Kate Burroughs, Entomology Pioneer and 'Bug Lady'

Plus: Solano farmers win one, Car Movies, and How The Beast and Cream Puff Got Their Names

Kate Burroughs, aka “The Bug Lady,” stands in front of a giant display of pumpkins and squash at the Heirloom Expo in Santa Rosa.

Welcome all and g’day! A cornucopia of randomly entertaining stuff for you today, including a chat with the woman you see pictured above—Kate Burroughs, once known as Barbara Burroughs who also smilingly refers to herself as “the Bug Lady.” We also discuss car movies and present pictorial tributes to The Beast, Cream Puff, and other beloved vehicles named by their owners.

But first, a local item that made news around the country.

California Forever, Not So Fast

In May we covered a unique little competition that occurred in the farmlands of eastern Solano County, California. The McCormack Ranch Sheepdog Trials brought farmers and ranchers from all around the state and the west to see how well their beloved border collies stacked up against other border collies in a series of open field sheepherding tests. Following their handler’s instructions, the dogs rounded sheep into a pack and brought them into a pen while performing other maneuvers designed to improve their herding skills.

The trials had an additional purpose: raise money in the fight against California Forever, a development group funded by high-profile tech billionaires—Laurene Powell Jobs, Reid Hoffman, Marc Andressen, to name but a few—whose master plan was to build a city of 400,000 in these farmlands. This plan at buildout would have doubled the population of Solano and transformed this largely rural county—61 percent of its land is agricultural—into something quite different.

The good news is that California Forever announced last week that it was putting its utopian pipe dreams on hold. It withdrew its proposed initiative from the November ballot that if approved, would have allowed its plans to proceed. They could read the tea leaves—and the polls. Voters across the political spectrum in Solano—Democrats, Republicans, independents—deeply despised the idea. For now, at least, Solano County’s sheepdogs, sheep, cattle, farmers, ranchers and anyone who appreciates locally grown and raised fruit, vegetables, and meat can celebrate a victory in the ongoing war against small independent farms and ranches.

The Bug Lady

Being a person—as I’m sure all of you are, too—who loves good food and good healthy food especially, I was intrigued when this email appeared unexpectedly in my in-box the other day:

“Hi Kevin, I didn't meet up with the East Ave. regulars until my family moved from Stanwood Ave to Second Street above Campus Drive in 1967 and I started attending Bret Harte Junior High. I have enjoyed reading your column and decided to upgrade to paid. I went on to graduate from UC Berkeley with a BS in Entomology and co-founded an organic farm supply in Sebastopol, Harmony Farm Supply in 1980.”

This column, to my ongoing pleasure and surprise, generates lots of really interesting comments from really interesting people, and here was yet another. But it also puzzled me. I knew a Barbara Burroughs back in my Hayward days. Who’s Kate?

Barbara—I’m sorry, Kate Burroughs cleared up the mystery with a follow-up email: “You have a good memory. I did go by Barbara in high school. Changed my name to a nickname of my middle name, Kathleen, when I was 28. Tired of feeling somewhat anonymous because there were always four Barbara’s in every class when I went to elementary school, even two Barbara B’s.”

But once I dug a little further into Kate’s story, there was no confusing her with someone else. Besides Barbara and Kate, she is also known as the “Bug Lady.” As she explains,

“Buglady was my nickname from the time I became an entomology major in college until now. I was the first female entomologist in the North Coast region, back in 1975. I was a pioneer in the integrated pest management consultancy as well and the first woman president of the Association of Applied IPM Ecologists in 1989, a group of IPM consultants in California."

She continues, “I worked for the California Dept. of Food and Agriculture when I first graduated from Cal for three years. I realized that someone who had specialized in biological control and solving pest problems with least toxic solutions didn’t belong on that staff that used spray rigs to fight every pest, over the objections of all of the entomologists on staff.

“I decided to become an integrated pest management consultant for farmers and worked with chemical growers to lower their pesticide use and to convert farmers to organic farming. My husband, David Henry, and I co-founded Harmony Farm Supply in 1980 to supply my clients with organic fertilizers, cover crop seeds and organic pesticides. The local chemical supply warehouses wouldn’t order these products for them and I needed to make it easier for them to switch. We ran the company from 1980 to 2007 when we sold it.”

David and Kate.

After selling the business they bought a 15-acre farm on the Big Island of Hawaii and raised tropical fruits such as lychee, papaya, tangerines, and bananas. They also knew and loved Hawaiian culture, and formed a trio that performed traditional island music at hula dances and other gatherings. (Look ‘em up on Spotify or Apple Music: Chance ‘Um Trio.) Eventually they sold the farm and moved back to Sebastopol, California, near Santa Rosa, where they’re still playing music (Kate on vocals and mandolin) at such venues at the Luther Bank Experimental Farm and naturally, doing lots of gardening.

Car Movies, Anyone?

A friend of mine and a friend of Tilting West remarked to me that the column sometimes felt “random” to him. Meaning, I think, that it hopped from subject to subject a lot, without any unifying central theme. I suppose this is true to some extent although: 1) Our stories generally do have a geographic base of California and the west, and 2) As Kate Burroughs shows, people with “minds at work” (to borrow from Hamilton) read and contribute to this weekly offering, and that’s definitely a central unifying aspect of it.

One such mind at work is Dan Crouch, who wrote several excellent haikus for a past issue of Tilting West and has made other contributions as well. After reading last week’s story on the fatal last drive of James Dean, he wrote,

“Your piece reminded me of the 2023 movie, Ferrari, starring Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari. There's a crash scene in the movie during the 1957 Mille Miglia, the 1,000-mile open-road race in Italy. One of the race cars blows a tire, careens out of control, and mows down nine onlookers, including five children, who were standing beside the road watching the cars race by at 150 mph. The movie used computer-generated imagery to recreate the accident with a level of detail that I wasn't prepared to see. But I guess the point of the scene is that no one was prepared for what happened. At least James Dean didn't take out other peoples' lives as well as his own. The legend lives on....”

I haven’t seen Ferrari, but I did see Ford v. Ferrari, starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale, which is a pretty good car film too. This made me think of other good car movies I’ve seen with epic chase and crash scenes. Dean’s Rebel Without A Cause, of course. Baby Driver, starring Ansel Elgort as a getaway driver in his breakout role as an actor; Steve McQueen blasting over the streets of San Francisco in Bullitt; Burt Reynolds and Sally Field falling in love on screen and in real life in Smokey and the Bandit; and one of the greatest and funniest chase scenes of all time, with a killer sound track, The Blues Brothers.

Okay, folks, time to put those minds to work. Got any good car movies with epic chase scenes you’d like to share? Drop your items in the Comments box or send them to kevinnelson@substack.com.

More Thoughts On Randomness

Although come to think of it, play is sort of random, isn’t it? When children play, they may have an idea what they’re going to do at the beginning but then they quickly move on to other activities, things they didn’t anticipate doing or maybe didn’t think of before they started playing. It’s the same with this column.

For instance, today. I knew when I started that I was going to talk about Kate, but after that I really wasn’t sure. Then I remembered what my friend said, had this random idea, and decided to go with it. What I’ve found, over the years, is that you have to go with that feeling—you have to go down the path of uncertainty and see where it leads. You can’t be afraid of it.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Often what happens is that a thing you’re absolutely sure is going to be a winner turns out to be a bust. The opposite is true as well. The path that makes you uneasy is the one you need to follow. It’s where you’re supposed to go.

That’s my truth anyhow. Another dictum I always try to remember when writing this column is: If I’m not enjoying myself, why would I expect other people to enjoy what I write? Thus, our next section…

Naming Your Vehicle

Recently I wrote a travel piece about naming my truck, and very soon after that my in-box lit up again with this message from another Tilting West contributor, Gary Horstkorta:

“Enjoyed the article and it is very timely. Just yesterday, I called a local repair shop to schedule an appointment for updates to our 2000 Ford Expedition we bought new. Now it has 113,000 miles on it and is due for new shocks, radiator hoses, AC recharge, smog system check. Plus I hope they can find the source of a rattle in the rear area of the car. It’s been there for years and I have looked many times without successfully finding the source. 

“I pondered selling the car and replacing it with another SUV but since the engine and drivetrain are in good order, it is much less expensive to have the updates done. With regard to naming cars and trucks, we simply call ours “The Beast” due to its size and weight. A few years after we bought it, I had considered getting a personalized license plate with the name of “TRKASRS”—or truck-a-saurus—but decided to go with The Beast.”

The Beast at rest.

Yet another Tilting West contributor who names his vehicles is Denny Carmo, who admits, “I know, we’re goofy that way.” His wife Cheryl drives a Honda CRV named “The Stormtrooper.” Here are two other members of their automotive family:

“Cream Puff”

“Big Blue”

Cream Puff is a 2012 Toyota Venza so the name seems a perfect match. Big Blue, however, is more of a truck-a-saurus on the order of The Beast. Denny explains that “we got him in 2007 to tow the boat and go to the mountains. We’ve taken Bigith Bluith everywhere, carrying golf clubs and bikes. We’ve put 100,000 miles of the 179,000 it has on it now. The joke was I would be buried in it…not so bad, I guess.”

Finally, there is this beautifully sentimental story. Denny’s son Mickey drove “Rags” for many years, a Chrysler Sebring convertible. Rags finally died and to help his son out, the Carmos shipped their 2013 Ford Escape to him in Arizona. On his final day with his beloved “Ecoboy,” his owner gave him one last caring embrace:

Thanks for being with me on this ride, dear readers, through all the twists and turns. See you next week!