Letters to the Editor 7-4-13

Fruit exchange
Editor: Today’s world is presented with new problems on a local and global scale that beg for creative solutions that show respect for a delicate earth while trying to preserve personal freedoms and private space.
Our family lives just outside Sebastopol in a delightful old rural subdivision. Like many of our neighbors we have converted our thirsty front lawn into a prolific fruit and vegetable garden to provide healthy organic food for our body and soul. This year has provided a bountiful fruit crop on our grouping of four different types of peaches grown together so to have a small but varied crop for our family throughout the season.
The first early peach was a yummy Golden Dust Peach. Our family was able to enjoy a few of the first peaches and froze one pack of peaches for year-round use. Yesterday however, I went to pick the bulk of the small crop of maybe 3-dozen peaches and found the tree stripped of fruit from an unknown middle-of-the-night harvester. Our dream of a full freezer of our full-bodied organic crop faded quickly.
So now I come to ponder the joys and pitfalls of a very accessible front yard garden. I admit our beautiful fruit and berries a few feet away from a fairly large daily crop of walkers and bicyclists is a big temptation indeed but a few tastes differ from the stripping of a tree of its ripe fruit.
So in an overcrowded hungry world where is a friendly neighborhood solution? Yes, I could post guard or fence in our beautiful orchard, but prefer not to take that route. Yes, I could pick fruit early and let in ripen like most tasteless supermarket fruit but refuse to do that.
On a trip last fall to Nevada City we came across a neighborhood sharing board that had 10 baskets on a piece of plywood with a sign that stated, “Exchange fruit and veggies in excess and take only what you need” In a day’s time, we saw baskets fill up and baskets empty in a delightful exchange of produce. Now there was a creative solution. In our personal situation we are not willing to give our whole small crop of prized peaches away but will have an excess of other fruits and veggies that we can’t use that would be open to exchange.
Yes our overcrowded world must find ways to share without putting up walls or high fences to shut out the world.
Tom Meyskens
Sebastopol
Vineyard moratorium
Editor: The Ag Commissioner finally placed a Stop Work order on Paul Hobbs Winery’s vineyard conversion next to Apple Blossom School and four other schools with 700 students on June 25.
This comes a month after over 100 people attended a Grange public forum, which included the Ag Commissioner, two representatives of Hobbs winery, and other government and school officials to discuss complaints by parents and neighbors about Hobbs. But the beautiful, abundant apple orchard has already been clear-cut to make way for industrial alcohol production.
The vineyard conversion had secretly been in process for months, but parents only found about it in May when hazmat suited men demolished a barn and home. The lack of transparency by government and school officials concerned parents, as did the censorship of material sent to the local daily about the matter.
Various groups — including the Watertrough Childrens’ Alliance and Apple Roots Group — have met with many officials, warning them of Hobbs well-known toxic practices and long trail of broken promises.
The grounds for the Stop Work order were two: failure to implement erosion control measures and cutting vegetation from the creek-side. One wonders how many other rules Hobbs will break, and then pay paltry fines. How long will the Stop Work order last?
As I watched soil run-off down the dirt road on a rainy June 25, my anger was replaced by sadness, as it had been when I saw the apple trees dead on their sides, all crunched up, leaving exposed, bare ground.
Hobbs claims to be a “local farmer.” He was in Asia managing his wine extensive wine empire when the Stop Work order was issued. He is neither local, nor a grower. Real farmers have our hands in dirt or on animals, which Hobbs does not. He is a bad apple who gives our grape growers, some of whom are sustainable, a bad name.
We need a moratorium on new vineyards, such as other counties have. We need legislation to protect sensitive sites, including schools, health centers, and homes for our elders. We need more protection from predatory bad neighbors.
Shepherd Bliss
Sebastopol
Historical decision
Editor: The Supreme Court has now made decisions on gay marriage. The Friday, June 28 resumption of marriage licenses in California is history.
My only question is, “Who’s going to spend the money to return the LGBT community to second class citizenship.”
The church from Utah has shifted to a “disagree but will not support” position per anti-gay marriage. Thank you. I hope and pray that no one else will support Prop 8’s unconstitutional and historically extinct ideology.
John A. McDonald
Sebastopol