Small Farm, New Year

Laura Avery
Mirror contributing writer

   Regular market goers probably noticed that farmer attendance was somewhat sparse over the December and New Year’s holidays. This is the one time of year that farmers can afford to take a short break –- a vacation of sorts –- while their tree crops sleep and the row crops are tended, but not extensively harvested. But farming is a year-round occupation that relies on forces beyond the control of its workers. A heavy snow pack in the Sierras is good news for farmers as far south as San Diego County who rely on water deliveries to get them through the long dry season and who count on winter rains to offset their annual water bills. Small family farms take advantage of the Christmas break to put their kids to work picking, irrigating and helping with sales at the markets they do attend. We have only to contemplate the universal three-month summer school recess to be reminded that at one time all families who farmed needed their children home for the peak harvest period.
   California’s farmers markets can offer a perfect example of functional small farm economics. Unlike their agribusiness counterparts, who benefit from largesse doled out by the federal commodity support program and whose names, along with the dollar amount of their subsidies, were recently posted on a web site, California’s small farmers remain independent and self-sufficient. Farms with fewer than 50 acres account for 60% of all farms in California, according to 1997 USDA census figures, while farms over 2,000 acres account for just 3.6%. Sales by big farms, however, account for 84% of all agricultural products, leaving California’s 61,524 small farms to share the remaining 16% of total farm production which is $2.2 billion in annual sales. (I did the math – this averages just $35,758 per farm per year.)
   One small family farm that manages to maximize its non-governmental assets is Peter Schaner’s family farm in Valley Center. The Schaners became a farming family more than two generations ago when Peter senior’s family moved from Michigan to the town of Placentia in California’s Orange County. Pete senior, the youngest of four children, took over the family’s 3-acre chicken farm when his father died, and bought an additional five acres of citrus trees. He marketed his eggs and chickens at a roadside stand and sold his citrus fruit through local packing houses back when Orange County was the #1 citrus production county in the state. Pete met his future wife, Mary Stehly, whose family had a 25-acre farm in Anaheim, and together they farmed Peter’s land in Placentia and raised a large family –- 13 children in all. Pete eventually started a second career as a mechanic to supplement his farm income, but the children were all raised on the home farm and they all learned the various aspects of the trade as well as the values of teamwork, togetherness and innovation.
   Mary’s family sold its land in 1972, as Anaheim was being rapidly developed, and bought several hundred acres in Valley Center, on which they farmed organic citrus fruit for the wholesale market. Peter junior went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo where he was a biology major and where he met fellow student Brett Schulman. Together Peter Brett’s Crop Science class opened what was probably California’s first unofficial farmers market by selling what they were growing. Right around the same time the Direct Marketing Program came into being and someone from the Farm Bureau showed up to take over the management, such as it was, of Peter and Brett’s class project. Peter left Cal Poly and moved down to Valley Center in 1982 while Brett went to nearby See Canyon to grow apples.
   In 1983 Peter bought a 12-acre farm in Valley Center that was planted with 90 varieties of fruit including citrus, cherries, avocadoes, apples, apricots, plums and pears –- a suitable mix for selling at the local farmers’ market in Vista. He met his future wife, Kayne, and as they began to raise their own family they began to look for more markets. They found a spot in the Wednesday Santa Monica market as well as a two newly opened markets in San Diego County – all three of which they or a family member attend each week. Peter and Kayne rearranged and replanted their family farm and acquired an additional 10 acres in 1991. Their own children –- eight in all and ranging from age 2 to 16 years -– grew up home schooled and learning about farming the way their father did. They live and work on the land, help one another and gladly give and receive assistance from neighbors and friends.
   The Schaner kids come to market to sell from time to time but just as often you will find some of Peter’s brothers or sisters helping out as well. Most of the Schaner siblings have stayed pretty close to the home place in Placentia which is still being farmed by David Schaner. The lands, a wedge of rural property surrounded on all sides by urban development, has finally been granted “grandfather” status as a farmstead, thus relieving it of any further attempts at rezoning. In addition to operating a roadside stand and holding school farm tours, David raises the chickens, pigs, cattle and sheep that feed him and his extended family all year round. Paul Schaner is a custom butcher who processes all the family’s animals for the freezer as well as for students at a local high school who raise animals as part of a year long course in farming. Mark Schaner is a tree trimmer, Mary became a nurse, Tommy is a goatherd in Mendocino and Greg – well, Greg became a doctor. You just can’t keep them all on the farm.
   At his stand in the Wednesday market, Peter operates and speaks with the deliberateness of a person who knows what his priorities are and who seems to understand that to be in a hurry is a waste of quality time. He has quietly assumed the responsibility of making deliveries after the market to three local restaurants for farmers and chefs who pool their purchases at his stand. This puts him on the road home to Valley Center well after 6 p.m. each Wednesday, but in lighter traffic, so it manages to work out okay in the long run. For the present, Peter values the life he has lived and provided for his own family; long term he looks warily ahead to the future for California’s small farmers, especially in the highly politicized area of water allocation. Farmers would be the first to have their water cut back in the event of any shortage, and development is making more and more demand on California’s scarce water resources. No more small family farms like the Schaner’s in California? Unthinkable.
   Think about it.