Vidovich didnt have to wait long for a buyer to come calling. Lupe and Manuel, like many of the residents, grew up next to each other in a pueblo called San Antonio deep in the state of Guerrero, a mountainous region of dramatic beauty. By then, Wonderful, if it still exists, will be a portfolio run by men even farther away than Beverly Hills. Lupe gave birth to two daughters, U.S. citizens, who are now 11 and 6. He lingers in the crowd long enough to shake hands with a friend from Bel-Air whos planting thousands of acres of pistachios in the worst ground of Tulare Lake. So the way Pablo uses own isnt necessarily a pejorative. Proposition 1 is a $7 billion bond passed in 2014 that would pay for a host of projects from flood control to water quality. Today is quincena day, twice-a-month payday, and he needs me to scram because the workers coming in to cash their checks and wire 25 percent back across the border to families in Guanajuato and Guerrero will wonder if Im with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He ran, unsuccessfully for city council in his hometown of Los Altos Hills in 2006. She delivers it in classic Lynda style. He isnt farming dirt. Even if I were to move water and sell it, it would be to farming operations.. If you study his moves, you can see a method to the acres he is accumulating. The parents of Vidovi and Mohat were featured in a documentary film titled Mentor, which premiered on December 9, 2014. We saved the best for last, he says. When pressed, though, they acknowledged it could be done. State water dwindling year after year. Just get started became one of his guiding principles. You have permission to edit this article. It was Lynda who teamed up with the USDA to develop 21 new single-family homes and 60 new townhouses on a couple of acres of almonds that Wonderful tore out. We send money home each month to our families left behind, Lupe says. For now, shes playing country western music on the sound system and trying to lure a combination of oil-field workers, supervisors at Wonderful, and travelers driving the last miles of James Dean. At the buildings he was cleaning, he noticed that no one was watching the front and back doors. Wonderful, by contrast, shoots for the middle. This doesnt count the 21,000 acres of grapefruits and limes hes growing in Texas and Mexico. Stewart refers to the occasional trek between Lost Hills and Beverly Hillsroughly 140 milesas a carpetbaggers distance. It seems even longer, he says, if you add in the psychological distance of being an East Coast Jew in a California farm belt where Jews are few and far between. To fix the subsidence, and keep the town dry in the next flood, residents and the state prison are having to pay $10 million in extra taxes. Altogether, Resnick has purchased 300,000 acre-feet of water from farmers and water districtsat a cost of $200 millionto cover his shortfall during the drought. The eye numbed by the tedium of orchards isnt prepared for the 1.3 million square feet of industrial assault, though the palm trees and roses along the perimeter try for a transition. I dont know how Hershey did Hershey, Pennsylvania, but Lynda is present in every painted sunburst, every planted flower, every blade of grass. 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. They thwack back. Once he finished grabbing the flow of the five rivers that ran across the plain, he used his turbine pumps to seize the water beneath the ground. Back then, the Los Angeles Times had a bureau in the middle of California. At one point, he was moving nearly 30,000 acre feet a year, according to Angiolas records. Welcome to San Antonio del Norte, he says. He found it. Theres a lot of people who dont like me, but nobody didnt like my dad.. And you know why? Shoving aside the coins, they introduced a Scarlett OHara doll that, by itself, raked in $35 million in sales. Theres a mythology out there that Angiola is stealing water, he said. "What I was most alarmed about was how I, and most people in the area, knew nothing of this proposal," he told The Leader. The rain of almonds has moved on to the next tree. Still, he was starting to think about his legacy, and thats why he finally agreed to meet with me. Then he turned and faced me. The type of transaction is also recorded such as cash entry, credit entry, homesteads, patents (deeds . The farmer corralled the snowmelt and erased the valley, its desert and marsh. Stephen Vidovich retired but kept a watchful eye on the company, getting daily reports and giving advice, John Vidovich told the San Jose Mercury News after his father's death. He lives down the road in Wasco, the Rose Capital of America, though the roses, too, have turned to nuts. John Vidovich is VP/Executive Director:Sales at Student Loan Corp. See John Vidovich's compensation, career history, education, & memberships. Neighbors dont tell on neighbors.. He and Lynda decided in 1984 to buy the Franklin Mint, the maker of commemorative coins and other kitsch, for $167.5 million. On one side of the road and the other, for miles in both directions, the dirt belongs to Wonderful. Already, the high school is filled with hundreds of students bused in from farmworker towns that are among the poorest communities in the West. The giving goes to college scholarships and tutors. His father had lost it in a bet. Lynda spent $150,000 at an auction to buy the beaded gown and matching bolero jacket, the Elvis Dress, that Princess Diana had worn on a visit to Hong Kong. Youre the one who needs to see., We pull out of the parking lot, past the palm trees and roses, and head up the thin ribbon of Highway 33 into the dust-swirling tunnel of nuts and fruits. But if he thinks youre defying him, hell start with, Nobody realizes the good Ive done for agriculture. Then he moves on to, Do you know who I am? The scale of productionand the ability to process, market, and sell its own cropsallows Wonderful to be mostly mediocre in the fields and remain highly profitable. Yes, critics agree, but Boswell uses that water to irrigate in the district. And, yes, that takes water. I didnt know good land from bad land. The biggest farmer of them all is tearing out 10,000 acres because he doesnt have enough water to cover the nuts to harvest. Farm bill strikes local note with developer/farmer, losaltosonline.com/users/admin/service/purchase, Los Altos teen wins Food Network top prize, Los Altos teen stars as featured contestant on Food Networks Kids Baking Championship, Snow in the hills: Unusual weather (for Los Altos) brings white winter to area, Running the table: Bullis Charter sixth-grader rules his age group in table tennis, Outside Santa Clara County Annual Subscription, Outside Santa Clara County Monthly Subscription. His account appeared in the Earth Island Journal, a small environmental quarterly out of Berkeley. I applaud, too. The farmer moved the rain. Hes not only able to irrigate his nut trees with an imported flow of groundwater40,000 acre-feet in some years. I had not seen any. Every river busting out of the Sierra was bent sideways, if not backward, by a bulwark of ditches, levees, canals, and dams. Resnick himself had sold 5,000 acre-feet to a proposed new town in the farm fields of Madera. All the rest of that stuff its just jealousy and innuendo, jealousy and innuendo, jealousy and innuendo.. Stewart was the second of their four children, the only boy. Three dogs, part pit bull, the menacing part, have given up on the shade and lie on the open road. When a farmers orchards encompass 186 square miles, finding the field man can be a challenge. I try again to pin him down, but hes a man who likes to think of himself as wily. The new plantings arent cotton, alfalfa, or carrotsthe crops a farmer can decide not to seed when water becomes scarce. This is the west end of Lost Hills, the extraction end. Thousands of California oaks were felled. Fiefdom. My health, knock on wood, is good. I leave Gabbys and follow a winding concrete path through the new Wonderful Park. For as far as I can see, the water in the canal runs inky through the orchards. My father, born in a vineyard outside Fresno, was a raisin grower before he became a bar owner. When he materializes onstage, he is wearing narrow black jeans, a black mock turtleneck, and a dark jacket. supernatural tattoos designs. As far as the company can tell, no active salmonella has ever traced back to the plant. Then the men of cotton, driven out of the South by the boll weevil, put the five rivers into canals and dried up the lake. Billionaire comes to the rescue of billionaire., But those two guys hate each other., Not anymore. But most of this water has been spent by the Resnicks and other account holders in years two, three, and four of the drought. Thats how he came upon the San Joaquin. Unlike the almond, the pistachio is moist and combustible. They went to law school together and joined the same program in the Navy reserves. Stewart and Lynda created a new brand, the Halo, from the same variety of mandarin. Rain for Rent, the pipes say. These books indicate who obtained the land, and include a physical description of the tract and where the land is located. On a fog-drip night in January 1972, two men walked into my fathers empty bar with gloves on and shot him to death. Now they have to keep that up, right? The baby is now a 20-year-old student at Bakersfield College. Chance of rain 100%. Links: www.sanjoseinside.com. Join us for a free, virtual event for International Women's Day on March 8! 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. The extraction of water beneath the lake bottom wont last forever. Im not going to live forever, even with the massive amounts of pomegranate juice Im drinking. If this were any other part of Kern, the farmers would be reaching into the earth to make up the difference. What to give a grieving widow and her five children in Lost Hills but drinking water? He went out and bought an alarm company. Business got so brisk that he bought two trucks and hired crews. I did sell water out of Kings County to an urban user and people didnt like it, Vidovich said. This is one of the ways the Nut King and the Pomegranate Queen are defying the California drought. Stephen Vidovich retired but kept a watchful eye on the company, getting daily reports and giving advice, John Vidovich told the San Jose Mercury News after his fathers death. Before he left her to cross alone, he gave her soda, water, chips, and Cheetos. I then move to the far side of the orchard, where another worker, riding a huge mower, is kicking up an even bigger cloud of dust. The Resnicks are growing again. 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. Then hed lose his temper and get the strap out..
