About three years ago, we moved to a largely agricultural area of soCal, the San Jacinto Valley.  Dairy farms and flies everywhere.  That was just fine with us.  I grew up in Iowa, so I'm used to those big orange triangles on slow moving tractors.  There were lots of dairy farms and horse ranches.  Wide open spaces and room to run.  An old brick mansion in the middle of San Jacinto that the city held old fashioned 4th of July celebrations at.  Plenty of churches and hard working people.

We've watched all that change all too rapidly.  Developers are buying up property right and left.  Cows  slowly disappeared ( the flies are still around) and the housing tracts came to town.  Not too far from town they're advertising 9 and 11 bedroom homes.  But in this valley, the foreclosure rates have risen to astronomical record levels.  We rent a home in a two year old neighborhood at the edge of town.  In this tract, I'd say about 50% are renters, 20% are homeowners and 30% are empty, hollow and in foreclosure.  They're easy to spot, notices tacked to the doors, grass overgrown or completely dead, weekly penny savers yellowed in the driveways.  It's bad news and good news I suppose.  Bad news for the homeowners who have lost their piece of the American Dream, good news because it seems to have held the developers just a little at bay, they've slowed or stopped building of homes.  Now they're focusing on commercial building. The beautiful thoroughbred horse ranches have became the latest casualty.  You'll notice in  my pictures one black cow.  He lives alone in the pen of a local farmer who I understand has had enough and will be moving to central california. 

Nonetheless, I attended a meeting this week where the city planner spoke about the proposed city plan.  The projection is yet another freeway to cut through the valley and a whole megaplex of warehouse shopping where the cows and horses used to graze.  There aren't as many hawks around and I've seen so many coyotes killed by cars that I can't stomach it any more.  I've watched them pace in an empty field bordered on all sides by busy streets, too narrow to accomodate the growth the region has seen.Afterwards, I asked the city planner, where is the agriculture on this map of yours?  He talked about the historic downtown area and told me of two more farmers who were selling out. 

John Prine, sings ...and they chalk it all up to the progress of man."