HISTORY

The discoveries of a mortar in the 1980s and a pestle and metate in the 2020s indicate prior indigenous activity on our hilltop. In the late 1800s our farm was called “Sunnyside Farm” or “Sunnyside Ranch”. In the early 1900s it was owned by the Peck family. At the time, the road to our farm was called Peck Rd. This ranch would most likely have been used for horses and/or livestock in the early years and we have uncovered several horseshoes buried 6-12”+ underground, suggesting this as well.

By the 1930s, the Litchfield family had acquired the farm and planted Newtown Pippin apples in the valley floor in a diamond pattern with 28’ spacing between trees. A home was built onsite in 1949. Peck road was renamed Litchfield Lane during the Litchfield occupancy. NRCS helped to construct the well onsite along with concrete irrigation lines and a pond at a neighbor’s property, all used to irrigate the apple trees. In the 1950’s the hillside was first planted with red delicious apple trees at 20-30 foot spacing, being previously used for grazing. Blasting caps were used to break-up the clay on the hillside at the site of each planting hole. The property passed to new owners focused on apple farming in 1967 as part of an estate sale after the Litchfield patriarch’s passing, and has changed hands a couple of times since.

Apple farmers in the 1970s and 1980s included the Pistas and the Buaks. In the 1980s, the hillside was terraced and re-planted in semi-dwarf red delicious, fuji, and granny smith trees. In the early 2000’s, the home was occupied by several farmworkers and the farm became known to the local farmworker population as “Rancho Las Cocas” after the head farmworker onsite who had been nicknamed “La Coca”. In 2013, a local doctor had purchased the property, but sold it two years later in 2015.

This is where our chapter begins.