First we helped to dam his pond, sorting and arranging carefully shaped slabs of wood to fit them into rusted slots. Newts lay about like bloated sunbathers in the murky water. "Gramps" has been filling and emptying this pond with the rhythm of the tides for over forty years, filling it with trout every summer from an old friend, and, after countless fishing days and trout for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, letting the water pour out at the end of the season. This self-sustenance is inspiring, and similar to La Finquita's wide range of animals kept for consumption. 

I often simplify farming into only food-production, and forget about all the other duties of managing huge parcels of land. We helped Gramps saw down twisted branches that had fallen into trees in the sheep pasture. As for the sheep, there were only two rams left, steadfast survivors of the coyotes and the winter, and, unlike at La Finquita where the two llamas are alert guards, my grandfather's llama "Pajama"was AWOL. I imagined these fields--home to the two rams and fallen tree limbs--as vineyards, as pasture for sheep that could produce cheese, as fields for the great handful of produce La Finquita farms. 

I met Gramps' baby chickens, another entrepreneurial attempt at food self-sufficiency. They spend the night in a cage in on an unpleasant swathe of cardboard but are moved in the daytime outside onto the grass where they fulfill the pastoral image of yellow chicks and green lawn. In the garage I also witnessed huge buckets of grain that had been chewed into by rats in the top corner, leaving gaping gnaw-marks even after duck-tape reinforcement.  I sometimes feel like I am on one of those reality TV shows where urban socialites are placed in country-bumpkin situations and forced to cope--

At the end of the day, my Dad and I stopped at the first farm he worked at, a (now organic) blueberry farm not too far away from his home. The vast nature of monocultural production grounds as compared to La Finquita was stunning, where I just planted one row of blueberry plants for CSA members and the family.

Driving homeward bound this evening, I imagined myself living on the farm, working it dawn to dusk the way Juvencio does on his. I don't know whether I am more scared of that idea or of the alternative--if it does not stay in the family, will it be parceled and bundled and cul-de-sac-ed? I'm sure there are zoning laws against the worst, but my Dad kept pointing out houses nearby that hadn't been there when he was growing up. Oh, progress.