Central California

We drove this week from San Fransisco to Los Angeles, and had an eye opening experience. Down much of the length of the I-5 freeway, we saw not the green fields of produce or green orchards laden with fruit, but dusty dead and dying orchards. Rows after row, acre after acre, miles after mile of them, perfectly helpless….lifeless.
By way of explanation, these signs dotted the dusty dry roadside: “Congress Created Dust Bowl.

Thought to ponder — it takes 30 years to build an orchard like this up to full production! Almonds, fruit, citrus… Why do suburbs have green lawns while these food sources are left to die?

Farmers through out this region echo the sentiment that politics, not the drought, is the problem. Most of this area of California gets its water from a huge Delta, where two big rivers join in the center of the central valley area. But so much water was being pumped out of the Delta that a tiny smelt there, an endangered species of fish about 2 inches long, is disappearing. So late last year, a federal judge ruled that the amount of water being delivered to the south had to be sharply cut back. Guess who got shafted. Why are we still watering grass lawns? Why are there vast green golf courses everywhere you look?

If this is what the Californian politicians think is best for their state... then maybe it would be best for the budget there to fail, let the government fall... and the California people can take their state back. Of course once the government falls, the illegals will have no reason to stay and the lazy white teenagers will have to get off the couch and put down the game-boy .. and get a real job!

We did see some plots of corn. Some farmers have planted baby tree orchards in the hope that 30 years from now... the politics will let them have a good crop again. They water them with hope and the little amount of water they had saved up.