Interviewer: Testing one, two, three. It seemed like a lot of the jobs in the county like mining and logging would attract a lot of single men. I was just wondering was there a big imbalance in those days between…were there enough women and men that they’d get together and have families.

Fitch: Well most of the loggers were traveling people, you know. They’re regular lumberjacks, you know. They work here and then they go from here and maybe they go to (____) for the work owner and up to Oregon and Washington, you see, and they were really the best. Well they learned more about the lumberjack. They saw how things were done in different places. That’s when your new systems used to come in, you see, and no they were mostly single I guess the biggest majority.

Interviewer: When did you get into farming then? When did…

Fitch: Oh I always liked ranch. When I was a kid, I used to be always at the cowboys around, you know, like that to help them to the mountain, you know with the herds and back, working the summer up in the cattle ranches, you know. They used to take cattle’s in the mountains then.

Interviewer: Just take them up in the summer to graze and…?

Fitch: Oh sure you drove them. You don’t fiddle around like they do now.

Interviewer: No fences…

Fitch: And there was lots of cattle in them…

Interviewer: Open range without fences?

Fitch: In the forest. They rented it in the forest like that. Then you drove. You drove way down the side of Oakdale up it would take quite a few days on the road because you can’t make over…well 20 miles is a good…is a big drive in the day with cattle, and you camped with them. You had corrals is different places they rented, corrals, and you…well…you mostly camped and had your own pack-up. Sometimes you pack and sometimes you (___) and you slept on the ground.

Interviewer: At night, though, they put them in a corral?

Fitch: Oh yeah they put them in a corral. There was corrals at, well, Long Barn. They had a corral and there was another corral at Sugar Pine and then different ones would rent different…rent from different ranches.

Interviewer: Was this all Forestry land up there that…?

Fitch: Oh just like it is now.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Fitch: Some was owned, some private.

Interviewer: So that means then they could take the cattle wherever they wanted? There wasn’t too many (___) (___)?

Fitch: Oh the Forestry…they designated how many you could take in according to the acreage, you see, and some of that was patented land and some of the other that you rented from the lumber companies and you rented from the Forest Service. The Forest Service told you how many you could run because there wasn’t any fences, except between the different place they put up…they put up the fences in the summertime. We had to take them down in the winter; the snow knocked them down and we had to put them up in the spring.

Interviewer: Would somebody have to be there with the cattle all day to kind of herd them around or?

Fitch: No they had the camps in different places. The cattlemen had their camps and they stayed at those camps. You had to go out and you stayed there all summer, yeah a lot of the cattle were up there because you had to go up to see the (___) more or less on their own range. They didn’t all crowd in a one place and they had to put (___) (___) (___) (___).

Interviewer: When did this all stop? How long did that go on these drives up to the mountain?

Fitch: Well till the automobiles come in and then you couldn’t get in or even be on the highway with them, see, it’s dangerous to the cattle and to the (___). I guess it stopped about that. We went the backroad here up in the…just a few years ago through town, you know. Oh I guess in the 30s it more or less stopped because I used to take my cattle over to Copper, you know, Copperopolis took out the back road Jamestown and out. When automobiles got to be such a nuisance and dangerous to man and beast both, had to quit and then they trucked them and then they had the fires and they logged over so much the grazing went down. You know…

Interviewer: Did the logging improve the grazing or did you get more grass in a logged out area?

Fitch: It wasn’t fresh (___) (___).

Interviewer: Yeah.

Fitch: That what do you call (___) (___) and gaming, oh, terrible up there and they had big fires doing that…didn’t do it any good.

Interviewer: So they’re not trucking them up now or anything?

Fitch: Oh yeah they truck up.

Interviewer: They still do?

Fitch: But they…not many anymore and the sheep used to come over early. See, they came over because most of them went to Nevada side. Then they had to go where the snow was hard enough for them to stay on top. They went over early.

Interviewer: You mean they’d drive them over the mountains?

Fitch: Oh yeah they used to come by Sonora thousands of them down there by the Foundry and over up the road.

Interviewer: Why would they want to get them over there? What was on other…?

Fitch: Phase out in the other side. In the Nevada side, see. They ran more sheep over there then they did out in this side. This side they only ran a few sheep in the Poison Meadows. There used to be lots of poison in those meadows up there. They couldn’t run cattle in. A large (___) kill them and then parsnip would kill them.

Interviewer: I’ll be darned and the cow just eats it? I mean they didn’t have any instinct not to eat it, huh?

Fitch: No they would eat it and then they would die. Horses and sheep it didn’t seem to…horses I guess had sense enough not to eat it.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Fitch: And the sheep it didn’t bother. Maybe it did.

Interviewer: Well then when did you settle here?

Fitch: Oh I got this ranch in ’35.

Interviewer: Before ’35 then, were you doing…you weren’t doing any settle farming?

Fitch: Yeah I had a ranch over there the other side of Columbia where Gold Springs is now.

Interviewer: Yeah. What were you raising over there?

Fitch: Oh I tried fruit but it didn’t do any good. I didn’t do any good. Then the Depression come on.

Interviewer: Was it marketing problems? Trying to market the fruit or just getting it going?

Fitch: You couldn’t sell anything. The cattle weren’t worth anything; sheep weren’t worth anything, hogs or anything.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Fitch: All ranchers used to raise lots of hogs, sheep. The price went down on them.

Interviewer: Yeah. So then…well then what did you…when you came over here, what did you start raising? You got out of fruit and…

Fitch: I was raising my cows.

Interviewer: And this is right in the middle of…

Fitch: I had feed too…huh?

Interviewer: This is right in the middle of the Depression?

Fitch: Yeah.

Interviewer: ’35? But apparently you were able to make it work, huh?

Fitch: Well I get a job outside…we’re in the middle of while…you had a hard time getting along. (___) (___). Nothings worth anything but you were just as well off as the rest of the people so you made it along, and you didn’t think there (____) living in those days. Now the young people think the world owes them a living. The world don’t owe you a darn thing. You got to dig for it.

Interviewer: Yeah. Where did you sell your cattle? What were the market conditions then and now? I mean…

Fitch: Well then we had local butchers in town and they would buy. Now we take them to Stockton it’s out through the (____).

Interviewer: Truck them all down or?

Fitch: Yeah.

Interviewer: What…when did that happen? When did it start? What was the transition?

Fitch: Oh well when the big stores came in. They all put in butcher shops and they squeezed out the local butchers; and local butchers went out of business because they couldn’t make any money too, see they had to quit.

Interviewer: You mean it was (___) all the way to Stockton and then bring the meat back here? Well I mean as a local butcher; it seems to me like it would be cheaper a local butcher then take it all the way to Stockton and then bringing the meat back.

Fitch: All (___) truck did now, none killed in the county.

Interviewer: Don’t’ they still have a butcher…what Shaws Flat or…?

Fitch: Oh he’d kill it. He’ll kill it for you.

Interviewer: Just local?

Fitch: For a local person but he can’t kill and sell that meat and you can’t get meat killed there sell it either. No they got too many laws in how and too many demands on local trades. See they’d have to put up certain kinds of…and we never had any…we had a butcher in Sonora, Martin, and nobody kept a place cleaner than he did, but he’d have to put in so many local…I mean not local but a lawful demands that he just couldn’t afford to put all of those in and compete with the big (___) houses below. And he was…

Interviewer: So it wasn’t just economics? It was also the regulations from the health department and…?

Fitch: Well it was mostly…it was economics too. Yeah.

Interviewer: Did this all happen about…when…40s or 50s?

Fitch: I guess it happened in the 40s.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Fitch: The beginning of the 40s.

Interviewer: Well how does…well like your son, he’s into eggs; how does…isn’t he caught in the squeeze too from the big…

Fitch: Sure but he had his own route. He’s selling…he takes his eggs out. He supplies the store, see, with and the rest…

Interviewer: Not the big chains but…

Fitch: Huh?

Interviewer: Not the big chains.

Fitch: No Safeway puts its own in. Yeah, the other chain store, they buy from him and Safeway don’t. They only put up their own. Oh, they get out of eggs and then they’ll see if he got any and if you got any extras, you do it but you don’t go out of your way to…

Interviewer: Yeah now is he the only egg rancher?

Fitch: He’s the only one; used to have two or three around, the same way down in Oakdale. They used to have lots of young…I mean lots of producers around Oakdale; they don’t have them anymore. You just got big ones; the big producers come in that raise maybe a million chickens or something like that, you know, and then you have big pecking houses and you put those eggs up and they put them up in different brands, you know.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Fitch: …different story.

Interviewer: I’ve been reading about how the quality of eggs is changing now because of this mass feeding processes and stuff and you can see the difference between the big chain eggs and a more local one like your son puts out; at least I think I can see it I don’t know. Is that just the kind of feeds they’re using or is there a difference between…? What does your son do? Is it just my imagination or is something being…?

Fitch: No he buys his feed at (___) yesterday. You know truck and trailer loads at a time. Oh put up…they put it up according to how anyway you want to put it up, see they mix it your way. No it’s the way they store their eggs too I think. Once in a while they get a complaint that the eggs aren’t tasting good. There’s something the matter with them. They get down and find out that maybe they start laying with (___) eggs take just like butter; they’ll take up the taste of something around them. One time he had an awful complaint down for a while. They couldn’t imagine what. He went in there; they were putting their vegetables in next to them. They had onions and carrots and potatoes next to the eggs. Well they found out that’s what was the matter with them and then he had a complaint last year. They were having trouble with the eggs so many of them broken and cracked; and they were putting them in their freezer compartment and the eggs were getting frozen…actually they were cracking. Just like (___) crack or anything like, so they get that (___) find out what the matter with them. No we don’t and the inspectors come around pretty regular. They come around look at your eggs. They’ll run a bunch (___) cattle machine here and see how they look. That way we have any…very little trouble.

Interviewer: Has there been a lot of technological changes raising chickens, eggs over the last few years? I mean you know do you have to buy more equipment to raise them now or is it more of a, you know what I mean, technological, you know, do you have to keep more around the clock heating and things like this?

Fitch: You do that for your own sake for the more you can stay in business.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Fitch: (___) (___). You take lots of lights and lots of feed and a lot of people going, “Why are our chickens quite laying when they first came in this year?” And he said, “I don’t know.” I said, “Our chickens quit laying so we quit feeding them. We just feed them now once a day.” Well I said, “You’ll never bring them back that way, especially in the winter time.” And I said, “Do you have extra lights?”
“No.” Well you got to have…we have a time clock over there with lights and they come on. You got to get the feed down them.

Interviewer: Are you still raising cattle now?

Fitch: Yeah not many I just can’t get rid of them all. I’ve had them all my life. I keep a few.

Interviewer: Well you always sell them. What do you mean you can’t get rid of them? Oh you mean just…that’s your habit now?

Fitch: I’ve been raising them. No I keep 40-50 head around here all the time.

Interviewer: Are you into…were you not doing the sheep now you said.

Fitch: No I’m not doing the sheep. I got rid of my sheep about four or five years ago. My son and my grandsons took them over. They went in the program stuff. They could make money and keep them and raise to (___). They got lots of feed mostly. It takes a lot of extra feed to raise these because they got to be a certain size, you know, they got to be large. They don’t raise just a market lay out. The (___) they put on the market. But dogs and coyotes is what dangerous the sheep.

Interviewer: You still don’t have coyotes around here do you?

Fitch: Oh Lord yes.

Interviewer: You do? Wow I didn’t know that.

Fitch: Oh yeah.

Interviewer: Is the only defense against your coyotes poison? Is that…

Fitch: Oh yeah used poison (___). Not poison, you attract them and shoot them. I think about four or five years ago, oh, we were bothered at the coyotes theme, they always coming here. Well we got over 50 that year and went right after and they haven’t been so bad since because all coyotes aren’t killers. If they were, you couldn’t raise anything, but some will kill and some won’t but of course when you get rid of them, you got to get rid of them all you don’t know who’s the killer and who isn’t the killer. We got a lot of coyotes (___) (___). We haven’t lost any lambs lately from them. Then you’ll get one and (___) you realize when baby’s lost a toe or two. It got caught in the trap, move out (___) (___).

Interviewer: It seems like just over the last few years especially that the cattlemen and the livestock raisers are really getting squeezed on the ….

Fitch: The prices on the hay are so terribly high. You can’t…hay now cost you $90 a tub and it cost…I mean now that’s…see during this drought it came on, but it cost $80 last fall and the fall before it put in hay and when you put in…well…80 or 90 tons that cost you quite a bit of money. You just can’t make enough.

Interviewer: Yeah the price of meat, I guess, is never going to go down again. It’s going to keep going up.

Fitch: To me it’s too cheap now. It’s low now. You could…you could raise it because it’s dropped lately on the count of this drought.

Interviewer: Yeah. What’s going to be the future of the business? Just fewer and fewer small farmers and more and more big or…? Is that even…?

Fitch: (___) (___) I don’t know. Meats got to go up higher. That would be it; supply and demand. See, meat went up when feed was cheap quite a bit and everybody could buy a cow or (___) to buy a cow and…and now that’s going down. They’re going out of business. It’ll be better when they do go out of business because only knows that maybe it’ll stay in business.

Interviewer: Is there much money in the wool from the sheep?

Fitch: No, no money at all. Wool sheep’s never been…no, we don’t raise the wool sheep anymore. We raise the mutton sheep, of course, you got to share them but the black faced sheep is usually the mutton sheep and their wool is a coarse wool and they don’t...its coarser wool and it…well and they don’t sheer as heavy. The Merino’s and the Rambouillet like that those are the fine wool sheep. You get a little more for your wool but they sheer three or four times a month, you see.

Interviewer: So they’re not an edible sheep though. You’d have to have one or the other?

Fitch: Well the lambs they usually use the black face rams on white…on the white Merino. Peep they raise a bigger lamb but its wool (___) (___) but it’ll lay heavier. That’s where your black face comes in. The white-faced lamb don’t get…well they get up to 80 pounds; the black-faced stands over 100.

Interviewer: How about the land itself over the last 34 years. It’s appreciated in value pretty rapidly hasn’t it or has it?

Fitch: They don’t grow anymore but the selling price if you’re in business now and got to land alright, but you couldn’t afford to buy any land because you take this land they own…they get it up to $1,000 an acre, you know.

Interviewer: Yours out here too goes in about that price around this part of the (___)?

Fitch: We didn’t sell any for that. I mean you wouldn’t buy any for that but you could…it’s I think they assess it at about $200 or better, see, well that’s too much…you can’t buy any for that but I mean if you own the land, I pay taxes on the land maybe at that value which land you…if you got the money to put into the land out, alright forget about it. You have to be rich to buy the land which you could buy that.

Interviewer: So somebody who wants to get into ranching or something today almost can’t afford to do it…

Fitch: You can’t afford it unless he’s made his money as an actor, a lawyer, or a doctor or something like that. They’re the ones that can buy that kind of land. Of course if you sell your place at a big price here like if I go in, I could put that same money inside of a year into land at so I could price I wouldn’t have to pay that high tax or something. If you go over, then you got to pay an enormous tax on it.

Interviewer: To get developers, you ever have any pressure from developers (___).

Fitch: Oh, oh yes. Above me that’s what forced up, see, the old man, you still own about an eighth…well…Jerimandi bought that, you know in ’71.

Interviewer: Oh yeah.

Fitch: You hear about that and then the piece in back up Mageria that’s been sold. I know on time I could’ve bought that land for seven and a half but I thought that’s too much and they….and now they’re dividing it up to (___) a piece and I supposed they’ll want…I don’t know what they want for it. I suppose $500 anyway and you know they got a rain on that…it always got water when it rains; no guaranteed a water or anything like that.

Interviewer: What’s going to happen if everybody keeps selling and it gets smaller and smaller? I mean eventually…

Fitch: Squeeze you out and the taxes will squeeze you out.

Interviewer: I mean this is almost a dead end problem. Is anybody dealing with it? I mean if we want to continue to have a ranch lands and you know basic farming lands. Is it reaching a critical point?

Fitch: I don’t know (___) (___) what it’s going to come to. The person who gets it left to him…when the person owns that land and dies, (___) come in and appraised and he’s got to sell a good bit of that land to pay the taxes on it; that there’s the end.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Fitch: Right there.

Interviewer: And that’s how they get broken up.

Fitch: And down in the valley, you know, that’s where you got the rich (___) land and the housing development taking it up and (____) valley. One of the riches fellas in the country, you know, used to be produce and vegetables.

Interviewer: Well they just passed a law now. They’re working on to prevent breaking up of this rich farmland and the housing projects. That might be a first step in stopping this trend.

Fitch: What you call it…Williamson Act here otherwise I couldn’t afford to keep the place.

Interviewer: Yeah and they keep it from breaking it up.

Fitch: Whoever gets the place after me, he’ll have to pay that high tax rate or he’ll have to sell the place.

Interviewer: Well couldn’t…well won’t he be able to keep it under the Williamson Act too?

Fitch: Yes but he don’t inherit it under that Williamson Act.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Fitch: He inherits under that high price and he can’t pay that tax.

Interviewer: Well then…yeah…it’s not very an optimistic picture then for…I mean things…

Fitch: For a young man to stay on a ranch. He’s lucky now if he can buy enough to build a house on.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Fitch: It is.

Interviewer: But on taxes is the main problem as you see it? I mean that’s the thing that’s the pressure that’s causing the…

Fitch: The whole thing is taxes; state and federal. They both get you. They sold lots out in this country without guarantee of water. You can dig lots of holes. We dug some holes three or four years ago when we had a dry year up there and I dug one a year cost me $1,015 and I didn’t even bother putting the pump on; build two up there over 200 feet. (___) thought he’d get more water, solid ground all the way down. We didn’t use any of it. That cost you money, $9 a foot.

Interviewer: Yeah. You have people who come in from out of the county, they don’t know this maybe, and they’re buying and there’s no…

Fitch: Yeah it’ll cost them more maybe to get a well then the lot cost them and the lot cost you more its worth.

Interviewer: Yeah. Well you’ve been in Tuolumne all your life or most of it.

Fitch: Not when I was a kid. I was at (____) and there was the time I was in the army.

Interviewer: Yeah I was just wondering what observations you have. Why is this such a good place to live? It seems like more and more people are coming in here all the time and realizing…

Fitch: I know I wish they were moving out as they’re coming in.

Interviewer: Yeah. I think, yeah, it’s just like myself…I came up here three years ago and fell in love with this place.

Fitch: Well what’d you come for?

Interviewer: To get out of the city. It’s crazy down there.

Fitch: That’s what a lot of them come; to get out of the city and then they come up here and there’s no jobs up here and the poorest paying jobs in the country, you know, they got up here. They come up here and some of the welfare will come up here because they can live cheaper up here then they can below; they rot.

Interviewer: Well they stop…

Fitch: (___) paying that welfare when they move up here.

Interviewer: No they stopped that now. You can’t come into a low job area like this and get welfare.

Fitch: This is a seasonal job country.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Fitch: See, they work in the mountains in the summertime. The lumber camps work in the summer, see.

Interviewer: Well yeah people are…

Fitch: And they’re off…their unemployment the rest of the time.

Interviewer: Yeah well what do you think makes Tuolumne an attractive place to live? What have you enjoyed living here? Is it the climate or…?

Fitch: Well I…if I were young again, I’d go to Oregon or Washington. I like both of those places (___) but I guess I never had enough money to get out, but I like it here. It’s nice here. I got friends here. I lived here all my life. Don’t come here thinking you going to get rich.

Interviewer: How about just the real life if you go on to a generation that’s probably seen more social change and technological then any generation that’s ever lived on the face of the earth.

Fitch: I guess I have.

Interviewer: I guess I have.

Fitch: Yeah really. Right from that time they used to use…well use oxen and horses and now all kinds of machinery.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Fitch: Same as with the sawmills. They used to have the big circular saws and now they go all the big ban saws and they got so much machinery here in the middle of woods you wouldn’t know anymore.

Interviewer: Yeah well how does that…seeing all this and having to live through it. Are you an optimist for the future of America or are you a pessimist? What do you think’s happening?

Fitch: I think it was the best time. I like it the way it used to be. It was interesting.

Interviewer: A little more personal, intimate contact?

Fitch: Oh yeah. If I knew each other like that, he probably wasn’t thinking about…they had scratch for a living but they never…they never saw much. I don’t think the big mines…I don’t know why though with the extra machinery now that some of those big mines can’t go back again like on the Motherlode and like those up around Soulsbyville that they were rich you know.

Interviewer: Yeah that’s what I’m wondering (___).

Fitch: I see the machinery in the cold mines now and it’s interesting they used to have to blast and dig it all out by hand and now they got those great big machines to dig that out. Why they…well (___) (___) just cutting wood right up here. He came from Pennsylvania and his brothers are working the coal mines there. He said that he did too work in the coal mines, but then they got paid so much time. Now it’s…both of his brothers are making $60 a day or something like that. They get paid for what they do. I know the coal…but then the coal pollutes your air; that’s what they claim but I don’t know. Like they say the lumber pollutes your air. The lumber never polluted any air because that ash that came from the burner didn’t have any sulfur and stuff like that in it. It was up there and it had a little ash in it but ash is fertilizer. It came down and it didn’t hurt.

Interviewer: Ok thanks very much for the interview. Can we have permission to use this at the college for research purposes and any teaching that they might want to do in the classroom?

Fitch: I don’t think they learn much from that.

END TAPE

General Information
Interviewer: ?
Interviewee: Charles Fitch
Name of Tape: Tuolumne Rancher
When: ?
Transcriber: Dee-Ann Horn
Transcribed: 10/01/2017