The crap shoot

Author: admin

One of the best teachings during my long-ago childhood was “count the day lost you don’t learn something new.”

We live in the heart of Oregon wine country.  North, South, East and West.  We are surrounded by row upon row upon row of vines.  And, tasting rooms.  It’s a wine lover’s paradise.  Pinot Noir is the single largest product flowing from the neatly kept fields.  It’s the life “blood” of our community.

But, not all is “peace and quiet” in our lush valley.  Several large legal cases have been filed in multiple counties, charging smoke from wildfires a few years ago ruined both grapes and the wine made from them.  Smoke.  See?  You learned something new.

The villain, if there is one, is Pacific Corp.  Apparently, several years ago, some power lines touched during high winds and set off large fires.  Other utilities turned off power transmission during those storms.  Pacific Corp. did not.  So, there are multiple lawsuits.

It’s the vintners alleging fires tainted crops and the resulting wine was ruined by smoke.  They claim at least a year’s worth of lost production and sales.  And, they’re looking at Pacific Corp to “make them well.”  Pay for the “damages” as it were.  We’ll see.

When I was a kid, we lived on a very large apple ranch in the Wenatchee Valley of Washington State.  We had wildfires.  We had floods.  We had record freezes.  In the ’40’s, we had several years of back-to-back freezes.

But, whatever the disaster – and there were some – nobody looked to the government or any other entity to “make ’em well.”  That’s just the way things were.  You either replanted and carried on or you went to work for your neighbor.

Basically, if you were a fruit rancher, it was a crap shoot.  You did the best to care for your trees – apple, cherry, cots or peach – and you took your chances.

For me, that was more than 75 years ago.  I remember, back then, we had a stretch of back-to-back late freezes that wiped out everything. But, the crap shoot continues to this day.

As you drive around our upper Willamette Valley, everything looks just like it’s supposed to.  Long lines of vines, neatly spaced, carefully trimmed and well-tended.

But, each day, there could be a wildfire, or some other “act of nature” and growers would be back to “square one.”  Oh, there are a few owners who are “well-heeled” and have big pockets.  They could “take the hit” and start over.  But, there aren’t many.

That’s the way it is.  We consumers shop at the store, we buy the fruit or the wines and we don’t give it a second thought.  We don’t because, whatever we’re shopping for, it’s always there.

We don’t think about freezes or long stretches of bad weather or smoke from wildfires.  Everything’s just “always there.”

It’ll be interesting to see the current legal effort works out.  Crap shoot.  We’ll keep you posted.

 

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