Surrounded by Suburbia

For two months in 1984, unrelenting noise pulsed from huge machines that arrived to remove the last agricultural holding that bordered the farm.

For years we had been huddled up next to each other, two small farms standing against the tide of development. Though Fairview had grown and flourished, our neighbor had given in years before. His lemon orchard, now falling to the big steel blade of the bulldozer, was a wild, derelict remnant. A certain beauty emerged from this neglect, as nature reclaimed the land in the years that the orchard was forgotten. Twenty-six acres were regaining their wildness. The land was full of life. Deer, raccoons, possum, hawks and coyotes passed through a bustling society of birds, small rodents and insects.

I fought the demise of that land, feeling feeble standing in the City Council chambers with a few other locals facing off against the highly paid lawyers for the developers. The story is always the same. Land is a mere commodity to be bought and sold, something to build on, pave over, mine or drill.

We protested the sacrifice of the richest topsoil on the entire West Coast. We cited the agricultural history of this valley, our perfect Mediterranean growing climate, the loss of farmland everywhere and the importance of small farms and local food for our children. Our voices were drowned out by housing statistics, traffic studies, and promises of parks and tennis courts, all supported by sophisticated maps and graphs.

The local newspaper acted as oracle, putting forth headlines on yet-to-be-approved projects as if they were a sure thing. “Progress Hangs Concrete Shroud on Goleta Farm,” the paper solemnly confirmed. The neighbor who sold the land was quoted, predicting, “Farming is a dying profession.” I had to wonder where his food came from.

*

We all hear stories of the greed that undermines our global environment. Until the bulldozers are idling at your back door, it is an intellectual concept. The pain for us was real. For 58 days, an army of 300-horsepower Caterpillars and dump trucks moved and buried and leveled and graded hundreds of tons of topsoil.

The bone-rattling noise started at seven each morning and didn’t stop until evening. Clouds of dust floated into the farm and covered everything. We complained, and the atmosphere of war seemed only to increase. The line was drawn where the lush green of our avocado orchards met the red flags that marked the roads of new development. But the battle was about more than just noise and dust, and we were losing. With each day the farm was becoming more like an island. All around us, the once fertile agrarian valley had become a sea of tract homes and shopping centers. The sense of complete isolation was the hardest to take. With this last development, the farm would be surrounded by suburbia. We were now completely out of context.

There were more struggles to come. Contiguous pieces of land cannot be separated so easily. Nature, especially water, does not abide by surveyors’ lines and man-made borders. When 26 acres are graded, paved and covered with rooftops, the watershed is concentrated into runoff, and the impact downstream can be disastrous. A cement culvert large enough to walk through appeared, sticking out into the corner of our land, ready for the next big storm. The Texas-based developer wasn’t accustomed to young, upstart farmers standing in his way. When I called in county flood control to find out how he planned to deal with all that drainage being dumped on our lands, he was not happy. The issue, if unresolved, threatened to hold up the works.

After long negotiations, the developer was required to dig a drainage ditch along the bottom of our land and pay the [farm’s owners] $30,000. He planned to make back some of his money by selling the valuable topsoil he dug out of the farm. I stopped him, and the topsoil became a small mountain that we still draw from for compost. The ditch, purportedly designed to withstand the “hundred-year flood,” has flooded into our fields and orchards three of the last six years.

Despite the obstacles we raised, the land next door was subdued, and nature was more or less contained. Construction began and several hundred look-alike tract-home condominiums popped up on the Mars-like landscape. They were given names such as Village Terrace. Unlike any village I have ever visited, they lack any commons and any real sense of identity or place. Then, as if they had been waiting in line at the gates of this new “village,” the moving vans arrived. There was a waiting list of ready buyers. With the influx of new neighbors came the beginnings of complaints--about the signs outside our produce stand, the compost and finally the crow of our roosters.

One of my new neighbors had been a tight end for an NFL football team. He stood about six feet tall and weighed close to 200 pounds. One evening as the produce stand was closing, he rushed in, angry. The newly built home he had just purchased was near our compost piles. He wanted the piles removed.

This neighbor filed his complaint with the county health department. They issued an official order for me to “cease and desist” composting. The penalty for noncompliance was jail. I ignored the order. Compost was not just a central part of our natural soil fertility program, it also allowed us to recycle hundreds of tons of green waste that would otherwise clog the local landfills.

We had some explaining to do. [Wife] Donna and I invited all of our new neighbors over to discuss composting and other issues. Over a home-grown meal of sweet corn, green beans, vine-ripe tomato salad and fresh-baked bread, we talked things through. Most of the neighbors showed up, except for the one who complained so bitterly. He sent his wife.

*

Exactly one year later, a uniformed county officer was tramping through the peach orchard, her shiny boots threatening the tender celery transplants we had just placed between the rows of trees. “PUBLIC NUISANCE” was printed in bold capital letters on the top of her six-page document. The “ORDER” commanded me to restrict this nuisance, and deemed me responsible for enforcement costs. If I did not comply, the matter would be turned over to the district attorney.

The public nuisance was my roosters. These roosters had run free for many years, fulfilling their part in the balance of the farm, and crowing about it most mornings. When I refused to sign the document, the officer stood bewildered at first, then became angry.

“You’ll go to jail if you don’t sign,” she said with the absolute conviction of a person who knows the law. I refused again, as I refused in prior years to cease and desist composting or to remove the signs advertising our fresh fruits and vegetables. I refused for reasons that were purely practical to the operation of the farm, and for deeper reasons that involved my principles and convictions. I also felt a responsibility to the community that supports and benefits from the farm.

Soon Fairview Gardens was caught in the eye of a major local controversy heralded by headlines reading “Rooster Riots,” “As the Cock Crows” and “Roosters’ Reveille Stirs Flap.” Televised hearings were scheduled and a throng of community supporters of the farm showed up in pop-up rooster hats. Marriages were strained as couples living near the farm were divided on whether the sound was a nuisance or actually a pleasant background to a suburban environment.

Mail and messages poured in from well-wishers, as well as plenty of expert advice. “Put a large metal bucket over their heads and they can’t stretch their necks to crow.” “Send them on a flight to Australia and back again to upset their internal time clock.” At the county hearing, officials suggested in all earnestness that we cut the vocal cords of the offending beasts.

I responded with an editorial that ran in the local newspaper on Mother’s Day about the archetypal cry of the rooster and our lost connection to the land. Perhaps the district attorney didn’t want to take on Mother’s Day, the American farm and a public dressed in rooster hats. Perhaps the public outcry had actually been heard and heeded. Whatever the reason, the district attorney withdrew his charges and the county backed down.

But the issue was not as the media presented it--just about roosters. The real story had to do with the loss of our relation to the natural world. The crow of the rooster is symbolic. It was one of the last natural sounds left in this valley, even though it could barely be heard over the constant hum of Highway 101 and the roar of jet planes from the nearby airport.

*

In the years that followed, we spent an inordinate amount of time defending our right to be. An anonymous complaint from a neighbor cost the farm thousands of dollars in conditional-use permits for the fruit stand and a trailer. Both had been on the property for a very long time. Then came theft and vandalism to the produce stand, increased traffic and noise, bottles and trash thrown into the fields, and neighbors’ dogs going after our goats, chickens and a rabbit called Blossom.

The internal battle that raged inside me swung to extremes. I considered holing up on the farm, building fences, guarding our borders, acting as if an alien force had surrounded us. I could keep fighting or begin to educate. I chose the latter. The neighborhood was changing--it was time to change the goals of the farm.

People were beginning to think about food in a new way. Food safety issues were surfacing in the media, as were environmental issues about agriculture. People were looking to rediscover their relationship to the land. Parents and teachers wanted new ways to educate their children. Reaching people through their kids and their stomachs seemed the most powerful and direct approach.

I continued to struggle with bottles in the fields, restricted tractor hours and dogs chasing livestock. At the same time, my new neighbors were drifting in to the produce stand. At first it was just to pick up the head of lettuce they had forgotten at the supermarket; we were in effect a convenience store. The connection grew gradually as they learned to savor our corn and strawberries, slowly realizing that what the sign said was true: “We Grow What We Sell.”

Together we were figuring out what a farm could mean to a suburban population. We were just beginning to recognize how important it could be for our children. Thrown into public discourse over compost and roosters, caught in a collision of urban and rural, we were given the chance to play out and resolve the same issues that were forcing small farms all over this country to shut down.

While the grown-ups were busy working out the complaints, the kids had already moved in. I discovered secret forts built into the avocado orchard. I found a little plastic table and chairs in a hidden corner of the fields, the setting for carefully planned doll tea parties with muffins and orange juice. Occasionally I was invited to attend.

The hostesses, Sara and Jenny, were just moments away from being too old for dolls. On the farm they clung to the ritual a little longer, even as they haunted the fields asking a million agricultural questions of my crew or searched the underbrush for signs of wild rabbits. For them the farm was full of mystery, and their carefully made notes and totems were left behind, like clues in a treasure hunt.

Little brothers came along too, arriving on their motocross bikes, jumping the curb that separated the farm from the development, and wiping out into the soft mountain of topsoil we had recovered from the clutches of the developer.

Things quieted down after the rooster riots, maybe because many of those who complained came to understand, even believe in, what we were doing. Or maybe it was because they decided that we were a formidable foe.

One neighbor, whose home borders the long field at the bottom of the property, often left messages saying he would rather look over his fence at condominiums, or that the dust from the tractor was ruining the plaster in his pool.

He was most sensitive about the old spreader truck I used to spread compost on the fields. The truck has a big bed with high sides. A belly chain runs along the bed dropping compost into two spinning fans that throw it onto the field about 20 feet to each side of the truck. I could see why this made him nervous.

In the spirit of peaceful co-existence--even harmony--I had a plan. When I needed to spread compost on the lower field, I decided that it would be better for our relationship if it was done before five o’clock, before he came home from work.

Unfortunately, one afternoon just as the truck moved into the field, it bogged down. It took the rest of the day to get it restarted. By that time, my neighbor was standing at the fence, arms crossed, just waiting for me to make a wrong move.

As I drove along the field near his place, I took extra precautions, veering way off to the side to be sure that the material would not land anywhere near his place. Looking in the mirror, I could see him wave, smile and acknowledge my careful consideration.

I turned around to make another pass, this time on the other side of the field. Just as the truck lined up with his home, a small rock landed on the spinners and was flung like a rocket clear across the field, over the fence and through his dining room window. There is no way I could have achieved such precision even if I planned it, but his smile faded, as I knew it would.

Peace is never perfect. Sometimes it’s little more than a cease-fire. I’m sure my neighbor wonders to this day how I got the nerve (or the skill) to pull a stunt like that on purpose. I’m also sure that long after the window is fixed, he enjoyed being left with an indignant story to tell about a reckless, lunatic farmer shooting projectiles with a compost truck.

*

Michael Ableman is director of Fairview Gardens and founder of the Center for Urban Agriculture.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Editor’s note

For 17 years, Michael Ableman has worked Fairview Gardens as a 12-acre island of organic agriculture in the Santa Barbara suburb of Goleta. He describes the evolution of the farm in a just-released book, “On Good Land” (Chronicle Books, $18.95).

In this excerpt from that book, a chapter titled “Bulldozers and Tract Homes,” he describes conflicts that arose after the long-dormant lemon orchard next door to the farm was replaced by homes, and how he won over most of his new neighbors through the powers of education and tasty fresh food. It is a tale with special resonance for Ventura County, where farms and suburbs often coexist side by side.

Ableman will host a slide show and book signing at 8 p.m. Friday at Barnes & Noble, 160 W. Westlake Blvd., Thousand Oaks.