Photo by: N.L. Belardes
One Bakersfield Woman's Blog to Mankind
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Exploring Rural Kern County...
In my break from reality, I took a drive out to Lamont, California to the farm that my Grandparents lived and worked on when I was young. I have many fond memories of spending time with my Grandparents on the farm. They retired from farming and moved into Bakersfield years ago and now they've both passed away.
It's been years since I've been to the farm they lived on but I knew that it was down the dirt road from the Sunset Labor Camp, Sunset School and Vineland School. I knew if I could find those landmarks, I could find the farm. After a few wrong turns on rural roads and a quick phone call to Jesse for directions to Vineland School, I turned down the dirt road next to Sunset Labor Camp and drove towards where my Grandparents used to live.
The road to my Grandparents farm
The house they lived in had been torn down and a double wide moblehome stood in its place. There were "Keep Out" and "No Trespassing" signs around the house, so I didn't take any pictures of it. The old barn we weren't allowed to play in was still standing, well barely standing...
We used to get in trouble for climbing on these too...
I drove down past the house and barn towards the fields, parked the car and got out and walked around.
Field workers were picking grapes from the vineyards. One worker chased me down and asked: "Are you lost ma'am?"
"No. My Grandparents used to live here, I'm just looking around, going to take a few pictures." I explained.
"Ok."
Whew! I thought he was going to run me off!
With his approval, I stayed and explored the farm and my memories...
The table grape vineyard...
Posts used in the vineyards...
A Cotton field...
I used to ride in the truck with Grandpa when he'd set the water on the fields...
Field sprinklers...
Alfalfa fields...
I used to climb on and hide in the haystacks...
After exploring the farm my grandparents used to live on, I drove the short distance to the foothills of the mountains to see the White Cross that Jesse, NL and I couldn't see through the fog on the night we chased the moon...
Barbwire fence along the road next to the White Cross...
The White Cross...
Exploring rural Kern County, my Grandparents old farm and my memories turned out to be one of the most amazing afternoons I've spent in a long time...
In my break from reality, I took a drive out to Lamont, California to the farm that my Grandparents lived and worked on when I was young. I have many fond memories of spending time with my Grandparents on the farm. They retired from farming and moved into Bakersfield years ago and now they've both passed away.
It's been years since I've been to the farm they lived on but I knew that it was down the dirt road from the Sunset Labor Camp, Sunset School and Vineland School. I knew if I could find those landmarks, I could find the farm. After a few wrong turns on rural roads and a quick phone call to Jesse for directions to Vineland School, I turned down the dirt road next to Sunset Labor Camp and drove towards where my Grandparents used to live.
The road to my Grandparents farm
The house they lived in had been torn down and a double wide moblehome stood in its place. There were "Keep Out" and "No Trespassing" signs around the house, so I didn't take any pictures of it. The old barn we weren't allowed to play in was still standing, well barely standing...
We used to get in trouble for climbing on these too...
I drove down past the house and barn towards the fields, parked the car and got out and walked around.
Field workers were picking grapes from the vineyards. One worker chased me down and asked: "Are you lost ma'am?"
"No. My Grandparents used to live here, I'm just looking around, going to take a few pictures." I explained.
"Ok."
Whew! I thought he was going to run me off!
With his approval, I stayed and explored the farm and my memories...
The table grape vineyard...
Posts used in the vineyards...
A Cotton field...
I used to ride in the truck with Grandpa when he'd set the water on the fields...
Field sprinklers...
Alfalfa fields...
I used to climb on and hide in the haystacks...
After exploring the farm my grandparents used to live on, I drove the short distance to the foothills of the mountains to see the White Cross that Jesse, NL and I couldn't see through the fog on the night we chased the moon...
Barbwire fence along the road next to the White Cross...
The White Cross...
Exploring rural Kern County, my Grandparents old farm and my memories turned out to be one of the most amazing afternoons I've spent in a long time...
I love those pictures. My mom used to work the cotton fields when we were young. She works in the grape fields now.
I worked with her one summer and it sucked ass. I knew that wasn't the life for me. I hated it.
Other than that.. I have nothing but fond memories of the grape fields and cotton, and alfalfa!
those are great pictures, wifey! if you didn't say they were from lamont, i'd think you visited my hometown... the grape city of delano. LOL.
nl, look, the hay is square!
The pictures are great. What a terrific post. They make me realize how much different your growing up was from mine, just because you were in California and I was here. I visited great aunts and uncles on my father's side in Hammonton, New Jersey, a similar sort of farm community ("The Blueberry capital of world" according to a speech Ronald Reagan once made there) where my relatives worked on a berry farm. We kids of a certain generation enjoyed running through the picked-over fields getting baskets of berries, but my father remembers the backbreaking work in the summertime, back in the late 1930s. Much like cotton, strawberries grow low on the ground, and you have to bend over to get them. Horrid, hot work.
Hammonton also boasts more Italians per capita than (supposedly) any American city, but that's not saying much given that it only has a population of about 13,000. Our family was completely Italian on Dad's side. Here's a cute photo of the main drag. http://www.townofhammonton.org/happenings.html
I remember the 16th of July and the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, the oldest such religious festival in the US. Besides the usual parades with the religious icons onto which people would pin money and ask for blessings, there was a distinctly un-religious carnival with all sorts of fun including some girlie shows that probably by today's standards were pretty tame. I never saw them, but the guys bragged. Here's a great photo of Our Lady and the faithful: http://www.hammontongazette.com/archives/071906/Weekly%20file/news2.html
Your piece touches upon a lot of what I'd like to write about: the rural outskirts of Bakersfield and farming communities.
The quaintness in some regards for many farmers left years ago. Today, life is highly mechanized as we heard that night out at the Arvin cemeterey: wheezing midnight tractors, and Grimmway farms packing facility lit like a penetentiary.
Yet there is a simple life somehere still out in rural America amongst the toxic soils and distant memories... the folks at Stonyfield teach me that more than anyone in the Central Valley(with the exception of David Mas Masumoto's writings). Most farmers and such are distant to us city folk.
But you captured it well because you went in search of a story.
Yeah, chingpea, I'm fascinated by hay... :)
It's sad there aren't more comments on this entry. It's the people in the cities and who have a sense of rural nostalgia who you would appreciate this article the most... but then, maybe many city slickers aren't like us: with a rural and urban past.
Or maybe they hated theirs.
I enjoyed growing up in San Jose orchard hills...
"....I saw below me the Golden Valley...." Woodie Guthrie
Beautiful photos.
Gone are the days of old when a family farm meant the family worked the farm. Nowadays a family owns the farm and hundreds of underpaid overworked migrants tend the factory fields. When the farmer has had enough of the agribusiness he sells the land to developers and moves to Santa Barbara. Theres nothing wrong with that I guess in the free market economy but I just wonder when they are gonna pay back all those USDA loans they took out in 70's 80's we could have started building houses on their land back then.
I'm sure all those grants have been paid in full I'm just talking out the side of my neck.
Norma, My mom also picked cotton and potatos when she was young.
Chingpea, I think most of Kern County still looks like this... we haven't sold all the farmland to developers yet. :)
Fortuna, Your east coast farming memories sound wonderful too! And thanks for the links. :)
NL, Yes, NL I went in search of a story in rural Kern County, in my nostalgic memories... and I haven't even begun to tell that story yet. The farming I saw last week had changed from when my grandpa worked that farm. But there still is simple life in the rural communities.
JR, I love that quote... fits so well. And thanks for the directions that day! :)
Black Dog, I don't know about the loans or any of that... but farming has always been a business. Things have changed a lot though over the years.
I love rural Kern County and its small towns. I never realized how busy Lamont was until I had a community class out there during the day. What about Andriotti's Corner (Rowlee and Lerdo)? Thirty years in Bak and I barely saw it a few weeks ago. It even has it's own picnic area! I should drive up there and actually go into the store.
The shot of the road to their home and of the white cross are so powerful and evocative. I love shots where I feel like I'm seeing one moment in time of a narrative, as if the full force of the narrative is already happening. What's really neat here is that you managed to get that feeling with landscapes.
S.R.: Rural Kern County is beautiful isn't it...
Jen: Thanks for finding something in the photos I took of the farm... I'm still learning how to use my digital camera and learning about photos. :)
The farming industry is not an easy one. My uncle lost a LOT of money one year when a major company(I think it was Sunkist but I'm not sure) here in Porterville filed bankruptcy and didn't pay him a huge amount of money for managing their farms.
Then my husbands grandmother owns acres of citrus and she's lost a lot of money through a few of the crazy winter weather.
I always wonder where we're going to get our produce from once all these farmers get sick of the farming life?
My wife's from Lamont. lot's of stories in that family!lol! These are great pics, and the story is wonderful. I worked in Arvin-potato and onion sheds in high school. But my biggest farm memories are from my Grampa too, in the St. Louis area. I was about 4 or 5, me, my sis and Gramma sitting in the kitchen. My Grampa comes in and starts talkin with us when all of a sudden he grabs his shotgun by the door( he always kept it handy!), he's still in the kitchen with the door open, see's a crow in the tree, and fires a shot at it! WOW! Farm livin'!