We've lost the ranch. The odd thing is it didn't go anywhere. I still see it from my window. The land stretches out there, now a chilling reminder of four farming generations.
Parents, grandparents, and great-grandarents aren't actually seen in the orchards, but their presence is felt. They lived the American ethic of hard work and continued a lifestyle centered around each season which was preparation for the next season, the next year, the next generation.
There's a tremendous sense of failure in being the last farmers in a family line. The banks try to dehumanize the pain by calling it a "paper loss." But just as ancestors are more than old family photographs, land is more than a notarized piece of paper.
The banker can't see the ranch from his window. He'll come out occasionally in an attempt to match the physical to the surveyor's paper image.
He's already sketching improvements. He's drawn plans to replace a two-acre vineward with almond trees.
"More efficeint. Better for the cash flow," he says. (Two acres of 288 will make only a trickle of difference in cash flow.)
The banker at his desk sees the vineyard as lines out of balance. I see vines, stakes, and the day we planted. My husband and I had spent the morning at the mortuary, picking a casket for Papa, and then we'd gone to Park View to buy a grate site. We came home, changed into our work clothes and went out to the open field. The land had been ready for a month but we had been at Stanford Hospital almost daily. The root stock was pushing buds; it was late spring and planting had to begin.
Pedro, Ted and Bino had started planting early that morning. No one said more than a few words as we joined them. A neighbor stopped by and found that he too couldn't express his grief. He dropped to his knees and worked with us as we cried together and planted the vineyard.
The paper description doesnt' show happy, crisp Sunday mornings with cousins and friends resting coffee mugs on the hood of the truck after we had picked the grapes. There's no official notation indicating the autumn evenings we watched a harvest moon rise over that vineyard.
Within a few days a part of our life and history will close. But we'll always be connected to the land. Locked in the land is our daughter at five years old, being overpaid at a dime an hour as she "helped" her grandfather plant replacements for trees that had died. My husband's youthful energies and dreams are out there.
We're a part of the past. We leave the ranch to men who farm from offices instead of homes.
From the window I see we've lost the seasons. Harvest is finished. Who will prune the trees?
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