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To manage the disease. He kept planting more and more trees. At the time we were handing out college scholarships in the valley, but Lynda decided it wasnt nearly enough. A year and a half after hearing Sandeland in the wake of Giblers storyLynda kicked into high gear their mission to save Lost Hills and several other farmworker towns where Wonderful operated its orchards and processing plants. The grass is a color green on the verge of blue, and the cutouts for trees are razor etched. "There is a national will to be self-sufficient in agriculture. Hes getting ready to introduce Lynda, the main speaker, but first he wants to address the federal governments recent recall of Wonderful pistachios. Chance of rain 100%. Like the waters of the lake, the indent of the Resnicks will recede from the land, too. His father grew grapes, cherries, and apricots in the Santa Clara Valley back when Stanford University still had a reason to be known as The Farm. Resnick has saved the front seat for me. He leveled its hog wallows, denuded its salt brush, and killed the last of its mustang, antelope, and tule elk. Maybe this explains why the United Way could declare the valley one of the nations skinflints, a place where the wealthy farmers donated to the childrens hospital or Fresno State athletics but almost never to the communities filled with Mexicans where their crops grew. Its John Vidovich. The film ends with the laughter of kids playing inside the giant sunburst at the center of the soccer field. Hes not only able to irrigate his nut trees with an imported flow of groundwater40,000 acre-feet in some years. Died on 26 Oct 2005. On the north end sits the Wonderful Soccer Field with its all-weather track, stadium lights, artificial turf, and giant yellow sunburst embossed at midfield. She was a very frugal lady. The courtship of Stewart and Lynda went fast. Hes got another meeting to attend. No rain in five years. There before me, two aluminum pipes, side by side, 12 inches in diameter each, slither in the sun. The city manager is in the process of coordinating a response, "said Gornick. His operation is extensive and very smart.. Im going to Kern County, just shy of the mountains, to figure out how the biggest farmers in America, led by the biggest of them all, are not only keeping alive their orchards and vineyards during drought but adding more almonds (79,000 acres), more pistachios (73,000 acres), more grapes (35,000 acres), and more mandarins (13,000 acres). He got himself into this jam. Then I get lucky. By then, Wonderful, if it still exists, will be a portfolio run by men even farther away than Beverly Hills. The dispute over the no fly zone was finally resolved by the invention of a netting that Resnick sheathes around his mandarins each spring. He does enough farming in the area to make it look like hes a farmer. If this were any other part of Kern, the farmers would be reaching into the earth to make up the difference. He doesnt wave me off or give chase. He was in the mood to gamble. Wonderful is getting smaller, he says. Contact Eliza Ridgeway at elizar@latc.com. When I look around here at what weve built and then look back at my life in New Jersey, I think, How did it happen? For one man and woman to build something like this would be almost impossible today.. I want to know that what we built will continue into the future.. Stephen Vidovich died in 2007, at the age of 81, driving a tractor near one of his remaining vineyards. Both GSAs, along with three others in the Tulare Lake subbasin, submitted a single joint groundwater plan. They knew little about the company except it was selling its keepsakes for five times the amount Teleflora was. I steer toward the almonds, past a row of worker housing and a main gate. The water is cold, clean, and salty, though not too salty for a desperate man. Be Proactive. A portion of his wages will be set aside each month to pay down the debt. The hillocks that existed back in Yokut Indian days were flattened by a hunk of metal called the Fresno Scraper. She described commodity programs as making up less than 13 percent of the farm bill. Ill have to go deeper if I can.. None of the sales taxes go to City Hall because Lost Hills isnt a city. Vidovich isnt the only pumper in that area, his supporters note. Here and there a mulberry tree, its canopy pruned back, breaks up the red-smeared sky.. His partner in the mandarins once told me that when Stewart is done with you, hes done with you. Brown oxtail in batches and set aside. He had spent the morning on his exercise bike reading Fortune. Iranian pistachios show up in Tel Aviv as nuts from Turkey. Welcome to San Antonio del Norte, he says. Scott: So you set out with this question: how was he defying nature? She is here and there, but I have never seen her up close. In a timespan even shorter than Resnicks, the 61-year-old Vidovich has bought up more than 100,000 acres of farmland scattered across the valley. Carls Jr., Subway, McDonalds, Wendys, Loves, or Arbys. In Kern County, one in two adults and almost one in five children are obese. This is the west end of Lost Hills, the extraction end. On our trips to Disneyland, I must have blinkered my eyes heading down 99. But that money enabled me to go into Angiola (a water district in Tulare County) and have other water sources.. But the smaller farmer still uses a pruning shears to make his most important cuts. Its the summer of 2016, eight weeks before the big pick, and Im zigzagging across the almonds and pistachios, square mile after square mile of immaculate orchards lined with micro-irrigation systems and heavy with nuts. Even if I were to move water and sell it, it would be to farming operations.. "This is the first step of a long journey. Now, Pace said, Vidovich will do the same thing on a larger scale by moving Kings and Tulare groundwater to Kern County. But his egotheres no controlling that., Resnick had heard it all before. Everything about our physical selves, Lynda believes, begins in our guts. They both knew what they wanted. Now its the Bobcats turn. Typically, each pound sells wholesale for $3.75. Low 42F. This is a forgotten community. This year's farm bill, the most recent incarnation of agricultural policy dating back to the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, is a controversial $300 billion package that combines poverty-relieving nutrition programs with big payoffs to agribusinesses. In the Wonderful fields, he tells me, at least 80 percent of the workers carry no documents or documents that are not real. Thanks to Wonderfuls $15 million Get Crackin campaignthe largest media buy in the history of snack nutspistachios now rank among the top ten bestselling salty snack items in the U.S. We are no longer processing nuts, he says. His real estate empire became big enough to bring aboard each of his four children. I'm not sure that it (location) being one of the busiest places in Kings County is the right place for that. The more water he got, the more crops he planted, and the more crops he planted, the more water he needed to plant more crops, and on and on. He hired Bert Steir, a Bostonian with a Bronze Star from the Second World War and a degree from Harvard, to come west and work his deals. The wildfires cant be far behind. According to Lemoore's city manager, local officials will likely respond to the feedlot proposal at Tuesday's (Jan. 18) council meeting. Feudal. supernatural tattoos designs. I roll past Tulare, where every February they hold the biggest tractor show in the world, even bigger than the one in Paris. Every last tree has been torn out of the ground. Maybe not since the wheat barons has the income disparity between farmer and farmworker been greater. It is the ditch up the road, the one that carries no water, that is filled with old mattresses and spent appliances. He says his bosses have been instructing him to cut the water each irrigation. Before we go much further, you should probably know a little more about Vidovich. Rethink Your Drink is the latest slogan. But a pipeline, which Vidovich is allowed to build under the Semitropic agreement, could span that distance. "Ten percent of farmers get 70 percent of the payment," Perez said. He holds a little more than 100,000 acres in Kings County, 40,000 acres in Kern, and 10,000 acres in Tulare County. The nut must be hurried from bin to truck to processing plant to keep it from discoloring. I was prepared to knock on the door, but a housekeeper, flanked by two blow-dried dogs, greeted me on the front steps and led me inside. Vidovich freely admits that most of his land is for water rights. For a silent minute, we dig into our bowls. Their houses made from railroad boxcars have been painted purple, blue, yellow, and gold. The relatives try not to press them, but the arrangement still feels like a form of indentured servitude. This project may not be fully thought out," said Neves. Low 44F. Month after month, she made ends meet on a $1,600 budget. What do you need to know, sir?, Whats it been like here during the drought?, Drought, no drought, makes no difference. He grew up in New Jersey, where his father ran a bar. When Lynda learned that half the students receiving thousands of dollars in company scholarships were dropping out of school, she wasnt deterred. Whichever dish they choose, workers are asked not to take a bite until they have considered Lyndas latest concoction: an ounce of apple cider vinegar cut with ginger, mandarin juice, and turmeric served in small plastic cups like the wine of Mass. By age 19, Lynda had dropped out of college, married a magazine ad man, and opened her own advertising agency. Theres a lot happening in the world. In Lost Hills, they call her Lady Lynda. She shows up in high fashion and stands in the dust and tells them about another charter school or affordable-housing project she is bringing to them. But when the Kings does flood, as its doing now, millions of acre feet rush north to join up with the San Joaquin River and empty into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. I had not seen any. Since international sanctions were lifted five years earlier, Iran has been crowding the market with its more buttery-tasting pistachios. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. The vibration is a stunning piece of violence to behold. The junk scattered about could be a lot worse. Longtime Los Altos resident Stephen John Vidovich, founder of De Anza Properties of Sunnyvale, died of an apparent heart attack June 19 as he was driving a tractor on his property in the Cupertino hills, said his son John Vidovich. Because a human picker is not needed in the almond and pistachio groves, the nut harvest doesnt spread around money the way it spreads around dust. I cross the Tulare County line heading south into Bakersfield, and there in front of me, for no eye to miss, stands the Wonderful Citrus complex with its four-story storage building designed in the shape of an almighty box of Halo mandarins. He paved over the last orchard in the Santa Clara Valley with some apartments and then went looking for another valley where he might build his own empire. A giant pistachio nut flashes on the big screen. He bought his first Kings County property in a foreclosure in 1994 and eventually amassed 102,000 acres in Kings - as well as nearly 40,000 acres in Kern County, 10,000 in Tulare County, and 1,700 in Fresno County, according to . Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph.. Theres a mountain range to my left and a mountain range to my right and in between a plain flatter than Kansas where crop and sky meet. City of Sunnyvale NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING. In the trailer next door, Lupes cousin Margarita lives with her husband, Selfo, and their three young children. It looks like no other campus in the valley: a modern, minimalist two-story design that uses paneled wood and fabricated metal, wild colors, and terraced landscaping to create the feel of a high-tech mountain retreat. Every move Vidovich has made, through Hurley and other public water districts, has been about gaining control of water, they say. Boswell had done for the town of Corcoran. But the one thing he cant control is what hes most dependent on water. There are a lot more rural areas that would be able to support that operation.". April 17, 2020. He explains that Wonderful has grown too big to hassle such precision. "In talking to the planning department, I found out that the initial step is to notify essential agencies in the area for comments. It was true that agriculture had been selling state project water to cities for two decades. Preview. Im down.. Lupe gave birth to two daughters, U.S. citizens, who are now 11 and 6. Often an equal amount of water splits south, wreaking havoc on farmland in the old Tulare Lake bottom, about 60 miles northwest of Bakersfield. As the nuts pour down onto the roof of the catcher, the operator shifts the trough so that it becomes a conveyor belt. Wow. So, capturing that south fork floodwater would benefit both Kings and Kern county farmers, according to Semitropics Gianquinto. The calculation and hubris inside it. Thats when the Resnicks decided to sell the concept of wellness to their 4,300 employees throughout the valley the same way they sell workplace safety. My health, knock on wood, is good. When its Pablos turn, he hands Hussein a check for $437, and Hussein counts out $433 back to him in cash. Hurley, who also serves as general manager of Green Valley, said that basin, which is separate from the Tulare Lake basin, is actually in balance. The Spanish rice isnt rice but cauliflower made to look like rice. The Ninth Annual Wonderful Pistachio Conference at the Visalia Convention Center is an invitation-only affair, but I managed to sneak in and grab a seat. Back then, the Los Angeles Times had a bureau in the middle of California. Taxpayers support the continued production of such commodities, at least in theory, through direct payments to farmers amounting to $5 billion last year under the direction of the farm bill. Then there was the nail in the coffin for folks like Pace and Mitchell when Vidovich appeared in a National Geographic film called Water and Power: A California Heist, which ran in mid-March and again on June 25. Read our full comments policy: losaltosonline.com/comments, $5.00 LOIS HENRY: Is John Vidovich planning to sell off the valley's lifeblood? He was going to Vegas, hanging out with his own Damon Runyon characters, and making plans to get even bigger. He makes $10.50 an hour, and the company provides him with a 401(k) plan and medical insurance. Weve had our battles in the past, and I dont agree with everything hes doing. Anzaldo grew up in Bakersfield and attended a Catholic high school where he played football and basketball. Whether its the glint of a 15-carat, yellow canary diamond ring, a 25th wedding anniversary gift from Stewart, or one of the pomegranate-colored rubies she says are a girls best friend, its hard to tell from the back row. Nothing changes. She tells me the water comes out of the tap yellow and foul smelling, and she doesnt trust it. Somehow, it made its way to Lynda. As it happened, just down the road, on the other side of the lake bottom, Resnick had captured his own body of water, the Kern Water Bank, and planted millions of nut trees on desert scrub. And when youve been as lucky as weve been, you start to think you can ride out drought, too., He did learn one lesson. If I follow them south into Resnick almonds, I can see where the water is going. He and the Resnicks had fought an ugly legal battle that tore their Cutie brand in two. To change the microbial life in our digestive tracts and reduce inflammation that leads to disease, we have to reintroduce fermented foods into our diet. Lessons? he says, sounding perplexed. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you. Vidovich, he said, is just the new water baron on the block, thats all. Its an economy of scale on a scale no ones ever tried here. He went out and bought an alarm company. At this point, he said, he uses about 30 percent of his land for farming and 70 percent for water. Or he can devise a scheme to steal water from a neighbor up the road. Theres an unease about the room. The knoll begins to rise. What spikes blood sugar more than a can of Coke? He was a small, trim man, no more than 5 foot 5, in his early 70s with thinning silver hair and brown eyes rimmed in pink. All this stirring up is a consequence of mechanization.