On a neighbouring large ranch, where a good deal of labour is employed, and which the proprietor only visits occasionally for a few odd days, the manager and overseer is, or rather was, a doctor, and a very good manager he makes.
An elderly rancher we came across had been a soldier during the Civil War; a farmer in the East; had driven an express waggon, and after ranching a short time in the South and finding it difficult to make both ends meet, emigrated to Oregon and became a member of the State Legislature, in which position the salary was probably not the only pecuniary advantage.
We had not been long in the North when we decided that the climate was not good enough. We had left home and come six thousand miles, and were critical. It was damp and windy. In the fruit valleys, the summers were quite as hot, if not more so, than in the middle South. Most of the early fruit comes from this part, and in the winter there was rain, more or less constantly, for four months.
In consequence of the heavier rainfall, the North is much greener than the South; the hills too are beautifully wooded with every variety of tree. But in many neighbourhoods the work of ranching is more fatiguing than in the South; the soil is heavier, and the longer wet season has many disadvantages for people who do their own ranching.
By this time the uncertainty and general homeless feeling of our lives was beginning to be almost unendurable.
There were so many things to consider; firstly, which kind of fruit paid the best and was the least subject to accidents and the disappointments of bad seasons; secondly, the quality of land best suited to such fruit and the conveniences for getting it to market; thirdly, the amount of water to be had; this last quite as vital as any point whatsoever about the land. In fact one might almost be said to buy water with land attached, so great is the value of a certainty of enough water.
We were so much impressed with this, that we were quite determined to buy land only where there was a well-tried and well-established irrigating system, and where all the water difficulties of the neighbourhood were solved and settled.
This resolve, with some others, had eventually to go by the board; but of this much we made sure when we bought, that there was water enough running in a satisfactory flume some two miles from our land. The part which had to be taken more or less on trust was the piping of the water to our little settlement, and the dividing of it in a fair and workable manner; this has given us more trouble than we would care to undertake again. The climate, too, had to be carefully examined, even in California. And the view meant a great deal to us; we were very unwilling to settle in a plain or valley, where soon our own windbreak trees would be the only outlook, year in, year out.
A school within reach for the younger boy was another point about which I was resolved to be stubborn.
Then, though we had so unhesitatingly chosen the absolute freedom of country life, in preference to pretentious villadom, we did not want isolation.