The Big Valley - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

JCE · #1 09-19-2002, 11:03 PM

It's all here.

600 miles long, 70 to 90 miles wide - roughly 50,000 square miles.

Russian, Portuguese, Basque, Polish, Italian, Mexican, Pakistani, Chinese, Laotian, Irish, Welsh, Argentinean, Azorean, Vietnamese - and everyone else. Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Agnostic - everything. Legumes and lemons, cashews and cotton, wheat and walnuts, peas and pistachios, artichokes and almonds, plums and pecans, rice and raisins, dairies, poultry, sheep, pigs, beef, aquaculture - if it can be raised and eaten, it's there. Agribusiness plots measured in tens of square miles, 200 year old family farms of 50 acres - and all sizes in between. Concrete canals and natural streams. Triple rows of electric towers stretching out of sight in both directions. Four lane freeway off ramps leading to a one lane dirt road, to another freeway, or anything else a vehicle can navigate. Back roads through sleepy little towns - unless that area's crop is being harvested. (Then it looks like a big rig convention!) Triple digits early Sunday morning on a totally deserted freeway - wide, straight, and flat enough to land 10 Space Shuttles at the same time, with unobstructed views across fields for 20 miles in any direction. Thirty minutes later traveling two miles an hour over 1/2 mile of dirt farm road that needs attention from a D6 Cat!

Kenworth grill tinted Mayan Gold by the rising sun, seen through steamy breath on a chilly morning walk - but it will be 90F by mid afternoon! Double trailer tractor rigs (two per minute) passing the farm 24 hours a day on the way to the processing plants - right now it is tomatoes. Hi tech computer controlled crop dusting helicopters, low tech manual stoop labor irrigation/harvesting. Coffee at 5AM with farmers gearing up for the day, ("Fred never knew what hit him when that truck driver lost control and crossed the line into his pickup." "I should have switched to pecans 3 years ago, never going to get from under the bank by growing beans." "Milk is a fortune in the stores, but the lowest price the creameries have paid in years - I'm only going to make enough to pay for the water I used." "The state wants to cut farm water another 10%, says the area should 'diversify' into industrial growth, but it sounds to me like more developers and politicians making deals to fatten themselves!") Cruising antique stores in the 2 block long "downtown" areas of farming communities. Late afternoon enchiladas and salsa under the trees in the middle of 500 acres of Lima beans.

Problems? Sure. Some homegrown frictions, some 500 hundred year old grievances traced back to ancestral homelands, and always some politics. Water, always an issue, just like the weather. Air pollution in the big towns. Jobs for the young to keep the kids from heading to the big cities. Drugs. Gangs. Medical care for the old. Untrained amateur 'environmentalists' that want to force everyone to grow things their way, or else. Developers that look at 500 acres of record yield olive trees and only see an industrial park and a profit before they move on to the next fields. Old time farmers that don't want ANY changes. Government that seems crooked when it isn't inept. More government regulations than crops.

But it works. It works because people have dreams, and they all know that they have a shot at making their dream happen, because a government just as perfect and just as flawed as anything else made by human beings will, sometimes seemingly despite itself, make sure that everyone will usually have the same chance as anybody else at making it happen. So it is all here, In California's San Joaquin Valley, "The Big Valley", and it keeps on working - part of the heart of America!

Police Cruiser, Big Valley Style: Thanks to Officer Henry Perez of Exeter PD for taking a half hour to explain the dual purpose police car (Gang and At-Risk youth outreach as well as traditional police work - 2 high speed pursuits under the belt of a car with graphics designed by the local high school!)

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#2 09-25-2002, 10:47 PM

John..I've read this article several times, and every single thing rings so true, but while going over it each time, I couldn't help but wonder how many others that read this can see their own little (or large) part of this great country in it. What a great place. "Don't tread on me"

JCE · #3 05-29-2006, 11:23 AM

What a difference in 4-5 years. Smog from one end of the valley to the other - Fresno is now the most polluted air in California according to the EPA. Lots more housing tracts and industrial parks, lots less farmland. Traffic jams in tiny towns, freeways crowded like a Friday rush hour. More cars than trucks or farm equipment

Out of control crime rates and drug problems. My wife's uncle found a SIG P239 in one of his fields - dropped by one of the harvest workers, pitched there after a crime in a nearby city - who knows. The police kept it, and 'don't have any info on it' even though the serial number is intact. Probably have too much to do to trace a serial number on what may turn out to be only a stolen firearm, a crime that seems to rank way down there with investigating stolen cars. Every time they drain a large canal for maintenance they find several stripped late model car shells at the bottom of the canal.

Small family farms being sold as families give up trying to pay for water, land taxes, equipment prices, bank loans - the only way to pay off the bank loans is to sell out to a developer. Your kids can do math, they won't even try to take over the hopeless task of taking over a 500 acre farm and attempting to break even. "Best soil in the world, but with the water rationing and prices, equipment, tax rates, labor costs, and enviro compliance, a farmer couldn't even grow pot for a profit in this area". If they still farm, they are focusing on the organic farming sector, where the overhead is lower (no pesticides and limited fertilizers mean lower costs, and the lower yield/acre means lower labor costs at harvest) and the profits much higher. The produce in the local groceries is marked 'imported from Mexico': Cheaper to import food from another country than to grow it locally!

But lots of farm kids are turning to industrial support jobs such as repairing heavy equipment or helicopters for agribusiness. Or working in the new industrial parks which are everywhere. High prices in/near the big cities mean industry locates to small towns for the tax breaks, lower cost land, and cheaper labor. Farmland is eaten up for housing tracts, strip malls, and industrial parks, which attract population, which in turn brings in WalMart and the death of small town business districts. Two out of three business locations shuttered in one small town we passed through.

Wonder what it will look like 4 years from now?

Carleton Hughes · #4 05-29-2006, 11:55 AM

Had a chance to relocate up Eureka way several years ago where my skills?

are in high demand.

Never been there but I hear the weather is pleasant in the summer and there are tons of well-preserved victorian era dwellings.

Jim B. · #5 05-29-2006, 01:16 PM

John,

A succinct and realistic take, BRAVO, well written.

You're right, it is changing fast, in the ways you mention. Visalia is the only town there I have ever spent a day in, and it's growing fast.

The heat in the summer is debilitating. Irrigation really made the land wonderful for crops!

Jim

Lebenz · #6 05-29-2006, 01:27 PM

Nine miles of two-strand topped with barbed wire
Laid by the father for the son.
Good shelter down there on the valley floor,
Down by where the sweet stream run.

Now they might give me compensation…
That's not what I'm chasing. I was a rich man before yesterday.
Now all I have got is a cheque and a pickup truck.
I left my farm on the freeway.

They're busy building airports on the south side…
Silicon chip factory on the east.
And the big road's pushing through along the valley floor.
Hot machine pouring six lanes at the very least.

They say they gave me compensation…
That's not what I'm chasing. I was a rich man before yesterday.
Now all I have left is a broken-down pickup truck.
Looks like my farm is a freeway.

They forgot they told us what this old land was for.
Grow two tons the acre, boy, between the stones.
This was no Southfork, it was no Ponderosa.
But it was the place that I called home.

They say they gave me compensation…
That's not what I'm chasing. I was a rich man before yesterday.
And what do I want with a million dollars and a pickup truck?
When I left my farm under the freeway.

--Ian Anderson