108 degrees today in downtown Sonora! Poor garden is looking droopy, but I’m doing a bit of evening water. Then I think about Kristy Worman, the farmer at Golden Brodaiea Farms. She has a hillside of raised beds for her amazing flower garden. How does she handle farming in this kind of weather? But that is the life of farmers and ranchers. Once you’ve made that leap, that commitment to the land, you take it on–hot scorching weather and all! These folks don’t get the luxury of saying, “Well, I think I’ll just do that job another day.”
My own garden is a diversion, a hobby. I get out and get dirty, then I enjoy the modest fruits of my harvest. But even my meager efforts have a lot of money sunk into their success. When I see a pitiful lavender or monkey flower, I consider the investment I’ve made in plants, water and landscaping. But a farmer’s investment is his whole being, her whole life.
Tell us about a farmer or rancher you admire for their work on the land.
1 response so far ↓
Marian Rocha Zimmerly // Jul 10, 2008 at 12:40 pm
BZ:
This is about a farmer, not from Tuolumne County, but from Tulare in the San Joaquin Valley. This is about my father, John L. Rocha, who passed away at age 92. Pop farmed cotton and alfalfa. He worked the land from dawn past dusk - driving tractors with no dust shield; irrigating the young seedlings, cultivating - all this in blistering Valley heat. My brothers knew what the work was like because they helped out.
But I didn’t appreciate my Pop’s labor until I moved up here from the Bay Area and got involved with Farms of Tuolumne County. Now I understand his commitment to the land and to family. When Livia Meagher, 76 year old owner and operator of M&M Suffolk and an FOTC Board member, comes in late to a Board meeting because she has has been lambing, I understand. When our President, Sasha Farkas, sits down to run a Board meeting, sighs and takes a deep breath, I understand that he has been hard at work managing Cedar Ridge Apple Ranch or fulfilling his responsibilities as a Farm Bureau Director. Then there is Rosemary Sawyer, Secretary of Farms of Tuolumne County and owner, along with husband Ron, of Rosemary’s Roses. Don Moore, another Board member, owns Twain Harte Tree Farm. Vice-president, Kathy Stegall, her husband Gary and daughter Melissa, raise pigs, and Kathy works a fulltime job in Calaveras County. Board member Kristy Worman owns Golden Brodiaea Farm and trucks her flowers to two farmers markets each week.
I honor these hard working people and can’t thank them enough for their contribution to Tuolumne County agriculture and their service to FOTC!
marian
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