October 18, 2024 • 24 mins
In this episode of Farm Talk, Paul welcomes Elena Brokaw, The Barbara Barnard Smith Executive Director of The Ventura County Agriculture Museum. Elena shares the rich history of "The Mill" where the episode is filmed and provides an inside look into the museum, one of the largest agricultural museums in the country, housing thousands of artifacts. She highlights how the museum not only showcases farming equipment but also tells the story of the farmers, the land, and the diverse cultures that have shaped Ventura County's agricultural legacy. From beehives to exhibits about life over 100 years ago, Elena explains how the museum brings history to life for visitors, especially children, and tells the story of how Oxnard got its name.
Elena also touches on the museum’s educational outreach, including school tours, partnerships with the UC Master Gardeners Program, and the Helen Pidduck Native Plant Garden. She offers insight into the museum's future plans, rotating exhibits, and fascinating stories, including one about Rancho Sespe and a mysterious murder. Finally, Elena discusses the various events hosted by the museum and how listeners can stay connected through their mailing list to stay informed about upcoming activities.
Watch the full episode HERE:
What you’ll learn in this episode: 0:00 Welcome to Farm Talk and introduction of our guest, The Barbara Barnard Smith Executive Director of The Ventura County Agriculture Museum
0:24 Paul described the setting of where this episode is being filmed and Elena Brokaw tells us the history of “The Mill.”
1:50 Elena gives us insight into The Ventura County Agriculture Museum, which is one of the largest, well-known Agricultural Museums in the country and has thousands of artifacts
3:52 The fascinating history of Agriculture in Ventura County
5:52 The museum is all encompassing by showcasing the equipment, the people that own the equipment, the farmers, the land, etc. Elena elaborates on this.
7:25 Showing children what life was like over 100 years ago and beehives in the museum!
8:45 A whole exhibit about the different cultures of people and families that worked the land and how the city of Oxnard got its name
11:48 Elena tells us about The Fillmore Citrus Association Band and how the railroad changed Venutra County for the better
13:19 We learn more about school tours at The Ag Museum, partnering with UC Master Gardeners Program, and the Helen Pidduck Native Plant Garden
15:05 The future of the Ag Museum
16:24 How to learn more about tours and the Ag Museum and more about the equipment, the art pieces, archives and artifacts
19:09 Elena describes how the museum rotates exhibits and a fascinating story about Rancho Sespe, a man from Ohio and murder
22:28 The people of Ventura County never know what happened hundreds of years prior on the land they are living on
23:13 The types of events The Ag Museum hosts and signing up for the mailing list to stay in the know
24:59 A special thank you to our sponsor: Opus Escrow
Related Episodes: Preserving Paradise with Ventura Land Trust Harvesting Futures in Agricultural Education The Wharf: Ventura, California
For More Information on The Agriculture Museum: Visit the Agriculture Museum - Museum of Ventura County (venturamuseum.org)
Contact Paul Ward: 805-479-5004 paul@homeandranchteam.com
Have ideas for future episodes? We'd love to answer your questions - leave a comment! For any home buying or home selling needs in the Ventura County area of California
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Hi, friends, it's Paul Wardand welcome to Farm Talk.
You may have been to a parade and seenthe tractors drive down the street with
the flags waving, but you don't knowmuch more about farm equipment than that.
Well,
who better to talk to than our guesttoday than Elena Browka with the Ventura
County Agriculture Museum.Welcome to Farm Talk.
Pleasure to be here.
Absolutely. And of course, we wannathank our sponsor, Opus Escrow. So,
(00:28):
this building that we'rein is the, as I mentioned,
the Ventura County Agriculture Museum,but it's also known as, "The Mill.".
Yes.
And we are in Santa Paula, California.
Yes.
Kind of wedged between Ventura to theWest and Magic Mountain Valencia to the
East. For folks that don'tknow. What was, "The Mill?".
"The Mill" was built in the late19th century, in about 1888.
(00:52):
It was we're right ona railroad tracks. So,
there's the depot across the railroadtracks, and then The Mill here.
And we were like an earlypacking house. Okay. So,
we were where the produce was storedbefore it got on the train to go east and
feed everybody out there. That'swhat it was. And it became,
and I don't know when Paul, itbecame, "The Mill," sometime
(01:14):
in the 1900's. A family known asthe, "Hengeholds," was their name,
turned it into an amazing place.So, it had feed, it had tackle,
it had little baby kittens.It had little baby chicks.
I grew up here in Santa Paula,
and we used to love to come toThe Mill full day event here.
The family eventually closedit, and about 20-30 years later,
(01:38):
it got reborn as the Agriculture Museum.
Okay.
It's now one of thebiggest and well-known Ag
Museums in the country. I mean,there's thousands of artifacts here.
Yes. Thousands of artifacts. Absolutely.So, the Museum of Ventura County,
this is one of the branches of the Museumof Ventura County, which by the way,
(01:59):
has been around since 1913. And itis the repository of history, art,
and culture for our region.
In about the 1950s,
we had a very active volunteerwho started going out and
collecting farm equipment. So, you know,
the world changes very quickly andfarming practices change very quickly.
(02:23):
So,
he went out and he saw people sort ofdecommissioning tractors and plows and,
and bean thresher andcarriages and what have you,
and took them into themuseum's collection.
And they actually were spread outall over the county. So, you know,
you talked about it at a road standthat might have been one of our tractors
(02:46):
that was collected by us. We had noplace to show them. So, about 2010,
this building was found,
and it was redone,
and it turned into the home for thoseagricultural implements. What you see,
whenever anybody comes tothe agriculture museum,
they're going to see 1.5%Of our actual collection.
(03:08):
Oh, interesting. It's a vastrepository somewhere else of stuff.
Yes. Oh, yes. Absolutely. Imean, blacksmithing tools;
I can' t even tell you howmany. I could tell you,
but I'm not gonna go look it up. Nobodycares how many blacksmithing tools,
but we have a lot of them. Andthey are stored offsite here.
So, whenever you come here,you're going to see, for example,
(03:29):
there's a walnut dryerbehind you over there.
That's one of the walnutdryers that we have.
We chose that one because we knowthe story behind that walnut dryer.
That is why we were showing it.
Interesting. And every piece ofequipment does have a story. I mean,
it's kind of fascinating thatit's in here, it's been polished,
it's been shined,
but these were working tools for decades.
(03:52):
Oh, absolutely. And, you know, VenturaCounty is an agricultural county.
That is the basis of ourindustry, of our economy.
We always have been. Oil wasalso a big industry here,
but agriculture has proceeded that. What
you see is you are able towalk through and kind of learn
(04:14):
the story of agriculture in our county.The story is really fascinating.
We think of agriculture ina kind of a nostalgic way,
you know, as another way of life.It was a simpler way of life.
But in actuality,
it is an incredibly creative industry. So,
we have gone through many differenttypes of farming in this county.
(04:38):
We started off in the 1900's,
when we had an actual industry in the1900's. It started with cattle ranching.
So, that's what we did.
Right.
That's what was here inVentura County Cattle.
There was a devastating flood in 1862.
It's the costliest natural disasterwe've ever had in California.
(05:00):
Much more costly than the greatearthquake in San Francisco.
And cattle died. And then after that,
there was a devastatingdrought. More cattle died.
They changed their entire basis to sheep.
So we started being a sheep farmingplace, selling wool, et cetera, only.
Talking 1860s.
(05:21):
1870S. That was in the 1870s.And then in the 18, late 1870s,
there was another devastating droughtand sheep, 50,000 sheep died in a day.
Wow.
Absolutely. Shocking.Imagine what that was like.
That's incredible. You're a farmer andyour entire, everything is gone in a day,
and you don't know what'sgonna happen. So, from there,
we started going into farming greens, andthat's really where we have continued.
(05:46):
We don't do livestock. We do a little bit,
there's a little bit of livestock farminghere, but mostly it's produce. So,
the museum is showcasing equipment,
but it's also showcasing the people thatown the equipment, that work the land,
the farmers themselves, the farmworkers. It's kind of all encompassing.
Right. So, if you look at a piece ofequipment, it's interesting, right?
(06:10):
Somebody invented it,somebody put it together.
It's interesting what it runs on.
It's certainly different from thetractors that they have nowadays.
And we're just talking about tractors.There's no computer needed is.
Right, right.
People can go in and fix iton their own. And that's,
that's interesting to weigh.But what is to my mind,
and this is what we tryto relay at the museum,
(06:30):
what's really interesting iswho, who bought that tractor?
Was it their firsttractor? Did they save up?
Did their father-in-law givethem the money for that tractor?
What were they doing with thattractor? What did that tractor,
what doors did that tractor openfor them? Did this turn into,
you know, generationalwealth for this farmer?
(06:51):
Or was this something wherethere was a terrible disaster,
and they couldn't recuperate?
And that's really what wetry to talk about. And we,
and there's a through linewith the museum. You know,
we think about the past and it's gone.
And we think about it ashaving belonged somewhere else.
But there were people just likeus eating the same things we eat,
(07:12):
sleeping the same hours, we sleep,falling in love, going to school,
and getting a bad grade. Allof that was still there. So,
that's what we try to showand bring out in our exhibits.
And you're showing adults,
but you're also showing kids whatlife was like a hundred years ago.
Yeah. When I started atthe museum eight years ago,
(07:33):
my son was five and my mother was inher eighties. We'll just leave it there.
And this museum it was a place, and I was,
I was between those two ages and thismuseum was a place where all three of us
could go and have a reallygreat experience. It was very different experience.
So, I'm gonna say thisstory there, as I said,
(07:55):
there are two branches to the museum.
There's a branch in downtown Venturaright across from the Mission,
and that's pretty much ourArt and History Museum.
And then there's theagriculture museum here. So,
I started working at the museum. My sonis five. I made him go to work with me,
and I would say, we're goingto the museum. And he goes,
"Are we going to the good museumor the bad museum?" And I was like,
"We're going to the "Good Museum." Whichis this museum, they're both wonderful,
(08:15):
they're both great. But he lovedit. He came in, he could run around.
It's a safe place. He can climb ontractors. There are bees. There's
a live working beehive here.
Beehive inside.
Everybody loves the beehive.All of us would go see that.
And then for my mother andme, we could go and, you know,
(08:36):
and talk about the past and what farmingpractices there were and what's going
to be in the future. And then ofcourse, we all went shopping, of course,
in the gift store.
Of course, there's a lot ofstuff in the gift store. So,
in terms of the people that workedthe land and the families that
worked the land,
there's a whole exhibit as well offarming families and what life was like.
(08:58):
Yeah.
Ventura County was where the ChumashNative Americans made their home and they
foraged, right.
There were no traditional agriculturepractices. So, they fished,
they hunted,
and they grew and gleanedfrom trees and bushes.
And then the Spaniards came.
(09:19):
And that's when The Missionwas established in 1782.
And they began to do farmingpractices like we think about with
irrigation, et cetera.
And after the Spaniards were here,
we Ventura County became part of Mexico.Mexico took over from the Spanish.
And that was the ranch.
(09:57):
And as they did, they broughtwith them their own practices,
their own ways of living.
And then new people started to comein to do the agricultural work. So,
sort of the first people doing the actualagricultural labor were the Chumash.
And then when we werepart of Mexico, Mexicans
(10:19):
and it continued like that. So, t's
actually really
fascinating how VenturaCounty is a microcosm
of nationally what was happening. So,
as we had Chinese workers comingin and working on the railroads,
we also had many Chineseagricultural workers here.
(10:41):
And there was a Chinese ExclusionAct, and we had not as many.
Japanese workers starting to come in.
One of my favorite storiesabout the actual laborers is in
1904, the sugar beet factory in Oxnard.
Have been opened. You know all about this.
Which, well, I'll let you say. The
(11:01):
Oxnard brothers never lived in Oxnard.
No, no, no.
But they were looking for a greatplace to open a sugar beet factory.
And they chose this unnamedplace that was not yet a city,
which became known as Oxnard becauseof the four Oxnard brothers. So,
they opened a sugar beet factory,
and the laborers there weremostly Mexican and Japanese.
(11:21):
And they actually formed theJapanese Mexican Labor Alliance
that works together. And hada strike, a successful strike.
Interesting. for working conditionsback in 1904. I love that story.
'cause It's, you know, it shows we'rebetter together, we're stronger together,
and then we have more in commonthan we think we do. Right.
(11:42):
And then also, the FillmoreCitrus Association had a band.
Oh yeah. Fillmore Citrus Association. Ithink that was in the 1920s. Actually.
and it was the FillmoreCitrus Association,
Mexican Marching Band, actually.
They were in parades, just like you said.
(12:04):
They had a drum that is part of ourcollection is actually on display at the
Smithsonian in Washington DCright now. There were many
groups like that, that were formedby the employers themselves.
So Limoneira had many, manylabors living at their ranch.
They have a land ranch herein Santa Paula, and they did the same kind of thing.
(12:26):
Wonderful. And then of course, therailroad changed everything. Right.
Because now you could shipproduce long distances.
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. The railroad changedeverything. And like I said, you know,
this was built as a packing houseright next to the railroad in 1888. So,
as it came, as it progressed ever further
it opened up our ability to exportagriculture tremendously. So,
(12:51):
before that, we had the wharfs,we had a wharf in Oxnard,
and a wharf in Ventura. And theywere pretty good for business.
We did a lot of businessthat way. But really,
the railroad made it possible forour little county to become a major
provider of produce for the United States.
So, when student groups comehere as a whole experience,
(13:13):
is it mostly grade schoolers orteachers that are kind of local?
Or are they coming regionally?
We provide a specific school tourhere. It's free for Title One schools,
which is where 65% or more of thechildren qualify for a free lunch program.
And the curriculum that we teachhere is directed to second graders.
(13:35):
Okay.
So, they come in,
they plant a lima bean seedbecause lima beans were the first
dry crop that we had here afterthe sheep in the late 1800's.
They learn about picking;they learn about bees.
There are four different stations. So,
the idea is that they get a sense thatfood comes from a very specific place.
(13:58):
It's not from the grocery store,
and they get a sense ofwhat it takes to grow it,
how much time it takes to grow.
And then they walk away withmore appreciation of our county's
role in everybody's day-to-day life.
That's wonderful. And then outside,
there's a whole vegetable gardenand harvesting and native plant
(14:19):
garden.
Yes. We are very lucky. We are partneredwith the UC Master Gardeners Program,
which is an amazing program.It's all volunteers,
and they are so dedicated.They're wonderful.
And they have put in a bunch of raisedplant beds. So, we've got tomatoes,
we've got corn, we've goteggplant. Everything that's like,
you can grow locally around here,which is how lucky are we to live here?
(14:42):
Of course. I mean, it's really remarkable,
but I think we sometimes take it forgranted. So, I try to remember yes.
And you can go out anytime. They willgive you tours. And we also, as you said,
have the Helen PidduckNative Plant Garden,
which is just a nice placefor people to walk around.
It's a little bit of peace.
What's the future looklike for the Ag Museum?
(15:05):
The Ag Museum is in Santa Paula.
It's one of the smallestcities in the county.
Interestingly, it used to be thesecond largest city in the county.
Really?
Yeah. As recently as the 1930's.
Because it's only like 35,000 people now.
Yeah. Yeah. Used to be 16,000people in like 1920-1930,
(15:26):
which was bigger thanOxnard. If you can imagine.
This is during World War IIthat Oxnard really boomed,
and the other cities have grown,and Santa Paula hasn't. So,
Santa Paula is an amazinglittle gem of a city.
We've got a beautiful historic downtown.
It's walkable. There aremultiple museums here.
(15:47):
There's an airport that istotally accessible with a cafe.
It's really a wonderful little city. So,
our goal is to be part of the county's,
"Must to-do day trips.".
Right.
We want you to have to come out here,
have some incredible food havesomething at the local winery,
cider place,
(16:08):
and come and visit the AgricultureMuseum along with our Art Museum,
along with the Aviation Museum,
and really get to know part ofwhat makes your county so special.
Wonderful.
And how can folks get ahold of tourgroups and learn more about the
museum if they wanna come check it out.
Easiest thing to do is justgo online, venturamuseum.org.
(16:29):
And if you're a teacher and you wannacome out here, we would love to have you.
We wanna get to every city,
every school in the countyand there's an education tab.
Just go there and we will hookyou up. If you're not a teacher,
you can go on Facebook VenturaMuseum, Instagram, all those things.
I'm old, I don't know. But there wereon all of them, all of the socials.
(16:52):
Of course.
Yeah. Ventura Museum.
Wonderful. So, we were talkingearlier about the equipment,
having stories behind them.
How can folks learn moreabout that in particular?
Oh, alright. The museum, like Isaid, has been around since 1913.
During that time, we have amassed notonly thousands of farm implements,
(17:13):
but we also have over 2000 works ofart, over 50,000 items in our archives,
and about 30,000 artifacts.
Historical artifacts could be acash register, it could be a plate,
could be an ashtray, anything. Each oneof those; this is a little business.
This is a little behindthe scenes museum stuff.
Sure.
Each one of those itemshas an accession number and
(17:37):
has the details about it, wherewe got it from, when it was made,
what it was meant to be used for,
what it was actuallyused for who owned it,
and anything, you know,particularly special about it. So,
that we have this massive databasethat has as many of those pieces of
information as we possibly can,
(17:59):
and that helps us interpretthese pieces. So, for example,
here there is a shorthand hoe on exhibit,
little hoe about this big, youknow, we've all seen a longhand hoe.
It's a shorthand hoe.
It was outlawed in the late 1900's.
(18:20):
And it was used for farm, youknow, farm labor for close.
You had to hunch down hoe.
So backbreaking work.
Can you imagine?
All day long.
All day long. So, I don't rememberwho we got that shorthand hoe from,
but that is an example. You can seethat. And you can think, "Oh my,
oh my goodness. What itmust have been like, the
(18:44):
experience of doing that dayin, day out." And you know,
obviously we still drive along andthere are farm laborers out there,
and they're still stooped over.We see, we see them every day.
So those are some of the typesof stories that we can tell.
How do you, the museum,
decide when to rotate the exhibits?
(19:09):
The museum rotates the exhibitswhen we have had enough time
to put together a storythat we think is going to
inspire curiosity or compassion in
people. So, for example, we recently had,
(19:29):
in our Ventura site, we had an exhibitcalled The Murder of Tom Moore.
Have you ever heard about this?
No.
Okay. So, it was 1878. Rancho Sespe,
which was one of the 14Ranchos in Ventura County,
had been sold by the originalrancher, Mr. Carrillo, Don Carrillo,
to a man who came fromOhio named Tom Moore.
(19:52):
When he came out it wasabout the same time that
the Homestead Act was created by theUnited States government and the Homestead
Act told people, "Hey, there'splenty of property out there.".
Right.
The goal was to get people out hereto what was a new state at that point.
Very new state.
1850.
1850. And start, you know,populating it, start having,
(20:15):
so you could come out and if you dug awell and you built any kinda structure,
you got 160 acres for free.
Which now, I think is big, butnot big compared to these ranches,
which were thousands of acres.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. RanchoSespe was 130,000 acres.
Incredible.
Yeah. Yeah. The smallestone was like 5,000 acres.
Nice.
(20:35):
That was tiny. It looked smallon the map, you know. So,
Mr. Moore has bought this Rancho and thereare these homesteaders who are coming
out and they are settling 'cause it's ahuge piece of property, but he owns it.
He gets very upset. Theysort of live together,
somewhat precariously. And then there'sone of those devastating droughts.
(20:58):
And Tom Moore decides that he's goingto control all water on that property.
Next thing you know,
Tom Moore wakes up atmidnight one night in March of
1878, and his barn is on fire.
He goes out to rescue all ofhis horses that were dying.
Right.
And he is shot 10 times. And hewas shot by the homesteaders.
(21:22):
Interesting.
So, that is a story that we hadit up at the Ventura Museum,
as I said,
and we had items that the pioneers hadtaken across the country with them.
A child's doll, for example,
or somebody's whiskey cupthat somebody actually used to
pay his laborers at the end of the day.
(21:42):
Right.
They got paid and they gota little slug of whiskey.
Right.
So, that when we have enoughthat we can say, "Okay,
we have story to tell." You all know water
is a major issue.
Water is everything.
And it's going to continueto be a major issue.
Extreme weather is a major issue.
These are things that we arestill grappling with right now.
(22:04):
There are lawsuits all over the place,
and we talk about how at this onepoint in time it turned into a murder,
and how do we,
what can we learn from that and how dowe move forward in a less violent way?
Right. It would be interesting to know,
you know what 7-Eleven or Mini-Mart is,
(22:24):
you know, sitting in TomMoore's front yard today.
Absolutely.
And you would never know what happenedthere. A hundred (years ago.).
Absolutely. Yeah. Isn't that something?Yeah. Yeah. Because wherever, you know,
if you're a viewer, the peoplewatching this live here in Ventura,
obviously they are livingin what used to be Spanish.
They're living on what used to beSpanish land, and that was Mexican land,
(22:45):
and that was, you know,
US land and was part of a ranch show andwas a place where who knows, you know,
gold was discovered in Pirubefore it was discovered up in..
Oh really? I never knew that.
Yeah. The early 1840's farmer was outdigging wild onions and found gold.
She just wasn't thesame amount. But anyway,
who knows who's living onthe site where that happened.
(23:08):
It's always fascinating. So,
what type of events doesthe does the Ag Museum host?
We actually do quite afew annual events. So,
thinking about it from when thisis gonna be out, we have a, oh,
we have a fun Sip andShop at our boutique.
Our gift store is really fantastic andhas everything from outer print books to
(23:28):
entirely new, you know,
pieces of art by local vendorsand honey and lemonade jam,
all the sauce.
All of it.
It's a great little stuffer kindaplace. So, we have that on November
22nd when we're gonna have someballet dancers here. We have,
every year we do the LaborDay Tractor Fair. So,
this is Santa Paula kind of knownfor the Labor Day Parade every year.
(23:52):
It's the one in the county and itends, and we are the place to come.
We're air conditioned. So,
it's super cool where familiescan come entirely free and
pet some tractors and play withsome bees and make some homemade
candles, do scavenger hunts in ourgarden. That's a really great event.
(24:14):
And we have a lot of other likelectures and series here..
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Mulhardt, who you mayor may not have talked to.
Was the book on Oxnard.
And he most recently wrote a bookon the history of the Lima Bean.
And we had the book release party here,
the lecture on Lima Bean andLima Bean hummus. That was good.
Interesting.
Yeah. So, we had, you know, and again,
(24:35):
go to Venturamuseum.org and sign upfor our mailing list and then everybody
could get notified of everything.It's free. Don't bother you too much.
I promise.
. Well, Elena Brokaw,
I wanna thank you so much for beingour guest on this episode of Farm Talk.
We loved having you and learning allabout the Agriculture Museum of Ventura
County and the history of ourwonderful little corner of the world.
(24:57):
Yeah. Thank you, Paul.
Absolutely. And of course, we wannathank our sponsor, Opus Escrow.
And be sure to tune in nexttime for the next Farm Talk.
Hi, friends, it's Paul Wardand welcome to Farm Talk.
You may have been to a parade and seenthe tractors drive down the street with
the flags waving, but you don't knowmuch more about farm equipment than that.
Well,
who better to talk to than our guesttoday than Elena Browka with the Ventura
County Agriculture Museum.Welcome to Farm Talk.
Pleasure to be here.
Absolutely. And of course, we wannathank our sponsor, Opus Escrow. So,
(00:28):
this building that we'rein is the, as I mentioned,
the Ventura County Agriculture Museum,but it's also known as, "The Mill.".
Yes.
And we are in Santa Paula, California.
Yes.
Kind of wedged between Ventura to theWest and Magic Mountain Valencia to the
East. For folks that don'tknow. What was, "The Mill?".
"The Mill" was built in the late19th century, in about 1888.
(00:52):
It was we're right ona railroad tracks. So,
there's the depot across the railroadtracks, and then The Mill here.
And we were like an earlypacking house. Okay. So,
we were where the produce was storedbefore it got on the train to go east and
feed everybody out there. That'swhat it was. And it became,
and I don't know when Paul, itbecame, "The Mill," sometime
(01:14):
in the 1900's. A family known asthe, "Hengeholds," was their name,
turned it into an amazing place.So, it had feed, it had tackle,
it had little baby kittens.It had little baby chicks.
I grew up here in Santa Paula,
and we used to love to come toThe Mill full day event here.
The family eventually closedit, and about 20-30 years later,
(01:38):
it got reborn as the Agriculture Museum.
Okay.
It's now one of thebiggest and well-known Ag
Museums in the country. I mean,there's thousands of artifacts here.
Yes. Thousands of artifacts. Absolutely.So, the Museum of Ventura County,
this is one of the branches of the Museumof Ventura County, which by the way,
(01:59):
has been around since 1913. And itis the repository of history, art,
and culture for our region.
In about the 1950s,
we had a very active volunteerwho started going out and
collecting farm equipment. So, you know,
the world changes very quickly andfarming practices change very quickly.
(02:23):
So,
he went out and he saw people sort ofdecommissioning tractors and plows and,
and bean thresher andcarriages and what have you,
and took them into themuseum's collection.
And they actually were spread outall over the county. So, you know,
you talked about it at a road standthat might have been one of our tractors
(02:46):
that was collected by us. We had noplace to show them. So, about 2010,
this building was found,
and it was redone,
and it turned into the home for thoseagricultural implements. What you see,
whenever anybody comes tothe agriculture museum,
they're going to see 1.5%Of our actual collection.
(03:08):
Oh, interesting. It's a vastrepository somewhere else of stuff.
Yes. Oh, yes. Absolutely. Imean, blacksmithing tools;
I can' t even tell you howmany. I could tell you,
but I'm not gonna go look it up. Nobodycares how many blacksmithing tools,
but we have a lot of them. Andthey are stored offsite here.
So, whenever you come here,you're going to see, for example,
(03:29):
there's a walnut dryerbehind you over there.
That's one of the walnutdryers that we have.
We chose that one because we knowthe story behind that walnut dryer.
That is why we were showing it.
Interesting. And every piece ofequipment does have a story. I mean,
it's kind of fascinating thatit's in here, it's been polished,
it's been shined,
but these were working tools for decades.
(03:52):
Oh, absolutely. And, you know, VenturaCounty is an agricultural county.
That is the basis of ourindustry, of our economy.
We always have been. Oil wasalso a big industry here,
but agriculture has proceeded that. What
you see is you are able towalk through and kind of learn
(04:14):
the story of agriculture in our county.The story is really fascinating.
We think of agriculture ina kind of a nostalgic way,
you know, as another way of life.It was a simpler way of life.
But in actuality,
it is an incredibly creative industry. So,
we have gone through many differenttypes of farming in this county.
(04:38):
We started off in the 1900's,
when we had an actual industry in the1900's. It started with cattle ranching.
So, that's what we did.
Right.
That's what was here inVentura County Cattle.
There was a devastating flood in 1862.
It's the costliest natural disasterwe've ever had in California.
(05:00):
Much more costly than the greatearthquake in San Francisco.
And cattle died. And then after that,
there was a devastatingdrought. More cattle died.
They changed their entire basis to sheep.
So we started being a sheep farmingplace, selling wool, et cetera, only.
Talking 1860s.
(05:21):
1870S. That was in the 1870s.And then in the 18, late 1870s,
there was another devastating droughtand sheep, 50,000 sheep died in a day.
Wow.
Absolutely. Shocking.Imagine what that was like.
That's incredible. You're a farmer andyour entire, everything is gone in a day,
and you don't know what'sgonna happen. So, from there,
we started going into farming greens, andthat's really where we have continued.
(05:46):
We don't do livestock. We do a little bit,
there's a little bit of livestock farminghere, but mostly it's produce. So,
the museum is showcasing equipment,
but it's also showcasing the people thatown the equipment, that work the land,
the farmers themselves, the farmworkers. It's kind of all encompassing.
Right. So, if you look at a piece ofequipment, it's interesting, right?
(06:10):
Somebody invented it,somebody put it together.
It's interesting what it runs on.
It's certainly different from thetractors that they have nowadays.
And we're just talking about tractors.There's no computer needed is.
Right, right.
People can go in and fix iton their own. And that's,
that's interesting to weigh.But what is to my mind,
and this is what we tryto relay at the museum,
(06:30):
what's really interesting iswho, who bought that tractor?
Was it their firsttractor? Did they save up?
Did their father-in-law givethem the money for that tractor?
What were they doing with thattractor? What did that tractor,
what doors did that tractor openfor them? Did this turn into,
you know, generationalwealth for this farmer?
(06:51):
Or was this something wherethere was a terrible disaster,
and they couldn't recuperate?
And that's really what wetry to talk about. And we,
and there's a through linewith the museum. You know,
we think about the past and it's gone.
And we think about it ashaving belonged somewhere else.
But there were people just likeus eating the same things we eat,
(07:12):
sleeping the same hours, we sleep,falling in love, going to school,
and getting a bad grade. Allof that was still there. So,
that's what we try to showand bring out in our exhibits.
And you're showing adults,
but you're also showing kids whatlife was like a hundred years ago.
Yeah. When I started atthe museum eight years ago,
(07:33):
my son was five and my mother was inher eighties. We'll just leave it there.
And this museum it was a place, and I was,
I was between those two ages and thismuseum was a place where all three of us
could go and have a reallygreat experience. It was very different experience.
So, I'm gonna say thisstory there, as I said,
(07:55):
there are two branches to the museum.
There's a branch in downtown Venturaright across from the Mission,
and that's pretty much ourArt and History Museum.
And then there's theagriculture museum here. So,
I started working at the museum. My sonis five. I made him go to work with me,
and I would say, we're goingto the museum. And he goes,
"Are we going to the good museumor the bad museum?" And I was like,
"We're going to the "Good Museum." Whichis this museum, they're both wonderful,
(08:15):
they're both great. But he lovedit. He came in, he could run around.
It's a safe place. He can climb ontractors. There are bees. There's
a live working beehive here.
Beehive inside.
Everybody loves the beehive.All of us would go see that.
And then for my mother andme, we could go and, you know,
(08:36):
and talk about the past and what farmingpractices there were and what's going
to be in the future. And then ofcourse, we all went shopping, of course,
in the gift store.
Of course, there's a lot ofstuff in the gift store. So,
in terms of the people that workedthe land and the families that
worked the land,
there's a whole exhibit as well offarming families and what life was like.
(08:58):
Yeah.
Ventura County was where the ChumashNative Americans made their home and they
foraged, right.
There were no traditional agriculturepractices. So, they fished,
they hunted,
and they grew and gleanedfrom trees and bushes.
And then the Spaniards came.
(09:19):
And that's when The Missionwas established in 1782.
And they began to do farmingpractices like we think about with
irrigation, et cetera.
And after the Spaniards were here,
we Ventura County became part of Mexico.Mexico took over from the Spanish.
And that was the ranch.
(09:57):
And as they did, they broughtwith them their own practices,
their own ways of living.
And then new people started to comein to do the agricultural work. So,
sort of the first people doing the actualagricultural labor were the Chumash.
And then when we werepart of Mexico, Mexicans
(10:19):
and it continued like that. So, t's
actually really
fascinating how VenturaCounty is a microcosm
of nationally what was happening. So,
as we had Chinese workers comingin and working on the railroads,
we also had many Chineseagricultural workers here.
(10:41):
And there was a Chinese ExclusionAct, and we had not as many.
Japanese workers starting to come in.
One of my favorite storiesabout the actual laborers is in
1904, the sugar beet factory in Oxnard.
Have been opened. You know all about this.
Which, well, I'll let you say. The
(11:01):
Oxnard brothers never lived in Oxnard.
No, no, no.
But they were looking for a greatplace to open a sugar beet factory.
And they chose this unnamedplace that was not yet a city,
which became known as Oxnard becauseof the four Oxnard brothers. So,
they opened a sugar beet factory,
and the laborers there weremostly Mexican and Japanese.
(11:21):
And they actually formed theJapanese Mexican Labor Alliance
that works together. And hada strike, a successful strike.
Interesting. for working conditionsback in 1904. I love that story.
'cause It's, you know, it shows we'rebetter together, we're stronger together,
and then we have more in commonthan we think we do. Right.
(11:42):
And then also, the FillmoreCitrus Association had a band.
Oh yeah. Fillmore Citrus Association. Ithink that was in the 1920s. Actually.
and it was the FillmoreCitrus Association,
Mexican Marching Band, actually.
They were in parades, just like you said.
(12:04):
They had a drum that is part of ourcollection is actually on display at the
Smithsonian in Washington DCright now. There were many
groups like that, that were formedby the employers themselves.
So Limoneira had many, manylabors living at their ranch.
They have a land ranch herein Santa Paula, and they did the same kind of thing.
(12:26):
Wonderful. And then of course, therailroad changed everything. Right.
Because now you could shipproduce long distances.
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. The railroad changedeverything. And like I said, you know,
this was built as a packing houseright next to the railroad in 1888. So,
as it came, as it progressed ever further
it opened up our ability to exportagriculture tremendously. So,
(12:51):
before that, we had the wharfs,we had a wharf in Oxnard,
and a wharf in Ventura. And theywere pretty good for business.
We did a lot of businessthat way. But really,
the railroad made it possible forour little county to become a major
provider of produce for the United States.
So, when student groups comehere as a whole experience,
(13:13):
is it mostly grade schoolers orteachers that are kind of local?
Or are they coming regionally?
We provide a specific school tourhere. It's free for Title One schools,
which is where 65% or more of thechildren qualify for a free lunch program.
And the curriculum that we teachhere is directed to second graders.
(13:35):
Okay.
So, they come in,
they plant a lima bean seedbecause lima beans were the first
dry crop that we had here afterthe sheep in the late 1800's.
They learn about picking;they learn about bees.
There are four different stations. So,
the idea is that they get a sense thatfood comes from a very specific place.
(13:58):
It's not from the grocery store,
and they get a sense ofwhat it takes to grow it,
how much time it takes to grow.
And then they walk away withmore appreciation of our county's
role in everybody's day-to-day life.
That's wonderful. And then outside,
there's a whole vegetable gardenand harvesting and native plant
(14:19):
garden.
Yes. We are very lucky. We are partneredwith the UC Master Gardeners Program,
which is an amazing program.It's all volunteers,
and they are so dedicated.They're wonderful.
And they have put in a bunch of raisedplant beds. So, we've got tomatoes,
we've got corn, we've goteggplant. Everything that's like,
you can grow locally around here,which is how lucky are we to live here?
(14:42):
Of course. I mean, it's really remarkable,
but I think we sometimes take it forgranted. So, I try to remember yes.
And you can go out anytime. They willgive you tours. And we also, as you said,
have the Helen PidduckNative Plant Garden,
which is just a nice placefor people to walk around.
It's a little bit of peace.
What's the future looklike for the Ag Museum?
(15:05):
The Ag Museum is in Santa Paula.
It's one of the smallestcities in the county.
Interestingly, it used to be thesecond largest city in the county.
Really?
Yeah. As recently as the 1930's.
Because it's only like 35,000 people now.
Yeah. Yeah. Used to be 16,000people in like 1920-1930,
(15:26):
which was bigger thanOxnard. If you can imagine.
This is during World War IIthat Oxnard really boomed,
and the other cities have grown,and Santa Paula hasn't. So,
Santa Paula is an amazinglittle gem of a city.
We've got a beautiful historic downtown.
It's walkable. There aremultiple museums here.
(15:47):
There's an airport that istotally accessible with a cafe.
It's really a wonderful little city. So,
our goal is to be part of the county's,
"Must to-do day trips.".
Right.
We want you to have to come out here,
have some incredible food havesomething at the local winery,
cider place,
(16:08):
and come and visit the AgricultureMuseum along with our Art Museum,
along with the Aviation Museum,
and really get to know part ofwhat makes your county so special.
Wonderful.
And how can folks get ahold of tourgroups and learn more about the
museum if they wanna come check it out.
Easiest thing to do is justgo online, venturamuseum.org.
(16:29):
And if you're a teacher and you wannacome out here, we would love to have you.
We wanna get to every city,
every school in the countyand there's an education tab.
Just go there and we will hookyou up. If you're not a teacher,
you can go on Facebook VenturaMuseum, Instagram, all those things.
I'm old, I don't know. But there wereon all of them, all of the socials.
(16:52):
Of course.
Yeah. Ventura Museum.
Wonderful. So, we were talkingearlier about the equipment,
having stories behind them.
How can folks learn moreabout that in particular?
Oh, alright. The museum, like Isaid, has been around since 1913.
During that time, we have amassed notonly thousands of farm implements,
(17:13):
but we also have over 2000 works ofart, over 50,000 items in our archives,
and about 30,000 artifacts.
Historical artifacts could be acash register, it could be a plate,
could be an ashtray, anything. Each oneof those; this is a little business.
This is a little behindthe scenes museum stuff.
Sure.
Each one of those itemshas an accession number and
(17:37):
has the details about it, wherewe got it from, when it was made,
what it was meant to be used for,
what it was actuallyused for who owned it,
and anything, you know,particularly special about it. So,
that we have this massive databasethat has as many of those pieces of
information as we possibly can,
(17:59):
and that helps us interpretthese pieces. So, for example,
here there is a shorthand hoe on exhibit,
little hoe about this big, youknow, we've all seen a longhand hoe.
It's a shorthand hoe.
It was outlawed in the late 1900's.
(18:20):
And it was used for farm, youknow, farm labor for close.
You had to hunch down hoe.
So backbreaking work.
Can you imagine?
All day long.
All day long. So, I don't rememberwho we got that shorthand hoe from,
but that is an example. You can seethat. And you can think, "Oh my,
oh my goodness. What itmust have been like, the
(18:44):
experience of doing that dayin, day out." And you know,
obviously we still drive along andthere are farm laborers out there,
and they're still stooped over.We see, we see them every day.
So those are some of the typesof stories that we can tell.
How do you, the museum,
decide when to rotate the exhibits?
(19:09):
The museum rotates the exhibitswhen we have had enough time
to put together a storythat we think is going to
inspire curiosity or compassion in
people. So, for example, we recently had,
(19:29):
in our Ventura site, we had an exhibitcalled The Murder of Tom Moore.
Have you ever heard about this?
No.
Okay. So, it was 1878. Rancho Sespe,
which was one of the 14Ranchos in Ventura County,
had been sold by the originalrancher, Mr. Carrillo, Don Carrillo,
to a man who came fromOhio named Tom Moore.
(19:52):
When he came out it wasabout the same time that
the Homestead Act was created by theUnited States government and the Homestead
Act told people, "Hey, there'splenty of property out there.".
Right.
The goal was to get people out hereto what was a new state at that point.
Very new state.
1850.
1850. And start, you know,populating it, start having,
(20:15):
so you could come out and if you dug awell and you built any kinda structure,
you got 160 acres for free.
Which now, I think is big, butnot big compared to these ranches,
which were thousands of acres.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. RanchoSespe was 130,000 acres.
Incredible.
Yeah. Yeah. The smallestone was like 5,000 acres.
Nice.
(20:35):
That was tiny. It looked smallon the map, you know. So,
Mr. Moore has bought this Rancho and thereare these homesteaders who are coming
out and they are settling 'cause it's ahuge piece of property, but he owns it.
He gets very upset. Theysort of live together,
somewhat precariously. And then there'sone of those devastating droughts.
(20:58):
And Tom Moore decides that he's goingto control all water on that property.
Next thing you know,
Tom Moore wakes up atmidnight one night in March of
1878, and his barn is on fire.
He goes out to rescue all ofhis horses that were dying.
Right.
And he is shot 10 times. And hewas shot by the homesteaders.
(21:22):
Interesting.
So, that is a story that we hadit up at the Ventura Museum,
as I said,
and we had items that the pioneers hadtaken across the country with them.
A child's doll, for example,
or somebody's whiskey cupthat somebody actually used to
pay his laborers at the end of the day.
(21:42):
Right.
They got paid and they gota little slug of whiskey.
Right.
So, that when we have enoughthat we can say, "Okay,
we have story to tell." You all know water
is a major issue.
Water is everything.
And it's going to continueto be a major issue.
Extreme weather is a major issue.
These are things that we arestill grappling with right now.
(22:04):
There are lawsuits all over the place,
and we talk about how at this onepoint in time it turned into a murder,
and how do we,
what can we learn from that and how dowe move forward in a less violent way?
Right. It would be interesting to know,
you know what 7-Eleven or Mini-Mart is,
(22:24):
you know, sitting in TomMoore's front yard today.
Absolutely.
And you would never know what happenedthere. A hundred (years ago.).
Absolutely. Yeah. Isn't that something?Yeah. Yeah. Because wherever, you know,
if you're a viewer, the peoplewatching this live here in Ventura,
obviously they are livingin what used to be Spanish.
They're living on what used to beSpanish land, and that was Mexican land,
(22:45):
and that was, you know,
US land and was part of a ranch show andwas a place where who knows, you know,
gold was discovered in Pirubefore it was discovered up in..
Oh really? I never knew that.
Yeah. The early 1840's farmer was outdigging wild onions and found gold.
She just wasn't thesame amount. But anyway,
who knows who's living onthe site where that happened.
(23:08):
It's always fascinating. So,
what type of events doesthe does the Ag Museum host?
We actually do quite afew annual events. So,
thinking about it from when thisis gonna be out, we have a, oh,
we have a fun Sip andShop at our boutique.
Our gift store is really fantastic andhas everything from outer print books to
(23:28):
entirely new, you know,
pieces of art by local vendorsand honey and lemonade jam,
all the sauce.
All of it.
It's a great little stuffer kindaplace. So, we have that on November
22nd when we're gonna have someballet dancers here. We have,
every year we do the LaborDay Tractor Fair. So,
this is Santa Paula kind of knownfor the Labor Day Parade every year.
(23:52):
It's the one in the county and itends, and we are the place to come.
We're air conditioned. So,
it's super cool where familiescan come entirely free and
pet some tractors and play withsome bees and make some homemade
candles, do scavenger hunts in ourgarden. That's a really great event.
(24:14):
And we have a lot of other likelectures and series here.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Mulhardt, who you mayor may not have talked to.
Was the book on Oxnard.
And he most recently wrote a bookon the history of the Lima Bean.
And we had the book release party here,
the lecture on Lima Bean andLima Bean hummus. That was good.
Interesting.
Yeah. So, we had, you know, and again,
(24:35):
go to Venturamuseum.org and sign upfor our mailing list and then everybody
could get notified of everything.It's free. Don't bother you too much.
I promise.
I wanna thank you so much for beingour guest on this episode of Farm Talk.
We loved having you and learning allabout the Agriculture Museum of Ventura
County and the history of ourwonderful little corner of the world.
(24:57):
Yeah. Thank you, Paul.
Absolutely. And of course, we wannathank our sponsor, Opus Escrow.
And be sure to tune in nexttime for the next Farm Talk.
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