Chapter 1 - THE END OF THE GOLDEN FORTIES
It looked like 1949 was going to be another dry year; we closed out the books with a slight dip in the profits, $22 million. That would limit our new construction and other projects because we had decided to set aside $5 million as a contingency fund in case this drought continued much longer.
The winter wheat did fairly well and we had enough soil moisture to get the rice in, but there would be little corn this year and there would be no oats or red wheat.
We had a sufficient holdover of oats and wheat for the feeder calves and swine, but we projected the siloes would be empty by the end of the year.
The Co-Op was particularly hard hit, their well was pumping mud and we assisted them in having it bored deeper. Their market for fresh vegetables was expanding and they had signed a contract with Safe Foods. They were sending eight trucks a week to the central warehouse and were expected to increase to ten trucks by the middle of summer.
Many of the Co-op members had left the area; they were down to only eleven members still active. By their agreements, if a member left the area or failed to plant his acreage for two years, the land reverted to the Co-Op to be redistributed among the remaining members.
We concluded an agreement with the Co-Op members for strawberries, raspberries and blackberries to be made into ice cream. It was an instant success and was sold under the Farm Gold label throughout California and Oregon.
Our dairy operations were beginning to become a major profit center for us.
By mid-summer, the water was so low in the river, we had to tie up the packets and depend on our trucks to deliver freight and products. This worked a particular hardship on the dairy as we are shipping nearly 60 tons of cheese, ice cream and butter every week.
We still had water in our wells, but the drought was taking its toll, we are pumping 24 hours a day to keep the orchards and row crops green. There were reports that the Shasta Dam, up on the headwaters of the Sacramento River, was nearly empty, the power company was predicting shortages in electricity as soon as the next fall!
The new diesel generator we had ordered was in the process of being installed and we decided to order a third unit to supply the dairies, it would be a disaster should we lose electric power for any length of time.
Like the first two units, we ordered a Caterpillar unit from the Holt Brothers Agency down in Stockton. They told us they could have one delivered in two months or less, so we placed the order.
We increased our underground fuel storage at the same time and made arrangements with Standard Oil Company of California to keep the tanks full. It was to prove to be a fortunate arrangement as there was a fire at the Texaco Refinery in San Pablo, and by June, nobody was accepting new fuel contracts.
Despite the drought, the fruit crops were heavy and we were scrambling for pickers. The fancy peaches to be sent to Chicago, were the first to come in, we found ourselves short of boxes and wrappers and had to make a quick order to the boxboard plant in Stockton.
The plant down in Antioch, where we usually placed our orders, had to curtail production because of saltwater intrusion coming up river at high tide. The freshwater flowing down river has become insufficient to keep the salt out.
The prediction of electricity shortages proved to be correct and, by September, we were running all three diesel generators full-time. I had created a Utilities Department and hired a young engineer, Chance Dickens, to be in charge.
Chance was a graduate of the Merchant Marine School down in Vallejo and that proved to be a fortunate move, Chance was an innovator and pusher, we never experienced a power failure the entire time we had to depend upon the generators to keep the systems running.
Roberta and Josiah had again teamed up and were developing new markets for our products, poor Todd was being run ragged trying to keep production up with their sales!
Their latest scheme was to produce pre-made fruit pies, all a housewife had to do is pull one out of her freezer and bake it in the oven for an hour. In less than a year, the entire standard peach crop was being used in making Farm Gold Frozen Pies and Farm Gold Frozen Peaches!
Those two, Roberta and Josiah, continued to expand the Farm Gold line. They created a line of Frozen Berry Pies and Danny Ito was enlisted to start a Boysenberry Plantation, the Co-Op just could not produce enough berries to supply the demand.
The land across the river from the Packet landing was ideal for raising the berries so we entered negotiations with the heirs of Charlie Stevenson.
Charlie had died about a year ago and his children had been unable to sell the property. We offered them $300 an acre for the four-hundred-acre property and they accepted it almost immediately.
The ink was hardly dry on the deed when Danny had crews out, planting berry vine slips! The new Boysenberry, developed by Luther Burbank Laboratories was a fast grower; we got a partial crop the first year.
The demand for prepared frozen foods was escalating and we held a mid-year board meeting to discuss the possibility of building a new frozen food plant in Rio Vista.
The Board voted unanimously to build the facility.
The biggest problem was who to put in charge of the new facility!
We closed out 1950, our new lines of prepared foods had pushed our annual profits back up; we cleared $34,900,000. We voted to increase the truck fleet and we hired Thomas Danby to manage the new frozen food plant in Rio Vista, Thomas was a classmate of Chance Dickens and he proved to be as much a mover and shaker as Chance is.
I had to make a trip down to the Union 76 refinery to negotiate a new fleet fuel contract, so I stopped by the Merchant Marine School in Vallejo.
I was impressed with their student body and I promised the Dean that we would interview some of his students for positions in our business. That came about sooner than I had expected, Roberta was tearing her hair out trying to schedule shipments, both for incoming freight and production headed for our wholesale customers.
I interviewed Bobby Marlowe, a student who had wanted to be a deck officer on a merchant ship, but was not able to pass the eye examination. After only two weeks on the job, Roberta told me she couldn't do without him!
By summer, the drought was becoming a major issue, farmers were told not to plow their fields and those pumping from the river were restricted in the number of hours per day they could pump.
Both packets had been sent downriver to Rio Vista to keep them from being stranded on the mud and we were depending on our trucks and the railroad for freight service.
Josiah suggested that Bobby Marlowe be promoted to Freight Manager and that he be given a small staff to manage all the freight for the company. We did just that and, in a matter of a few weeks, we wondered how we had gotten along before we had made the changes.
Gone were the days of waiting for trucks and fruit spoilage from sitting in the hot sun until a truck could carry boxes off to the warehouse.
Bobby suggested we build a central refrigerated warehouse for all the fruit products and another for the dairy products. We already had several such warehouses for dairy products and he centralized them, the difference was noted immediately.
They were skid-mounted units and, after he had them all moved to a central location, wastage and losses due to thawed frozen goods dropped to near zero. After I saw those figures, I had no qualms about a central refrigerated and frozen goods warehouse.
By the end of the year, product quality and profits rose as waste losses dropped.
Chapter 2 - 1950'S CRISIS
The war in Korea that began last summer was ramping up and some of our younger employees were drafted into the Army, Todd Yee and Carl Ito were called up almost immediately and almost the next mail, Chance Dickens got his letter.
Bobby Marlow was also called up, but his eyesight prevented him serving, which was a good thing for us, I had to load Bobby up just to cover for Todd and Carl.
I hoped the war would not last very long, those two were need here!
The government requisitioned what little grain we had and we had no rice at all for Anchor Steam Beer that year.
We were hard-pressed to feed the feeder calves and swine. We didn't pay much attention to the war in Korea; we were too busy trying to keep up with our own problems.
At low tide, the water in the river at the landing had fallen to a mere trickle at the bottom of the channel.
We had to have several of the wells bored deeper in order to keep the water flowing.
We ran some advertising on the new television channels for our Farm Gold frozen products and orders started coming in faster than we could produce the products. We decided to create a whole new division for the frozen prepared foods and that proved to be a wise decision as there were several new competitors marketing similar products.
Bobby wanted us to test market frozen chicken dinners, but we decided against that as we had never been involved in poultry before and had no expertise in it.
He persuaded the folks at the Co-op to try it and it was an instant success. Maybe we were wrong and should have looked into it, but I am just as glad we didn't.
In July, we lost Mama; she had been doing poorly ever since Poppa passed away. She died peacefully in her sleep with a smile on her face; we believed she had seen Poppa and they were together again.
Her death hit Josiah and Toby real bad, she had been a Mother to the two of them ever since they had been little boys.
In recognition of her, we used her picture on the boxes that our frozen pies and dinners were in, I don't know if it affected sales any, but it certainly didn't hurt them either! The durned stuff flew off the shelves, the packaging plant had hardly been opened that we were studying ways to expand it!
We trudged through 1951 and reported a profit of just under $40 million. At the board meeting, we authorized the construction of a second frozen food plant in Stockton and the purchase of Silas Williams' ranch, just across the river from us. It was 21,000 acres, mostly in fruits.
Silas wanted out of the farming business and his daughters' husbands wanted no part of farming. The old house was pretty ramshackle, so we tore it down. None of the Family wanted to live there, so we replaced all the buildings with a new packing shed and fruit chiller.
Bobby had been convinced that, if we chilled the fresh fruit before shipping, it would arrive to the customer in better conditions. It had been Todd's idea and Bobby pushed until we agreed with them. He was right and demand rose even further for Farm Gold products!
Todd had come back to us at Thanksgiving time, minus his left leg. His Daddy, Hank, was beside himself, but Josiah took care of the problem. He and Toby went down to Shady Grove and collected Todd after he had been home for a few days.
They brought him up here and carried him into his old office and shut the door. We could hear Josiah shouting at him, telling him he didn't need that damned leg to be my Executive Assistant and that he could damned well get busy and unload some of the work that had been dumped on Bobby Marlowe, what was more, he was still a Vice President of Blount Farms, so, get off his ass and go to work!
Josiah left Todd sitting in his old office and slammed the door shut. After a little while, Todd came out on his crutches and faced me with a sheepish look on his face, "Isaac, I am ready to go to work now."
I pretended I hadn't heard the dressing down Josiah gave him and welcomed him back. I really was glad to see him back, Bobby and I were running ourselves ragged, trying to cover all the bases.
I took Todd across the river and showed him the fruit chiller that had been his idea. He perked up a bit after that and, in a few days, he had gotten over his funk and was back to nearly the same old Todd that we knew.
Sadly, Carl was killed and it took everything out of Danny Ito. The troubles Danny had survived and now the loss of his youngest son was just too much for him, just before Christmas we were burying the father next to his son.
Yoshi Ito was a pillar of strength for their remaining son, Albert, and she kept him from brooding over the deaths of his brother and father. Before we realized what was happening, Albert Ito had taken in a young teen boy, whose father had run off, leaving the boy to fend for himself.
Yoshi Ito became a Grandmother to Tommie Blake and, before year's end, I was writing a letter to Judge Raymond asking that Albert Ito, despite being a single man, be allowed to adopt Tommie.
The adoption, irregular as it seemed, was approved and Yoshi threw herself into making a home for both of them.
1952 closed and we reported a corporate profit of $42 million. It looked like the war in Korea was winding down and, already there was a building boom starting in housing.
Several developers had asked if we were willing to sell some of our land near Redding for housing developments and Todd sent them packing.
At our annual meeting, Roberta reported that we now had eighty-three Safe Food stores in business and another six were under construction. After all these years, the store in Redding was still only marginally profitable and we voted to close it down.
I can still hear the howling from the Redding City Fathers, but that store had been a burr in our saddle for far too many years, it was time to dump it.
We had a short rainy season in April of 1953, it was not nearly enough, but it was more than we have gotten in the last several years. It gave us enough soil moisture to plant some white wheat and about half the normal amount of rice. We didn't even attempt any corn again this year, but we did also plant some oats.
Having to buy feed for the feeder calves and swine was becoming difficult and our commitments to Safe Foods and our other customers had to be honored.
The utility crew had run permanent irrigation piping to the orchards and the olive grove during the winter. The mains were all underground and terminated in risers at each location. All the men had to do was connect the sprinkler piping to the riser and open the valve.
The utility crew regulated the system pressure from the pump house. It saved a lot of labor for the outside crews as they did not need to run back and forth between the orchards and the pump house adjusting the pressure. They could communicate with the pump operator using their radios in each of their trucks.
We had equipped all the foremen and the pickup trucks with radios and there was a base station in Todd's office and at the main switchboard.
My brother-in-law, Jonathon, had been going to school at night and graduated with a degree in Accounting. Toby snatched him up almost as soon as the ink had dried on his diploma and the next thing I knew Jonathon was Manager of Sales Accounting.
We had sixty salesmen out in the field and there was nobody to keep track of who was selling what to whom, nor how much. Jonathon had a coordinated mind and it was not long before I started getting monthly reports on each salesman, who they had visited, what they had sold and the profit margin on each sale!
It was an "eye-opener" to say the least and showed us where our strengths and weaknesses were. As we suspected, the frozen foods were our premier products, followed by the dairy products.
The lone star in field products was the fresh peach market, despite the shipping expenses to Chicago, fresh peaches were a "gold mine"!
The drought continued, a miasma of dust hung over the entire valley and there were some serious fires in the mountains, adding smoke to the dust cloud.
We were worried about fires in the pastures and had to outlaw smoking outside of the ranch housing area, where we were able to keep some semblance of green lawns.
In years past, we had allowed the Scouts to hold their annual camp at Dover Creek, but this year there was no water in the creek and the grass was so dry, we had to tell the boys that they could not camp there this year.
The boys were disappointed, but it was just too dangerous for them and us. The Co-op offered them the use of Shady Grove, so their annual campout was held there.
It was a bit crowded for them; they had over a thousand boys in attendance from all over the northern part of the state.
Despite the reduced crops, our income held up pretty good, we reported a profit of $41,500,000 for 1953, only slightly reduced from the year before.
At our annual meeting, we approved another frozen food plant; it was to be located down in San Jose and would also serve the Salinas and coastal areas.
We had purchased some acreage near Watsonville and we hoped to be able to develop methods to freeze small row crop vegetables, like broccoli and green Brussels sprouts. The fresh frozen market was expanding and was proving to be very profitable.
The drought was not nearly as bad along the coast as it was in our Central Valley and those coastal valleys were heavy producers.
We also approved a new surgery suite at Marysville Hospital and a new wing at the middle school. The roads in the Main Compound needed repaving and repairs were needed to Blount House and the Retirement House.
We added to the fleet of refrigerated trucks and ordered six ten-ton flatbed trucks for use on the ranch. The tractors were holding up pretty good, especially since we were not using them so hard because of the drought.
Between Christmas and New Year's Day, fifteen of our hands came back from the war in Korea, we made them welcome and there were more than just a few tears in Employees' Housing that night!
Chapter 3 - THE DROUGHT ENDS
The rains began in mid-January of 1954 and, by early February, the flooding started, soon the whole valley seemed to be covered by a sheet of water.
It rained almost non-stop for three months, the entire valley east of the river was flooded from Red Bluff to Fresno, down in the San Joaquin Valley. Many of the roads were flooded and we brought back the packet boats to help with freight handling.
Even the railroad was having flood problems and school had to be cancelled for the high school during most of February because the school busses could not get through.
The ground was so dry; much of the water ran off, until it became wet enough that the rain could soak in.
In hopes of a good year, we ordered in a goodly number of feeder calves and swine and we had managed to get oats and barley planted before the fields had become saturated.
There were reports that Lake Shasta was filling rapidly and the new reservoirs down at Manteca were both full by March. Shady Creek went over its banks and the Co-op was unable to plant for the spring crops.
We would be alright, provided the rains let up in time to plant the wheat and corn.
Josiah, Toby and Jonathon made a sales trip back east; they flew out of Sacramento to Chicago. Then they continued on to New York, Richmond and New Orleans before returning home.
They had kept the teletype machine busy with new orders the entire time they were gone.
We had quite an inventory of olives that they had managed to sell, as well as canned fruit.
The railroad was offering us a new service for frozen food cargo and our travelers sold out the warehouses of fresh frozen vegetables and peaches. It was a good market and as soon as they got back we made plans to expand both products.
The war in Korea was declared ended last year and the last of our men had come home by February.
We certainly were glad to see the last of them come home, some of them had suffered mentally and it took them several months to stop cringing at every loud noise.
A number of them had suffered terrible illnesses and even worse injuries, they would never be as strong as they had been when they left. We found places for all of them; they were part of our family.
We had expanded Family Housing and every house was occupied, I told Todd to make arrangements to construct a dozen new houses, there were guys who wanted to get married and there was no place for them to live.
By harvest time, everything had pretty much settled down, it was such a pleasure to have crops to harvest, nobody even complained about the howling corn shucker/huskers!
The rice was a boom crop and the folks from Anchor Beer were anxious to take possession of it. The wheat and corn did as well and the feeder calves and swine were ready for market in September.
We were well pleased with the prices, everyone had started to panic during the drought and buyers were standing at the door to bid on the grains. It looked like it was going to be a good year, at last!
TBC
The Blount Family is slowly changing and branching out into new markets. They will soon have to compete with houses for the land and will, perhaps, be forced into markets they had never before envisioned.