Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.
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After 16 years of living without a lawn in ANGWIN, CA

I was not really ready for the reality of a patch of grass surrounding our house in Tennessee.
In California, we had about an acre of vineyard, orchard, berry-patches, vegetable garden and nut grove, instead. It was a lot of work….but there was always the knowledge that we would GET SOMETHING back for the effort. It’s just not the same with a lawn…...
We were “student missionaries” in 1969-70, financed by our Seventh-day Adventist college to teach for a year at a small church high school and teacher training institute in Vinto, just beyond Quillacollo near COCHABAMBA, then the second-largest city in Bolivia. We learned to love the high, cold and spare land with its people of surpassing kindness despite their poverty. Our school, Universidad Adventista de Bolivia (then only secondary level) was virtually the only place with electricity along our road, and we also had running water and actual sewers. Most folks nearby walked a mile to the artesian well for water at the corner, or used the ditch in front of their houses for washing. Outhouses were the “modern” plumbing for most folks at our end of the valley.