I think everyone has a “bucket list,” you know things they
would like to do someday, long term dreams so to speak. Usually they are fun
and unnecessary things, and in the busy days of having a young family seemingly
unattainable. But sometimes we are given an opportunity to check something off
our list when we least expect it.
Since I was a little kid I have loved looking through the
farm magazines when they land on the kitchen table. Shiny new equipment,
pictures of other farms all over the world and once a year there would be
sections devoted to the World Ag Expo in Tulare, California. I went to school
on the north side of Spokane, and in many cases we farm the first fields as you
head out of town, this meant that I was pretty much the only “farm kid” in
school. (That is if you define farm kid as someone whose family actually
derives a significant portion of their income from farming, there are lots of
people who have ten acres and a horse and call themselves a farmer.) Farming is
more than a job your dad has, it is a lifestyle and that shapes your worldview,
changes what you do after school, and changes what you value in life. School
can be an isolating experience in many ways, and although I really enjoyed all
of my schooling, I did feel different, somewhat because I felt I was the only
one who had a farm background.
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| This is what I did for fun in my free time |
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| Not many kids can wore boots, hat and belt buckle to a formal dance in high school. Lucky for me Erin didn't mind. |
Every February the Spokane Ag Expo was always exciting to me
because it was a whole show full of other farmers. It was a reminder that I
wasn’t the only farmer around. After high school, going to WSU was really
great, there were a ton of other “Aggies” there, and I got to make a bunch of
new friends that also came from farm backgrounds. One of those friends was
Grant DeVries, and through college and in the years since, Erin and I have
really come to cherish our friendship with him and his wife Andrea. They have
three kids; Noah, is a year and a month older than our JJ, Lydia, who is a year
and a month younger than our JJ, and now they have Levi, who was born in
December. Having kids that are similar in ages and play really well together
makes for great times when we can make the 3 hour journey to Prosser to see
them.
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| Grant and I in our WSU days |
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| At Grant and Andrea's wedding. |
Now, back to more current events, Grant works for a company
in Prosser that builds custom orchard and vineyard sprayers. I could give you
some details, but really all you need to know is that they are really cool, and
Grant can tell you anything you need to know about them. Last year Grant’s
company decided to rent a booth at the World Ag Expo, and they had a lot of
interest. This year they wanted to take two sprayers instead of one like the
previous year. So, Grant asked Erin and me if we wanted to haul one sprayer
down and he and his family would haul the other one. Despite being in the
middle of setting up our new house, and Erin being in the 34th week of
pregnancy, and a 20hr drive to get there we jumped, okay, I jumped at the opportunity check the World
Ag Expo off my bucket list, and Erin was excited to go somewhere warm and sunny
not the grey of Spokane winter especially on a room and fuel paid vacation with
great friends.
After spending a couple weeks tuning up our ’93 Chevy with
204,000miles on it for the trip, Erin, JJ, and I loaded up and headed to
Prosser on Saturday Feb 7th. We got to Grant and Andrea’s and hooked
up the trailer and made final preparations for the journey in the morning; well
the journey in the morning, and the afternoon, and the evening, and the night,
and really, part of the next morning.
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| Ready to go |
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| Lunch break |
Sunday morning we loaded our families up and headed out for
California. We left Prosser about 8:30am, and drove down highway 97 across
central Oregon and into Cali. We stopped in Weed, Ca for dinner and it was
pouring rain. When we left Mickey D’s to continue on south on I-5 it was still
pouring rain, like really pouring rain, windshield wipers on high, 35mph on the
freeway, just following the taillights kind of rain! I have never driven in
rain like that before, and did I mention there was a high wind warning, and we
were pulling a trailer with a $40,000 sprayer on it? It was exciting to say the
least. Once we got to Sacramento it cleared up and I let Erin drive for a
couple hours. Maybe I should say, Erin let me NOT drive for a couple hours.
Over dinner we had decided to push through to a hotel in Tulare for the night,
so that we could sleep a bit and be in town to setup at the expo on Monday
morning. Despite all of our kids, who
did great, it did take us until 3:30AM to roll into bed in Tulare, CA, but it
felt great to get there.
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| Washing off the road grime |
Monday we slept in, washed the road grime off the sprayers
and headed to the show to set up the Vine Tech booth. It was simply incredible
to see the size and scale of the ag show. I have never seen so much agricultural
equipment in one place, let alone so much equipment that I had no idea how to
identify. We really were just there to set up and only got a glimpse of what we
would see over the next few days of the show. After things were all setup, we
loaded up and headed out to the vacation rental house where we were staying.
The drive from Tulare, across the central valley and up into the foothills was
pretty amazing, all kinds of orchards, dairies, vineyards, and hay fields lined
the highway as we followed truckloads of oranges. The house we stayed at was
beautiful, set up on a hill with great views and lots of space for the kids to
play. It also had a pond, a pool, a hot tub, a sport court, and a kitchen. It even had a spiral staircase and an underground tunnel to a game room. And by room I really mean a whole extra space where some other friends that now live in California, Erin, Jon and their two kiddos slept over for a couple nights of our stay.
While all of these features were great and did get used over our stay, the
kitchen was most appreciated. Andrea had planned out great meals for our stay.
After setup, the drive to the vacation house was a bit farther than we had
hoped (just over an hour) which meant that we had just enough time to unpack,
settle in a bit, eat and go to bed.
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| ORANGES! |
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| The pool and "game room" |
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| What a view! |
The next three days were filled with exploring the Ag Expo
and hanging out at the house. I don’t really have the words to describe the
expo, it was really amazing, almost overwhelmingly so. Acres and acres of
equipment, most of which was nothing we could use at home, but all very
interesting to learn what it does. I was very impressed by all the nut harvesting
equipment, shakers, tenders, and trimmers, strange looking stuff to this Washington
farm boy. Tulare is known for its dairy industry, we even drive by a Kraft
plant on the way to the show (apparently the yellow squares my wife says are not
“real” cheese, do at least come from milk), and the pavilion dedicated to
booths for dairies was huge. All the stuff was fascinating, but the most fun
part of the show was exploring with Jayney.
Here we are checking out a bunch of the show booths
She loved it, like really, really
loved it. She wanted to walk around and look at all the tractors, and climb up
in them all with me, which made my heart swell at least two sizes too big. It
was really cute. I was surprised that she cared as much as she did for a three
year old. She has questions about everything, “what does this do?”, “How does
that work,” “Is that for harvesting?” I could see here really trying to understand
and take in everything she could. She begged us not the leave every day. On Thursday
Grant and I went to the show to tear down and left Erin and Andrea with the
kids to “relax” at the house. When JJ learned that I had gone to the “tractor
show” without her she was more than a little bit heartbroken. Erin was eventually able to reminder her the house had lots of other fun and friends to distract her from her sadness, but she wasn't easily convinced that anything in the world could possibly be better than the tractor show!
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| Plus one more toddler (and baby Cora not pictured) when another couple Erin and Jon came to visit for a couple days too. |
Overall our time in California was awesome, being able to
get away from our “to do list”, see the World Ag Expo, and spend time with
friends in warm weather was very refreshing; despite the long commute from the
show to the vacation house and the fact that Tulare is 1,049 miles from home. Erin
and I are really glad we got to go on such an adventure this spring as a prologue
to our adventure of a new house as a family of four!
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| TRIP OF A LIFETIME! |
