Wednesday, January 19
Paula and Julie drive around to see the town a bit since it's Julie's first visit.
Meet Michael Bedrosian for a tour of National Raisin facility and conversation. In arranging the meeting told him that aside from the raisin processing tour we were interested in the company’s relationship to the community, as well as the Armenian heritage and family farm characteristics of Fowler, and anything else he wanted to tell us about. The Bedrosian family is one of the major farm/business families of Fowler.
The raisin plant tour was great! And because Michael has been working there his whole life and has done every job on the line, he was the best guide possible. Three Bedrosian uncles started National Raisin in 1965-- why? JMM asks. Honestly, they saw a guy with a really nice car and they thought, How can we get that? We need to start a business. One of those brothers--Kenny was visiting the plant while Julie and I were there.
National owns some raisin vineyards and also buys raisins from various farmers. You can read a bit about National Raisin on their website of course and there is information online about raisins process from grape on the vine to in little boxes, Raisinets and as ingredients in many other things. One thing I think is interesting is that raisins first dry first by being laid out on paper in the vineyard rows.
Another point of interest is that raisins get cleaned A LOT before they are packaged-- or at least they do at National which is known for innovations in raisin cleaning.Some farmers are moving away from growing raisins, trading them in for almonds which are more of a cash crop- very popular lately. It takes 5 years for new almond trees to produce a crop but still some farmers make this leap. Other farmers-- and this is true over a lot of the San Joaquin Valley-- sold farm land to developers to build homes, though that has slowed down a lot since the housing market dropped.
We were due to meet with Paul Magill, Agriculture Teacher at Fowler High School who also runs school farm. He's born & raised in Fowler. He forgot about us and was not in town that day.
Thursday, January 20
We drove out to meet with David & Marcy Masumoto at their farm. They are Del Rey residents though their farm straddles the border of Del Rey and Fowler.
It was a treat to get to visit them at home on their farm. Marcy works for the Education Dept Fresno State and a lot of her job is about outreach to local rural schools and how to get the best possible education for those kids who might have less opportunity. David who goes by "Mas" is both a farmer and a writer. He's written many books and has a featured column in the Fresno Bee.
We talked about many things. Mas had just returned from a conference/event for food writers. We talked a bit about their daughter, Nikiko, and how we met her.
[ We first met her through the experience of Cornerstone’s project in partnership with the Music Center in Los Angeles: LA Storytellers. We did this program twice and the second time the theme was FOOD. People wrote in to the Music Center to apply for participation and about 60 folks were selected. Cornerstone created a mini-version of our process so there were 2 meetings of this workshop group, the second one 2 weeks or so after the first one. Those 60 people were divided into smaller groups and each group also included a CTC writer, director and actor. The first meeting was about community building and story sharing. The playwrights all spent the interim writing a short play for their groups. The second meeting was about rehearsing and sharing back these short plays. Nikiko participated in this LA Storytellers workshop and her group, like some others, continued to keep in touch after the workshop ended. In fact, her group participated together in adopting a Masumoto Farm peach tree for a few years! Nikiko then participated in a Cornerstone Institute 2Day Intensive because she was inspired by the process and experience of LA Storytellers. And that is when Cornerstone started thinking we should collaborate with Fowler for an Institute Summer Residency production.]
We talked about our experiences in Fowler so far. About running a family farm for generations, both daily life and big questions. We talked about what it means to be neighbors with the same families for generations. We talked about the history of the Japanese American community in Fresno County. In Fresno County, including Fowler, the Japanese & Japanese American people living west of the main highway (which at the time was Golden State Blvd) were relocated first. Most people in Fresno County were sent to Gila River “Relocation Camp” in Arizona. Mas’ parents were sent there.
Rather than try to reiterate all that Mas & Marcy shared, I will encourage you to do some exploring on your own regarding David's family history (which he has written about and continues to write about both in books and his newspaper column) and about Japanese American history in California.
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