Saturday was a cool, fresh day, with a touch of rain, reminding me of the wonderful walking weather in England. My daughter, Jennifer, lassie Isabella and I made our usual trip to the Missoula Farmer's Market, truly a "feast" for the eyes as well as later for the bellies.
Beautiful red onions...
White onions...
Cauliflowers and cabbages the size of basketballs...
And a "now thar's a beet" beet...
I had noted a large number of Hmong (pronounced Mong) farmers on the last trip to the market in June -- they had delicious truffles picked from the forest. This time I asked Jennie on the way back to the car about the Hmong in Missoula -- seemed to be an unusual place to relocate.
"It must have been because of the weather", Jennie said.
"I don't think so", I responded. Missoula has two seasons -- winter and July -- and people from tropical jungle wouldn't be particularly drawn to the weather. Must be something else, I said to myself.
Soon after arriving home today, I sat down at the Internet to check out my suspicions, and found the connection to, what else, Missoula's famous Smoke Jumpers, those guys who jump out of airplanes into a forest fire. Now, if I were going to locate a place in the country where you could find guys willing to do this kind of thing, it would be Montana.
About 200 Hmong live in Missoula, most making a living by farming as they did in Laos. The guy responsible was Jerry Daniels, a Missoula smokejumper who went on to spend nearly ten years in combat with the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese and the CIA's connection to the leader of the Hmong tribal army in Laos. A larger than life kind of guy.
An amazing story behind giant beets, cabbages and cauliflowers.
So you went for vegetables and came home with a story about a hero. Not bad, not bad at all...
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, my word verification letters for this comment are "jumhp". Weird, huh?
This is fascinating! I'm going to go read up on the Hmong and the smoke jumpers. You always have the most amazing posts!
ReplyDeleteterrie
KNH, Here is a link to the Missoula Smokejumpers.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fs.fed.us/fire/people/smokejumpers/missoula/
Sorry I didn't put that in the blog. Sometimes bloggers just get lazy or tired.
Here is a You Tube smoke jumper. I especially like the part where he talks about jumping into a “small fire” and there is a blazing, skyscraper high fire in the background.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue9RFtkJoBU&feature=related
We do need giant vegetables to feed the ever increasing population...Nice pics...
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