Mowing

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

IT HAS BEEN SIX YEARS since a crowd of activist United Farm Workers stormed Cedar Point farms, disrupting more than 500 employees hard at work preparing strawberry plants to ship throughout the country. It has been five years since Mike Fahner, owner of Cedar Point Nursery, launched a lawsuit with PLF against California for giving special interest groups permission to invade farms. And it’s been six months since the Supreme Court agreed to hear Mike’s case, with the potential to protect the property rights of owners everywhere.

Why is Mike so willing to swan-dive into a long, laborious fight that would put him under the scrutiny of national media, the public, and the most important judges in the country? Well, this is not Mike’s first fight with the government. Mike’s story did not begin in those early-morning hours in 2015 or even with the creation of Cedar Point Nursery 20 years ago. It began with the birth of overreaching environmental regulations and the family farm he was forced to abandon.

The rise of a farming community

In the early 20th century, America needed food. Two World Wars and the Great Depression had clobbered the country’s agriculture industry, and rehabilitation became a pressing need. As part of that effort, the government created a lottery for farmers who were willing to move to the Klamath Basin in Southern Oregon and Northern California and begin farming the land there.

The government had constructed a series of dams and canals in the area to make it more hospitable to agriculture. Then the government raffled 80-acre plots to homesteaders, including a number of military veterans, with a promise of abundant water for irrigation.

The Fahners came to the Klamath Basin in the 1960s when Mike’s father got a job as manager of the irrigation district before turning to farming full-time.

Young veterans and their families carved out a strong and prosperous community from what had once been wilderness. Potatoes, onions, wheat, and barley were among the leading cash crops. And even with the rapid development and influx of population, there remained an abiding sense of harmony, with logging and farming coexisting with abundant wildlife in a sweeping American landscape.

Mike remembers, “I have visions from my childhood—and this is no exaggeration—so many birds would fly in on their way to the Northwest that it would cover an 80-acre field. You couldn’t see the sky. It was black with birds. They’d land in the field and fatten up on baby potatoes and leftover grain, and then move on. Lots of people have never seen nature like that.”

Mike lived in an Albert Bierstadt painting. It was Western paradise.

Mike Fahner at Cedar Point Nursery

“I cannot stake my livelihood here…”

Unfortunately, the serenity didn’t last long. By the 1970s and ’80s, government regulators became increasingly adversarial toward farmers and agriculture. Sweeping legislation like the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act created wide-reaching regulations which, instead of working to partner with farmers and ranchers to conserve and improve the land, delineated farmers and ranchers as environmental enemies.

And water became the center of a conflict that continues to this day.

The heightened government regulations “began to have a huge impact on our water supply,” Mike explains. “Our rights were now inferior to the Endangered Species Act. We became third or fourth in line [for water] where we had been first in line. We would start a season without knowing whether we’d have enough water to finish it. But [these laws] could have been developed to the benefit of agriculture and wildlife synergistically.”

For years, Mike was forced to fight the government for the simple right to exist as a farmer. For five years, he went to meetings with government officials at every level trying to work with them and explain how farmers and ranchers were helping and improving the land—but it all fell on deaf ears.

“My friend’s mother was one of the Siskiyou County supervisors. She intercepted a memo between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Reclamation. It stated that their goal was to return the Klamath project back to its original state prior to the act that brought all of us farmers there. Talk about feeling under attack.”

Mike is a natural problem-solver. His inventive mind is what allowed him to adapt drip tape irrigation—used commonly for potatoes—to strawberries, making them healthier and hardier. But there is no clever solution for government restrictions on water. Water is as critical to farming as breath is to life.

“In the ’90s, it became clear we couldn’t count on whether we’d have water or not. They would tell us, ‘Oh yeah, you got a 50% allocation.’ What am I going to do with that? If they were to tell Walmart, ‘We’re only going to let you have traffic in front of your store maybe two or three days out of the week, otherwise close your doors those other days,’ how long would they stay in business? The very resource that we need to feed our families and the world, it was compromised. And it’s only gotten worse.”

Mike realized then what hundreds of Klamath farmers have realized since: They would have to let go of their land.

“That’s when I had to go to Dad,” he says. “I told him, ‘I cannot stake my livelihood here now. I can’t in good conscience just stay here and think this battle is going to change. I gotta go somewhere where I have control of the water. The water under the ground, I own.’”

Mike started scouting land in the surrounding region outside the scope of the heavily regulated and bitterly contested basin and found the property he now owns near Tule Lake, not far from the Oregon border. It’s only some 40 miles from the Fahners’ old property, but more importantly, his water rights are not currently at the mercy of government edicts. On that site in 1999, he established Cedar Point Nursery, which is now a top producer of California strawberry plants, employing more than 100 full-time workers and around 400 seasonal workers each year.

“Well, here they come again.”

In October 2015, Mike experienced a rude awakening when an unruly mob of union organizers barged onto his property waving signs and shouting through bullhorns at 5 a.m. as his workers were starting their day.

It was perfectly legal, thanks to a union access regulation the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board enacted in 1975. The rule allows union organizers to enter the private property of agricultural producers and processors, uninvited and unannounced, for three hours a day, 120 days a year.

Mike’s reaction to government threats for the second time was uncharacteristically cynical, “Well, here they come again.” But Mike isn’t leaving this time.

After that first invasion of his property by the union organizers, he sought legal counsel to determine how to fight the incursion. Joined by Fowler Packing Co. of Fresno, they—represented by PLF—challenged the California rule in court, arguing it represented an uncompensated taking of their land, a violation of their constitutionally protected property rights. Mike’s case has made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where oral arguments were heard in March.

Knowing what had happened to agriculture producers in the Klamath Basin, it’s easy to see why Mike would be willing to take time from his busy schedule—a farmer’s schedule—to fight his case all the way to the highest court in the land. Mike knows the union access rule is the thin end of the wedge that could be used to separate him from his farm once again. He, and PLF, refuse to let that happen.

On a call, Mike told us, “Strawberries need what are called chilling hours that harden and strengthen the plant. Farming does that to us.” Mike’s been strengthened by the many fights for his livelihood he’s been forced to wage. The government doesn’t stand a chance.