After we visited his grave, we walked over to his farm where we saw this in the parking lot. Whoo-eee. Love this car.
Yes, two great dreams were gone but Jack found his love as a farmer. He once said that he wrote books to support his love of farming. Every time he sold a book, he bought more land. When he returned from his 2-year sea adventure, he found some land north of San Francisco that he loved and bought to redeem it from the poor farming practices which had doomed it. Most farmers farmed one plot land until it was used up and then moved on - further west. But, of course the Pacific stopped this trend. Here London applied many of the farming techniques which he had learned in Korea and Japan like terracing, crop rotation and using natural manure. He wanted his farm to be productive forever. He raised many animals such as prize bulls, horses, and pigs. He built a circular piggery where 1 man could tend 200 pigs. Pretty efficient. He spent $3000 on this and everyone called him crazy and his pig sty the Pig Palace.
But it worked. Around the inside edge of each sow’s pen was a pipe. Between this wall and the pipe the little piggies could run and not be crushed by the sow. Saved many little piggies this way.
He also kept his piggery very clean and, when cholera wiped out the pigs of nearby farmers, his survived.
Here he had a bull treadmill.
'I am rebuilding worn-out hillside lands that were worked out and destroyed by our wasteful California pioneer farmers. I believe the soil is our one indestructible asset, and by green manures, nitrogen-gathering cover crops, animal manure, rotation of crops, proper tillage and draining, I am getting results which the Chinese have demonstrated for forty centuries.' ~Jack London 1915
His vineyard is still going strong.
In many cases his farming techniques, though derided by his neighbors, worked and his farm was much more productive than others. But, of course he had his failures. Some one at the University of CA told him that the wood of eucalyptus trees was hard and good for building. But, they were selling the wrong wood in CA. Unfortunately, by this time he had already bought 8000 little trees which eventually grew into a nice forest around his ranch.
We toured the farm and, as we were leaving had the great good fortune to actually see Jack and Charmian as they were lounging about the farm. What luck. Maybe we can get their autographs.
No, actually, it was a French film crew filming a story about his life. Here’s one of the crew setting up the moving camera. They were going to ride their horses by the house that Charmian is standing in front of so they needed a rolling camera.
We left with a much greater appreciation about Jack London the author, the adventurer, the farmer and the man.
On our way back we stopped for a soda: $2.89 each. Well, I guess we are in Sonoma - don’t expect things to be cheap.
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