy looks around the saloon, marches over to the cowhand, grabs him by the scruff of the neck and tosses him over the bar. “Gimme a drink!” he bellows.

The cowhand obeys, pouring a shot of whiskey and placing the bottle down next to the glass on the bar. The cowboy tosses back the shot and then bites off the neck of the bottle and drinks its contents.

The cowhand, shaking in his boots, asks, “Sir, would you care for another?”

“Nope, I gotta go,” the cowboy declares. “Big Jake’s comin’!”

Your new neighbors may look strange and do things differently. They might even be critical and hard to get along with. But at least they’re not Big Jake.

To my way of thinking, cities are good for two things. One is professional baseball.

After what the owners and players did to baseball last year (1993), urban life’s only advantage over country living is the farmers market.

Sure, there are farmer’s markets in smaller communities offering an abundance of local produce. And there’s nothing quite like a roadside fruit stand for fresh-picked peaches, cukes or corn.

But you could take the same produce, the same catch of fish, and the same baked goods on a smaller scale and never be able to recreate the ambience of a Pike Place, the color and fragrance of a French Market, or the teeming symphony of a New York City greenmarket. It’s like the difference between the minor leagues and the majors: nothing compares to The Show.

I can get by just fine without Seattle’s traffic problems, its gangs or its high-rise office buildings. But I yearn for Pike Place Public Market.

For a year in the late 1980s Pike Place was part of my daily routine. Morning began with a newspaper from Read All About It and coffee at The Sound View Cafe. Then I’d stroll slowly past the Pike Place Fish Company where vendors shouted over crates of newly arrived salmon. With an eye toward dinner, I’d assess the day’s catch of sockeye or chum or silvers, consider again the unsightly Puget Sound goeduck clam, and ponder the possibilities for smelt, butterfish or Dungeness crab.

By noontime the market would be aflood with shoppers. I often took lunch nearby and visited the food stalls either coming or going, and sometimes both. Every time there was some new discovery, like a basket of Northern Spy apples or Peruvian potatoes or bottles of goat milk.

Mornings are best for beating the crowd, getting a parking space, and buying crisp salad greens. Afternoons are best for bargains. I bought in the afternoon mostly, as vendors were near to closing and “giving good weight” (generous on the scales), and each evening’s meal was shaped with those purchases.

Farmer’s markets like Pike Place, full of shops and vendors and paying customers, don’t happen by accident. The best are carefully shaped over many years to fit the community’s needs, both in the products they offer and the times they are available. Pike Place began in 1907 with five farmers in wagons who sold out in less than an hour; today it’s open six days a week with lots of seafood, organic veggies, and seasonal fruit.

Like baseball, a farmer’s market must care for its fans, be sensitive to their tastes and respectful of their habits. Become a part of their ritual and they’ll be yours for generations. Take away their favorite vendors, or shut down in the midseason when tomatoes and melons and clams are at their best, and you may lose them forever.

• Rural Delivery
• Open Air Farmers Markets Directory

You know you’re on a rural road when folks wave at you as you drive by.

I’m not talking about waving at friends or family. Nor am I referring to the kind of waving between colleagues that truck drivers share. The waves I mean are the ones thrown out to complete strangers encountered on the road or as they pass by the home place.

Waving at strangers is endangered behavior these days. The number of places where it’s practiced appears to be getting scarce.

A friend in eastern Montana waves at the drivers of passing vehicles more often than anyone else I know. I’ve been with him on cross-country drives and watched him cast dozens of waves that were not returned.

“Why do you wave so often?” I asked him.

“Just hoping they’ll respond,” he replied.

Waving is his mission on the road. A friendly wave is a sign of civility. People who wave at each other acknowledge a common bond: we’re all in this together. Those who wave are more likely to help one another and work together, and less likely to cheat and cause each other harm, or so he believes. Encouraging the practice of waving is my friend’s way of rebuilding community spirit.

Why some folks wave and others don’t is partly a matter of population. The bigger the town and the more heavy the traffic the less likely it is to see a wave. There are just too many strangers.

Speed is also a factor. Folks in the fast lane rarely wave because they don’t have time. Before you can lift your hand they’re gone.

And freeways, of course, discourage waving altogether. Divided highways isolate us, each to our own vehicle. They are designed to keep us from running into each other, but they also prevent us from recognizing each other.

I’ve been on roads where waving provoked startled looks and obscene responses. It’s hard to be open to strangers in places where drive-by shootings and lootings occur. Fear closes a lot of doors.

But out on the open range of Wyoming or beneath the big skies of Montana waving comes pretty easy. When you’ve been alone on a road for thirty minutes another vehicle can be a welcome sight. Where there are fewer of us it’s easier to see and appreciate how much we need each other.

Two-lane blacktop country roads, whether they part the potato fields of Idaho or cut across the scablands of Washington, seem to encourage a slower, friendlier style of travel. It helps, too, if you drive an old pickup with the windows down and one arm resting on the door.

Whether waving at strangers will help restore courtesy to the roads or make our communities more neighborly is hard to say, but it’s worth a try.

These are the dog days of summer, a time of year when creeks run dry, the air stands still and the sun beats down relentlessly, day after day, or so it seems.

These are the days when we rediscover shade, pools, and the contents of our freezers. Cooling off becomes an obsession.

Over-heated hounds do lounge beneath porches and trees on hot afternoons, but it is not for them that “dog days” were named. Instead, this parching period pertains to Sirius, the “Dog Star,” which rises and sets with the sun from mid-July until September. Sirius is also called “The Scorching One.” Its lurid presence on the horizon evokes desperate memories of withered crops, raging wildfires and infernal droughts.

August brings “the great scourge of days canicular,” wrote the poet Dante, a time of terrible heat that causes “fever in men and madness in dogs.”

I remember Augusts in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states: 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity. For a person from the arid West, it was like living in a sauna. Without air conditioning, I don’t know how I would have survived. I doubt I ever would have slept at night.

But people survived dog days before electric air conditioning, and quite comfortably, thankyou. Their cooling methods were simple, but well proven, like planting trees on the east and west flanks of a home, and carefully placing windows so they are shaded from the full force of the sun.

Dog days have inspired thousands of inventions, from fans and ice cubes to convertibles and matinee movies.

In ancient Persia, someone invented draft towers. These are tall chimney-shaped columns that rise up through a building. Water is pumped to the top of the tower and sprayed in a fine mist — pssst, pssst — at the opening. The mist evaporates immediately in the hot sun, of course, and the cold air from that evaporation drops down the tower and comes out vents inside, just like an air conditioner.

In modern-day Miami, I’ve heard of homes built with roof ponds. The pool of water soaks up solar heat during the day that would otherwise cook the building. At night, evaporation and radiation from the pond helps cool things down.

My own summers are a often a time of relentless experimentation and refinement. I get by without central air, so I’m forever tinkering with household shading and air flow, seeking the optimum conditions for cooling:

What will happen if I open the basement windows and close off the upstairs? Will it make a difference where I place the fans? How about a west side awning for extra shade?

I’ve discovered, or re-discovered, the “stack effect” in ventilation. Since hot air rises over cool, the cooler air will be found in the lowest and shadiest corners of a home. Cracking open a low, shady-side window and a high, sunny-side vent will encourage the warmer air to rise up and out of the house while drawing cooler air inside.

And when there’s a breeze outdoors it’s a good strategy to open a low-lying window facing the wind and an upstairs window on the opposite side. This gets air moving through the house, sometimes at a pretty good clip.

It would be easier to turn on an air conditioner, I suppose, than to trim my windows to catch a breeze or adjust blinds and awnings to provide more shade. But I would rather be an active participant in summer than a passive prisoner in an electrically chilled box. And besides, its cheaper.

• Rural Delivery

I’m standing here in a bare-walled room contemplating a stack of cardboard boxes and wondering which contains the notes to the water rights article I’m working on. And I’m asking myself again why this is happening. What possessed me to box up my belongings, scramble whatever order there was to my life, and leave behind friends and neighbors for a new residence?

Some people enjoy moving. They like the emigrant experience, the transitory feel of ever-changing scenery and acquaintances. They live their lives like travelers on an interstate highway, pausing only for rest stops and business loops.. Life is short. There’s no time for attachments.

My wife and I do not share this feeling. We grieve over places and people left behind. Moving fills us with worry and frustration. We experience sudden headaches, dizzy spells, disorientation and nausea. Each time we move we say to each other, “Never again! Here we take root!”

We’ve moved 17 times in 16 years of marriage. Each time there was a good reason. My wife went back to school. I got a better job. We hated the city and longed for the country. We needed money and moved to the city. We missed the country and moved back.

This time there was a baby to consider, schooling and day care and life insurance to think about, and a good buy on a good piece of property in a small town we had our eye upon. It’s only 36 miles down the road, but it’s still a move that involves leaving some piece of ourselves behind, and it still hurts.

It is said that moving ranks with a house fire and the death of a spouse as the most anxious moments in our lives.

From long experience, I can vouch for moving anxiety. In my first move I said goodbye to my pinto pony, my Geman shepherd guardian, and my second grade classmates. Later, I let go of best friends, treasured toys, favorite hiding places, and my position on baseball teams. Over the years I have lost or given away loads of furniture, hundreds of books, several pets, and at least two cars.

The moves I’ve made with wife have included harrowing cross-country journeys in questionable vehicles in various states of disrepair. We’ve camped out for weeks on end, moved belongings in and out of storage units and up and down precipitous flights of stairs, been broke or broke down or broken- hearted many a time, and found ourselves locked in or locked out at the most inopportune moments.

I’ve met people who have lived all their lives in one county, or nearly so. I have lived in a dozen counties so far. I cannot imagine knowing only one.

Most Americans move a lot — a third of us every two years on average. We are descendants of footloose peoples from Europe and Asia and Africa and the Americas who left stability and certainty behind for risk and opportunity.

But we are also descendants of peoples that cherished rootedness and sought permanence. In the folds of family, like a thick quilt, lies a sense of purpose and belonging. In the web of community we find our station and our meaning. Only through careful tillage in the same soil over many seasons can we secure a footing.

With each move most of us expect to come home. At the end of every relocation there is at least the hope of some constancy. Otherwise, why unpack?

I think these thoughts standing amid my boxed belongings and watching the furnishings of one place passing out the back door toward another. In a framed mirror I see my reflected self moving away.

Oliver Wendell Douglas finds the Haney Place advertised in The Farm Gazette, which he picks up from a news stand while on a business trip to Chicago. Compelled by a deep-rooted urge, he decides to go have a look. To get there, he changes planes twice, takes a bus from the county seat to Pixley, then hops on a train known as “The Cannonball” for the last leg of his journey. When he gets off in the town of Hooterville, he breaks into song:

Green acres is the place to be, Farm living is the life for me.

Dressed in an expensive three-piece suit, the Manhattan attorney with a Harvard Law School degree purchases the 160-acre farmstead and is determined, at last, to be the farmer of his dreams.

Land spreading out, so far and wide…

Back home in his Park Avenue penthouse, where his wife Lisa waits for him, Oliver has been growing crops in containers on the terrace. Earlier, he was fired from his first law firm appointment when he was caught growing mushrooms in his desk drawer.

Keep Manhattan, just give me the countryside.

Lisa is a glamorous socialite with a thick Hungarian accent. She’s quite at home in the big city, with its bright lights and fashionable restaurants. She sings:

New York is where I’d rather stay.

Oliver’s mother agrees. Her son has obviously lost his mind. She tells Lisa to leave Oliver and come live at her penthouse. Lisa is tempted.

I get allergic smelling hay. I just adore a penthouse view.

Where, in Hooterville, will she find people to talk to about fashion, about movies, about museums and culture? Lisa was raised to be an urbanite, not a farm wife. She can’t even cook!

Darling, I love you, but give me Park Avenue.

Oliver isn’t listening. He’s too enamored of country life. He just loves pitching hay and riding around the farm in his Fordson model F tractor. In his elation, he raises his pitchfork and cries out:

The Chores!

Lisa was made for shopping Macy’s and Saks 5th Avenue. Where will she shop in Hooterville? Sam Drucker’s store?

The Stores!

Oliver the gentleman farmer is blinded by his obsession. He can’t see what a shambles of a farm he’s purchased from an insatiable con, Mr. Haney. He’s pestered into hiring a live-in farmhand, Eb, who works slowly and calls him “Dad.” The neighbors are a bunch of wacky eccentrics, led by the Zwiffels and their multi-lingual television-watching pig, Arnold. Even the scatterbrained country agent, Hank Kimball, is more than a bit peculiar. And almost everyone in town is in a betting pool to see how many days it takes before Oliver moves back to New York.

Fresh Air!

Lisa cannot imagine what life will be like on the Haney Place. She is the daughter of the former King of Hungary, after all, and used to opulence and privilege. The city is her birthright .

Times Square!

This is still the 1960s, however, and a wife’s place is at her husband’s side, as Oliver testifies:

You are my wife!

Lisa had forgotten about the Hungarian Parliament’s “Big Dumb Law of 1924,” which stated: “All Hungarian women have to do whatever their husbands want them to do, no matter how dumb it is.”

Goodbye city life.

And so the Haney Place becomes the Douglas Farm — with all its clutter, fallow fields, and telephones mounted atop telephone poles — for six television seasons. Oliver struggles gamely to make his farm a success while Lisa brings some graciousness and finer things of life to their rural experience. They stand side by side, in a parody of American Gothic, and declare:

Green Acres, we are there!

• Where Oliver Found His Place
• Rural Delivery

I spent many hours of my childhood in chicken coops. If I wasn’t gathering eggs from my Grandpa’s laying hens or teasing his rooster I was likely with my cousins in the abandoned coop behind my uncle’s place that we’d claimed as a clubhouse.

Every home was built with a chicken coop out back, or so it seemed. Both sets of grandparents kept chickens, and so did most of my aunts and uncles. Until the day he died my Grandpa Jess had a hand-painted sign advertising “EGGS” nailed up out front next to the lane.

Nowadays, I’m hard-pressed to find a chicken coop. We have no chickens. None of our neighbors keep chickens. There are chickens around and eggs for sale someplace nearby, I’m sure, but I couldn’t give directions.

We’ve talked about raising chickens. Every spring, as the slugs rise to gnaw on the strawberries, my wife says, “We ought to have chickens.” Free-ranging hens are an effective deterrent to slugs, grasshoppers and many other insect pests. They’ll also keep down the weeds and add nutrients to your soil if you manage them carefully.

Every time I trim the fat off a fleshy store-bought chicken I’m preparing for the grill, I tell myself, “We ought to raise our own chickens.” Chickens convert feed to meat efficiently. Most broilers will gain a pound of weight for every two-and-a-half pounds of feed. If a bird is allowed to free-range, not only will it be less fatty, but nearly half of its feed will come from foraging grubs, weeds and worms.

Keeping chickens in the backyard is no more bother than having a dog. An 8×10 shed will shelter a dozen hens and so long as they get regular feed and fresh water and ample opportunity to forage, they are likely to thrive. The most clever chicken coop I’ve heard of is the portable poultry shelter devised by Virginia farmer Joel Salatin. Dubbed the “chicken tractor,” the coop is mounted on wheels and has a mesh screen floor. Pulled to a new location on the farm each day, the hens in the tractor have fresh grass and terrain to scratch and in return they leave behind a thin and readily composting layer of rich manure. When the tractor is pulled onto pastures after sheep or cows have grazed, the hens scratch and scatter the piles of manure, eating the eggs of harmful livestock parasites and hastening the decomposition of waste.

Why, then, do so few of us raise chickens? Maybe it’s the cholesterol in those eggs. It’s hard to take much pride in a product that other folks point to as dangerous and harmful. Or perhaps it’s the low prices. When a full-size broiler brings less than two bucks at the grocer, you know there’s not much margin in being a small producer. And then there’s zoning laws. Some people take well to chicken coops at their neighbors’ place. There’s no arguing with them about slugs or the benefits of manure. Dogs and cats are welcome, but not chickens.

When it comes to raising livestock or taking an active role in our food supply, most of us have “flown the coop,” so to speak, and would have a difficult time backtracking. Even so, we ought to raise chickens.

• Animal Husbandry Books
• Chicken Coops
• Hen and the Art of Chicken Maintenance
• Husbandry
• Rural Delivery