"These factors helped Native Americans establish camas plantations here, mistaken for empty "green lawns" by early European explorers." Growing up in Oregon, it's a tragedy to me that I only learned of the vast camas fields and its significance as an adult. I dream about what they looked like, how beautiful they are when still blooming under the oaks of the WiIlamette Valley in the spring.
I loved learning about the specificity of your place, having loved that area since a child visiting for vacations there each summer. And it's truly heartening to hear of the many organizations that are working to find new ways to live with the lands and its histories, at repair and regeneration. Such a great read this morning, grateful for your work and its care. 💜
John, I found today’s well researched and well written information very helpful in understanding rights to land and water. The Navy’s presence on the north end of Whidby Island prompted thoughts on the US government’s use of Super Fund (we have the best, softest toilet paper) Sites. Too frequently the industrial polluters escape accountability through bankruptcy, re-incorporation in Texas, where hazardous industries are not liable for anything, with the change of a word or letter from their original name. So in the end we taxpayers foot most of the bill. Actual costs come in over budget; others just are never completed.
The idea of “Think globally, Act locally” harkens back to my hippie days in the sixties. So out of date. So ignored. So vital today. I smiled upon seeing the logo displaying a red barn in the foreground and a white lighthouse in the background. We truly aren’t in the Kansas of “Wizard of Oz” days. Eliminating beef from our diet has been one step. Cheese, too? Not yet but that’s got to go too. Changes in diet seem to offer a great impact - for our own bodies and the planet. All the best, John.
You might find interesting an article some local journalists from my hometown put out about very similar water/farming dynamics.
The journalists, along with people from Pro Publica, interviewed some of the largest farming families.
If you had told me who controls the Colorado River’s water, I suppose last on my list would be some farmers in Imperial County. I suppose it’s commentary enough that these water policies have these odd knock off effects all over
Yes, the Imperial Valley is something else. Thanks for the link. It's a great article. I notice it calls out the hay, which is spot on. Both here, and in the Central Valley, it's cows that are consuming the water.
As Marc Reisner puts it the afterword to the 2017 revised edition of Cadillac Desert:
California has as a shortage of water because it has a surfeit of cows—it's really almost as simple as that.
This is so interesting, John. It seems there are some great organizations on Whidbey Island working on community farming. As you say, the examples are local but the issues are global. I live in Flagstaff, Arizona, and my son was co-owner of a local produce farm here. After several years of late freezes, droughts, wildfires, and floods, they moved to Homer, Alaska on the coast in hopes of having a more stable growing season. I don't pretend to know all the issues they dealt with, but I know they worked very, very hard and it seems that's the direction farming is heading with climate change. I am amazed by and grateful to all community farmers and their dedication. Thanks for this post and I look forward to more.
Of course! You may also call me Kate, but I know that is hard to recall when the handle doesn't match and the notifications are many! Truly, your voiceover added so much to this and I'm so grateful for it.
Thank you for listening and for more kind words. Voiceovers have been a bit of a journey. It's taken me a while to get past obsessing about sound quality and let my natural voice with its transatlantic accent come through.
Thank you for this interesting listen while I tidied up tonight. Such fascinating connections made. I have a similar itchiness around homesteading - especially because in my area it’s often tied up with religion.
I live near Lake Erie and every summer we have issues with our water because the runoff from farm fields cause toxic algae blooms in our warm, shallow lake. For the last several years we have to constantly check water quality thru summer before swimming at the beach and about 9 years ago we didn’t have clean drinking water for a few days. 🤯 It breaks my heart. Although, hearing about the thoughtful groups starting up in your community are so inspiring!
This essay by Antonia was fantastic - not surprising at all - and I finally made time to watch the Ted talk she mentioned. So important and so devastating.
i learned a lot. you mentioned: "At South Whidbey Tilth we want everyone to have access to healthy produce that is grown with respect for wildlife and our natural landscapes." - I hope eventually it will also evolve into consciously producing food that is native to the area. Native plants should also be able to thrive without needing so much artificial stuff and perhaps, less water.
Fascinating as always! Do you read Patrick Donnelly’s work? He just posted an in-depth article on a major change in Nevada water law that is going to have impacts on water rights there. Might be of interest to you.
Wonderful piece, John. I like how you connect all of the histories and the way they worked to create the realities of today. Agriculture is intertwined with so many issues, problems, and historical rights as well as food! You really bring that to light.
For all I write about water, this was the first time I'd put together that water rights are not this separate thing but are rooted in and help cement in place the injustices around land ownership. I realize now that there's no land reform without water rights reform, no land back without water back.
In part 5 of that Ghost Herd podcast https://www.kuow.org/stories/part-5-the-bidding-war, LDS eventually outbid Bill Gates and paid $209 million for the 22-thousand-acre Easterday farm. It fetched so much because it has senior rights to Columbia River water. They're essentially buying water.
I love that, John, how we're all, really, starting to see how interconnected these things are.
I've got that podcast downloaded, just need the time to listen! And yeah, LDS is one of the biggest landowners in the country and its ownership of water rights is truly daunting. No idea what it means for the future but I'm not sure it will be to the benefit of most people or the rest of surrounding ecologies.
John, I love the way you're mixing history and the present in so many of your posts. We can only have a thin grasp of the present difficulties unless we understand the specific policies and practices (like homesteading) that got us here. That gives us one place to start undoing. I look forward to hearing more about the Black Seed farm.
Thank you, Tara, I love that you picked up on that.
History was the one subject that I failed in high school, I think precisely because there was no way I could relate it to the present. It was just the dates of kings and battles, with no context about how these events changed ordinary people's lives then and to this day.
Haha! Me too! 😂😂 I dragged myself through the mandatory semester of Washington State History, learning the names and crops or industries of those white male homesteaders with no idea of the controversy or drama or my own family’s place. I became a historian by reading old magazines. They hardly age a day, except in dated hats and awful jokes.
An apt phrase! The required course was back in junior high or high school, and all the western books seemed to be designed around the color sand-parchment-dead grass brown. Maybe I was objecting to the absence of color in more ways than one.
"These factors helped Native Americans establish camas plantations here, mistaken for empty "green lawns" by early European explorers." Growing up in Oregon, it's a tragedy to me that I only learned of the vast camas fields and its significance as an adult. I dream about what they looked like, how beautiful they are when still blooming under the oaks of the WiIlamette Valley in the spring.
I loved learning about the specificity of your place, having loved that area since a child visiting for vacations there each summer. And it's truly heartening to hear of the many organizations that are working to find new ways to live with the lands and its histories, at repair and regeneration. Such a great read this morning, grateful for your work and its care. 💜
Thank you so much, Freya. 🙏
John, I found today’s well researched and well written information very helpful in understanding rights to land and water. The Navy’s presence on the north end of Whidby Island prompted thoughts on the US government’s use of Super Fund (we have the best, softest toilet paper) Sites. Too frequently the industrial polluters escape accountability through bankruptcy, re-incorporation in Texas, where hazardous industries are not liable for anything, with the change of a word or letter from their original name. So in the end we taxpayers foot most of the bill. Actual costs come in over budget; others just are never completed.
The idea of “Think globally, Act locally” harkens back to my hippie days in the sixties. So out of date. So ignored. So vital today. I smiled upon seeing the logo displaying a red barn in the foreground and a white lighthouse in the background. We truly aren’t in the Kansas of “Wizard of Oz” days. Eliminating beef from our diet has been one step. Cheese, too? Not yet but that’s got to go too. Changes in diet seem to offer a great impact - for our own bodies and the planet. All the best, John.
There's a post coming up on the Navy and PFAS probably next week!
Thanks. I’ll look for your information next week.
You might find interesting an article some local journalists from my hometown put out about very similar water/farming dynamics.
The journalists, along with people from Pro Publica, interviewed some of the largest farming families.
If you had told me who controls the Colorado River’s water, I suppose last on my list would be some farmers in Imperial County. I suppose it’s commentary enough that these water policies have these odd knock off effects all over
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2023/11/09/20-california-farm-families-use-more-colorado-river-water-than-some-states/71156386007/
Yes, the Imperial Valley is something else. Thanks for the link. It's a great article. I notice it calls out the hay, which is spot on. Both here, and in the Central Valley, it's cows that are consuming the water.
As Marc Reisner puts it the afterword to the 2017 revised edition of Cadillac Desert:
California has as a shortage of water because it has a surfeit of cows—it's really almost as simple as that.
Also this: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/california-climate/2023/12/12/californias-future-is-hanging-on-j-b-hamby-00131459
That’s an eye-opening article. Thanks for sharing.
This is so interesting, John. It seems there are some great organizations on Whidbey Island working on community farming. As you say, the examples are local but the issues are global. I live in Flagstaff, Arizona, and my son was co-owner of a local produce farm here. After several years of late freezes, droughts, wildfires, and floods, they moved to Homer, Alaska on the coast in hopes of having a more stable growing season. I don't pretend to know all the issues they dealt with, but I know they worked very, very hard and it seems that's the direction farming is heading with climate change. I am amazed by and grateful to all community farmers and their dedication. Thanks for this post and I look forward to more.
Thank you so much for reading and commenting, Cherie. Homer must be tough, but at least they have water!
Wow, I just learned so much and I thank you, John. This was an incredible read and the voice over was phenomenal.
Thank you, 15th (may I call you 15th?), for two lovely compliments.
Of course! You may also call me Kate, but I know that is hard to recall when the handle doesn't match and the notifications are many! Truly, your voiceover added so much to this and I'm so grateful for it.
I shall remember Kate. It's nice to meet you.
Thank you for listening and for more kind words. Voiceovers have been a bit of a journey. It's taken me a while to get past obsessing about sound quality and let my natural voice with its transatlantic accent come through.
Thank you for this interesting listen while I tidied up tonight. Such fascinating connections made. I have a similar itchiness around homesteading - especially because in my area it’s often tied up with religion.
I live near Lake Erie and every summer we have issues with our water because the runoff from farm fields cause toxic algae blooms in our warm, shallow lake. For the last several years we have to constantly check water quality thru summer before swimming at the beach and about 9 years ago we didn’t have clean drinking water for a few days. 🤯 It breaks my heart. Although, hearing about the thoughtful groups starting up in your community are so inspiring!
On tied up with religion, check out https://antonia.substack.com/p/the-doctrine-of-discoverys-disastrous. The religious roots are there.
And thanks for the sub, Lindsey. It's always good to connect with another soul who cares about water.
This essay by Antonia was fantastic - not surprising at all - and I finally made time to watch the Ted talk she mentioned. So important and so devastating.
Ah. I'll look for that Ted talk too.
https://greatlakes.org/2019/08/five-years-later-lessons-from-the-toledo-water-crisis/#:~:text=On%20August%202nd%2C%202014%2C%20residents,bloom%20growing%20in%20Lake%20Erie.
Thanks, and back at you with https://www.circleofblue.org which has extensive coverage of water issues in the Great Lakes region.
Thank you!!
i learned a lot. you mentioned: "At South Whidbey Tilth we want everyone to have access to healthy produce that is grown with respect for wildlife and our natural landscapes." - I hope eventually it will also evolve into consciously producing food that is native to the area. Native plants should also be able to thrive without needing so much artificial stuff and perhaps, less water.
Yes indeed. There are many native plants and many other staples sad as wheat and barely that grow well here withant irrigation.
Fascinating as always! Do you read Patrick Donnelly’s work? He just posted an in-depth article on a major change in Nevada water law that is going to have impacts on water rights there. Might be of interest to you.
Thank you, Rebecca. I had not run into Patrick. I've bookmarked that article. Sounds great.
Wonderful piece, John. I like how you connect all of the histories and the way they worked to create the realities of today. Agriculture is intertwined with so many issues, problems, and historical rights as well as food! You really bring that to light.
Thanks, Nia,
For all I write about water, this was the first time I'd put together that water rights are not this separate thing but are rooted in and help cement in place the injustices around land ownership. I realize now that there's no land reform without water rights reform, no land back without water back.
In part 5 of that Ghost Herd podcast https://www.kuow.org/stories/part-5-the-bidding-war, LDS eventually outbid Bill Gates and paid $209 million for the 22-thousand-acre Easterday farm. It fetched so much because it has senior rights to Columbia River water. They're essentially buying water.
Positively scary. What have we done?
I love that, John, how we're all, really, starting to see how interconnected these things are.
I've got that podcast downloaded, just need the time to listen! And yeah, LDS is one of the biggest landowners in the country and its ownership of water rights is truly daunting. No idea what it means for the future but I'm not sure it will be to the benefit of most people or the rest of surrounding ecologies.
This stuff is an example of system racism that's embedded so deep that even those who are attuned to it can miss it.
The water beat is taking me places I never imagined.
Very, very, VERY true.
John, I love the way you're mixing history and the present in so many of your posts. We can only have a thin grasp of the present difficulties unless we understand the specific policies and practices (like homesteading) that got us here. That gives us one place to start undoing. I look forward to hearing more about the Black Seed farm.
Thank you, Tara, I love that you picked up on that.
History was the one subject that I failed in high school, I think precisely because there was no way I could relate it to the present. It was just the dates of kings and battles, with no context about how these events changed ordinary people's lives then and to this day.
Haha! Me too! 😂😂 I dragged myself through the mandatory semester of Washington State History, learning the names and crops or industries of those white male homesteaders with no idea of the controversy or drama or my own family’s place. I became a historian by reading old magazines. They hardly age a day, except in dated hats and awful jokes.
Was that at one of those land grab universities?
An apt phrase! The required course was back in junior high or high school, and all the western books seemed to be designed around the color sand-parchment-dead grass brown. Maybe I was objecting to the absence of color in more ways than one.
All credit to High Country News for the phrase.
https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.4/indigenous-affairs-education-land-grab-universities
"Absence of color." Yes.
Thank you so much, Tamra. I'm glad you find my work useful. I'm so grateful for your support.