40
OJAI MAGAZINE | SUMMER 2022
the Flower
Farmers
It took “a saint” to make her lavender farm in Upper Ojai possible, said Christel Rogero. “We bought this 7 acres in 2003,” said Rogero, a teacher, speaking of herself and her husband, Larry, who works in renewable energy. “But it didn’t look anything like this.” Rogero turned to gesture at her driveway, a neatly landscaped courtyard built around a fire pit, with a view of the Topa Topa Mountains to the north, and a log-cabin home on a stone foundation to the south. On the other side of the house, down a short slope and across a wooden bridge over a barranca 20 feet across and 12 feet deep, was a field of lavender. In early spring, the neatly trimmed mounds were dormant, not yet ready to sprout new growth. “When we first moved in, my husband and I each brought a Weed Eater from our home in the valley at the time, and we went to work,” Rogero remembered. “We worked all day cutting weeds and then lay down on the porch, because it was July, and it was sweltering. Then we looked at what we had done, and we had cut out one tiny little square in 7 acres of tall weeds and we thought: What did we get ourselves into?” For help, they eventually went to a longtime resident, Jim Hall, who has lived in Upper Ojai for the last 34 years. At the time he helped support his farming and ranching habit by doing heavyequipment work for his neighbors, even though he had lost both his arms as a young man in an industrial accident when he was up in the air splicing a 16,000-volt Southern California Edison power line. “I just love that man with all my heart and soul,” Rogero said. “He came over here with a big tractor to knock down the weeds, and he told us where to plant. There’s never been animals on this part of the property, he told us, and it’s never been farmed. It’s the fluffiest dirt around”. Plant something beautiful” he told us. So lavender came into my mind, because it’s drought-tolerant, it outcompetes weeds, and it needs almost nothing.” Interviewed at his home in Upper Ojai, in a backyard overlooking a verdant field of young hay, Hall insisted he’s no hero, nor a saint for that matter, but does believe he’s alive for a reason. He said that at least seven times in his life he should have died — four in Vietnam, when he was leading a platoon as a young man, and three after being nearly electrocuted, because when he was in the hospital
by KIT STOLZ
