After more than a century of milk production, California’s oldest dairy is closing. The owner isn’t getting out of agriculture altogether, however—he’s switching out cows for trees. Dino Giacomazzi is a fourth-generation dairy farmer in Hanford. Having produced milk since 1893, he suspects Giacomazzi Dairy may be the oldest west of the Rockies—or at least it was. In late October, Giacomazzi sold his 2,000-odd cattle off at auction, a decision he says wasn’t easy. “When you’re doing one thing for over 100 years, there’s a lot of identity in that and a lot of emotion built around that decision,” he says. Giacomazzi says it was actually in 2013, slammed with the west’s historic drought, when he decided to begin transitioning from dairy to almonds. On a different property, he planted a few hundred acres of the trees, which he estimates should reach maturity in a few more years. Why the change? Giacomazzi says he’s had a tough time staying afloat. It’s tough to keep such an old facility
https://www.kvpr.org/sites/kvpr/files/styles/big_story/public/201609/Cows4.jpg