Victor Davis Hanson Oh, the self-delusions we buy into at the razor’s edge! (Right before my appendix ruptured in Libya, I kept telling myself that I had “torn a muscle,” nothing more.) Only the antihistamine didn’t work. Nor did I take a Zyrtec on top of it. Nor a Pepcid. (Yes, I know the venom […]
Victor Davis Hanson But no problem. At the ER, they gave me Benadryl and some tests, and I was out in a few hours. So, it would be now, too. The doctor there had said, “You have an allergy to something. And oh, by the way, you have a large kidney stone on your scan.”
Victor Davis Hanson I have lived on my farm for the most part of my 72 years. In all of them, I have lived amid pollinating orchards—plums, apricots, pears, and now almonds. These species required dozens of rented beehives at bloom. In the last few decades, perhaps the Africanized hybrid strains seem a bit more
Victor Davis Hanson The American barn was a symbol, its profile a stark reminder that rural America was healthy and raised families as well as food. The old wisdom of my grandfather echoes as the job nears completion, and I begin to get an inkling of what the finished barn will look like: “You can
Victor Davis Hanson In the end, I said “Ok, let’s do it”—just as the latest torrential storm hit (so much for the tired warning that the “drought is not over” as we receive two back-to-back near-record years of rain and snow). Over the last two weeks, all sorts of lumber and materials arrived. Manlifts were
Victor Davis Hanson So, 150 years after the barn’s birth, the last month’s California storms started to flop up the roof sheets again. In one gusty hour, I saw the roofline sway and the barn itself shake. Another far more skilled and imaginative roofer came out who two years ago had saved some of the
Victor Davis Hanson When the almond shakers and sweepers of the surrounding orchards kicked up clouds of dust the floors by this November were 3–4 inches deep in dirt. It was in theory a barn, but so perforated and porous that the inside was not much different from the world outside. About 10 years ago
Victor Davis Hanson I was told by my grandfather (1890–1976) that his grandmother Lucy Anna Davis (1832–1923) when she and her boys arrived by train here from Missouri (ca. 1870–71), bought what is now left of our present farm from the railroad (ca. $4 an acre contingent on improvements made within a set period of
Victor Davis Hanson Before the onset of American latifundia (i.e., around the rise of globalization, ca. 2000), the environs here were a patchwork of small farmers, of 40, 60, 120, or 200 acres. All were family owned and worked. Most were diverse—combining vines (raisins, table grapes, or wine) and trees (plums, nectarines, peaches, or almonds
Child’s Garden of AnimalsVictor Davis Hanson The Great Circle When I had three of my own free rangers in the early 1980s, there were even more houses on the farm, perhaps economically a bad idea to bring more of a family onto a farm without increasing its acreage. Our young triad would visit their cousins