Almost got blown off Highway 101 yesterday afternoon as I drove down to Pistol River from Washington. But today wandered just a bit and found mushroom heaven!
mushrooms on walking stick leaning up against cabin for the past year
I don’t know any mushrooms, except that I am learning chanterelles – my very first one picked (yes, I had someone experienced validate my find):
It is a bit mature, and rained on, but I will trim it up and dry saute it; and eat like a mountain hermit!Over Snoqualmie Pass, to Mesa, WA for Thanksgiving.
Of course we were too busy enjoying the dogs to take photos, but this afternoon both of our dogs, Philly and Mesa, tried their luck for the first time herding sheep. We found a fantastic place in Roy, WA that lets dogs of all stripes get in the ring with sheep or ducks and see what they are made of. Ewe-topia is a 10 acre farm with stock completely accustomed to dogs of all capabilities. I think the stock are really what make it a success.
Philly and I were up first. The handler coached a very positive attitude as we just pushed the sheep and worked to get Philly attentive and engaged with the sheep. She was her usual slightly reserved self – very attentive, but not sure if it was ‘alright’ to interact with the sheep. The sheep were so tame that I had to physically get my hands and knees into their wool to get them to move (there were 3 ewes) and that physicality and movement eventually encouraged Philly to circle and actually ‘push’ the ewes occasionally. One of the owners of the place that had been working on some of the lights in a next door arena paused to lean against the fence and start to ask the handler if it was Philly’s first time and provide encouragement that she looked great.
Mesa and Aamir were up next. Honestly, this was as new to Aamir as it was Mesa (he had never been so close to sheep ever before.) Mesa was interested, but those ewes were big and she has a slight fear of large creatures (dogs, horses, just about anything.) She definitely wanted to work, but didn’t find her footing as well as Philly did by the end. You can tell either dog would engage more if the sheep actually ran, but getting used to moving them at a walk is way more controlled. Mesa will get there, along with her ‘handler.’
We will definitely be back out. The literature says to expect to just work on getting engaged with sheep and paying attention and gathering by walking around the sheep in the smaller pen for maybe even months (also depends on how often we can get out there.) But Philly slept the entire drive home. So there won’t be any ‘come by’s or ‘away to me’s in the foreseeable future, but we definitely enjoyed ourselves!
As has been mentioned previously, a caretaker couple has been staying at our Oregon property this past year (they arrived from Connecticut just before Thanksgiving last year.) Mr. and Ms. Caretaker have been diligently maintaing roads (even as March’s record storms soaked the ground so much a road slipped away where no one could have stopped it),
improving and maintaining the young orchard, clearing brush, and also gardening in the greenhouse and terraced beds to feed themselves.
The big update as we enter fall is the body count from the summer battle in the Ground Squirrel War. 100+ caught and ‘relocated’ (to a neighbor’s where cats are in residence) and ~20 shot at the end of the battle by a neighbor’s friend. The battle appears to have settled for the season with no recent incursions noted.
There are approximately 5 acres of shared clear grass land in the corner of our property (it is the one property corner shared with a private owner (the other neighbors are public land or timber companies.) The roughly 3 acres on our side of the line include about 1 acre of fenced pasture (we have nothing there, a previous owner had goats), about an acre of roughly fenced orchard and chicken run, and a final acre which includes the greenhouse, the terraced garden beds (fenced to keep open range cattle out), and the steeply sloped open pasture which runs down into the neighbor’s property. In the picture, the fenced terraced garden area is just to the right of the photo and the steep sloping shared meadow is below.
Locally these natural south facing oak savannas (the ecologically appropriate description) are called prairies and not meadows as they would be further north. And this prairie has been home to a burgeoning population of ground squirrels. It is quite dangerous to walk across the slope because of the many burrow entrances and sink holes. Ms. Caretaker is an avid gardener and spent tremendous efforts in planting and nurturing her garden over the spring and summer. She is also a vegan, but officially declared the Ground Squirrel War sometime in June, when at times after working out in the garden beds, she would return to the greenhouse to find entire beds of carrots, just days from harvest, to have disappeared. The summer battle toll included many beds of carrots, broccoli seedlings, and other tender greens. The tomatoes and green beans were among the few left standing. Research indicates that ground squirrel populations can average about 100 beasts per acre, so the approximately 120 casualties of the battle will most definitely have left survivors across the 5 acres who have apparently retreated for the fall to regroup over the winter. Hopefully Ms. Caretaker will have a reprieve for the fall and winter garden before next year’s battles commence.
And the phone call in the middle of the night is from . . . Sierra Leone!
For the past 5 years I have worked as an independent international development consultant. That ‘definition’ isn’t terribly descriptive, but after working for various for-profit and non-profit agricultural development organizations for over a decade, I hung out my shingle and continued to work with those same organizations and a few others on short-term assignments as needed and contracted. These have included ones that most people will have heard of including CARE and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and a few that you may not have heard of, including ACDI/VOCA, TechnoServe (both former direct employers), Carana, and Fintrac (my current employer.) These short-term consulting assignments were each unique, working on a different objective, often in different countries (though almost exclusively in Africa), and with a different team of people and unique client requirements. It has been an amazing professional experience and I met, and collaborated with, some extremely competent professionals and business people.
Most of my assignments have somehow been related to my private sector-led development and market-focused bias. I’ve mapped industry value chains, reviewed agribusiness investment enabling environments, recommended extension and origination strategies for supply chains, and even helped to draft staple grain policy. What all of this work has had in common is my heavy reliance on consultation with a wide range of people who actually live, work, employ, and govern in each market and country. Each assignment begins with a range of meetings with key individuals including large processors, informal traders, government officials of all levels (I’ve had Permanent Secretaries on speed dial), farmers, and so many, many others. The vast majority are gracious and generous with their time and their perspectives. At times, we encounter a bit of ‘donor’ fatigue. I’ve personally experienced this a few times – a large, key business whose perspective was important for my understanding that particularly commodity market I was looking at had received a handful of consultants in the previous 3 months, all sent by the same donor; providing useful insights can actually increase the requests for meetings. This past summer two other consulting groups had been through within 2 weeks of us from another organization. We each had different mandates and areas of focus; our timing came after the others and I struggled to make a few meetings because of fatigue.
Sometimes we (consultants in international development) can take the extreme generosity from those consulted for granted. Sometimes we realize that we are prone to the same negative biases and perceptions as those less traveled and with less professional experience in these foreign cultures. Not only do we receive the same anonymous fraud emails as everyone else, but sometimes people that we have actually met and who may even be very senior government officials have their emails hacked. More than once I’ve had some fraud solicitation come from a government official that I met a couple of times and have had legitimate email exchange with. I ignore the message and a couple of days later comes the apologetic email stating the originator’s email had been hacked. Also, surrounding the donor community are many who actually do try to get something for nothing and take advantage of the system.
So yesterday, my phone rang from Sierra Leone. In 2009, I did a short-term assignment there looking at the table egg industry. I hadn’t heard from that work since. As I was saying, so yesterday I get a phone call from Sierra Leone. The connection wasn’t the best and the gentleman had a very strong accent. He finally communicated his name, that he had sent me a proposal via mail, though he wasn’t sure if I had received it, and would I please phone him the following day as he was running out of phone credit. I honestly wasn’t sure if I would or not. It sounded rather sketchy. While I was in Sierra Leone 3 years ago, I couldn’t really understand this gentleman over the phone. And let’s face it, after that long . . . he wanted something.
I missed the call that came at 3:30am (I don’t typically answer the phone at that hour regardless – I can sleep through just about anything.) I saw the call when I checked my phone in the morning, and just went about my day. Another call came while I was walking the dogs later that morning. I didn’t pick it up. It rang again. I picked it up. The gentleman again asked if I could call him back as he really would like to speak with me. I assured him that I would once I returned to the house. At this point I actually meant it and I did phone him back. Somewhere along the morning, and actually in that moment of answering the second call, I remembered the incredible generosity of time and attention that I’ve received over the years as a consultant and recognized that I owe it to the gentleman. I did phone him back, though the conversation was a bit labored (honestly, I do better with strong accents in person.) I committed to giving him some of my time and attention for a proposal he has been working on and would like some of my input. It was a fantastic reminder of how much I have enjoyed these rather successful 5 years of consulting and how much of that depended on the generosity of others.
I’ve been in Washington, DC a few days for work. It is rather different after nearly 13 years of living in the suburbs of DC (first Maryland and then Virginia) to be staying right downtown, walking distance to so much.
There are many wonderful places in the city; and many of the ones that immediately come to mind as interesting or unique are actually places best reached by car. These include the view from the Frederick Douglass House, the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, the many county owned historic properties in Prince George’s County . . .
This past weekend, I did visit a favorite place on the National Mall – the Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Institution. These museums of asian art are often less crowded, quiet, and always with interesting and calming exhibits. The exhibit ‘Nomads and Networks: the Ancient Art and Culture of Kazakhstan’ displayed beautiful and refined ornaments from horse tack (and other cultural relics) dating to the hundreds of years BCE. I’m looking forward to an upcoming exhibit entitled: ‘Roads of Arabia: Archaeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’ which opens November 17th. The photo above is of one of the lifesize Japanese wood statues gracing opposing ends of a main hallway in the Freer Gallery – now if only they had replicas of those in the gift shop . . . I would definitely want to take one of him home in my suitcase!
I’m going to do a post about what I actually do for a living; BUT this isn’t that post. In the broadest sense I work in the field of international development. I have had the pleasure of traveling and working in many diverse developing countries, though the past decade has largely been Africa.
My friends and colleagues that I’ve worked closely with know that I often jokingly say that “I don’t really care about women and children.” The development community over the period of my professional career has correctly focused increasing resources and rhetoric towards empowering women in the varied facets of their lives – including governance, economics and livelihoods, health, education, and sanitation. My joking (read: inappropriate sarcasm) comments about comes from my experiences with many misguided programs or ‘gender specialists’ that have forgotten that there are actually two genders. Specialized professionals with deep expertise in understanding gender dynamics and implications for development, and whom I respect greatly, agree that a nuanced understanding of the gender context with complimentary interventions for the diverse individuals within a community, agricultural value chain, or whatever target underprivileged population are necessary for successful outcomes.
This is probably all ‘development insider speak’ for people not in development – but this is all to say that while I can be a bit negative and sarcastic about ‘gender in development’ because of all of the abuses I’ve seen perpetrated in the guise of empowerment . . . I actually do subscribe to the need to really analyze and understand the social dynamics and cultural context for development programs to deliver on their objectives – everyone, regardless of gender, should have the right to improve their standard of living and opportunities . . .sort of my free market/libertarian tendencies!
So – I’m looking forward to watching the upcoming PBS special – Half the Sky. It is a four hour program premiering October 1 & 2. From the website:
Filmed in 10 countries, the series follows Nicholas Kristof and celebrity activists America Ferrera, Diane Lane, Eva Mendes, Meg Ryan, Gabrielle Union and Olivia Wilde on a journey to tell the stories of inspiring, courageous individuals. Across the globe oppression is being confronted, and real meaningful solutions are being fashioned through health care, education, and economic empowerment for women and girls.
I’m hoping that the film also recognizes and celebrates the role men have to play in empowering women (and women’s role as societal partners with the other gender.) I do know good work is happening and will try to be slightly less sarcastic about gender in the future . . . (okay, that might be a stretch!)
