L.A.’s urban farm now a withered memory

IT’S just a big, empty lot now, filled with the savaged remains of what had once been an urban farm. Large piles of junk and garbage partially block the padlocked main entrance. Signs that once rallied a protest hang listlessly from a high metal fence.

Five months ago, the 14-acre plot was a thriving garden of the people, filled with the crops that helped feed and support families in South-Central L.A. The garden disappeared under a court-mandated stamp of private property. Now it’s just another piece of dirt and debris in the gray core of an industrial zone.

True, legal action continues in an effort to regain the property from its owner, real estate developer Ralph Horowitz. Attorney Dan Stormer, who represents the farmers, has filed an appeal and a lawsuit to restore the land to the 350 men and women who once toiled there.

“It was the taxpayers’ property,” Stormer insists, lost to the people by a “no-guts City Council.” He vows to stay at the job until the cabbage grows again at 41st and Alameda. Urban farmer Ruffina Juarez adds: “People say it’s over, but it’s not. The spirit is still there.”

The land was acquired by the city for $4.8 million in the mid-1980s for a trash-burning plant that was never built. It was ultimately turned over to the community, but because it had been acquired under eminent-domain laws, its original owner, Horowitz, sued and got it back from the city for $5.1 million. He put it on the market for $15 million. Efforts by the farmers to buy it back failed. They were ordered to leave.

I revisited the plot recently on a day as dark as winter, low-hanging clouds adding an overwhelming mood of sadness to an already somber situation. I’m not sure why I went back. It’s pretty much a dead story now, except for the faint legal efforts to regain the farm, equivalent to the sounds of a cat scratching at the door.

I was especially interested in one of the fenced-off plots dedicated to children that I’d visited a few days before the farmers were evicted and bulldozers began chewing up the crops and the scattered elements of life that adorned the acreage. As many as 20 kids came by on weekends to plant, dig and work with the arts and crafts provided by a young college student and his girlfriend.

I took photographs of the jars of paints, brushes, brightly colored paper and arrays of potted plants on tables in the center of the square. A sign still draped over a fence said, “The children of South-Central grow here too.” The kids themselves had painted words on a trash can: “Don’t take away our dream.” Now, because of the destruction, it’s hard even to tell where the dream existed.

There was no security guard at the gate and hardly anyone in the area, unlike the way it was when marchers tried to save the farm -- back when protesting celebrities were demonizing Horowitz, and anti-Semitic comments on the farmers’ website fueled anger and resentment. Apologies and gifts of fruit were made to Horowitz, but the damage was already done.

It was a sorry end to an otherwise valiant effort.

In a telephone conversation recently, Horowitz, still simmering over what he called the misinformation published by the media, said he regretted that the farmers never came up with the money to buy back the farm. He had granted an option to the Trust for Public Land, a conservation group, to sell them the acreage and said he’d even agreed to help finance it, but no one could gather enough money to make any difference. The celebrities made noise, he said, but offered no money. When the anti-Semitic comments appeared on the website, that was the end. Asked if he would ever give them another chance at buying the land, Horowitz thought for a moment and then said, “I just don’t want to deal with them anymore.”

I circled the farm that gloomy day like a sentry on duty, looking for someone to talk to, taking photographs of the churned earth and the debris that covered it. A single flash of color adorned what otherwise had the appearance of a battlefield: a plant of brilliant yellow blossoms on a mound of dirt, like flowers on a grave, gleaming into the gray autumn morning.

As I came back to the main gate again after circling the field, I saw a middle-aged man peeking through the fence, studying the remnants of life in disarray across the entire expanse of land. He was dressed for church, as my mother used to say, in neatly pressed dark pants and a new white shirt. I asked if he’d been a farmer. He replied in Spanish. I speak no Spanish. He spoke no English.

So we stood there, side by side, for several minutes in silence, staring at the vacancy. Finally, he shrugged, gestured toward the abandoned farm and walked off. The gesture somehow said everything. It was all a waste. I watched him disappear around a corner onto Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Then I left, wondering at the dreams lost in the conflicts of human acquisition. The bells of a passing Metro train clanged into the melancholy silence.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. E-mail: [email protected].