Of late there certainly has been a lot of print delegated to how much water farmers and ranchers use to provide town folks with three meals a day.  I think my urban friends who are suffering along with those of us in agriculture in this interminable drought are beginning to be inconvenienced enough to start lashing out at the hand that feeds them.

Reading from Bloomberg Businessweek: Last year, the federal government spent $3 billion putting out fires.  This is five times as much as 20 years ago.  California expenditures have doubled since 1998 to $1.6 billion.

Have you ever wanted to tell somebody something that you thought was important but your choice of words might fall short? Well that’s where I find myself right now. Trying to create a picture in the mind of others on how Mother Nature would like us humans to care for her planet Earth.

My dad upon seeing me and seeing I was non the worse for wear started to laugh and said “welcome to starting at the bottom.” The other parents also agreed that this was a right of passage. So ended one of many fond memories at Palo Alto High School.

In my view right now and all my days to follow, the safety freaks are at work right now snuffing the very life out of common sense. Whoever said that common sense was becoming uncommon more all the time has my vote.

I believe that the spirit of this agreement should address the goals to be accomplished and the methods used to accomplish these objectives. Upon the signing of the Conservation Easement, a vacuum was created by the fact that the Varian Family L.L.C. could no longer use the sale of a portion of the ranch in order to cure economic or family difficulties.

It’s time to head back to the ranch having washed myself in the  blood of the status quo, tasted candy at almost every booth to satisfy my sweet tooth and lubricated my conscious so that I won’t squeal to the world that there may be trouble in paradise.

Elise, the Borden’s cow, was the love able cartoon mascot representing Borden’s Milk Company of a bygone era. Elise has been around longer than we humans have, but her form was very much different. I believe her counter part was Dino the Dinosaur that four-legged, affable, slow-thinking, grass-eating machine.

My mother, Winifred Varian, was a prolific letter writer. She also spent the better part of a year taking a life time of family photos, letters, and memorabilia regarding my fathers early life, his years of being a pilot for Pan American Airlines and time with his brother founding Varian Associates, in its formative years and cataloging it all into 7 albums.

We lounged around for a while while my thoughts took me to how tasty a hard boiled Easter egg would taste, and if I was home it would be the last thing I would eat. Somebody yelled, “Its time to go!”

Want to have a good life? Then own up to your mistakes and be a giving person.  If for whatever reason you happen to be already endowed with these traits, then you’re already a long way down the happiness trail. Why?  Because you now have two really big bonuses to negotiate life’s mine fields with, without getting blown up.

I now find my bank account is a light $10,000, but the good news is I now have a building permit that allows me to put 3″ pipe posts in all 109 holes and fill them with concrete.

I go now, knowing at least for the foreseeable future, that weather people (least I get labeled a sexist), and politicians won’t be apologizing for their mistakes, and I can go on sniveling about how these people don’t know as much as the Farmer’s Almanac.

I’m hoping that lightening might strike twice, and why not? First it happened to cigarettes, they went the way of Humpty Dumpty, who had a great fall; so why not Cheerios, Fruit Loops and Sugar Frosted Flakes?

This type of decision-making doesn’t lend itself well to a regulation, because so much of good ranch management is subjective. I think a better way for the water quality folks to approach their goal of quality water is not with a regulatory whip, but with an olive branch of education and patience.

This is a unique opportunity to spend a day with Jack Varian as he shares his wit and wisdom regarding innovations in cattle ranching, grasses, water and whatever else may be on his mind that day.

So if you would like to pay homage to our universal friend, come visit us in Parkfield California, Earthquake Capital Of The World pop. 18. Now equipped and as the place where a cutting edge, ground swell of gratitude is gathering steam to make toilet paper, Top of The Heap, King of the Hill.

Zee and I just returned from Paso Robles after doing some last minute shopping before we rid are selves of Old 2014. That was a dry, dry, son of a gun. Some guy, according to an article I read, said the last three years were the driest three years in the last 1200 years.