A West County Valley that Cannot Change

A Valley that Cannot Change

©Copyright 2012: Richard von Sternberg, All Rights Reserved

I will return to my story about the revolution that took place in the world of diamonds with my next blog posting.  Meanwhile, I would like to help celebrate a local hero who, like many others, worried we were developing our country to death with neighborhoods and mini-estates, turning our backs on our rural beginnings.

North of San Francisco about one hour, in the area known as “West County”, there is a tranquil Wine Country valley, gently nestled in the hills to the west of Santa Rosa that separate the Santa Rosa Plain from the Sonoma County coast, a valley named Blucher Valley.  The main road that connects Blucher Valley with the rest of the county, Bloomfield Road, descends into it after climbing uphill from Gravenstein Highway passing small roadside businesses, rural residences and a school past which the road narrows, changing from semi-rural to full-blown rural on its way past former apple orchards, current vineyards and Christmas tree farms.

At about the same place where Bloomfield Road actually touches Blucher Valley, Blucher Valley Road, not surprisingly, also touches the valley.  Ironically, the main road through the actual valley is Canfield Road, not Blucher Valley Road.  Blucher Valley Road, like Bloomfield Road, descends into Blucher Valley along Blucher Creek as it meanders through the canyon where it origniates and crosses Canfield Road on its way to the Laguna de Santa Rosa, in the middle of land that once belonged to a gentleman known locally as "Bud", born Bernard Nahmens in the valley about a third of the way through the 20th century, October 19, 1931.  The house he lived in is still standing on Canfield Road, down a hill below its crest.



House where "Bud" was born



On a hot summer day, when the temperature hits the century mark in Santa Rosa, the little valleys to the west which are, like Blucher Valley, affected by the marine influence of the icy Northern California waters of the Pacific Ocean., get into the high 70’s and low 80’s.  Summer night temperatures are in the 40’s and 50’s and, as in most areas of Sebastopol, it can be “drippy” in the morning after the late afternoon overcast has covered the area.  Evidently Pinot Noir thrives in this climate as did the Gravenstein apples grown here from the late 1800’s.  Kendall-Jackson planted their first organic Pinot Noir vineyard at the western end of Blucher Valley on a square mile of land that was one of the last land grants in California, one owned by the Carrillo family, famous in Sonoma County, headed by the son-in-law of Mariano Vallejo.

It is chilly here and a bit windy compared to Healdsburg or Sonoma, areas known for their summer heat.  Hence “Bud” grew up in one of California’s magical microclimates where agriculture flourishes, at a time when families owned dairy farms and ranches of hundreds of acres or even thousands of acres. 

Bud’s mother and father came here from an island community in the North Sea named Föhr where people either farmed, fished or hunted whales.  During the rugged North Sea winters, the daytime temperature averaged about 35 degrees.  Summer days that got beyond the 50’s were pretty rare.  Days in the 60’s probably talked about for weeks.  For George and Tita Nahmens who began their life in Blucher Valley with a dairy and poultry farm on Canfield Road, discovering the little valley's microclimate must have seemed like the final shedding of a case of the Winter Blues that most Californians have never had to suffer or even imagine.



The Isle of Föhr in the North Sea

Mr. and Mrs. Nahmens were descendents of rugged island folk dominated centuries ago by Dutch conquerors, and later, Prussian ones, people who spoke German as well as their own native language.  They were not at all unfamiliar with adversity and had no problem settling down to a life of honest muscle-straining work that required constant attention, during a time when people had to be resourceful and creative to address daily “fix it” mini-crises inherent in country living, especially so before the ushering in of the super store with everything, like Home Depot.  They were resourceful country folk who made it comfortably as they passed through the Depression and World War II, folks living a sweet life in the coastal foothills of Northern California.  They were farmers in an era when DDT was a commonly-used pesticide, when weeds were to be eradicated, when war was declared on all pests. 

In spite of this, Bud was a visionary who grew up loving his surroundings.  His parents taught him well, nurtured his instinct to live harmoniously and in balance with nature to the extent that it became part of his life philosophy to leave the land better than he found it. Bud became an adult in a time when DDT was outlawed in America and, possibly due to this, evolved to a higher level of understanding of the intimate relationship between ourselves and the land we draw our life from.  He took over the dairy operations from his parents in 1962

As you drive through this little valley it appears that nothing has changed in decades, save for a few spendy custom homes.  To quote one of my real estate clients who stood on a hill overlooking Bud’s valley: “It reminds me of the old California”.  When George and Tita built their ranch in the 20’s, there were national programs to electrify rural America and extend the postal service with the Rural Free Delivery program.  People lit their homes with gas and kerosene lanterns and cooked on woodstoves.

At some point the electric lines and phone wires arrived and lives changed almost as much as they did with radio and television.  Times and philosophies underwent a kind of kaleidoscopic transformation during the 1960’s that tugged at the heartstrings of many local farmers and pulled them into the organic movement here, gave them a new kind of respect as they took on a role loftier than mere agribusiness: "Bud's goal was to preserve the land. He always felt farmers were the best stewards of the land in Sonoma County," said his wife, Janet Nahmens (this quote is from an internet eulogy)

The most sensitive side of Bud surfaced when he came to know of the endangerment of the Sebastopol Meadowfoam flower.  Bud actually took steps to change the way he farmed in order to preserve this endangered species.  His concern for the local watershed made him embark on a restoration program for Blucher Creek, an activity for which he was honored by Nature Conservancy in the late 1980’s early in his retirement from dairying.  In the mid 1980’s he sold his dairy herd and switched to beef cattle.

I remember when that happened.  I never met Bud, but the view from my living room window includes the Kendall Jackson vineyard I mentioned earlier as well as Blucher Valley.  When Bud made an arrangement to preserve his land for agricultural purposes, when he “Preserved his land by selling his development rights to the Sonoma County Agriculture Preservation and Open Space District.”, he froze history and moved very high up my list of heroes.  Because Bud, who died March 10, 2004, chose not to sell his land to land sub-dividers and developers, my beautiful view will always be beautiful and the valley will always be the valley.

Richard von Sternberg

May 5, 2012