In their never-ending quest to synergize new ways of making money, the LA Times used to run many more special sections and pages. One was “Little Farm Homes”. This is from the Dec. 13, 1931 issue. It was written by Mrs. H.E. Thompson, and because she describes Los Alamitos — although not in any real detail — we choose to include it.
We Really Live Now
JUST TRY TO TAKE US BACK TO THE CITY!
By Mrs. H.E. Thompson.
winner, Second Prize, Two-Acre Class, Second Annual Farm Home Contest of Farm and Garden Magazine and Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce
With an inherited love of the outdoors, it was quite natural that when selecting a permanent homesite in California, we should choose one with trees and a bit of ground where our spare time could be spent pleasurably, yet profitably.
We recognized our future home here in Los Alamitos the moment we chanced upon it—two acres of land with 194 fruit trees of fifty varieties and eighty-seven vines of twelve kinds. All were intermingled as though Mother Nature herself had arranged them, and everything was tucked back of fourteen large palm trees that extended across the street front of the place. We even had our fig tree with the vines—a huge one growing above and all over an old-fashioned and comfortable house. The property was within eight miles of the city where we were then living and five miles from the husband’s place of business. Needless to say, we lost no time in effecting the purchase.
After a few modern improvements and the addition of a pigeon cote, we settled down to reality live for the first time since migrating from our back east home. With an abundance of fully-ripened choice varieties of fruit at hand, fresh vegetables and fresh eggs always available, plenty of fat fowl for the Sunday dinner with squab, the piece de resistence for the company menu, we frequently tell our friends as well as ourselves that we are living off the “fat of the land.”
And what did we pay for this luxury?
Because the original owner and developer of this small farm had fulfilled the joy of its completion and was dreaming of starting afresh on a more extensive program, we were able, by furnishing the cash for his subsequent venture, to acquire it all for less than what what would have been the price of a five-room bungalow which we, at the time, occupied in the city. So the expenditure for this “luxury” created a saving, for the little farm with its shade in and sun, its rambling house and outdoor living-rooms, is a good producer.
The marketing problem solves itself. The fruit is so choice that the same housewives come from near and far, year after year, for their special pear for pickling or quince for preserving. The picking is not intrusted to others, but is done solely by ourselves; there is pleasure in picking fruit when it is choice.
The trimming and spraying are taken care of by the husband, filling the need of outdoor diversion for him. Since dry farming is practiced, the matter of weeds is of little concern as a weekly wielding of a wooden rake adds the desired neatness with little effort. This is part of my work; I call it my “golf” and firmly believe that the exercise is quite beneficial as that form golf and that the pleasure and satisfaction from chumming with one’s own flowering plants and fruiting trees are more substantial than more diversion without profit.
But to come to actual figures: on the fruit house wall is a boom where we keep count of all fruit sold on the place (and that is where it it is all sold). In each of the six years of our venture, the sum has topped the $200 mark, but to this must be added a very big item, the delicacy of the just-picked fig or peach, the quality of the fully sun-ripened persimmon—all we can use and always tree-ripened and fresh picked. This creates a savings of no small monetary value for us and a satisfaction quite difficult to estimate.
Besides, there is the nursery stock. A few slips of this or seeds of that planted around the edges are soon bushes and young trees, which are easily sold to admiring visitors, bringing an additional revenue of some $50 or more, again making pleasure profitable.
The small farm produces many fold; it even produces many Christmas presents. Besides all we sell, consume ourselves, or give away, a good deal finds it way into glasses and jars for out-of-season use and still more into boxes, for some 200 pounds of pigs are candied and sent out all over the country as Christmas presents each year,
And again, I say, it would be difficult to put into figures what the small farm yields even if this were the objective of small farm home life, for, first of all, it is a real home, and in this capacity, certainly earns its way. Large, indeed, would be the rent that would find for us elsewhere a place of equivalent satisfaction.