BELOW-Amber is the fourth generation Giorgi to water her horse at Nojoqui Falls.
There are many legends about the falls, several tell of a beautiful young maiden who saves her clan in a time of great drought by leading them to the falls.
The falls then increase in size and spill to the Valley below, causing all the creeks and rivers to fill.
click for larger view
Photo credits -
Mehosh Dziadzio
- Amber At falls
- Top Cattle Drive
- Pen Photo
.
Connie Cody
- Toby at Plow
- Bill & Toby with Plow
by Reka K. Badger
sunny fields of golden grain and rugged foothills dotted with cattle distinguish the Santa Ynez Valley, giving it the look of a place lost in time. Western wear prevails, the Grange thrives, and horse trailers abound, sure signs of the outdoor life that resident farmers and cattlemen treasure and defend.Among the old families that pioneered the Valley, the Giorgi clan remains a vital link to the agrarian past that continues to inform local affairs. Holding fast to family tradition is third generation Bill Giorgi, and his wife, Gail, who devote their lives to keeping the family's beloved Nojoqui Falls Ranch a viable operation.
A four-generation legacy, the ranch came into the family in the 1800's when Natale Giorgi bought "1743 acres more or less" in the foothills of the rugged Santa Ynez Mountains.
Grampa Giorgi, who emigrated from Switzerland in 1879, landed in San Jose at the tender age of 22. He soon headed south to work as a dairyman, first in Harmony and later in Cat Canyon, near Los Alamos.
In 1896, he moved onto Nojoqui Falls Ranch, (named after the legendary waterfall located on the property), and contracted for the land, as well as cows, horses, barns, and a house, from the heirs of John Pietro Righetti. Family lore has it, that to ensure his continued good luck in the new world, Natale kept a portrait of the elder Righetti hanging in the parlor of his new home.Grandpa Giorgi established a dairy farm that boasted over 100 cows, and with the help of his five sons, serviced a regular route along the coast. He shipped his butter from the wharf at Gaviota to markets in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and kept the milk inspector happy by giving him a bottle of the family's best homemade wine whenever he visited the ranch.
Always an innovator, Giorgi was the first resident in the area to bring electricity to his ranch, running wire all the way from Buellton. By requiring new subscribers to pay him a little something when they signed up for electrical service, Giorgi handily recouped his entire initial investment.
In the 1920s, Grandpa Giorgi leased to Santa Barbara County the spectacular Nojoqui Falls (a 165-foot wonder located on the ranch) and 40 acres of land for use as a public park. Fifty years later, the county considered buying the falls, but after having the land appraised, decided to continue with the lease arrangement.
Born at the ranch in 1899, Bill Giorgi's father, Tito, turned from dairying to raising cattle, and dry farmed garbanzo beans, lima beans, barley, and juicy plum tomatoes. In those days, harvest meant cutting, drying, and dumping the beans on the hard ground and then walking the horses over them. Tito and his brothers would then hoist the beans on their pitchforks and let the breezes carry away the chaff.
During the Depression, Tito helped put food on the table by hunting and fishing, and supplemented the family income by trapping coyote, fox, raccoons, even a skunk or two, and selling the pelts to a broker in Chicago.
In the late 1930s, an encounter with a black widow spider put Tito in the hospital, where he met his favorite nurse and future wife, Alma Marie Schlange.
Handsome and trim at just over 50, Bill Giorgi remembers getting up every morning before school to milk the cow, and digging into the endless pies and jars of jam his mother made from fruit grown in the family's orchard. As a special treat, every year around Christmas, Tito would whip up a batch of his signature English toffee.Before Bill attended college at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, his father and two older brothers made all the important decisions on the farm.
"If I did anything," Bill laughs, "it was 'go get your butt on the tractor.' I didn't make any management decisions or anything like that."
"I worked my way through college. I'm kind of proud of that," Bill reveals. "I'd been in 4-H and FFA all my life, so all the money I raised from selling animals at the fair, I put into an account for college. I used to work on weekends. In fact, I'd even push a broom between classes."
Bill earned a degree in Farm Management, and polished valuable skills that have helped him to build his business, design budgets, and even calculate his spraying program.
"You bring all this data together," Bill explains, "and analyze each one of your operations separately to figure out how to divide up all your common costs, so you can find out what's making the money and what isn't."
Bill's wife and "best friend", have been running the ranch together the last thirty years. Bill met Gail, a city girl from Southern California, in 1973. They married in 1975, and moved into a mobile home on the ranch.
Tito semi-retired from ranch work about 1965, "farmers and ranchers don't fully retire" says Bill. First-born brother Ken then took over running the ranch.
After graduating from Cal Poly in 1973, Bill returned home and the two brothers worked the ranch together for two years. Brother Ed then stepped in and he and Bill managed the ranch the next three years. Tito died in 1977 and Ken passed away in 1978. Bill and Ed then formed a family partnership in order to keep the ranch together. The partnership is owned by Bill and Ed along with their nephews Michael and Jason Giorgi.
Ed moved to Nebraska in 1979, and Bill and Gail took over full operation of Nojoqui Falls Ranch. The couple have been farming on their own ever since.
Last year, Bill and Gail farmed 90 acres of garbanzo beans, 50 acres of forage mix hay, and raised 75 head of cattle for market, pretty much single-handedly. They used to butcher a steer every year for the freezer, but with the high cost of grain, they've decided it's too expensive to fatten them up for the table.
Over the years they've grown wheat, lima beans, jalapeno peppers, sweet corn, and Anaheim peppers. Along the way, Bill helped develop new varieties of garbanzo beans, and register several herbicides for use with garbanzo beans."It's dawn to dusk at times," Bill describes ranching life. "Harvest season, sometimes I start at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning. You get the tractor ready, and start cutting beans. You have to cut 'em in the morning when it's damp and they're tough, so they don't fall out of the pods. Then you rake 'em together into windrows.
After that, you work on your equipment, fix things, grease 'em up. When things have dried up enough, you harvest the beans - if you've got all the equipment you had been working on fixed and ready. You run the bean harvester until the night moisture comes in, or the harvester breaks. Sometimes it dark, and sometimes it might be 2:00 a.m."
"Because all the equipment is like antiques," Gail chimes in with a laugh, then thoughtfully adds, "Bill's dad farmed and it supported his family, but today it's tough to sustain your family. You've got to have other careers or sources of income."
In an age of corporatization, rampant regulations, and diminished returns, today's independent ranchers struggle to stay afloat, while grappling with the usual vagaries of weather, pests, and uncertain markets. To make ends meet, some ranchers have begun staging day camps and offering "farm stays," where overnight guests can get a taste of life on a ranch.
"I think one of the things that's becoming, more and more a source of income for ranches is recreation," muses Bill. "People just like to get out, whether it's hiking, bird watching, bicycling, horseback riding. There are more and more ranches that operate a hunting program, and I think in a lot of areas they make more money in that than in cattle."
"It would help hold us together and educate the public," explains Gail, blue eyes flashing with determination. "Give people a chance to see what we're doing. We've got a lot of ideas for the future in hopes that we can maintain the ranch for our kids."
The Giorgi children, Toby, age 25, and Amber, 23, both thrive in the outdoors and show a keen interest in the future of the ranch. Toby, who just finished a hitch in the Marines, attends college part-time and has taken an interest in the life sciences. Always willing to do his share of the farm chores, Toby doesn't hesitate to fire up the tractor or buck bales of hay. He spends his free time hunting, fishing, and enjoys "just about anything done in the outdoors".
Amber, an accomplished equestrian, hunter, and budding veterinarian, teaches horsemanship, and operates her own horse-training facilities on the ranch. A part-time college student, she earns extra income waitressing at The Vineyard House.
Amber married her sweetheart, Eric Stanchfield - a personal fitness trainer at the YMCA and Club West - last May, under a flower-covered arch on a grassy swale just outside the Giorgi's home.
"It made me feel good that she has the same special feelings about this ranch," Bill admits, a little misty-eyed. "She's probably the only homecoming queen in Santa Ynez who guts her own deer."
Another fourth-generation Giorgi - Bill's nephew Michael - recently returned to the ranch, where he is growing native plants and "rare multi-use edible ornamentals".
Regarding the future of the farming life he loves, Bill laments that most people have lost contact with their agrarian roots.
"Everybody's two to three generations removed from the farm," he says sadly. "It's a problem for ag, because when people hear about land use issues and pesticides, they don't have anyone they can call to get the truth."
"Now days we spend half our time attending meetings in an effort to protect our way of life. It takes away from our time on the ranch and all the work we have to do," says Bill. "I can't imagine my grandpa sitting at meetings all day."
Bill and Gail Giorgi hold out hope for "farm stays" and other organized outings to bring paying customers to the ranch, and pray that the regulators don't make it too difficult. They figure if they work together as a family, they can protect their way of life and keep the ranch intact for future generations of Giorgis.
"We've thought about doing weddings, maybe putting up a website," Bill suggests.
"Maybe even summer programs for kids, "Gail brainstorms. "Teach them how to set up a camp, about nature. Toby and his knowledge of snakes and other wildlife...Amber can give 'em a quick course on horses. We'd like to share the ranch with others so they can appreciate it."
"So they'll have a tie to the land" Bill adds, " and understand what we are doing out here,"
In an age of relentless change, the natural beauty, bracing climate, and gracious community of the Santa Ynez Valley persist, while local farmers and long-time ranchers continue to honor their role as stewards of the land.165-foot wonder located on the ranch) and 40 acres of land for use as a public park. Fifty years later, the county considered buying the falls, but after having the land appraised, decided to continue with the lease arrangement.
Born at the ranch in 1899, Bill Giorgi's father, Tito, turned from dairying to raising cattle, and dry farmed garbanzo beans, lima beans, barley, and juicy plum tomatoes. In those days, harvest meant cutting, drying, and dumping the beans on the hard ground and then walking the horses over them. Tito and his brothers would then hoist the beans on their pitchforks and let the breezes carry away the chaff.
During the Depression, Tito helped put food on the table by hunting and fishing, and supplemented the family income by trapping coyote, fox, raccoons, even a skunk or two, and selling the pelts to a broker in Chicago.
In the late 1930s, an encounter with a black widow spider put Tito in the hospital, where he met his favorite nurse and future wife, Alma Marie Schlange.
Their son,Bill Giorgi, handsome and trim at just over 50, remembers getting up every morning before school to milk the cow, and digging into the endless pies and jars of jam his mother made from fruit grown in the family's orchard. As a special treat, every year around Christmas, Tito would whip up a batch of his signature English toffee.
Before Bill attended college at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, his father and two older brothers made all the important decisions on the farm.
"If I did anything," Bill laughs, "it was 'go get your butt on the tractor.' I didn't make any management decisions or anything like that."
"I worked my way through college. I'm kind of proud of that," Bill reveals. "I'd been in 4-H and FFA all my life, so all the money I raised from selling animals at the fair, I put into an account for college. I used to work on weekends. In fact, I'd even push a broom between classes."
Bill earned a degree in Farm Management, and polished valuable skills that have helped him to build his business, design budgets, and even calculate his spraying program.
"You bring all this data together," Bill explains, "and analyze each one of your operations separately to figure out how to divide up all your common costs, so you can find out what's making the money and what isn't."
Bill's wife and "best friend", have been running the ranch together the last thirty years. Bill met Gail, a city girl from Southern California, in 1973. They married in 1975, and moved into a mobile home on the ranch.
Tito semi-retired from ranch work about 1965, "farmers and ranchers don't fully retire" says Bill. First-born brother Ken then took over running the ranch.
After graduating from Cal Poly in 1973, Bill returned home and the two brothers worked the ranch together for two years. Brother Ed then stepped in and he and Bill managed the ranch the next three years. Tito died in 1977 and Ken passed away in 1978. Bill and Ed then formed a family partnership in order to keep the ranch together. The partnership is owned by Bill and Ed along with their nephews Michael and Jason Giorgi.
Ed moved to Nebraska in 1979, and Bill and Gail took over full operation of Nojoqui Falls Ranch. The couple have been farming on their own ever since.
Last year, Bill and Gail farmed 90 acres of garbanzo beans, 50 acres of forage mix hay, and raised 75 head of cattle for market, pretty much single-handedly. They used to butcher a steer every year for the freezer, but with the high cost of grain, they've decided it's too expensive to fatten them up for the table.
Over the years they've grown wheat, lima beans, jalapeno peppers, sweet corn, and Anaheim peppers. Along the way, Bill helped develop new varieties of garbanzo beans, and register several herbicides for use with garbanzo beans.
"It's dawn to dusk at times," Bill describes ranching life. "Harvest season, sometimes I start at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning. You get the tractor ready, and start cutting beans. You have to cut 'em in the morning when it's damp and they're tough, so they don't fall out of the pods. Then you rake 'em together into windrows.
After that, you work on your equipment, fix things, grease 'em up. When things have dried up enough, you harvest the beans - if you've got all the equipment you had been working on fixed and ready. You run the bean harvester until the night moisture comes in, or the harvester breaks. Sometimes it's dark, and sometimes it might be 2:00 a.m."
"Because all the equipment is like antiques," Gail chimes in with a laugh, then thoughtfully adds, "Bill's dad farmed and it supported his family, but today it's tough to sustain your family. You've got to have other careers or sources of income."
In an age of corporatization, rampant regulations, and diminished returns, today's independent ranchers struggle to stay afloat, while grappling with the usual vagaries of weather, pests, and uncertain markets. To make ends meet, some ranchers have begun staging day camps and offering "farm stays," where overnight guests can get a taste of life on a ranch.
"I think one of the things that's becoming more and more a source of income for ranches is recreation," muses Bill. "People just like to get out, whether it's hiking, bird watching, bicycling, horseback riding. There are more and more ranches that operate a hunting program, and I think in a lot of areas they make more money in that than in cattle."
"It would help hold us together and educate the public," explains Gail, blue eyes flashing with determination. "Give people a chance to see what we're doing. We've got a lot of ideas for the future in hopes that we can maintain the ranch for our kids."
The Giorgi children, Toby, age 25, and Amber, 23, both thrive in the outdoors and show a keen interest in the future of the ranch. Toby, who just finished a hitch in the Marines, attends college part-time and has taken an interest in the life sciences. Always willing to do his share of the farm chores, Toby doesn't hesitate to fire up the tractor or buck bales of hay. He spends his free time hunting, fishing, and enjoys "just about anything done in the outdoors".
Amber, an accomplished equestrian, hunter, and budding veterinarian, teaches horsemanship, and operates her own horse-training facilities on the ranch. A part-time college student, she earns extra income waitressing at The Vineyard House.
Amber married her sweetheart, Eric Stanchfield - a personal fitness trainer at the YMCA and Club West - last May, under a flower-covered arch on a grassy swale just outside the Giorgi's home.
"It made me feel good that she has the same special feelings about this ranch," Bill admits, a little misty-eyed. "She's probably the only homecoming queen in Santa Ynez who guts her own deer."
Another fourth-generation Giorgi - Bill's nephew Michael - recently returned to the ranch, where he is growing native plants and "rare multi-use edible ornamentals".
Regarding the future of the farming life he loves, Bill laments that most people have lost contact with their agrarian roots.
"Everybody's two to three generations removed from the farm," he says sadly. "It's a problem for ag, because when people hear about land use issues and pesticides, they don't have anyone they can call to get the truth."
"Now days we spend half our time attending meetings in an effort to protect our way of life. It takes away from our time on the ranch and all the work we have to do," says Bill. "I can't imagine my grandpa sitting at meetings all day."
Bill and Gail Giorgi hold out hope for "farm stays" and other organized outings to bring paying customers to the ranch, and pray that the regulators don't make it too difficult. They figure if they work together as a family, they can protect their way of life and keep the ranch intact for future generations of Giorgis.
"We've thought about doing weddings, maybe putting up a website," Bill suggests.
"Maybe even summer programs for kids," Gail brainstorms. "Teach them how to set up a camp, about nature. Toby and his knowledge of snakes and other wildlife...Amber can give 'em a quick course on horses. We'd like to share the ranch with others so they can appreciate it."
"So they'll have a tie to the land" Bill adds, " and understand what we are doing out here."
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