March of Alleged Progress Threatens a Good Land Gem

My family started farming here in 1830, we have 3 generations of family buying produce from Fairview now. It's too bad that people who have no roots in the county have no respect for our history or the people who try to preserve it. Will the cock a doodle doo of the rooster be replaced by lawn mowers, leaf blowers, midnight car alarms and more urban pollution?

You're too late. They already got rid of the rooster because the new neighbors didn't like the noise. I hate to state the obvious, but more housing=more people. If you don't build it they can't come.

Fairview Farms is great, but all the great things it does aren't an excuse for good sanitation and safe housing for its workers.

If Goletans want absolutely security and anal-retentive santitation, they can go to WalMart. Leave Fairview Gardens alone; a healthy community needs to be in contact with the earth beneath it. Who knows, perhaps the Goleta of the future could learn a bit of sustainable living from Fairview's example? Hopefully, FG's supporters will chain themselves to City Hall - or better yet, to the city councilmembers who want homogenization and standardization. FG is NOT a public health threat. To those who resent the rooster: GET A LIFE!

Mugu, I have a lot of respect for what you guys are trying to do. It is really unfortunate that these corporate interests are pushing their corporate agendas.

They will be sorry when suddenly the trucks stop coming in with their COSTCO food, and they WISHED that our community had a more locally based food economy. Unfortunately, they are hurting all of us with their maniacal reasoning.

I don't know one long term resident who has ever told me they are glad that the Santa Barbara/Goleta area is more developed than it was a generation ago.

I can think of no way how the quality of life is better here now than before and this is yet another way "progress" is going to lessen that quality.

Sadly, so many aspects of the once-serene ambiance us old timers grew up with have been destroyed that when another domino falls few even notice.

120 years ago there were still indigenous Californians here who were forced to work as slaves (both agricultural and sexual) for the white farmers.

120 years ago there were no antibiotics and no polio vaccines. Many, many women and their babies died or were badly injured in childbirth.

Some progress is good. Good sanitation has helped everyone have a better life. Building codes protect everyone from the regular fires that used to burn down both small farmhouses and West Coast cities every 10 or 20 years (the 1906 fire in San Francisco was preceded by many others that were not initiated by an earthquake).

Fairview Gardens should adhere to sanitation standards and building codes; everyone else must do so, Fairview should not get special treatment. What Fairview Gardens does is great, but they should follow all the same rules that the rest of us must follow.

Blaming the development of Goleta on good sanitation and building codes is simply perverse. Sorting people into `us' and `them', where `us' claim some sort of ancestral privilege (but deny that privilege to the Chumash) is divisive and won't help Fairview Gardens one bit; in fact, Fairview Gardens is hurt by such ploys.

Hmmmm, sevendolphins, methinks thou doth protesteth too flippin' much, my brother.

Clearly you are one of the folks pushing the "sanitize everything out of existence" agenda. I bet you are one of those neighbors in one of those crackerboxes who doesn't like the rooster, has a pathological terror of dirt, and can't stand the thought of anyone having any fun without paying a big fat fee and passing some kind of anal inspection first.

Dude...lighten up. This isn't about your PC racist agenda, OK?

And while we're at it, the reason for all those fires back in the day was because everyone used gas and/or candles for lighting, and fires for heat.

I realize that you are a really unhappy individual who is absolutely freaked out at the thought of anyone enjoying life for its own sake, and I'm awful darn sorry for ya, but you don't get to tell everyone else the we have to be miserable and constipated, too.

We like Fairview Gardens. We liked the rooster. We like that people get to live there and work the land, to feel soil in their hands, to nurture seeds and help them grow. We like fresh air...not exhaust fumes spewing from the throngs of SUV's and jacked up trucks clogging the streets of Santa Barbara & Goleta. We like animals, the beach and the mountains.

Since you don't like any of this stuff, might I lend a hand and help you pack your bags so you can get the heck out and move to L.A., where you'd clearly be MUCH happier?

Have a nice day!