Dick, on the early 80's

All my life I had heard the advise of "Buy land and you will never go wrong".     So that's what I did when we made our money with the motels and sold out to move to California.     We put all our cash into buying the ranches, going at that time for about $14,000 to $15,000 an acre.     We put 35% down and payments on the rest.     We also spent approx. $1,000 an acre on upgrading the properties, either with a new home, or remodeling an old one, or new pumps and drip systems for the irrigaton.

At that time, raisins were selling for $1,200 a ton and a good farm would get from 2 to 3 ton per acre.     It cost approx. $1,100 per acre to grow and pick the crop, leaving a good healthy profit for the farmer even after paying his mortgage and taxes.      

But, and it's a huge 'BUT', the money was so good, farmers who beforehand had sold their grapes either fresh or the wineries, turned their grapes into raisins.     Suddely there was a glut on the market, far more raisins were produced than sold and the amount left in reserve increased every year, driving down the price the farmer got for his raisins, and obviously driving down the price of the vineyards themselves.

The problem we had was we were suddenly under water with our mortgage and no profit to pay the payments with.     The mistake I made was buying at peak market prices and not waiting for prices to settle down.     I understand that a large number of people got into the same problem recently as a result of the crash in the housing market.

So here we were in 1984 struggling to have enough money to make the crop and not enough money to pay the mortgages.     Our ranches bought at the high prices, now would bring $5,500 or less an acre.    It as good as wiped us out and we had to turn our vineyards back to the lenders.

My brother Bill was making good money at that time, and he and Frances went into partnership with us on buying  100 acres in Caruthers.     The ranch had been lost by the owner in the same way we had lost ours, and we bought his place at the distress sale from the lenders.     Most of you will remember our ranch on Nebraksa Ave.     It had a very nice 3 years old house, plus a couple of other houses that we rented out.

The excess cash was gone, but thanks for Bill and Frances, we could now start at the bottom again and have a chane at the vineyard business.