When I graduated from high school in 1961, I decided to return to a 50 acre family farm that had been leased out for a (my mother's) generation. The house had burned down, about half the tin had blown off the barn roof, and there wasn't a pice of iron left on the place. While I was in high school, my grandfather and I had fixed up some of the old buildings and restored the electric service.

I was always facinated by old farm machinery. I felt left out that there was none left on the ranch. I set about rectifying that situation. I started attending farm auctions early on and started bringing home obsolete equipment. I bought 3 old dead tractors, brought them back to life and started to farm. Everyone told me I would never make a living. They were right. I can look back on all of those years and realize I was only able to show a profit in three of them.

By '95 the equipment was getting pretty shot from too many years of too little money coming in. I lost the lease on the 40 acres I was farming under CCOF organic accross the road. The old lady had died who owned the old hotel property described on the web site.

I left the ranch and moved into the hotel as caretaker. I was left with an interest in the old saloon building that I had done some rehabilitation work on years before. Farming through those years was limitted to the 2 acres on the hotel property. My son married an moved onto the ranch. I married Kathy while I was at the hotel.

Kathy and I tried to steer the hotel property into use for historical purposes. We envisioned it as a living history site. It all came down to a court battle. I was awarded a settlement, and the property has been sold to private interests.

Kathy and I bought a trailer and returned to the ranch. I am mostly farming the theoretical now. Riding the internet and trying to figure out how things should be done. I really hate to turn the ground with a plow. I learned to farm the old way. The old equipment I have is all old style trailer type trip rope stuff. It will take some more farm auctions and more money to get into conservation tillage.

I make a living from a mail contract which allows me a full 8 our day between the morning and evening runs. My son Bob (30) works at a sewer plant up the coast. In his spare time and on days off Bob is hauling in rock for the yard in preparation for winter. I have been slowly working on putting rollers under one of the D-2's. The other one has been in the garage torn down for repairs since last winter. The D-4 still runs. I have had the blade on it all year doing grading for the trailer site and maintainence.

Our big "El Nino" winter last year was the fifth wet year in a row. Not a good time to be farming our ranch which consits of mostly 28% slopes. I am going to try to scratch up a few acres and plant some good kind of oats. I might cut a little for hay and harvest the rest for seed to plant more another year.

I want to start fixing the fences. I want to get a few beef cows. I want to rotate with electric fence and maybe just farm small plots. Maybe we can clear and plant some of the fields on the south 40 which belongs to cousins.

Basically it is starting all over from scratch again. It's a good thing we still have a lot of old parts left from the farm auctions of the 80's. I wonder if the combine will still run. If it will, I know it will use 1 gallon of oil in the engine and 1 gallon in the hydraulics for each tank of grain it cuts.

We still don't have enough sheds to store equipment in or a decent shop. The salt air eats up stuff faster than we can fix it.

Tom Armstrong toma@crl.com Sequera Ranch s.1892 San Gregorio, CA Barnyard Technology--- Ideas for tomorrow -> from yesterday's scrap. 4th -> 5th gen. on family farm. Can Ag Sustain? A ghost town fights its way back.. http://www.crl.com/~toma/