Slow Life with Real Food

We're sitting at an old diner in Blythe, close to the Colorado river, which we are soon to cross on our way to Tucson, Arizona.  We said goodbye to Doug Adair at Pato's Dream Date Gardens this morning, and headed towards the Chocolate Mountains in the morning cool.  We haven't blogged in a few days, partly because of difficulty finding an Internet connection, and partly because we found a couple of farms where we felt very comfortable and welcome, just at the time when we felt like slowing down and taking a little bit of a break.

Reminiscing of the last few days, crossing southern California and heading towards the Arizona desert, many memories come to mind. Many relate to the visible battle between urban sprawl and food production, for the land and water resources of the southern CA desert. This battle became very apparent while we crossed LA towards Riverside, on our way to Fallbrook.

Which brings my mind back to that memorable ride, two days ago....

We're squeezing between lanes of insane traffic, heading out of Los Angeles towards Fallbrook, a farming community inland between LA and San Diego. The change of scenery from the Pacific Coast of Los Angeles, where we had spent a day in Santa Monica with friends, is quite jarring. We pass miles and miles of McMansions, as we flow though the turbulent river of SUVs.  We drove into Los Angeles on the beautiful Pacific Coast Highway, after spending 3 days hopping from patch to patch of pristine farmland, and now we exit the city immersed in its other extreme. The air is very hot and dry, and the speed at which we travel makes it feel doubly so.  Patches of defunct or dying farmland show up sporadically among the sprawl, and blocks of box stores and acres of asphalt parking lots spread over what used to be farmland.  Small patches of green lawn dot the desert landscape, in front of huge but rickety-looking newly built homes. Quantity over quality? Huge strip malls filled with box stores “unify” these new “communities”. Here in Blythe, we just passed “Main Street”, with all of its boarded-up mom-and-pop shops, a stone-throw away from Albertson's, Rite-Aid, and countless “embassies” of the corporate behemoths that have colonized most niches of the human-sized economies that our communities used to be based upon.

We pass Temecula, and enter the Fallbrook area. Finally, we're on farmland again. We pass a couple of abandoned fruit stands close to the freeway. If you didn't know about Fallbrook, you would pass in on your way to San Diego and not even know it was there. Fallbrook is a region of rolling hills that hosts a cluster of small growers, mainly growing fruits and herbs.  Our first stop in the area: McManigle Grove.

George McManigle is a serious small farmer.  We phone him from the road, and arrive to find him waiting for us on his driveway. He gives us a tour of his 7 acres of beautiful and healthy-looking fruit trees. George grows avocados, cherimoyas, macadamias, lemons, guavas, blood oranges, and passion fruit.  He's very involved in the farming community, as president of the macadamia growers' coop, member of the chamber of commerce, activist for farming water rights, etc.  He tells us of the struggle for water with the urban sprawl.  It is likely that Fallbrook will get a 30% cut in water soon, and his farm will suffer greatly.  He'll have to kill 30% of his trees, since his water use is already very efficient, and he cannot reduce it any further without killing his trees.  We climb to a hill and survey the neighboring hills. Among the little farms, little patches of development can be seen. They include some beautiful and very large homes, and a few empty “for sale” lots tell us that this is probably the shape of things to come.  I feel that we're seeing the “dying pangs” of a style of development that is not sustainable and will eventually fall under its own weight. Will these people be able to commute to LA or San Diego, once oil becomes really scarce? Will they like to stay here once the shrinking snowpacks of the Sierras stop providing enough water for their lawns?  I wonder what will happen once importing produce from far away becomes less competitive than growing for local consumption, and demand for farmland close to urban centers grow. We're entering a period of much uncertainty in regards to the evolution of our food systems. Water and farmland availability, climate, and energy prices are all flux and their impact on the future evolution of our food systems is uncertain.

We say goodbye to George, and my mind juggles with so many bits of information from our conversation. It's an interesting time for small farms like McManigle Grove. On one side, demand for their products is growing, but many other variables, water availability in particular, make the future uncertain.

We head east in search of Beck Grove, where we'll soon find a welcome antidote to the harsh riding and heady thinking that this morning has mostly brought.  Helene and Robert Beck are soon to bring back smiles into our faces with their wonderful hospitality and loving warmth.