Dear Friends
I am joyful, truly joyful, to share with you a little about my good friend Leo Hernandez, who is leaving us after over 20 years of faithful, reliable service to this farm and our family.
Leo is one of the best men I have ever met. He has stuck with us through thick and thin, droughts and floods, snowstorms, windstorms, plagues of insects and fungi and the ups and downs of a small family farm. Every single challenge Leo has met with a calm resolve that we can get through it. And in every case we did, in no small part due to his efforts, which he often made seem effortless even though most people would find them extraordinarily difficult. Most people can’t do what Leo does on an average day.
Over the course of his time with us, Leo has collected, processed and planted countless millions of seeds, pulled literal mountains of weeds, lifted millions of plants, cut hundreds of thousands of cuttings and performed many many other tasks that benefitted from his diligence and skill. Leo leaves a legacy that is growing here at our farm, and in our community and our state. Many millions of the plants and trees growing, from the Coast Range to the Gorge, and north to Puget Sound and South to the California border (at least) have had Leo’s hands on them.
Any thoughtful, observant person can’t help but learn a few things in the process of handling plants. Leo has handled millions of them, and he is truly a wise person. I do not use that adjective lightly. But Leo is wise. He is also kind, loyal and incredibly dependable. I can count on one hand the times when Leo had to call out over twenty-plus years. We all – all of us – depend on people like Leo.
I am going to miss Leo more than I can say here. We will all miss him. It’s a new era.
-George
George …. serendipitously found you and the blog yesterday as a funny set of circumstances arose to bring me here. And lo and behold I read about Leo “Leonardo” Hernandez getting ready to leave after 20 some odd years! After working with him out at Scholls Valley NN for at least my last five years …. all the superlatives you shared are right on – and I couldn’t have said any of them any better. Please share a big congratulations and goodbye from me. I will share the news with Al, Jesus and John and they will be smiling and I am sure congratulatory as well.
And what a great idea to blog away …. I will visit as I can and now that I am fully retired myself – I’ll make a point to come on by Gales Creek later in the fall.
Len Norwitz
Hi Len..nice to hear from you! Come on out and see us anytime..
For those of you who don’t know, Len Norwitz was an important fixture in the early days of Scholls Valley, and he also worked with me at the City of Portland in developing the Watershed Revegetation Program. That work live on in the trees we established along the banks of the Columbia Slough and its tributaries in North and Northeast Portland.