Morgan Hill
– There’s just no getting around it – farming is smelly,
especially growing mushrooms which sprout from, well, you know
what.
Morgan Hill – There’s just no getting around it – farming is smelly, especially growing mushrooms which sprout from, well, you know what.
But Morgan Hill resident Patricia Peterson, for one, won’t take excuses when it comes to agricultural odors – not when her nose is involved.
“I literally have to hold my breath because it makes me sick,” said 75-year-old Peterson, who lives on suburban Belletto Drive, where two-story homes sell for about $1 million.
Peterson moved in about 10 years ago. She loved the quiet neighborhood with its manicured lawns and young families – and still does – but she quickly realized something rank in the air when she opened her windows or went outside to do some gardening. South Valley Mushroom Farm and its piles of horse manure, she found out, existed about one mile away on Condit Road and Diana Avenue.
“I know the farms were there before I moved in here,” she said, “but I think something should be done. If they could eradicate the smell, or at least keep it to a minimum, that would be wonderful.”
Malaga Drive resident Ruth Anderson, who can smell the essence of mushroom farming from her home near Nordstrom School, agrees something should be done.
“We can’t ever plan anything outside because we never know when it’s coming,” said Anderson, 74, who moved to the neighborhood about three years ago with her husband. “It should have been disclosed when we bought our house.”
Not everyone is so critical of Morgan Hill’s favorite crop.
“If you’re going to come live here, you might as well see the area, and smell the area, first,” said Morgan Hill resident Sunny Phea, owner of Coffee Express near the corner of Dunne Avenue and Condit Road, well within range of the sometimes offensive farm.
Phea said the smell doesn’t hurt business, but sometimes she’ll get a headache on a hot day when she takes out the garbage.
“If it’s smelly, I can close the door,” she said. “But people who come in pinch their noses.”
Christine Kubogamell, 41, whose family owns South Valley Mushroom Farm, said she is not aware of anyone ever calling the company to complain about the notorious smell. But she did say it comes up in good-humored conversations with other Morgan Hill residents.
The unavoidable issue, she said, is the culture clash of Silicon Valley expansion brings into generations-old farming territory. Not everyone moving to Morgan Hill values the aromas of agriculture, especially if they can’t escape it on their quarter-acre subdivided lots.
“Most of the farms here have been in the same spot for years,” said Kubogamell, whose grandparents started growing mushrooms locally in late 1960s when about 5,000 people lived in Morgan Hill. “It used to be the edge of suburbia. But now that edge has been pushed back to Los Banos and Watsonville.”
With the population, now about 38,000 and continuing to climb, the remaining mushroom farms – including Royal Oaks Mushrooms on Watsonville Road and Monterey Mushrooms on Hale Avenue – are watching housing developments close in on them. Life has certainly changed for the farmers who were here first.
“I remember when I first moved here in the 1970s, I would ride my horse along the freeway when it was being built,” Kubogamell said. “We used to have races there. It was a real farming community.”
Now it seems old agricultural fixtures such as South Valley Mushroom Farm, which employs 42 and farms 60,000 square feet of mushroom beds, are finding it harder to appeal to the next generation of farmers.
“It’s not a clean job, it’s not an easy job, and there are things we can’t control,” Kubogamell said, alluding to market pricing, stiff competition from imports and, internally, pests and disease. “I could see this area becoming all residential eventually. Of course, it’s hard to say.”
Until then, Santa Clara County’s second largest crop will have a home in Morgan Hill.
At least Peterson can enjoy the taste, if not the smell.
“I certainly love mushrooms,” she said. “I love the farms that are around. I just hate that smell.”
