I tried to call my mother today to ask a question, but she must have been busy. I guess I can ask my friends out here at some point. What is the etiquette on turning right on a city street when horses are in the bike lane? So far, I've lucked out, and they've been at least half a block behind me when it was time to turn. The other drivers behind me are usually impatient enough that I know if it comes down to it, I will just drive up another block or two and just turn right there, then wind my way back to where I'm going, entirely to avoid the question, much like how I use someone's name over and over again if I'm uncertain of their pronoun preference. I'm sure that the rules for horse riders are similar to those involving bike riders, but I feel like I should be more cautious, since bikes don't get startled and shy or rear.
Those of my readers who don't live in this area are most likely confused at this point. Yes, I do live in a city of about 30,000 that borders on a city of 117,000. Yes, we are situated between San Francisco and Sacramento. Just days ago, I was posting about my many fast food choices, after all. The truth is, I live in a farming area that was developed into a suburb, with varying degrees of success. The horse riders live on a farm on the border between the two towns, a development and a half from the outer reaches of my town. It's a working farm in the middle of town--not very big, but boasting some nice animals and a well-loved fruit stand. It's a few blocks from Kiddo's first elementary school.
There is a lot of quick transitions from city to country within our area. There are vineyards and farms within a mile of Target. The road that goes past the community college continues into a windy tour of the Suisun Valley winemakers before ending up back in town. The hills on the freeways out of town are regularly dotted with cattle having their grassy lunches, and our neighbors in Yolo, Sonoma, and Napa Counties are heavily invested in agriculture as well. Some of my friends' kids are in 4-H, and county fairs are held throughout the area.
This fall's fires were terrifying and devastating to our area. While other parts of the Bay Area were dealing with forest fires, we were dealing with grass fires, which tend to go faster, and some of those fires were hitting crops. One of the major logistical issues was transporting all the livestock out of the path of the fire while locating safe places for them. The County Fairgrounds, which are across from the Six Flags Discovery Kingdom park (the city and the rural, crashing together again), housed as many animals as they could in their animal buildings, but some of the farmers in the town about ten miles from us couldn't get their animals out before the fire got too close. Community boards had a lot of heartbreaking videos of animals being released from their pens and enclosures in the hope that they would at least stand a chance. Later, there were several tearful reunions with animals who had survived and had been found in various places. Other stories were less heartwarming. The pictures of farmers and ranchers who had lost everything surveying the damage are truly heartbreaking, and many are still requesting that other people not travel the most heavily-affected roads, as the cleanup is still ongoing.
It's easy to dismiss the agricultural portion of California. A few years ago, I brought Kiddo to a county fair in Michigan while we were visiting my mother. Several members of my extended family smiled indulgently and opined that they bet she had never seen anything like that back in California. I didn't have the heart to tell them that actually, their fair looked almost precisely like the Yolo County Fair, at which Kiddo had spent a day a couple years before. I also omitted the school field trip to the teaching farm the previous year.
The fact of the matter is that my part of California is much more rural than the movies lead you to believe. Most of California is more rural than the movies lead you to believe. Twenty-five percent of California's land is used for agricultural purposes. The majority is used for pasture and range, while the rest is cropland. Considering how much of California is forest (about 33%, split 60-40 between federal and privately-owned) and how much is desert or mountainous, it's a pretty impressive amount of land, and it's not all vineyards (which--let's face it--are basically specialty farms with tasting rooms). When you leave the Bay Area headed south to Los Angeles and its many attractions, you spend a lot of hours looking at fields of crops and livestock. When you leave our area headed to Lake Tahoe and its many attractions, you spend a lot of time looking at fields of crops and livestock (and then you look at trees).
Give us a chance. Our heartland looks an awful lot like everyone else's heartland.
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