A Farm Story
Presented to the Brentwood City Council meeting of November 14, 2000.

It seems to me that the question of the hour is whether farming remains a viable occupation here in East County. I'd like to relate a story that, I hope, will answer that question.

Once upon a time way back in 1979, when Brentwood's population was only 3662, a freshly-graduated Ph.D. chemist took a job in West Pittsburg. As he and his legal secretary partner scouted Far East County for housing, they were shown a 10-acre, weedy alfalfa field on which was situated a house of dubious character. This property was almost at the corner of Marsh Creek and Hiway 4 and the pair agonized that perhaps the property was too far out in the boonies; but being escapees of the LA/Orange County area, they were looking for a place to settle that was more rural in nature than the Santa Ana neighborhood from which they moved. They were diligent backyard gardners and were seeking a piece of property which would offer them room to grow more of their own organic food and enough distance between them and the next house that the neighbors wouldn't complain about the chickens like they did in Santa Ana. They were also practical, upwardly mobile types who saw the 10 acres as a stepping stone to something better 10 or 20 years down the road. So, they signed their lives away and bought the farm.

After the ink dried and the dust settled, they went to Diablo Farm Equipment, bought a rototiller, planted a small kitchen garden and "farmed" alfalfa til the next spring. Then, for some unknown reason, they got a wild notion to plant a large block of crenshaw melons on the back part of the property. When they began harvesting them some months later, they thought they were about the best melons they had ever eaten. But there was no way they could eat them all. So they started taking the melons to a San Francisco farmers market and to an organic food distributor close to the market.
A number of years passed while they worked their jobs, gardened and dabbled in what their tax lady called "hobby" farming, but it was becoming more and more difficult to work their day jobs AND "hobby" farm. It seemed, from the demand for their products, that some unknown force was pulling them toward farming full time. The pair had no farming background, no parents or relatives to mentor their transition into farming, had not bought the property OR planted it with the INTENTION of farming, but Fate intervened. Somewhere between 1979 and 1986, they got bitten by the farming bug and were now certifiably infected. So they quit their day jobs and became full-time farmers.

Now it's almost the year 200l and they still find themselves farming. They are, unlike most of the farmers in the area, farming on a small scale and farming organically. But they ARE farming. Their postage stamp of a farm employs an average of 8 to 10 full-time field hands year round, as well as a driver to deliver their products. The 10-acre farm that they bought in 1979-and for which they are STILL paying-has been sufficiently fruitful to allow them to purchase a small cabin at The Sea Ranch on the coast in Sonoma County for weekend getaways. Trouble is, they can never get away, but they'll gladly rent you the cabin if YOU want to get away. They're happy farmers. They're successful farmers. They're hard pressed to imagine life as NOT-farmers.

Well, all stories have a moral, so you are probably wondering, "What's the moral of THIS story?" The moral is this: if two goofballs from suburbia can BUY-not lease-ten over-priced acres and end up ACCIDENTALLY making their living farming, that should be all the proof anyone needs to believe that farming is alive and well and living in Far East County. We as a community should do all we can to support preserve and defend it.

Thank you for listening.