Oshala Farm

09/30/2026

The Season of Night

Juni pulls against the leash as soon as the door is open, yanking me out of the house one last time before bed. As I stumble down the stairs behind her I'm startled by the clear sky. The clearest night in weeks, and no moon. As the glow of day fades on the horizon, the stars are already bright against the purple behind them. I've been wanting to capture the echinacea at night all summer, imagining it in full bloom beneath the Milky Way. But since the fire, I haven't picked up my camera, whether from lack of time or the crushing of my spirit.

Recognizing my chance, I know the field of first-year echinacea is in full flower, while the second-year field has already crossed over to seed. The flower heads have long dropped their petals, leaving only spiky balls of dry seed, the plants now storing their energy in their roots. This is my last opportunity this year to capture it, and the conditions are lining up perfectly. I step inside and collect my camera gear. Quietly, almost whispering, I tell Elise my plan — as if not to allow the stars or flowers to hear.

In the middle of the echinacea field, the flowers gently swaying around my waist, I work in silence. I set up the tripod between two rows, working through the ISO, f-stop, and finally shutter speed, focusing on the specifics of the task. The silence is overwhelmingly loud — crickets and frogs in a chorus of song that's hard to discern one from the other, a wall of silence.

Only the sound of my camera pierces the night. The shutter opening to the sky is startlingly loud in moments like these. The first shots come in — small adjustments to the focus, the framing, the light on the echinacea and how it hits the lens, the stars peering out of the darkness overhead.

Suddenly, almost against my will, my arms shoot overhead, as if my body reacted without my mind. Wind hits my hair as a white ghost seems to fly within inches of my head. A giant white flash rushes from behind me, disappearing into the blackness of the night above me.

Again, out of the darkness the white emerges mere feet from my head, its wings outstretched, pure white — my brain tells me it is a giant white heron. It pulls up just short of my head, bolting silently into the sky. As it turns, wings stretched wide through the stars, I see it clearly for the first time — it is an owl. As it crests the hill, its wings dislodge the stars, sending them like Van Gogh's Starry Night cascading off the tips of its wings with each silent beat. Not a sound as it disappears again into the darkness of night beyond the Milky Way.

I go down into the flowers on instinct, camera forgotten, heart going. When I look up there's nothing. Just stars.

It comes again before I've caught my breath. And again. I'm moving now, weaving through the echinacea toward the truck with my arms locked over my head, and every few steps the air moves again, that same silent drop out of the dark, close enough to feel, never once touching skin. The echinacea flowers whip against me as I retreat across the field.

My eyes have now fully adjusted from the camera to the darkness as I track my attacker while I retreat. It continues to dive upon my head, only at the last second shooting back into the stars with a mere change of its wings. It works me in figure eights from above, slicing infinity symbols in the sky.

I hesitate to shine the light on it. Somehow even in this moment it seems a deep betrayal to this messenger of the night. But after the eleventh pass, mid-turn, about to come at me again, I finally pull the headlamp from my pocket. Light punctures the blackness in a tight shaft, striking the bird square in the chest. I feel its disgust through the night air. The light, however, works like magic. The owl disappears just as quickly as it had appeared, leaving nothing but darkness, the vast expanse of the field around me, and the stars overhead. The silence has never been broken except within my own head.

My mind is racing for some understanding of what just happened. My blond hair — Elise says now gray!! — must have looked like a scrumptious white rabbit in the night. But the owl never made contact. Its trident of talons extended toward my head as it approached at full speed, every time, and every time it pulled up short. As I return to my camera, I keep looking over my shoulder. Whatever sense of safety I had, now shattered.

Certainly, if it had wanted my head, it would have taken it in the first pass, sinking its claws into my skull. From the darkness it came and into the darkness it disappeared again. Looking into the distance from where it came, the silhouettes of the white oaks seemed to glimmer silver in the blackness along the edge of the field, Grandmother White Oaks. Walking briskly back to the camera, I see Grandfather Black Oaks in the distance surrounding the house. I take one last shot as I gather my gear, the clicks of the shutter cutting through the night. I pull the hood of my black sweatshirt up over my head, picking my way through the waist-high flowers toward my truck on the field road. No — this felt more like a warning from the elders that watch over this place.

A couple days later, Juniper and I find ourselves walking the field roads right alongside the echinacea. As my mind wanders back to the experience a few nights before, Juni roots around along the edge of the field road where it disappears into wild space and then forest. She is a tireless gopher chaser, her body lost in the brambles, only the swaying weeds giving away her location. I whistle for Juni as I turn back towards the house but she is slow to follow. I find myself trying to understand what happened that night, but maybe I'm attaching meaning where I shouldn't. I don't know if the owl was the guard or just the messenger. What I know is that it didn't want me there, and it made sure I was aware of it without ever laying a talon on me. Juniper finally lumbers out of the understory, her tail wagging heroically, nearly throwing her off course, dragging a fresh deer leg.

Two weeks have passed since that night in the field. Juni and I walk outside before bed. The full moon has just risen over the hills, shooting long rays of white light from the bottom of its circle, beaming towards my chest. Juniper pulls on the leash but I pull back, watching and wondering if it means some change in the weather is coming. Fall is here, the equinox having already passed a few days ago, but the signs are clear. The dew on the plants hangs long in the morning, the pants of the crew wet from the knee down as we work through the fields. The black walnut has turned from green to yellow, and sister oak, the shapeshifter, has changed its leaves of three from green to crimson red, and now they are just barren sticks in the underbrush beneath the oaks along the field edges.

In the distance, a great horned owl is vocalizing to others, its guttural bark unlike any other bird or owl even — not a hoot but a cry, the female calling into the night: "aaahhn, aahhn," almost like a fox. Suddenly, from above us, another giant horned owl — the one that hangs out in the dead spruce outside the back window every night — drops down, swooping low directly over Juni and me, floating silently on gliding wings, landing in the pear tree on the other side of the yard, heavily weighed down with ripe fruit. The only sound is two pears falling in light thuds on the ground below.

As I lie in bed the owl begins its call outside our open bedroom window, and it makes me realize it is there most every night while we sleep.

The roots are ready for harvest. Tomorrow we start digging.

09/26/2026

We had the honor of sharing our story on stage at the AHPA Botanical Congress this month — where we came from, and what it takes to grow herbs at this scale, season after season.

SupplySide Supplement Journal wrote a beautiful piece about our panel and the risks herb farmers carry every step of the way. Grateful doesn't begin to cover it.

Read the full article here: https://www.supplysidesj.com/herbs-botanicals/from-plot-to-pill-herb-farmers-share-environmental-and-political-concerns-at-botanical-congress

American Herbal Products Association - AHPA

🌿

Growers assume financial risk from planting to delivery while navigating water rights, equipment needs and labor challenges.

09/10/2026

Excited to be joining fellow farmers and herbal friends next week in Portland. Look forward to seeing you there. Sold out!

09/01/2026

Days are getting shorter, cutting into our mornings and pushing us to start the crew half an hour later, yet I was awoken with the sound of vehicles on the road. A deep rumbling that seemed to send vibrations into my dreams, lumbering down our private road and turning into the wrong driveway, the one leading to the house rather than the field. The drill rig had made the wrong turn and pinned itself in the driveway between the woven willow fence leading to the house.

Monday mornings on the farm often explode with life and activity, and this one more than usual. As I rushed to my boots to help with the line of trucks that had followed, somehow they managed to pull the sharp turn leading from the house to the field without me. By the time I stumbled out the front door, pulling the back of my Chelsea-style boots over my heels to the protest of my feet, seemingly revolting from the ensuing day, while fumbling with the side that the pull tab broke off. My feet making contact with the inserts of my shoes as they hit the ground, I'm left seeing the last of the red lights drop down into the field behind the blackberry hedge. The chill that hit me reminds me that September is days from banging on our door, and drives me back into the mudroom for a sweatshirt to cut the edge off the morning.

I wasn't patient enough to wait for the glow plugs to finish their thing before I fired up the truck to follow them out to the spot Ed Ownbey had marked last Thursday. Parking, the drill rig had already pulled into place and deployed the boom to its upright position. As the first light began to change the hue around us from black to purple and then blue, the rig fired up just as the headlights from the farm crew turned into the employee parking area, letting out an initial release of diesel exhaust into the air, as the metal shaft touched the ground and sent a few rocks strewn across the surface tumbling.

Drilling a well is a special type of joy, pain and indecision. The price to drill a well is per foot, so as the drill twists into the ground your bill continues to go up, and going deeper doesn't always equate to more water, but it certainly can. It's a type of gambling, much like farming can be, with tangible results if all goes well, but a lot of risk and certainly no guarantees.

As the drill works through sections of drill pipe, they add sections of liner and metal well casing, driving it deep into the ground. Within 40' we started seeing signs of water. Small amounts at first; we had anticipated needing to go 80-120' deep to hit real, significant water. The team of 3 worked efficiently, drilling a section, bringing the next section of metal casing into place and welding it onto the piece below it before driving it deeper into the earth where the drill had opened space for it to live. At 120' we had 20 gallons per minute. The well drillers were happy, and to some degree so was I, as we have 3 other wells on this property that together add up to about 5 gpm. Although it was the low end of Ed's anticipated flow rate, it would still be a good well for the neighborhood. Talking to the team at Applegate Well Drilling, we decided we would go another 30' or so for extra storage capacity in the well.

It took three rings for him to pick up. "Good morning Ed, it's Jeff at Oshala, we hit 45 gallons per minute! At 140' we tapped into another large section of water, releasing a steady flow of clean, clear water, with Total Dissolved Solids of 107." That is 2,700 gallons per hour, 64,800 gallons per day of water. Ed expressed that he had been hoping for more but he was happy. He also had seen my story and was moved. We discussed him teaching a class at Oshala Farm in the near future and he said he would absolutely be delighted.

Wednesday afternoons is Applegate Valley Farmer's Market and though often we are too tired or still too busy to make it, we found ourselves on the grass with neighbors and fellow farmers from across the valley. As the community danced barefoot along the banks of the river, the band kept time, and the children laughed and chased each other amongst their parents swaying and grooving to the music. My leg has been going numb if I stand still too long these days and I shift my weight and head to an empty bench to release some of what I've been carrying. Looking at the dance floor I see the signs were all too clear — sore backs, busted shoulders, wrist braces in place, the repetitiveness of our industry taking its toll on one body at a time.

This time of year is known as Angry August amongst farmers. A time of year where the injuries and pains have started adding up to the point where the struggle through the day to day is all too in your face, the end of the season is still too far away to get excited about and help you through the endless lists of tasks, and when the work is often too hot, or too smoky and often too heavy to always find enjoyable. It is a time of year when on every farm crew things start to break down, bodies are worn and patience starts to fray in the best of times.

Managing a season is like running a marathon, and as farm owners we are trying to get a whole squad across the finish line. Luckily, as a team, we can play off each other. Some pushing out front, others drafting.

Like any endurance race, typically you try to work a little less in the third quarter of the race so you have the juice you need to finish out strong. Normally we try to have a slight downturn in harvests at the end of August to allow the crew some rest before the heavy lifting of the root season. This year, with the loss of all our inventory to the fire, we are out harvesting as much as ever, doing our best to catch every little harvest possible to build up inventory before the window of the season closes.

Our crew has seen many Augusts before, and though this one is proving particularly challenging at the moment, we all know the season is closing in — the signs are here. As we headed into the weekend we breathed more and held gratitude and patience for each other. I knew what we needed more than anything was a good weekend for everyone to reset and rest.

Sundays are the farmer's day, the day most likely we have the farm completely to ourselves. Sitting on the back patio with our dog Juniper, I drink in the morning. My relationship with farming comes from the lens of an observer as much as a doer, and mornings like these are rich in observation. Without the background noise of a tractor, or the distraction of crew, the farm settles into a silence that allows the farmer to listen, to see, to feel. The silence is often overwhelming. The Goldfinches have arrived by the tens of thousands, their cheerful peeps carrying on the morning breeze. The Oregon Myrtle, which would have been known as a California Bay a mere 7 miles to the south, was alive with their song, though for the most part the thick green leaves were hiding them in the thick interior.

The Crows have left for the time being. They arrive on the wings of the cherry harvest, announcing the ripening of the first fruit in the high branches facing southwest. By the time the plums have fallen, the Crows have left, until the wild grapes come ripe along the river, and typically with them the Lazuli Buntings, who have finished their breeding season in the brush and brambles, their brilliant blue reflected in their song now gone.

Suddenly, an explosion rises off the echinacea purpurea field, where thousands upon thousands of Goldfinch take flight at once, forming a cloud of birds that reminds me of schooling fish in the ocean creating a bait ball and then forming out of it in a spiral, as if mimicking a tornado of wings and wind, before spilling out the top to redistribute over the field of echinacea once again. The first seed must be coming ripe in the echinacea, making a mental note to schedule the seed harvest.

In 2014 we did a Kickstarter campaign to build our first drying barn. We were trying to raise $50,000 to turn an existing hay barn into a 3-bay dryer barn. Many, many people contributed to that campaign, including a woman we didn't know named Patti. At the last minute we were $10,000 short on our campaign, and Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing fundraiser — if you don't hit your goal, you don't get anything. We were stressing, and more importantly as the clock was winding down, we were coming up short. Suddenly, from across the country, a donation came in from someone we didn't know, and to this day, she continues to be a north star for us as an example of selflessness and philanthropy.

On Thursday at 6 am the first of the concrete began to pour. We had slightly widened and lengthened the slab that was left from what we have always called Patti's Dryer. Five trucks later, we had a beautiful new concrete slab where the old one had sat, pockmarked with holes where the concrete had heated up and caused spalling, as moisture pulls from the concrete and causes the surface to pop, reducing the integrity of it. Where once stood this dryer will now stand a new processing barn, where we can do destemming, as well as cutting and sifting of our herbs. A new destemming machine is en route from Serbia and will need a home when it arrives — we've already located and purchased a cutter and a sifter to replace the ones we had, both one size larger to accommodate our growing farm, not just replace what we lost. Patti's Barn will be the first of many buildings we will be building over the coming months and years.

The framers/carpenters are lined up to start construction this coming week. Within the next few weeks this building will come from idea to completion, in time for the equipment to land safely in its new home, which couldn't be soon enough. We have been super busy harvesting, but so much of what we sell needs to be further worked — removing leaf from stem, or cutting roots to a more manageable size for our clients' needs. Our temporary storage space is filling fast.

The first of the dragonflies have begun to arrive. Not in huge numbers, but they are starting to come nonetheless, feasting on the minutiae of small lives that have exploded from the fields these late summer afternoons, as the sun sets and the heat coming off the field sends them cascading into the sky in clouds above the farm, dancing clouds, and the dragonflies swooping through like fighter jets, and soon after them the swallows too, both feasting on the glut of late summer.

As Sunday morning turns into Sunday day and then afternoon, the text messages start coming in. The crew checking on any changes in plans, making sure I have moved the equipment they need to hit the ground running tomorrow. Sounds like they got some rest this weekend, or maybe they too just know that the season is closing in on us and there is still a long list of harvests ahead. This week more yarrow, motherwort, calendula, catnip, skullcap, nettle seed, lemon balm, anise hyssop and mullein leaf. As Elise and I walk out to the field as the sun begins to set, Juniper underfoot, the birds take flight as we approach — oh yes, the echinacea seed as well!

At the door to Patti's Dryer there hung a plaque with a quote:

"To forget how to dig the earth
and to tend the soil
is to forget ourselves." - Gandhi

https://oshalafarm.com/dirt-on-the-farm-angry-august/

09/01/2026

Published In The Applegater Fall 2026 Issue that came out this week, a thank you specifically for our community here in Southern Oregon:

Thank You, Applegate Valley

The last of our crew was clocking out for the day when a loud “poof” caught everyone’s attention. Looking up, we could already see white smoke curling from the barn’s clearstory. Within seconds, it was replaced by flame.

It’s hard to believe how difficult it is to dial 911 in a moment like that. 9112. 912. 9111. Finally: “We have a serious fire on our hands, a massive structure fire on a large barn. Send everyone you can.”

We’d later learn, confirmed independently by the state fire marshal’s team and our insurance company’s investigator, that the fire was accidental, sparked by an extension cord plugged into a scale. A piece of equipment we’d used a thousand times, on a day like any other.

We had twelve fire extinguishers mounted to that building. It didn’t matter. The speed and ferocity of the fire were beyond anything we could fight with what we had on hand. Crew members ran to move tractors and forklifts parked alongside the barn. Others sprinted to isolate the irrigation lines so we could put one hundred percent of our water where it counted. We laid handline, brought in the big irrigation cannons, and did everything we could to hold the flames back. The heat was unlike anything any of us had ever felt.

It felt like forever, but firefighters arrived within seven minutes of our call. Applegate Fire led the response, joined quickly by Williams Fire and crews from around the region. They faced flames reaching sixty feet into the air and deployed anyway. Neighboring buildings began to catch, not from flame, but from radiant heat alone.

They fought through a gauntlet most people never have to think about: power poles catching fire and dropping live lines between firefighters and the buildings, propane tanks near the forklifts and our employee lunch area heating past their limit and exploding, throwing flame onto additional structures.

Finally, the fire reached our fuel tanks, sending what looked like a hundred foot flamethrower into the sky as it burned through them. When the old pine trees at the edge of our property caught fire, we started to really fear it would spread to our neighbors. It was extreme fire season, hot, dry, windy, our normal afternoon breeze fueling the flames like a blow dryer.

One of the first to arrive weren’t firefighters at all. A few guys from Anderson Rock & Dirt happened to be driving by with a water trailer hitched to their truck, and they used whatever means they had at hand, hose from our well water at first, until the power cut off our well and irrigation pump, then kept fighting with fire extinguishers, saving our old barn again and again as its eaves caught fire and sent flame into the shake roof underneath the metal. They fought until there was nothing left to fight, and then, just as fast as they’d appeared, they were gone. Heroes, through and through.

Somewhere in the middle of it, sprinting around trying to help with whatever I could, I started seeing my neighbors’ faces. Word had spread, and people dropped everything and came. By the time the flames were out and the ashes were smoldering, the community was already showing up in ways we couldn’t have imagined.

We had a crew to attend to. Many of our team have worked with us more than a decade, and dozens of families depend on this work for their mortgage, their rent, food on the table. That morning, looking into the fear on our staff’s faces, Elise and I faced one of the hardest moments of our lives, wishing we could promise them it would be okay when we hadn’t even processed our own loss. We are very proud to say our team has not missed a single day of work since.

Help came fast, and it came from everywhere. Neighbors offered barn space, cold storage, and equipment, along with tools to help replace some of what we lost, including hoes for the crew. Several neighbors built us a large rack dryer so we could get back to harvesting. People arrived with food, hugs, and condolences. A GoFundMe went up, and the response was overwhelming. The Lindsay Lodge organized a raffle with over forty local businesses donating, alongside an unforgettable burger day at the farmer’s market. Other farmers gave space, labor, even their own market earnings. Teachers offered classes. Musicians like Alice DiMichele raised funds at the Green Show at OSF. A local artist made “Support Your Local Herb Dealer” stickers that were, frankly, awesome.

More than anything, you shared our story far and wide. At a time when we could barely articulate our own needs, our community spoke for us. We moved to this valley in 2013 because we believed a place like this was best equipped to survive tragedy together. It has humbled us ever since.

We also want to thank Sara Katz and Ed Smith, who founded Herb Pharm here and helped build an industry that now looks to this valley as a standard bearer, and Mark Wheeler, founder of Pacific Botanicals and one of the most influential people in Oshala’s history, who showed up for us personally in the days after the fire, just like he always has. Between them and neighbors like Banyan Botanicals and Strictly Medicinal Seeds, this narrow valley holds some of the most respected names in herbal products on earth.

Rebuilding barns, coolers, a mechanic shop, everything it takes years to build the first time, is not a season’s work. It’s a long row to hoe, and we know we’ll be walking it for years yet. What you’ve done for us hasn’t been the finish line. It’s the reason we can keep walking it at all.

There is magic in this valley, and the community is what makes it work. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for everything.

With love and gratitude,
Jeff, Elise and the entire Oshala Farm team

08/22/2026

He drew a satchel from the backseat of the vehicle, a well worn backpack, a bouquet of leaves billowing from its unzipped top. He rummaged through the leaves pulling out a forked stick of green cottonwood. At 83, Ed Ownbey is now a full-time caretaker of his wife, though today he was able to get his daughter to help so he could come do what he has done for more than 50 years. His eyes fixed on the horizon as I began to explain my hopes for the day, to find water.

I explained how the fire had wiped out our barns, how our root washing equipment had been damaged, and how the power infrastructure had been destroyed to power our wash line. The conveyors, barrels, tanks, and sprayers lined out before him now, having been moved to this new location. Power will come in from here and go to there, I said, the dryers will be here.... I'm hoping to place the wash line over here.... but we need water.

At 83 years old, Ed is one, if not the last, traditional well dowser in Southern Oregon. As I talked and pointed he drank in the property, his eyes glassy, like my grandfather's had been. Moist with age and cataracts, tired from a life of watching.

"The water travels in channels at 45 degrees to the river, flowing back not just to the Applegate River but to the Rogue. Do you see the trees there along the property line, notice the blue hint in the leaves of that large white oak and the two firs and the tall ponderosa there in line with it? Now follow that line back towards the river, look how it corresponds with large oaks, fir and ponderosa leading all the way to the river, notice how much bluer they are compared to the ponderosas just to their right?" Yes, I had noticed, which is why I parked where I did. I thought the water was up near those trees, but it is a bit far from the wash line, but Ed was showing me the pathway of the water, the veins of water moving through the earth.

What Ed does has been called different things depending on who's telling it and when. In parts of the rural South and Appalachia, it's water witching — a name that leans into the uncanny, the sense that some people are simply born with a sensitivity the rest of us don't have. Miners in 16th-century Germany called it divining, working divining rods to find veins of ore the same way Ed reads veins of water, a practice old enough to be written about, skeptically, in mining texts nearly five hundred years ago. The word we use now, dowsing, is the newer one — plainer, more technical-sounding, the word that survived into dictionaries and scientific studies while the others faded into folklore. But the names change more than the practice does. Long before soil reports and drill logs, someone in every generation has walked a property with a forked branch, reading water the way Ed reads it — in the blue cast of a leaf, in the twitch of a green stick — and calling it whatever their place and time called it.

He claimed he needed his walking stick, his footing unsure at this point, though it never touched the ground, rather firmly tucked under his arm.

Last night, after his wife had fallen asleep, Ed had slipped out of the house with the same walking stick and a pair of shears. Under cover of darkness he worked his way down towards the creek behind his house on the edge of town. As the dry grass turned moist along the stream bank, the rubber tip on the end of his gnarled walking stick began to leave small triple-ringed marks where he leaned on it heavily, as the grade changed abruptly on the edge of the creek where the cottonwoods had grown both large and dense. The moon was reaching its halfway point, lighting his work. He selected his branches amongst the smaller saplings in the understory, working out the leaders to where they jutted with new growth and cutting them below the fork and tucking them stem side down into his bag. When he had collected enough, he made his way up the muddy bank, leaving his three-legged tracks next to the does who had been there drinking a few hours before.

Taking the main lead in his right hand palm up, he twisted the side branch as he rotated his left hand up towards the sky as well, thumbs out, the pressure causing the forked branch to stick straight out at attention.

The stick does different things for different people, he explains. "For me, when the water is moving with good flow the stick starts to bounce. The more it bounces the more water." Slowly he works his way towards the hidden watercourse he had visualized from his reading of the trees, working perpendicular to where he believed the water would be. The stick was twitching as he walked, like the tip of a fishing rod that is being struck by the fish testing the bait below, small little bites, but like a seasoned angler Ed knew it wasn't yet time to set the hook.

As we approached where we had thought we would find water, the stick went still, not a movement. Ed was surprised, we kept on our path, working perpendicular along our anticipated line. Suddenly the stick began hopping madly. "Here is our main lateral," he explained, turning to follow the vein of water, his stick bouncing as he walked, stopping every few steps to readjust the stick in his hand because the hopping was causing the stick to slide in his firmly gripped hands. Suddenly the stick began moving even more, as he explained that we had just found a cross lateral — where another rivulet of water comes down and crosses with the other. Working his way around the location, he confirmed. For the first time his walking stick came into action, pressing into the rocky dry earth. It was hard to believe this was the spot, but he said, "Right here, under my stick, that's where you want to dig."

Ed asked me if I wanted to try.... He placed the sprig in my hand and backed me up from our newly marked X. He showed me how to hold my thumbs, how to twist the branch, bringing the stick alive as if turning it on with a switch. I walked slowly towards the X, the pull was unmistakable, but was very, very slight. It was not bouncing wildly like a fish on the string, but as I walked back and forth again and again I could definitely feel the stick tugging my palms as it twisted imperceptibly towards the earth. Ed explained that only about 5% of people have the ability to do this work, and that statistically more women than men. Alas, maybe I wasn't sensitive enough. As we stood over the spot that we had marked, Ed grabbed the lead of the stick with his right hand and instructed me to hold the other side with my left, twisting it like he had taught me. The stick didn't move. "We need to complete the circuit," he explained. "Hold my hand now with your other hand." As we held hands it was as if the fish struck and the tip of the rod began bouncing wildly. I let go of his hand, it stopped, and we held hands again and it bounced until it slipped from my grip and I had to pull my hand from Ed's again to reposition the stick.

Mesmerized, I watched as Ed worked his way around finding another lateral and cross lateral, we marked a second location about 250' away. He explained the small bites of the bouncing rod as he walked around were probably 3-5 gallon a minute wells, the spots we marked he anticipates 25-60 gallons per minute, probably between 80 and 120' in depth.

As Ed put his walking stick back into the backseat of his car he asked two things from me: "Make sure you call me and tell me how we did! And, please have a splendid day."

As I watched him pull away, his tires slipped slightly on the dry rocky ground, with the sound of gravel chafing against rubber. I couldn't help but think about how this important skill was dying. At 83, Ed has no student, all the others that used to be in the area have passed on. Something that was so important to farmers and land owners for so long has become a forgotten craft. Dowsing.... witching..... divining.... We will see what Monday brings.

https://oshalafarm.com/water-first-finding-the-well-before-we-break-ground/