We have a commercial landowner nearby who is proposing developing their property in a way that makes most of us worry about the local water supply and traffic concerns. Since the land in question changed hands twelve years ago, they have switched from dry land bean/hay farming with no inputs of water, to a wine-growing vineyard operation with thousands of acres now under irrigation. As the owner drills wells and makes his millions, he is slowly draining the water level, causing some dismay among nearby people who have had their wells go dry. A coalition of locals has been formed to fight this unwise expansion that threatens to displace many families when their wells go dry. Here is their latest letter.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Hello Neighbors,
I know that many of you are following the recent news stories about the Caltrans proposal to block the five crossings on Highway 101 between the Thompson/Los Berros exit and the Traffic Way exit in Arroyo Grande. Click here to see the recent article in the Adobe Press.
Your NiHA Steering Committee met last week to form a stance on this proposal and to draft a letter to Caltrans. Keep in mind that one of our concerns is that if the freeway crossing opposite of the Laetitia winery is closed, it will give Laetitia an arguing point to force all access to their winery and proposed housing development through the Thompson/Sheehy/Dana Foothill/ULBR entrance. This is not good, since, as you know, our roads cannot handle this heavy traffic. The Laetitia housing development alone calls for and an added 1,000 vehicle trips per day through our little country roads!
I have attached the letter that was sent today to Caltrans, SCAC, and Katcho Achadjian. I hope you will take the time to read it.
I would encourage all of you to write a similar letter expressing your concerns to:
Matt Fowler
Caltrans
50 Higuera Street
SLO, CA 93401
Jay H.
The Nipomo Hills Alliance
PS: With all the rain we have had this season, you might expect Los Berros creek to be running. Right?
Wrong. As it passes Laetitia, it flowed for only two days, and has been dry ever since.
Also…do you have neighbors that would like to keep informed on this email list? If so, please let me know of their address.
Believe it or not!
There are lots of people out there that can make impressive web pages showing anything imaginable…
You can save the world if you just listen to them…. or maybe not… but what does it matter if you CARE.
Just caring is worth so much…. and it’s popular too!
In the following video science teacher Greg Craven explains the choices facing us in response to Global Warming. He charts a graph, and breaks it into two columns, action and inaction, and two lines, one for Global Warming is real, and one for Global warming is not real. Then he breaks the two factors down where they intersect on the graph.
It’s an interesting perspective. As he says, it comes down to ‘risk management’.
This next video is about the same… but narrowed down a bit tighter due to responses he’s gotten from people after the first video above was loaded in.
I run to
whatever
is shiny,
find out about
anything
new.
I sniff
a gleaming mica chip
a feather that falls
from the sky,
a pale blue turquoise bead,
a button,
the top of an old tin can,
and the pipe
that a miner
smoked by his campfire
and left on the ground
while she slept.
I take it all.
I am a gatherer of treasure . . .
of leaves
and berries and roots,
mesquite beans,
sweet red summer cactus fruit,
and a piece of a clear glass bottle
turned purple by the sun.
I stay
close to home,
close to the trails I know,
close to the rocks where I was born,
close to the cholla cactus
I climb so easily.
Everything I want
is here.
In the cool evenings
I search,
darting from rock to rock,
out of sight of coyotes and owls.
I run back and forth
with my mouth full of treasures.
I go home at sunrise,
pushing
and pulling
and rolling
all the good things
back to my nest,
my pile of sticks and dirt
and cholla cactus thorns.
It holds me safe.
It hides my shining secrets
in the dust.
This is a pack-rat in an oak tree. Usually I never get a good look at one, they are such a quick blur running through the brush, that when I see them out of the corner of my eye and turn to them, they are already hidden away in the foliage. They usually stay on the ground also. I think this guy might have been chased into the tree by one of our cats. This tree is right in front of our house. My brother was visiting from North Carolina and saw it first… he saw the tail hanging down and thought it might be a possum….
This is a Packrat nest. They are a collection of twigs arranged on the ground under the oak trees. They quite often are built around a small tree for support. The twigs seem to be arranged something like a thatch roof, directing water away from the nest, keeping the little family dry, warm and cozy inside.
Packrats are very clean little animals. There is nothing messy, or creepy about them when you get to see them up close. But they are fast movers.
There is such a diversity of animals and plant life all over, the opportunities for learning are profound. To let the world pass before you without note is a shame, yet you cannot possess it. The world is for us to use not abuse, to steward, not to own. It is a trust gifted to us, and we are called to take care of all we are given to safeguard.
‘Variety is the spice of life’ say the old folks….
There’s some foods for instance that are great all alone…. tomatoes, watermelons etc…. but chop bits of them into a fruit salad, and you have nirvana in food. Life is made so much more enjoyable by having varied interests and scenes…
So too with the arts… weave poetry and tune together and you have a song….
Match a peerless singer such as Loreena McKennitt with a peerless poet such as William Butler Yeats…. you have Nirvana in the audio sphere.
This song by Loreena also has one of the most spectacular bagpipe intros I’ve ever heard.
This poem is not one to rush through… each stanza is so full, so deep in symbology
This is the California Live Oak in front of our house.
It is covered in pollen laden male flowers right now.
This particular tree is probably a good one hundred fifty years old.
This old Oak tree is about fifty feet across, and maybe forty feet high. These oaks are respected by almost anyone who sees them. Few people can regard a huge tree without some sense of awe at the huge mass of life they represent. They are a slow growing species, their reactions to stimuli such as flooding, changing water levels or disease are slow also. therefore they can have their conditions change radically and take some years for that to become apparent in the appearance of the tree. That is why you’ll often find people installing a lawn under such a tree, and it might take a few years before the constant moisture makes the tree start to die. The homeowners will be dumbfounded as they will not associate the conditions they have given the plant for three years with the recent changes in tree appearance.
These trees have adapted to and grown up with the prevailing California weather and soil conditions of the areas they inhabit. It is for this reason that they go into a short ‘aestivation’ in the heat of summer. This is a partial slowing down of processes so that the plant uses less moisture in the summer when we get no rain from May to October. But that same survival strategy can lead to death as the plant cannot tolerate constant moisture around their root zone through the summer.
We try to keep this old tree healthy, we don’t water too near the drip zone of the tree, and neither do we plant any water loving plants near it. This ensures that the tree gets no supplemental water in the summer.
The grasses under this tree are the ones that grow here naturally each year. We mow them down a few times a year, but they are annuals that will die down when the heat of summer comes. By July the area under the tree will be just the oak leaf mulch, the dried grasses, and the few cactus plants we’ve got near it.
Our neighbors Laetitia Vineyards have started their grape harvest.
They work around the clock and through the nights so they can get
all the many hundreds of acres harvested on time.
At nighttime they truck in these large lights operated by generators.
In general I know they try to adhere to sustainable practices.
They use bio-fuels where they can. They use drip systems and install raptor perches.
They have been inspected and found to be holding to sustainable ag principles
However sustainable agriculture has different interpretations.
And I don’t like that they seem to be sucking up all the water.
Sustainable means it can be sustained at that level indefinitely
(that means generation after generation for like… a thousand years!).
I also start to get an uncomfortable feeling when local ‘big-business people’
actually spend much of their time a hundred or miles away on another place…..
and when they have several of these large farms here and there….
Maybe that’s the European Kulak in me…
and the Southern small farmer
Nighttime grape harvest at Laetitia Vineyard on Calif Central Coast
When I drive this road at night, usually there are miles I go with no lights to be seen…..
then to all of a sudden come around the bend and see these lights,
like some movie being filmed is disconcerting.
But I am glad to see work being done, production etc.
Nighttime grape harvest at Laetitia Vineyard on Calif Central Coast
Yet I am also conflicted with all the fuel used for lighting,
and the massive use of water the vineyard takes.
Since they put in the vineyards, the water level in the creek lowered,
and it has now stopped running for several months.
Nighttime grape harvest at Laetitia Vineyard on Calif Central Coast
My sense of capitalism says a person can do what
they want with their land within limits….
but do those limits extend to overdraft of the limited local water supply?
Lao Tzu
Chapter 53
The gentry wear elaborate richly embroidered clothes,
eat and drink in excess with their sharp swords at their sides,
these are surely the robber barons.
This is not in keeping with the Way.
Nighttime grape harvest at Laetitia Vineyard on Calif Central Coast
These several thousands of Corporate acres are owned by one person,
and many of the people in that field are given work
for a short time during this harvest season.
How much better off would they and me all be if this land
was held by several hundred small growers?
Each trying to live a regenerative low-impact lifestyle, growing local foods…
and pooling resources to send co-operative food to further areas.
Lao Tzu
Chapter 77
The way of nature is much like the drawing of a bow.
That which is high is lowered,
and that which is low is brought up.
The excess is removed,
and where there is deficiency more is added.
The way of nature is to reduce the excesses
and spread them to where there is deficiency.
The way of Man is otherwise,
Mans way is to take from those who have little,
and give to those who have much.
Who is it that can offer more to the world, and have still more to offer?
Only the person of the Tao.
Therefore the sage acts without laying claim to the act.
He can accomplish without boasting.
He has no wish to appear superior.
Nighttime grape harvest at Laetitia Vineyard on Calif Central Coast
They could be using water-capture techniques to hold rainwater
so they’d pull less from the ground.
Individual small landholdings of five acres of good soils like this
can be effectively and intensively farmed.
Resulting in overall less water use than currently, more infiltration,
less water run-off and more of a diversified environment.
The mono-culture of hundreds of acres of one plant encourages insect and disease issues.
No wonder grapes are one of the most intensively sprayed crop in California.
Luckily, although we consider them neighbors…
they are still some four miles from our place.
Nighttime grape harvest at Laetitia Vineyard on Calif Central Coast
Tao teh Ching
Chapter 80
I see a small country of small population.
A simple folk, who even if highly skilled work simply and easily.
Tools are seldom used. They do not bother to invent time-saving appliances.
They would dearly love life, and would take care to avoid death.
Since they would love their homes and land, they would not care to wander.
Even with their horses, boats and carts, they do not wish to travel about.
Though they may have armor and weapons, these are kept out of sight.
These people would return to simple techniques for record keeping.
Their food would be tasty but simple; their clothing would be unpretentious.
They would be content with their simple homes,
and the simple pleasures and customs of a simple people.
And even though there might be a neighboring land within sight,
so that the crowing of roosters and the barking of dogs can be heard from it;
these people will have lived their entire life without ever having gone to that country.
It is this kind of issue the Regional Water Quality control board wishes to address with the newly-required ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ classes for all commercial produce growers in California. But they go about it the wrong way. The classes should be given for free to licensed growers… not enforced onto us at our own travel and expense. The water testing is another thing that should be shared across the board. If this is for the good of the planet, whey are we the ones to bear the cost? And there is little (seems to me nothing) to help the very small scale grower, nor any consideration given to those who are already doing some or many of the actions they desire…. Instead, like nearly any governmental program, all are lumped together, and all herded through the same door into the same classes. So we who have run on a deficit for the last few years are paying nearly the same as the super huge corporations.
If I’m upset about this, imagine the commercial growers who would see this all as ‘Tree-Hugger BS’. At least I believe in and support the basic premise of the classes.
Here’s an excerpt from the article….
Hamerschlag’s report finds that careful studies have shown that several underused farm management practices, such as cover cropping, conservation tillage and organic fertilization, have the potential to deliver significant carbon sequestration benefits while helping farmers conserve water, maintain yields and resist weeds and pests in the face of climate change.
The report makes ten specific recommendations for addressing the inertia that has prevented California from taking effective action on agriculture and climate change and calls on policy makers to develop programs of targeted research, outreach, technical assistance and financial incentives for farmers.
“As a first step towards swifter action,” Hamerschlag said, key state agencies “should establish an inter-agency working group on agriculture and climate change. Federal agencies, NGOs and farm groups all have critical roles to play and should also be actively involved.”
The last is the reason I am reluctant to make a decision to close shop and stop producing. I believe that in time, the officials will realize they have destroyed the most productive farms on a ‘per-acre’ basis.. the small family and organic farms with their growers more interested in producing good foods and taking care of the land than just making a buck this quarter.
We’ve been operating at a loss the last couple of years…. most of that is due to advertising costs that have not borne fruit. I’ve decided we’ll stop with advertising in the conventional sense… it seems to gain us very little for the cost. This will allow us to at least operate without having to post a loss. Perhaps in a couple of years the government will come up with a plan to let farmers be able to take the classes through the internet and not have to travel 200 miles for them. Perhaps the government will decide that if it requires a thousand dollars worth of water testing yearly, they will reimburse the growers for some of that cost, since the reason is to help the entire country out. Instead as it stands now, they will push out all the large gardens (small farms) that make some of the best produce. Actually, they won’t, those folks will mostly just operate ‘under the table’, selling their produce to stores that are willing to take food from unlicensed growers without paperwork and receipts. But that will defeat the entire purpose of the testing. Governmental actions generally have unintended consequences that often are more horrendous than initial inaction by the government.
A trip to the landfill…..
Our first in a few years.
We don’t like to throw anything away…
when we do, it’s probably really worn out.
In this case it was our 17 year old sofa and loveseat.
Arroyo Grande, Grand Ave
I took the 101 up to Grand Avenue in Arroyo Grande, the next town over
and the town our phone bill says we live in….
but folks in our area tend to feel they live in Nipomo
Arroyo Grande is a really super-nice little town.
It is surrounded by many thousands of acres of small landholdings.
It has good schools, and fine folks.
Arroyo Grande, Grand Ave
Arroyo Grande was celebrating its ‘Harvest Festival’
it’s good when small towns celebrate things.
It brings nearby folks over, and makes almost everyone smile and have fun.
Arroyo Grande is a town full of small ‘Mom and Pop’ shops, cafes and restaurants.
We’ve only eaten in one of them, that is a pizza place in the white building to the right.
It was great Pizza and was a Tuesday night ‘All you can eat’ we attended a dozen years ago.
I ate so much for the price, I’m too embarrassed to go back.
There is a butcher shop to the right halfway up the block…
We’ve used them in the past to process meats for us.
But we don’t raise livestock anymore.
Arroyo Grande, Grand Ave cafe
Arroyo Grande is far enough inland to have clear weather most of the time.
Yet it is close enough to the coast that it stays cool even when it is 100 degrees ten miles further inland.
It seems a great place for these numerous cafes with tables on the sidewalks.
The Famous Corbett Canyon, corbett Canyon... corbett canyon
Further on along 227, I came upon the northern opening to Corbett Canyon.
Corbett Canyon Winery used to have a national commercial for their wines.
Rock formation alongside Hwy 227 near Edna
This area has many protrusions of rock
including the fabled ’seven Sisters’ that are just a bit north of here
Cold Canyon Landfill
Arrival at Cold Canyon Landfill
Cold Canyon Landfill
The sanitary landfill at Cold Canyon
I like the way the landfills operate in California.
They really do try to segregate the materials according to hazard level.
Coming along Price Canyon Road to Pismo Beach
To get back to the coast, I took Price Canyon Road, a five mile drive.
This is the sight of the ocean as you get into the back -end of Pismo Beach.
Avila Beach, Port San Luis area
When I got to Hwy 101, I turned right (North)
This is the view of Avila Beach and Port San Luis
a most beautiful area
The Law in its majestic equality,
forbids rich as well as poor to sleep under bridges,
to beg in the streets,
and to steal bread
~Anatole France~
Since 1993 we’ve been an organically certified small farm in California. I had a job with a contractor which paid our household expenses and kept us solvent even when the farm sales were less than our farm expenses. But two years ago when the factory in town closed down, and most of us were laid off, I decided to go into the cactus growing more full time. We grow a unique vegetable which we’ve shipped throughout the country. Initially we shipped the cactus leaves as nursery stock, then governmental regulations tightened and we became more aware of the laws and regulations of shipping nursery stock into other states. So we switched to shipping the younger leaves for people to eat themselves as produce. Our goal has been to ship to Health Food Stores, and restaurants as well as individuals who might be interested in the leaves we grow. Through the years our customer list grew slowly but steadily at a steady 30% rate. As the years progressed the governmental regulations seemed to grow more onerous… and the last year we’ve lost many of our older customers due to the recession. Other businesses have quit, some people seem to have stopped their regular orders. Yet, due to aggressive marketing, our sales this year are the highest we’ve ever had due to many new customers. Yet this was done at the expense of any profit we might have had. And again the government has come down on us harder. Now we have been notified that we must complete a fifteen hour ‘continuing education’ credits in water pollution and conservation. I’m all for education, but these government-mandated classes for all farms in the state are not provided for free… we must pay for them ourselves. The worse part is that they are given in the major population centers of Ventura or Monterrey to which we must take ourselves, and pay for our own lodging for the three days of the course.
It is this extra bit that has me stymied. We don’t really make any money doing this cactus business. All of our money goes to shipping, governmental fees of several thousand dollars yearly in order to maintain our licenses, permits, and associated fees and overhead expenses. Knowing that this trip will lead us into negative financial territory makes me reluctant to want to go. Knowing that due to these regulations, we must take a sample of our water and have it analyzed monthly at unknown costs…. I am seriously aggravated at the state of our laws and the level of compliance required even for tiny little micro-farms.
We have some months in which to take the classes, and maybe I’ll find some classes nearby, but this more personal posting than usual is to let the people know that governmental regulations are a double-edged sword. While they give the USA good traceability in produce, and what is perhaps the safest produce in the world, it also makes for stronger economy-of-scale issues that stymie the small grower… right at a time that we are needing MORE small farms, not less. If we were a huge corporate farm, with many employees, still we would need just one person to go to the classes, but when it’s a one-man operation, the standards are the same. The costs are the same, but they are a larger share of the profit in a small operation like ours.
My usual outlook is of hope and positive thoughts. Rarely am I dragged into this level of aggravation. I am sure I will sign up for the classes in Monterrey, they seem very informative and interesting. But people need to know that excessive governmental regulations strangle small business, they hamper the process of business formulation. We need to seriously look at what we want for this country, a place where people can transact business legally and efficiently with little governmental interference. If the government requires classes such as this, it should place them within the reach of the people, if it requires monthly water sampling, it should have a method to make such sampling efficient and inexpensive, (the paperwork mentions some samples might cost $8,000 yearly).
Excessive governmental regulations hamper small business more than the large. If due only to ‘economy of scale’.
When my dad grew up on an Ozark farm in the thirties and forties, they raised corn and wheat, raised hogs which they sold every fall and winter, and had a hundred or so chickens from which they sold eggs daily. They had five or six milk cows which they milked by hand, using the milk for food and their dogs, and one milk-can daily which they left on the roadside for the milk company to pick up. They also went to neighboring farms to supply skilled farm labor. Nowadays they would have to have many more permits, and each operation would require specialized equipment and permits and licensing. As all these regulations pile onto business, you must streamline your operations, drop aspects that have no profit and require permits, then you start to specialize. Yet a small family farm should not be a specialist farm, it should have a wide variety of foods and animals to create the ‘loop system’ for bio-diversity. Yet through the years we have had to drop livestock from our farm, first initially because we did not have proper butchering facilities, so we stopped the breeding of animals, until we had no more. We stopped using manures for fertilizer years ago because the government is worried about contamination of the soils with bacteria from manures. We stopped bringing in mulches for weed control and soil building because we could not vouch for the exact trees the wood chips came from. We are now a closed system with no outside inputs, and only material going out at a rate of a ton a month. Yet even this production is priced so low, and the shipping and governmental costs are so high, that we make no profit. One day, it might just get through my head that I’m better off just enjoying the property ourselves, and stop working so hard to make a business out of it. Yet, I know I can’t, we have such great customers….
While mulling these thoughts over in my head, I decided I needed to go for a walk. So with my camera in hand, I went down the road and took photos of the things I love about living here. And it is when in the wilderness, when I am furthest from people and the government, that I am closest to God and nature. These photos are my world, they are my daily activities and sights…. it is what is most in my heart.
The large oak once was a nut that stood its ground
Spanish Moss on Black Oak
Cutbank on the canyon road
Cutbank on the canyon road
The green lush creek bottom
The green lush creek bottom
Live Oak reaches over the creek
Live Oak reaches over the creek
Old cattle Loading Chute
Miocene Deposits, this was all once underwater
Oak Woodlands
Poison Oak vines wind up the Oak Trees
Spanish Moss on the Oak Tree
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
Right around the bend from home, my daily view
‘One Tin Soldier’
`Lambert-Potter’
Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
‘Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below.
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone,
And the valley-people swore
They’d have it for their very own.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill,
Asking for the buried treasure,
Tons of gold for which they’d kill.
Came an answer from the kingdom,
“With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain,
All the riches buried there.”
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
Now the valley cried with anger,
“Mount your horses! Draw your sword!”
And they killed the mountain-people,
So they won their just reward.
Now they stood beside the treasure,
On the mountain, dark and red.
Turned the stone and looked beneath it…
“Peace on Earth” was all it said.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
