Spider Season

I’ve learned that there are many more seasons than the four we usually think of. There’s the rain season and the fire season and there is also the spider season. In mid-July to early August spiders the size of quarters with bulging bodies show up in the orchard. In the early evening they jump from one row of trees to the next, twelve to fifteen feet, throwing their silk thread behind them to connect two facing trees. They then weave their webs in the center of the alley. They can finish an eighteen inch web in a few minutes.

Then they sit and wait for a victim to blow by.

I leave nature alone as much as I can. But I don’t like it when a spider falls down my shirt. So this time of year when I walk in the orchard I arm myself with a spider stick. The best ones are about four feet long. If the spider’s anchor line is over my head I pass under it with no trouble to the spider. If it is lower I have no choice but to break through. The line clings to the spider stick and I fling it and the spider back into the trees. This works fine as long as I see the web.

The trouble with the spiders usually comes at night when I ride my John Deere Gator out in the orchard to check on irrigation. I drive with a spider stick in my right hand and watch for the webs beyond the headlights. Silvery web after silvery web cross my path. I steer around as many as possible and use the stick on the others. Nevertheless stringy sticky spider silk smashes me in the face and I bat at my head and frantically brush off my clothes hoping to shed a spider that may or may not be there.

The spiders are gone by mid September, victims of the necessity of dealing with bud mite, thrips and other harmful organisms. I know they will return. In their season.

Time to Go?

I’ve read that the majority of family farms are run by women. I’m one of them. I didn’t choose it but this is what I do. I worry about the weather: cold, wind and rain. I kill weeds and gophers and fungus and mites. I irrigate and throw snail bait. I didn’t learn this at law school.

Twenty years ago I gave up practicing law and my husband and I bought the lemon and avocado ranch sixty miles up the coast from Los Angeles. We worked the ranch side by side until he got sick and I gradually started doing more and more. For the last almost eight years I have run it alone. Most of the time I have help with the day-to-day labor, but sometimes I have done it all for months while I looked for new help. I’ve learned an odd assortment of skills, like how to repair pvc and set a gopher trap. I know what an “easyout” is and how to use it.

I have several thousand lemon trees who depend on me to feed and water them, to keep them free of disease and to keep them warm in the winter. If I do it right they will reward me with about the same income an experienced grocery clerk earns in a year, sometimes more, sometimes less.

The trees are getting old. Some are over fifty. They are beginning to die, more each year. They should be replaced, but replanting or changing to another crop is a complicated, laborious and risky thing to do. I doubt that I have the stamina for it.

Perhaps it is time to leave and let someone else live this dream.

But the thing about farming is that a farm is both business and home. I may be ready to give up the work, but I would lose forever the first ray of sunlight on the tips of the lemon tree that I see in the early morning from my bedroom window; the sweet smell of damp earth; the tiny new purple leaves that gradually turn lime then dark green; the roaring hum of the bees as they invade the blossoms; the spiders who throw their stringy webs from tree to tree and hit me in the face if I’m not watching.

I look out my window and see green in all directions. No streets, no cars, no houses, only green and the mountains above. I hear the cry of the hawks in the spring and watch the baby rabbits nibble at my garden. Bats fly their loops over my lawn just before final darkness. Four species of hummingbirds force me to fill the feeders twice a day in the spring. The air is rich with the scent of citrus and the ocean breezes bring mixed fragrances from the flower fields next door.

These gifts are too great to willingly forfeit.

I can’t go.

Not yet.

Some regional terminology

Around here a place like mine is called a ranch. A farm is where row crops (lettuce, onions, strawberries) are grown. Tree crops grow on ranches. I am called a grower, not a farmer. But somehow this still grates against my Texas upbringing where ranch only means cattle, sheep, horses. So I have named these writings “Susan’s Farm” in deference to all of you who believe that all vegetative crops grow on farms.