Jack London's Ranch AlbumPage 2 of 3
"I ride over my beautiful ranch. Between my legs is a beautiful horse. The air is wine. The grapes on a score of rolling hills are red with autumn flame. Across Sonoma Mountain, wisps of sea fog are stealing. The afternoon sun smolders in the drowsy sky. I have everything to make me glad I am alive."
| -Jack London |
At the present moment I am the owner of six bankrupt ranches, united in my possession. The six bankrupt ranches represent at least eighteen bankruptcies; that is to say, at least eighteen farmers of the old school have lost their money, broken their hearts, lost their land.
May 12, 1911
"Most of the ranchers were poor and hopeless; no one could make money there, they told me. They had worked the land out and their only hope was to move on somewhere else and start to work new land out and destroy its value. . . . . My neighbors were typified by the man who said:" 'You can't teach me anything about farming; I've worked three farms out!'
circa 1916
The Dam
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"My first big dam on the place is just finished so that on these poor, old, worked-out, eroded hillsides I shall be able to harvest two crops a year and turn one crop under; in place of the old meagre crop that could be taken off only once in several years."
The lake was formed by the building of a stone dam in the hills above the ranch fields. It was kept full by a pipe line bringing water from Graham Creek.
