Tribute to Farm Moms
Issue Date: May 3, 2006
Heart and hands: Valley teacher helps at-risk teens succeed
Taking a stand: 'Ranch gal' inspires family and community
Agriculture's advocate: Ventura woman passes pride to future generations
A while back, Ag Alert® asked readers to share stories about moms who go above and beyond for family, farm, community and the good of California agriculture. Now, just in time for Mother's Day, here are tributes to three of these exceptional women.
Heart and hands: Valley teacher helps at-risk teens succeed
By Kate Campbell
In the small farming town of Huron, on a hot, dusty afternoon in June 2004, a special milestone was celebrated by 13 teenagers. Their triumph was special because most people had written them off as kids who were going nowhere.
They proved the skeptics wrong, however, and graduated from Chestnut Continuation High School. The ceremony was modest. "Pomp and Circumstance" was played on a small boombox as the graduates entered the auditorium of the local elementary school.
In attendance were more than 200 family members and friends, many in tears. They packed into the small space to see what for some was the first person in their family to graduate from high school. There was thunderous applause when each graduate's name was called.
Linda Hansen
Only about 20 percent of the town's population of 6,300 has a high school education, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. Median family income is about $24,000 a year, with the average household including five people.
In the almost entirely Hispanic community, the kids who work their way through continuation school and into a cap and gown do so by overcoming significant obstacles, like pregnancies, physical and learning disabilities, a gang environment, poverty and unstable living situations. These are kids that regular schools and most communities have turned their backs on.
"Sometimes people are in a hurry to throw away young people," said Linda Hansen, who taught at Chestnut High School for more than a dozen years. "But these kids are special. They're not discards."
Mother and mentor to thousands
Hansen is all about success. She spent 35 years as a teacher in the Coalinga-Huron Joint Unified School District, finding ways for children, particularly those with special needs, to triumph. For many years she taught physical education to children with disabilities, adapting sports activities to the needs of her students. Some went on to compete in national competitions for athletes with physical challenges.
Hansen and her husband, John, are the parents of a grown daughter, but Linda Hansen has been a mother and mentor to thousands of kids in the southern San Joaquin Valley--kids who wouldn't have had a chance without her.
Huron is a community with many problems, said Hansen, who farms cotton and alfalfa with her husband in the small, nearby community of San Joaquin. "But when it comes to the children, there's a unifying force there. They like to see their children succeed. We are family here. We take care of each other."
For example, she says when her graduates couldn't afford to buy roses to hand out to family members as a thank-you gesture during the graduation ceremony, they were told not to worry. Hansen said the roses just showed up.
"These kids made it because they decided to stay in school," she said. "They got lost for a while, but they found a way to get on track."
Hansen came to alternative education reluctantly. She said she was asked to take over a class in 1984 for an alternative education teacher who had to leave before the semester was through.
"I said no at first," Hansen recalled. "I was afraid the job was just a glorified baby-sitting service and that the students would be too hard to handle.
"What I found is that these were some of the most honest kids I'd ever worked with," she said. "I started teaching them English, math and history and never looked back. I fell in love with alternative education."
Going beyond the classroom
Sometimes teaching high school students who didn't want to be in school meant going beyond the classroom--into the home and into the community.
Sometimes she moved the classroom outdoors, into a greenhouse she figured out how to finance and build. Or into the community for an Ag Day festival, organized completely by her Chestnut High School students and featuring her own horses, tack, husband and friends. Or she'd engineer a way to get her students up to Tulare for the world-famous farm and equipment show.
Harris Ranch, which operates in nearby Coalinga, agreed to host a career day for Hansen's students. The event included a tour of one of the nation's largest, vertically integrated family-owned agribusinesses, and talks by ranch managers. The Harris family went a step further and hosted the students for dinner, exposing some for the first time to formal table settings and dinner service.
Hansen's willingness to go the extra mile wasn't wasted on her students. Graduate Roxanne Sanchez said in a note to Hansen a few years ago, "I want to thank you for all your hard work and dedication you have put into Chestnut High. Thank you so much for believing in us when others didn't. You will never be forgotten."
Arturo Duran, principal of Chestnut High School and Huron Elementary, calls Linda Hansen "old school," meaning that she didn't confine her teaching responsibilities to the classroom. He said she has been hard to replace.
"Linda played an important role in the lives of our kids," Duran said. "She was a mother to them, as well their teacher. She has even gone into the delivery room to support pregnant students who needed her there. The kids are her family."
A couple of days after the graduation in June 2004, Linda Hansen retired from teaching. Long before that day, however, she had already been selected as the state's top high school teacher by the California Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation.
In 1998, she was named a Fresno County Teacher of the Year. In 2002, her students nominated her for inclusion in the seventh edition of Who's Who Among America's Teachers.
Hansen is a farm wife, an active member of Fresno County Farm Bureau and California Women for Agriculture, and a credentialed teacher. What doesn't appear on her resume, however, is her dynamic energy and hair-trigger sense of humor.
Genuine love of people
"Underneath, Linda is one of the kindest people I've ever met, with a spirit that keeps the rest of us inspired," said table grape grower Debbie Jacobsen, who is a past president of Fresno County Farm Bureau. "She's genuinely caring and loving--qualities that appeal to everyone she meets.
"Her generosity extends beyond the school into her community, to Farm Bureau and to family and friends. We look to her guidance because of her genuine love of people."
Julie Sporhase, who is a program technician for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency in Colorado, agrees Linda Hansen is a noteworthy person, but points out her bias since Hansen is her mom.
"My mom--both of my parents--were always there for me," Sporhase said. "I never had a question whether Mom would be at a volleyball game I was playing in or at a 4-H meeting or community function. My mom would have 5 million things going on, which she usually did and still does, and she'd still be at every game. She was there every time I needed her.
"My mom can start a conversation with a complete stranger and in nothing flat get their entire life story out of them," said Sporhase, who is now herself a mother of a four-month-old son, Caden. "My mom connects with people right off the bat."
But Sporhase mentions something else that impresses her about her mom. Hansen was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when she was 26 and has been battling the disease ever since.
"I'm amazed sometimes that my mom gets out of bed in the morning, given the amount of pain she's in," Sporhase said. "Different medications over the years have made her sick, made her hair fall out.
"I remember when I was a little girl standing on her bed helping her button the buttons on her shirt. There are days when getting out of bed is a real challenge for my mom."
A lot of people don't realize the obstacles Hansen has faced through the years, Sporhase said. "They see how bubbly and positive she is and say they want to take her home to help them stay upbeat, too. I understand how they feel. My mom's amazing."
(Kate Campbell is a reporter for Ag Alert. She may be contacted at kcampbell@cfbf.com.)
Taking a stand: 'Ranch gal' inspires family and community
Mary Ann McGuire-McComber walks through a rainy vineyard with her oldest son, Tom Gamble.
By Christine Souza
The oak, pine and cottonwood trees that line Conn Creek create a natural, graceful entrance to the Napa Valley home of Mary Ann McGuire-McComber. To McComber, however, these trees are much more than just attractive vegetation. They represent a mother's dedication to agriculture and a willingness to take a stand to ensure that her children be raised in a rural setting.
"Mom was very active in the fight to establish Napa's Agricultural Preserve, which went into effect in 1968," said Tom Gamble, McComber's oldest son and partner with her in Family Home Vineyards. "I would not be farming in Napa today if she had not helped lead that effort. We would have been paved over if it wasn't for Mom taking a stand."
From the time she was a young girl picking oranges at her grandparents' citrus grove and cracking walnuts at her parents' farm in Lafayette, McComber always knew farming was in her blood. But she didn't have a farm of her own until 1960 when she married George Gamble, a Napa County cattle rancher.
"It wasn't until I married Tom's dad that I became a real ranch gal," McComber said. "We moved to Lake Berryessa Valley. There were no telephones, no paved roads and it was one hour to the nearest grocery store--one hour to anywhere. I really loved it."
When McComber began raising children, however, she decided her family needed to be closer to town.
"As soon as I was pregnant with Tom, I said, ?You know, I really need a hospital,' so we bought a house in the Napa Valley," McComber said. "At that time, Napa Valley agriculture wasn't just grapes. Cattle was the No. 1 commodity and it wasn't until the early 1970s when grapes exceeded cattle as the top crop."
Passion for the land
McComber has fond memories of her and her three children--Tom, Jim and Aimee--feeding cattle from the family's 1943 Chevrolet flatbed truck.
"Tom would steer the truck through the pasture and we'd throw the hay off. We would come back to the house and have a big, hot breakfast. Then the kids would go to school," McComber said, reminiscing of more difficult, yet rewarding days of the past. "The ranch was an ideal place to raise children."
After McComber and her husband divorced in the early 1970s, she and the children decided to pitch in and take care of the house and 10 acres surrounded by the family's larger holdings. She realized that no matter what happened, farming was part of who she was.
"I had the house and 10 acres and I thought, how can I continue as though nothing has happened? How can I be Mom and Dad?" McComber said. "I wanted the kids to grow up with the work ethic and passion that their forebears had for the land."
McComber recalls times when son Jim and fellow members of the high school basketball team arrived at the ranch to help pick grapes.
"This was always the gathering place. Everybody was always welcome here. It was always buzzing around here," McComber said. "We are a very bonded family."
Today, Jim Gamble farms a 5-acre vineyard in St. Helena and daughter Aimee Price works with her brothers on ownership issues regarding the family farming operations. McComber and her second husband, Don McComber, are partners with Tom Gamble in Family Home Vineyards.
Face-off with a bulldozer
Through example, McComber taught her children to respect and appreciate the environment and to stand up for their beliefs. During the 1960s, she and other moms stopped a four-lane freeway from being built past Yountville. They also successfully advocated for a Napa County Agricultural Preserve.
"Agriculture is the way of preserving nature in this area," Gamble said. "Without farming, this would be housing and if the Ag Preserve hadn't passed, those who became the kings of selling wine and making Napa famous would not have had the opportunity to do so."
In the late 1970s, McComber reacted instinctively to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' decision to strip living vegetation from a portion of the family's Conn Creek property that had been channelized years prior for flood protection.
"There were many species of animals that lived there, so I replaced the bare-stripped ground with a couple hundred trees along the driveway, which I really wasn't supposed to do," McComber said.
"A few months later it was summer and I looked out that window and saw a great big bulldozer coming off of the truck where I had replanted the trees. I didn't think. I just got in the car, drove down there and said, ?I'm not moving my car and if you go through with this I will call every mother in this valley and they are going to bring their babies down here and we're going to sit in front of your bulldozer.' After that, they didn't return."
A spiritual journey
Surrounded by natural beauty, serenity and peacefulness, the family home became McComber's sanctuary and influenced a new spiritual direction in her life. In the late 1960s, she and a neighbor formed a school of religion for children of all denominations.
"We let the kids go out in the vineyard, pick the grapes and make grape juice and the bread and we would do the Eucharist," McComber said. "This was very important to me. I went through a number of evolutions and I didn't have any preconceived idea of becoming a priest. It just evolved."
A spiritual director since 1985, McComber has a master's degree in divinity and has spent many years caring for the terminally ill as a hospital chaplain. She continues to counsel people enduring personal hardships.
"She understands healing of the human being in the spiritual, physical, mental and emotional level. She walks with humor, understanding, clarity, peace, selflessness and a genuine yearning to help people wherever they are in their journey," said Judith Caldwell of Yountville, a close friend who considers McComber her spiritual mentor.
"The clarity in the brightness of her blue eyes shines through and that is the signal that there is some brighter light much deeper in Mary Ann and it is there because she works at it."
Something McComber and her family--which now includes seven grandchildren--look forward to each year is her blessing the grapes at harvest.
"This is an opportunity to pause and reflect upon the year and give thanks that you got to harvest. Mom has thought about this more deeply than most people, but it gives us a chance to reflect," Gamble said. "It takes many things to bring a harvest together and a lot of it is good fortune. It is something we should give thanks for."
McComber contributed several writings to the 2000 book, "Napa Valley." In one piece, called "A Valley Love Song," she describes her experiences as a vintner.
"There was never any fear about doing it the wrong way. Maybe there were other ways, but people didn't judge me. Sure I had a lot to learn, but that was exhilarating. Our first harvest was delayed due to heavy rains. Before the pickers could get in the vineyards, the grapes rotted," McComber wrote.
"The idea that money and income could be connected to this small garden of vines. The fact that this god-awful mess made one of the best wines ever made at the time. The look in the winemaker's eyes and in friends' eyes left an almost giddy sense of anticipation. Everything seemed to have a place in this new community: everyone fit in, an ethic of partnership with each other. This was where I wanted my children to grow up."
(Christine Souza is a reporter for Ag Alert. She may be contacted at csouza@cfbf.com.)
Agriculture's advocate: Ventura woman passes pride to future generations
While dating in 1945, Leo and Rita Vanoni found their love of farming to be a common connection. Today, they find great pleasure in their role as the parents of five grown children and the grandparents of 11 grandchildren.
By Christine Souza
As wide-eyed children shuffle excitedly through Uncle Leo's Barn at the Ventura County Fair, Rita Vanoni shows the youngsters how to milk a cow--a wooden Holstein display complete with rubber-glove utters. Her time spent with kids is just one way this farming mom is dedicated to teaching future generations about the importance of agriculture.
"That's my mom, a strong woman who has raised a large family, is an active member of the community and shares her time and talent with hundreds of young people," said Charles Vanoni, her oldest son and also manager of the family farm. "She is a strong advocate for California agriculture who goes above and beyond the usual, providing opportunities for thousands to learn that they are connected to California agriculture."
Among those who learned the lesson firsthand are Vanoni's five grown children--Charles, Marie, Laura, Edna and Glenn. Vanoni and husband Leo, who is "Uncle Leo" at the county fair, have been farming lemons and avocados in Somis for 57 years.
Her love of agriculture is a journey that began when Vanoni was a girl growing walnuts with her mother and brother in Simi Valley.
"As a young child on the farm, I had to pick up walnuts. You had to bend your back and pick up the walnuts one by one with a bucket. Then you'd peel off the green shell and put them on a tray to dry them," she said. "I had to help my mom with everything because she was by herself."
Blind date with destiny
As a young woman in 1939, Vanoni found employment at local packinghouses.
"During World War II when the men were called to serve, Mom signed on as one of the girls traveling from packinghouse to packinghouse throughout the state, helping to get California's citrus fruit to market," her son said.
"Packing oranges was tiring and I never was real speedy, so I didn't make the wages that some of those girls made, but I got by," Vanoni said. "That is when they had the braceros--the boys that came here and worked in the packinghouses. When the houses closed, they went back to Mexico. Those boys worked hard, they were good kids and all of their wages went back to Mexico."
Vanoni realized that it was to be her destiny to remain in agriculture in 1945 when she married a Saticoy farmer she met on a blind date.
"My father tried to join the military, but he had been told by the draft board to ?stay home on your family's farm and do your part by growing food,'" Charles Vanoni said. "As my parents left the church on the day they were married, the church bells began to peal, announcing that the long war was finally over. For the next 60 years, they farmed in the Los Posas Valley of Ventura County."
By the time the family moved to Somis in 1949 two of their five children had been born, but Rita Vanoni enjoyed every opportunity to help her husband on the farm.
"When we moved to Somis, that is when I went out and helped Leo with irrigating, spraying weeds and what have you," she said. "I enjoyed it. I would much rather be outside than in the house and Leo feels the same way."
Charles Vanoni recalls his mother lending a hand with anything that needed doing on the farm, most often with him in tow. She did tractor work, planting and harvesting.
"I remember her checking irrigation furrows late at night by the truck's headlights and signaling to my dad, up or down for more or less water, with a flashlight," he said. "In the summer she took off her shoes and loved the cool relief of the mud on her feet as she walked through the fields of sugar beets, lima beans or lemon trees. She helped plant some of the first avocado acres in the county. And she did all of this while cooking the meals and taking care of the house and family."
Uncle Leo's Barn
Rita Vanoni's love of children and farming inspired her to teach kids about where their food and fiber comes from. She began by volunteering as a 4-H leader and serving as a leader at 4-H summer camp. At camp, Vanoni taught organizational skills and also shared her love of nature and the outdoors with hundreds of youngsters.
Her work continues today at Uncle Leo's Barn.
"When I was 10 years old, my parents realized that as our county became more urbanized, children's connection to agriculture became more tenuous and remote so they decided to do something about it," Charles Vanoni said. "Today, most children don't have the opportunity to visit Grandma or Grandpa or anyone on the farm, but for a few minutes each year at the Ventura County Fair, everyone can visit Uncle Leo's Barn."
The purpose of Uncle Leo's Barn is to provide the young and young at heart with a connection to agriculture. It is a place where children learn that farmers are members of the community where they live and that the science and industry of agriculture is an important part of their everyday lives. Children have an opportunity to learn simple things, such as hearing firsthand that a turkey really does "gobble."
This last summer marked the exhibit's 50th anniversary.
"While the barn bears my father's name, we all know that without my mother standing beside him, without her strength and support, Uncle Leo's Barn and everything our family is and has accomplished would not be possible," Charles Vanoni said.
Elaine Cavaletto of Somis has volunteered with Rita Vanoni at the county fair, 4-H and California Women for Agriculture. They have worked side-by-side at the farm days, helping children learn about agriculture.
"Rita really points out things that kids maybe have never seen before and she makes sure that every child is talked to. If some kid hangs back, she will help them see what they want to see," Cavaletto said. "She really loves kids. She is a good mom and a good person."
Vanoni also participated with Cavaletto in an agricultural day with inner-city children in Los Angeles, where many mothers asked if they could touch a lamb at the event.
"Rita lit up like Christmas tree lights in that, here the mothers brought their children and they got just as much out of it as their kids did," Cavaletto said. "Rita is concerned that people learn, especially little kids. She does it in a way that the kids probably don't even know they are learning."
Charles Vanoni is proud of his mother's involvement in teaching children and others about the benefits of agriculture. He believes it is vital for farmers like his mother to advocate for agriculture in urbanized society.
"Farmers can no longer just grow food. They must educate and be advocates of their products and way of life," he said. "By helping to provide hands-on experiential opportunities for learning and the chance for non-farm folks to interact with farm families, Mom helps to create a new connection between agriculture and the consumer. And I'm so proud of her."
(Christine Souza is a reporter for Ag Alert. She may be contacted at csouza@cfbf.com.)
Permission for use is granted, however, credit must be made to the California Farm Bureau Federation when reprinting this item.
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