“Farming gives you a sense of freedom. It’s a peace of mind, just you and nature,” T.R. (Tony) Martin tells me as I sit with him and his wife, Dorothy, in their ranch home just east of Winters. T.R. is explaining to me how at the age of 19, he had the opportunity to run his own farm. At the time, he was a sophomore at UC Davis, studying to become a dentist while working on farms during school breaks to help pay for tuition. In October 1953, Pete Arisetti, who T.R. had worked for previously, was seriously injured and could no longer farm. Mr. Arisetti approached T.R. with an offer – if he quit school, T.R. could run Arisetti’s 30-acre farm. T.R. dropped out of college, married Dorothy the following month, and they have been farming ever since. “We essentially started our married life and farming life at the same time,” T.R. says.

T.R. has deep roots in agriculture. His paternal grandparents raised grapes in the Andalusia region of Spain. When drought and famine hit in the early 1900s, the family made the difficult decision to abandon their ranch. In 1907 they took a steamer ship to Hawaii where they worked for 5 years on a sugarcane plantation, eventually coming to California in 1912 and settling in Winters. The young family worked on farms up and down the state following the fruit.

Dorothy’s family was also in agriculture. Her grandfather came to California in 1922 to raise cotton and, like T.R.’s family, Dorothy’s also worked on farms all over California. As children living in downtown Winters, just a block from one another, Dorothy and T.R. would occasionally work in the nearby orchards picking fruit. T.R. remembers receiving 50 cents for a day’s work. When T.R. was 10, his family moved from their small house behind the post office to a farm just east of town. This is where Tony learned to drive a tractor and “do all the things on the farm that adults do.”

T.R.’s early farm education served him well when at 19, he found himself running his first farm with his new wife by his side. It was hard work, with T.R. working a night job to help support their growing family. Over the years, they have grown many crops, from apricots to almonds to tomatoes, and have run cattle on the hills outside of Winters. Today T.R. and Dorothy grow only walnuts and prunes on their farm on Russell Boulevard east of Winters. Tony tells me “that there isn’t anything on this farm that I didn’t plant.”

The history of their farm goes back to the earliest days of Winters. The land was once home to the co-founder and namesake of the town, Theodore Winters. Mr. Winters had a horse racing stable and racetrack there, and grew tobacco and other field crops over 150 years ago. The Martin Farm still has some of the finest soil in the world. With good quality water and excellent climate, the land remains highly productive. 

Growing up working on farms, both T.R. and Dorothy developed a love for the land. T.R. tells me that his goal when he was younger was to own just 10 acres. Today, he and Dorothy own hundreds. “It took a lifetime to get to where we are today,” Tony says “We feel so blessed- what are the odds of someone starting with nothing?” In order to protect their life’s work, in 2012, the Martins approached the Yolo Land Trust with a simple request. They wanted to protect their farm from any future development. “I cobbled this farm together from five parcels over 25 years,” says T.R., “I don’t want to see it turned into blacktop and cut up into home sites. That’s not the legacy I want to leave.” Working together, the Yolo Land Trust secured public funding through the US Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Conservation to pay for an agricultural conservation easement on the Martin’s farm- protecting over 200 acres as farmland forever.

T.R. and Dorothy worry that the agricultural way of life they have known and loved is disappearing. They speak fondly of having had the pleasure of working in the Santa Clara valley when they were young, saying it was like a Garden of Eden, full of fruit orchards and farms. Their hope is that Yolo County’s farmland will not succumb to the same fate as that of Santa Clara, paved over and developed into homes and shops. They fervently believe that “we have to secure farmland for the future, for our kids.”

The Martins have spent a lifetime farming in Yolo County. Through generations of hard work and perseverance, and a real love of the land, they have helped to build the region’s rural heritage and to feed the world.

photo courtesy of Yvonne Hunter