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Even with his eyes closed, Doug Martin can recognize the sound of every tractor on his Hanford ranch. There’s the big silver work horse, and the 40-year-old Oliver that can still run his backup generator, but the one he looks at with love is a tiny green thing from 1958. “The first time I plowed ground with it, I was seven years old,” he says, recalling how he mishandled the plow and feared he had ruined the fields. He hadn’t; his father simply re-plowed them. “This little tractor did a lot,” he says, laughing. Martin’s grandfather purchased these 200-odd acres in the 1930s after emigrating from the Azores, renovating the tiny ranch house on the northeast corner that still serves as the anchor of the property. Throughout the generations, the Martins raised cattle, then moved to row crops. “Corn, cotton, wheat, broccoli, sweet corn, garlic, milo,” Martin says. “Let’s put it this way: I’ve tried just about everything.” Even so, running the property has become progressively harder. A few
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