Sunlight for sale
No matter what a person has for sale it’s necessary to understand what your selling. So for the first few years I knew I had cattle to sell each year in the early part of June. I also, sold a right to hunt on the V6 to a Chrysler dealership owner for a new Chrysler station wagon to use each year and that was my total income. But I didn’t realize that what I really had to sell was sunlight that made the Cholame valley brighten anybodys day with it’s, take your breath away beauty. When I began to realize that natural beauty was more important than how many tons of hay I put up per acre or how many cattle could I run on the ranch for maximum amount of weight gain, it took awhile to get comfortable with the idea. But now after many years of cultivating that “peaceful easy feeling” I know irrevocably, that by trusting in Mother Nature practices I will always be doing the right thing. I constantly ask myself questions like: how do you care for a rain drop? How can I gather more sunlight? Do I see regenerative things happening? Is there water to drink for all the critters that live here? I guess you might say my family manages The Embraceable Gift Shop whose mission is for anybody that happens to find there way to the V6 to say that the stay was certainly worthwhile, even if they just made it for lunch.
Let me tell you about how I came to this conclusion. With the birth of our fourth and youngest child Greg and the station wagons of that era were similar to the present day SUV only there were no seatbelts only a mattress in the back where our children played or slept making car travel a pleasurable family event. Zee and I were making a comfortable living by following traditional methods of raising cattle and working from six in the morning to six in the evenings, but it didn’t feel like work as we were both passionate about raising kids and cattle.
May of 1979 everything would change very dramatically. By now my ego had me running 10,000 head of stocker steers on the Parkfield home ranch and a ranch that I bought at a San Luis Obispo county courthouse sale and several leases. My ego was still firmly in control when I turned down an offer from a cattle buyer to buy all 10,000 head for a price that was 3 or 4 cents less than I wanted but still an offer that would have made me a millionaire but I turned it down as I was sure the cattle market was going higher. But after thinking about that offer I decided I would take it so I called my buyer and told him I would take his offer. Sorry came the answer from a nice guy but this was business and he was now holding all the cards. He said this market is sharply lower so I can’t bid you until this cold shower I was about to take settles down. So when prices finally met up with demand my dreams of getting out of this wreck alive lied shattered on the rocks of stupidity and it would take 20 years to get back to where I was on that fateful day in May of 1979. By 1984 interest rates were running at 21% and I had doubled down on cattle to pull me out of the hole through the early 80’S but there only contribution was to dig me a deeper hole and my debt with my local farm credit bank was approaching 8 million dollars and the whole nationwide farm credit system was in trouble. Also about this time, maybe triggered by the size of my debt, I contracted a rather serious case of the mid life crazies. I took time to read an article in some magazine that talked about a developer on the East coast that had clustered his development right to build houses on one corner of the property and leaving the rest in open space. I knew I had to sell my San Luis Obispo ranch to pay down my debt but to sell it by chopping it up into 40 acre parcels that the zoning board approved of was making me sick to my stomach as this was a very good productive ranch that didn’t need to be hacked apart.
For some reason I know not why I felt like I still had the Green Light to go. So I called my banker friend and explained how this clustering idea could work. It would pay off farm credit and use only 2% of the 3,400 acres of land for 48 one acre home sites, roads and a community recreation area the remainder 3,332 acres would keep its Ag use only. My guy liked the idea and gave me the green light. I’ve always liked green lights. But my green light to start construction was going to have to wait for a couple of years while I was convincing the S.L.O. county board of supervisors that this was a better way to develop a rural ranch.
What a nice feeling when the board of supervisors finally gave me the green light to start. My banker was still with me as I told him I would need another two million to complete the project. I was also beginning to cure myself of my mid life craziness by attending a meeting called Support Group Network where after learning the rules of the road this group of about 50 or 60 split up into groups of a dozen or so. My group was selected totally at random as I didn’t know one person only the fact that they also wanted to march to a different drummer. We started with 13 members and immediately started losing people for various reasons. After about 3 years of meeting every Monday night at a different members house. We were now down to 5. Three women and 2 men, me being one of the men. We met continuously every Monday night for two more years and then one meeting night we looked at each other and said we’ve done our work and each liked the place they were in with their lives, plus we each had new social tools to work with and a support group if any of us needed it. So I had a green light to go again. With hugs all around I departed and never saw any of my group again but those five years of Monday nights will always be an important time in my life.
My debt was still growing at about the same clip as our California state debt is growing. That’s when my phone rang and an unfamiliar voice asked if I could meet the next day to talk about my loan. I said that would be fine. The next day, found me in my bankers office, only a new person was sitting at his desk. He introduced himself and said that he was the new manager and had replaced my guy and furthermore, there would be no more funds available for your project and I’m going to bring before the next farm credit board meeting that we start foreclosure proceedings on your loan. Well, what could I say but “Go f - - k yourself I’ll be here when you’re gone.” Now one has to think that that would be a Red light but what I saw was a Red light waiting to turn Green.
After looking for just one more million dollars to finish Varian Ranch I found myself in a very seedy world where people in bad need of money and we’re willing to pay exorbitant rates we’re told in case of default the lender had people that would break both your legs for excuses. Well that didn’t seem like a very good option as I closed the door behind me. I had time to think as I drove from Bakersfield home. I had three of my well healed friends and said if you would co-sign a note with me at farm credit for a million dollars I’ll pay you back a million dollars but you have to promise that you won’t break my legs if this whole development goes down the toilet. A year later the Varian Ranch with 48 lots for sale sells all the lots for 12 million dollars. I hand over a million to my three friends and 11 million to farm credit and my ledger says paid in full and I’ve still got enough left over to go have a cup of coffee.
Note: The Varian Ranch Development is 3,127 acres of land bordered by Orcutt Road and Lopez Drive in Arroyo Grande California. It is an Ag Cluster Development, where 95% of the ranch is still used for Ag while the other 5% provides a unique rural living opportunity to homeowners.
Jack’s objectives in creating the Development were recorded as so:
To create an environment where people and agriculture can live in harmony with each other.
To create and maintain a viable Ag operation that will produce food and fiber for the public using accepted Ag practices and new technology as it develops.
To maintain the natural beauty of the property while still allowing the production of Ag products.
To manage the land and its resources in such a manner as to preserve and protect native vegetation and wildlife.
To teach those who live on the land the care of the land and the crops and animals to be sustained through proper stewardship of the land.
It’s 1988 and I had won a rather significant award for my development but awards don’t pay bills and I was still living with traditional cattlemen’s practices that didn’t fit for me anymore causing me to do, a slow death spiral to oblivion “he had a nice ranch I wonder why it didn’t work” and I could feel the light turning from cautious yellow to red. The phone rings and it’s my neighbor one mountain range away and he asked me if I would like to go to a three day seminar and listen to a guy from Zimbabwe, Africa. He had studied the way wild grazing animals in Africa actually helped the land stay healthy instead of what we cattlemen here in California we’re doing which is to let our cattle selectively eat the best and leave the rest. George said he also has a way of making better decisions and methods to prove they’re correct. Well I wasn’t doing anything at the moment and a little Snake Oil might do me some good and it was going to happen in Paso Robles, my shopping town. Okay George I’ll go. The first day I was so full of cynicism and Allan Savory was talking to me in what seemed like a foreign language that I had had enough but George convinced me to try one more day and much to my surprise I was beginning to understand his thoughts and the third day was the aha day when he said “if your going to make a decision assume it’s wrong because if you assume that it’s right you will never change it. But if you assume that it’s wrong then by using his decision making process and the decision does past the test you get to keep it and if it doesn’t pass you have to have the resolve to make changes and change what you’re doing. Allen had given me permission to do things differently and in a flash the many doors in my mind opened to all the possibilities that changes when made Holistically would work for the betterment of the V6.
I could now see clearly that the green light had flashed on again so in 1993 after watching the movie City Slickers I told Zee that we could do that and this year will be our 30th year of having paying guest help move the ranch cattle to various different pastures or gather all of the stockers and deliver them to our shipping corrals for delivery to the party that bought them. In 2001 Zee and I placed a Conservation Easement over the entire ranch and gave the V6 to the Varian Family LLC that our four children own that same year, I put my 1,000 acres that I dry farmed back to pasture as this practice didn’t pass the Holistic test of making hay and it failed miserably on all accounts. To make sure that I didn’t back slide, I sold my mountain of balers and swathers, seeders and cultivators and said goodbye to the many trips I drove to town for parts to keep this army of iron keeping on keeping on. I then took my road grader that caused too much ranch road erosion and cut it apart and sold it for scrap. Not having to spend all my time doing repair and maintenance work I started writing a blog about my thoughts on changing from a Cattleman to a Holistic Grassman. Seven years ago I took 100 acres of the thousand acres of ex dry farm land that passed the Holistic test and planted it to Pistachios trees that hopefully will only need sunlight, water, Mycorrhizae Fungi, and a liquid fertilizer that would be used only if a laboratory tests showed that it was absolutely necessary and I hope I never see the day that a herbicide or pesticide would be necessary. The trees should start producing nuts this year.
I’ve been rambling on for enough time that I’m sure somebody out there in Blog Land is hoping my iPad Battery would die, but before it does sunlight on green leaves and on people are my keys to success. Now your wish is granted, my iPad has had enough.
See Ya,
Jack