I was so glad to see a new sign up at the begining of the summer that said Mariani Orchards. A new name? A new generation is taking it over?

That sign is gone now. I was hoping it was a teen prank or something.

This article. Andy Mariani made the business section of the New York Times today on who he is and the selling of his land for a housing development. His home will be torn down with the trees.

My one last thread of hope is in the aside that the county has to approve it first… They will, though.

I had so hoped that the farm conservancy folks had stepped up and given him a different outcome. He will continue farming 20 leased acres because that’s who he is and what he does. He currently owns 60 and leases more from his neighbor.

But how do you get the next generation to take it on during the year he lost 95% of his cherry crop and all of his most popular peach to a severe heat wave in March? Climate change. It’s real.

He has one of if not the largest collection of stone fruits in the country, quite a few of which he created.

I’ve never joined the California Rare Fruit Growers Association because I would feel like a pretender and the whole lupus/sun time thing anyway and I don’t know how to do grafting, but if ever there were a time to hurry up and get to it that would be now because he is sharing scions freely to try to keep those varieties alive.

It staggers me that those with the means to preserve this piece of posterity did not do so.

P.S. The dishwasher? New repair guy. He came three hours after I called and let me watch him and now I know how to do what he did, the equivalent of snaking the outtake valve. He charged me $70 which is what the base price of house calls cost 25 years ago here, and we were good to go. I definitely lucked out when I found him.