The urban farm is dying, and so are its hopes

THERE was a forlorn quality to the embattled urban farm on the day I visited.

Bulldozers had already begun plowing under areas within the 14-acre plot that had once been rich in the agriculture of the people.

The sound of a flute drifted over the lost urban oasis like a woman’s cry, adding to the melancholy nature of the scene.

And the weather itself, hot and humid in the presence of far-off thunderstorms, placed the farm and its environs in an almost surreal setting, as though one was trapped in the unnerving embrace of a bad dream.

It has been only a little more than two weeks since sheriff’s deputies evicted the farmers and their followers from the land at 41st and Alameda and turned it back over to real estate investor Ralph Horowitz, but it is already assuming the appearance of abandonment.

What the small bulldozers -- Bobcats, actually -- haven’t plowed under, the intensity of the sun is slowly killing off. Padlocks on the gates, combined with private security, have prevented anyone from watering the plants, and it won’t be long before they perish in the heat.

Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is cordoned off on the north edge of the farm, allowing protesters and others to gather. There were about a hundred there on the day I stopped by. They were selling trinkets on sidewalk blankets, dealing with occasional journalists and listening to live music from a makeshift bandstand.

I was captured by the high, hollow wail of the flute that floated over the small crowd of believers, drifters and hangers-on. Without words, it seemed to articulate the mood of those who assembled on the street and at other places around the farm.

To be sure, hope still simmers among at least some of them that Horowitz will change his mind and allow the land to be sold back to the farmers with money offered by the Trust for Public Land and the Annenberg Foundation.

They have come up with the $16 million he was asking on a $5-million investment, but he turned them down after enduring vilification at the hands of his detractors and an anti-Semitic slur on the website of the farm supporters. They have said it was put there by an unauthorized hacker, and deplored its presence, but it was too late.

Generally, it was all too late, even though the farm’s backers are still going to court in an effort to force Horowitz to accept the offer he once said he would.

The city’s flurry of support, a makeshift organization and the noisy presence of celebrities came after a deadline Horowitz had imposed. There was no core to the effort to save the farm, no single person or presence that one could donate to or rally around. It was a war without a general.

I was told that “hundreds� still turn out at 7 p.m. rallies held every night at the farm, but I doubt that even thousands would make a difference in the sad plight of the once-thriving land, 350 separate plots farmed by locals in the largely Latino area of South-Central L.A.

The garden traces its origin back to 1986 when the city assumed ownership through eminent domain for the announced purpose of building an energy plant. The plant was never built and the farmers moved in six years later, turning the vacant land into a rich expanse of fruit trees and vegetable gardens. Horowitz sued, won and got the land back for the $5 million he was paid by the city in the first place.

I went to the farm to, in effect, write its obituary, and I guess this is what I’m doing. There was, indeed, a dream buried within the padlocked confines of the site, and all the moody elements of the day contributed to a lonely feeling of mourning.

Added to the grayness of the afternoon were an enervating hot breeze and the occasional blast of a Metro train racing past the mourners who sat in desultory silence listening to the music.

Others seemed to wander languidly through the day, just to be there, as though their presence might animate a fading cause. Green balloons tied to the high fences bounced in the wind.

It had the odd feeling of being in a Raymond Chandler novel on one of those strange and awful days when you knew that something bad was about to happen.

Money and governmental pressure are powerful methods of persuasion, and I suppose there’s always a chance that Horowitz will change his mind if the city truly muscles him and another million or so sweetens the pot. And I suppose that when they go to court next week, there’s a chance that a judge will issue a restraining order to stop the bulldozing until the whole thing is settled to his satisfaction.

I’m no oracle, but I’ve got to tell you that what’s happening doesn’t have the clear, clean scent of victory about it. There’s something dying within the garden that no longer exists; something that was alive and vibrant and full of hope. It’s almost too basic to be a dream, but we give it a name like that to summarize its spiritual qualities.

But dreams end when we awaken, and I’m afraid we’ve awakened too late to save something that was good and pure while it lasted but was probably never meant to continue. That’s too bad. That’s too damned bad.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at [email protected].