In the course of research on this project, I did a lot of reading, and every so often I would come across a quote I found particularly interesting or insightful. I collected a few of my favorites but never found much use for most of them in the stories. I thought I'd share some of them here. Food for thought ...

"Friday, March 1 (1861), we came on to San Buenaventura, on the seacoast. Soon after leaving Cayeguas (Ranch) we entered the plain, which there lies along the sea, and crossed it to the sea about twenty miles. It is a fine grassy plain, with here and there a gentle green knoll, with a few dry creeks or alkaline ponds, and one fine stream, the Santa Clara River, running through it. We stopped for an hour on its banks and rested our mules, lunched and refreshed ourselves in a grove of cottonwoods which came nearer to a forest than anything I have yet seen here. We forded the river and came on. At San Buenaventura the hills come up to the sea, the plain ceases, but a fine stream comes down from a pretty valley, green, grassy, and rich.

"Here is the old Mission San Buenaventura, once rich, now poor. A little dirty village of a few inhabitants, mostly Indian, but with some Spanish-Mexican and American. The houses are of adobe, the roofs of red tiles, and all dirty enough. A fine old church stands, the extensive garden now in ruins, but with a few palm trees and many figs and olives -- the old padres' garden."
-- William H. Brewer, 1861
Up and Down California in 1860-1864: The Journal of William H. Brewer

"The garden of Buena Ventura far exceeded any thing of that description I had before met with in these regions, both in respect of the quality, quantity, and variety of its excellent productions, not only indigenous to the country, but appertaining to the temperate as well as torrid zone; not one species having yet been sown, or planted, that had not flourished, and yielded its fruit in abundance, and of excellent quality. These have principally consisted of apples, pears, plums, figs, oranges, grapes, peaches, and pomegranates, together with the plantain, banana, cocoa nut, sugar cane, indigo, and a great variety of the necessary and useful kitchen herbs, plants and roots. All these were flourishing in the greatest health and perfection, though separated from the sea-side only by two or three fields of corn, that were cultivated within a few yards of the surf."
-- George Vancouver, 1793
Vancouver in California, 1792-1794: The Original Account of George Vancouver

"It is not to be denied that this land exceeds all the preceding territory in fertility and abundance of things necessary for sustenance. All the seeds and fruits which these natives use, and which have been previously mentioned, grow here in native profusion."
-- Pedro Fages, 1775
A Historical, Political, and Natural Description of California by Pedro Fages, Soldier of Spain

"In a world without integrated corporate agriculture, without chemical poisons, and without enormous vertically integrated chains of supply and distribution, the produce section of the supermarket would not be open at midnight, and it would not have papayas, guava, bananas, and red grapes in February."
-- Victor Davis Hanson, 2000
The Land Was Everything: Letters From an American Farmer

"Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1787
Notes on the State of Virginia

" 'All these trees do well, and are profitable,' said an orange cultivator to me, 'but they don't compare with the orange; when you have a bearing orange orchard, it is like finding money in the street."
-- Charles Nordhoff, 1873
California for Health, Pleasure, and Residence: A Book for Travellers and Settlers

"Farm labor is California's 'peculiar institution' in much the same sense that chattel slavery was the South's peculiar institution. Today, as yesterday, the farm labor problem is the cancer which lies beneath the beauty, richness, and fertility of the valleys of California."
-- Carey McWilliams, 1949
California: The Great Exception

"I like to think how nice it's gonna be, maybe, in California. Never cold, an' fruit ever'place, an' people just bein' in the nicest places, little white houses in among the orange trees. I wonder -- that is, if we all get jobs an' all work -- maybe we can get one of them little white houses. An' the little fellas go out an' pick oranges right off the tree."
-- John Steinbeck, 1939
The Grapes of Wrath