man: a hundred years of climate change, logging, and no forest management and drought, i knew enough to be really scared. woman: i definitely thought that we were gonna lose our home. man: i had many of my friends and peers call me and text me and say, "john, you need help moving your animals?" there would be nowhere to go with that many animals. different man: yeah. copy that. man: [sighs] different man: climate change. you have to feel it. you have

to see it. you have to smell it. you have to live it. you have to touch it. woman: i belong here. it releases all my stress and my pain, and it makes me stronger again. [thunder] man: we're constantly battling the weather. we were so dry, and we wanted rain, and now it won't quit raining. woman: i'm hoping that we can help people find their joy and realize that, "hey, maybe it isn't so bad. i can get through this." it's a hard life, but yet it is a wonderful life. don't give up. keep going. [camera clicking] male announcer: "earth focus"

is made possible in part by a grant from anne ray foundation--a margaret a. cargill philanthropy and the orange county community foundation. female announcer: hasa is a proud sponsor of "earth focus." [cattle lowing] man: we're awoken by a lightning storm, and we rarely get that here. [thunder] we saw these vein lightning bolts all through the sky, and it was-- i'd actually never seen anything like that before. the ones that landed actually started fires within a visual distance of our ranch.

[rumbling] woman: the fire almost seemed like it was almost like a tennis match or something because it would kind of bounce back down the valley and then it would go back up again, and this is over a series of days. it's like i just didn't want to go to sleep because i didn't know what was going to be happening when i woke up. my parents house burned down when i was in high school. we came home to a burning house. i definitely thought that we were gonna lose our home. john: i came up to the house, and she was packing the car, you know, all your important papers, everything. she goes, "ok, john. ready? we're ready to go." i said, "diane, i'm not leaving." she looked at me like

i had, you know, two heads. [insects buzzing] diane: my husband john and i live here in healdsburg. john manages our family dairy farm and vineyard, and i run our family wine business. another winemaker with a vest. john: we're an agriculture-based community. we're part of sonoma county. we're about an hour, hour and a half north of san francisco. our economy really, really is primarily an agricultural tourism area--wine tasting, vineyards, hospitality. my parents started this farm in the late fifties. my mom would joke that she had to track me down the first day of kindergarten because i was holding tools for my dad fixing fences. ha ha! diane: he bounces out of bed every morning so excited to go down to the farm. he loves it, so that's a very good thing, but i don't think i could do it. i think at some point, i would probably say, "enough."

john: this has been my whole life, living on this farm. the ranch itself is 360 acres. we have 40 acres planted in pinot noir and chardonnay grape vines, and then the rest is in the farm buildings and organic pasture for our dairy animals. diane: agriculture is not easy. animal agriculture is even harder. it's a 24/7 thing...

diane: and at times, it can be a little bit overwhelming because it just never turns off. john: yeah. yeah. diane: we're in another drought here in the western united states, so there's pressures for literally finding enough feed for the animals. there are so many stressors on him right now. john: you can do the best job, be the smartest person out there, but mother nature really has the final say, and that's a little bit--that's what happened with these fires, too, that we really didn't have-- you can't control that. all you can do is work at controlling what you can control. [cattle lowing] we saw a lot of changes in the california dairy business, and

that's when we decided as a family to diversify into wine grapes. you know, the grapes helped pull us through, which is one of the reasons why you look at diversifying your business operation. here we are in august of 2020 in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, and we have this fire. diane: the first fire that we had, large fire, was in 2017. it was quite shocking. it was a major fire. i believe over 8,000 structures were burned, 5,000 homes here in sonoma county, so everyone was impacted by it. we've had more fires since then. in 2018, there was a fire, the camp fire up in paradise, california. that was farther away from us, but the smoke and everything, it was, you know, all through

sonoma county, all the way down to the bay area. then it kind of became unsettling because it had happened two years in a row, then with more fires, and, obviously, our fire last year in 2020 was very close to us. john: there was different levels of stress and anxiety as these fires evolved over the last few years. the waldridge fire was literally burning on the property behind our ranch. that time of the year--in august, september, october--is when we have all of our livestock here on this property. all the grasses are dried, and we are feeding everybody here. we have 600 cows to milk twice a day, another 800 animals, the younger animals, that need to be fed. i had many of my friends and peers call me and text me and say, "john, you need

help moving your animals?" there would be nowhere to go with that many animals, even if we could move them. it just was impossible. diane: as a farmer, your first inclination is to protect your animals, protect your employees, protect your buildings or facility, your land. john: with the mandatory evacuation, we actually become an island, so we're supposed to be gone. everything's blockaded. our biggest challenge was getting things in. we have deliveries, you know, every day of the week. it was like fish swimming upstream. we're fighting a situation that's completely opposite of what everyone else is doing. when you're in the middle of it, it's almost like you're on autopilot. diane: i was on the patio, and i was watching east side road,

which is, obviously, east of us--we're on west side road here; it's on the other side of the valley floor--and there, it was just full of cars, and i kept thinking, "oh, there must be an accident or something. why are there so many cars?" and i turned around and saw this huge plume of smoke and flames behind us and realized all those cars were looking at us. they were looking at our house. the stress of the smoke everywhere and then not seeing the sun and the fire so close and the noise, it's kind of overwhelming. john: and so the stress for me, i think it manifested itself later for me. maybe it's part of my dna or just part of what i do as a farmer because you just-- [sighs] diane: it's hard at the end, and so many of our neighbors

have lost so much, and then it becomes very sad because sometimes, then, we'd lose those neighbors. they choose to leave. john: there's a lot of folks that lost their homes, all their belongings, and having to start over. i mean, that's a game changer. man: about 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon, i was the last one here. i just saw a huge, chugging smoke train of brown, orange, yellow hades demon hell-looking skyscape that was coming right at us, and i realized, "well, now i know where the fire is and where it's coming"... so at that point, it's a "one way in, one way out" road. i

just got out. it's the old iverson place. i came back two days later to find the place still smoking and trees on fire, but our place was gone. psychologically, it's losing everything you own and everything that reminded you of who you were and just the arduous task of rebuilding. it's a bit of a marathon. it's all-consuming, and it's not so much if it burns down again. it's kind, well when will it be? will it be before or after i die? hopefully, after. i came here 5 years ago, just after my daughter was born, with my wife and daughter and to be closer to the grandparent

and been creating defensible space and trying to prevent fires and prepare for an eventual fire for about 5 years until one finally hit. [rumbling] man: back up, you guys. just pulled my engines back hard. grout: i was and still am a wildlife biologist. i'm a conservationist. i taught forestry and wildlife, so i knew enough about biology and the forest ecosystem to know when we moved in here that a fire had not hit here in about 60 years, and it was probably only a matter of time before it did, so i got active in the forest pr--not prevention as much as preparedness community. dozens and dozens of us living in the hills on these spread-out homesteads got together and created a fire-protection plan. a hundred years of climate change, logging, and no forest management and drought and then a two-week heatwave, you

know, it was bound to hit us sooner or later, so i knew enough to be really scared. that... is scary. hundred-year-old woodshed, 500-year-old tanoaks, orchard house, fire. it was a magical place to the entire family. all the grandkids would come up here for all the holidays over the river and through the woods and grandmother's house and always full of fruit. this homestead went back a hundred years. there were two-man saws and coyote traps and bear traps and old-- everything was hand-forged here and built by her grandfather and great-grandfather, so there was a lot of historic buildings, the

old 140-year-old, one-room schoolhouse that my wife's mother and sister and grandmother went to, so, like, then covid kind of took away our community and our ability to gather, and then the fire took our community and just scattered us all over the county, all over the state, and some have left the state because of it so, all of maslow's needs were gone in 24 hours. we lost our home, the clean air, water, sense of community, neighbors, sense of place, you know, the connection to the land and the beauty and the hundreds of fruit trees and cherry trees and wildlife and snakes, and walking up here and just seeing all the dead birds and deer and snakes and charred trees, it was a bit of a gut-wrenching trip followed by 9 months of continual cleanup and

reliving the losses. you kick around and find an old, charred trinket reminding you of another thing. "oh, yeah. we lost that, too." [creaking] [birds chirping and squawking] woman: what my grandpa used to say was, our hair represented the thunderstorm... and we were always told to never ever cut our hair, and a lot of the navajos, dines cut

their hair. that's why we got no rain. what do you mean, that dirty, red one? girl: oh, yeah. maybelle: when i was a little girl, it would rain for, like, 5 days straight, and we had to climb our way out of the mud just to get to some supplies, and the grasses were as tall as a horse's belly. that's how tall they were. you couldn't see me walking after the sheep when i was, like, 5 years old. we didn't have to go to town to get water. in the winter, we only hauled water, like, once a week. in the summer, it's really bad. we

have to haul water, like, twice a day to our sheep camp. man: everything revolves around water. just survival. that's it. people call us the forgotten people. girl: yes. maybelle: no. man: [indistinct] this community is called cedar ridge. we're under the navajo nation. the navajo nation is huge. it's bigger than some states. being navajo is very,

very important to us. we have a strong history. i'm proud to be dine, makes me strong on who i am and what i stand for. people my age now, when they were young, there was really no drought. [engine starts] [sheep baaing] there would be, like, about 150 sheep in one area, and people took care of them. girl: grandma says, "go home." [cattle lowing] leonard: my wife here, she

raised about 4 calves. they're at that age where they're having babies now. that was worth it... [cattle lowing] and that makes her a little bit prouder, stronger, and the will to go ahead and care for her animals. she wants to carry on the tradition that her mom and dad did, her grandpa, her grandma. that's how strong of a lady she is. maybelle: we use it for food. we don't profit off of it. when we get together, we'll butcher sheep, and the cows, i take some to the market, but i don't profit off of that, either. i have to go back and buy whatever they need--protein, salt, hay. that's where it goes. it's our custom that we

have livestock. taking care of them, looking after them, to me, it's very important because it was from generation to generation like this. we're in now. close the gate. it's my responsibility now. i love being around animals, and it helps me in so many ways because at times, i'll struggle. mindwise, i'll struggle, and it helps me pull through day to day.

i don't know whose land it is. i have no idea. it's not mine. i'm just living on it. my grandpa always said that to me. "this is my ours. it's just here for us. it's nobody's." he used to say that to us. "it's nobody's." it's the cows, the sheep, all these little creatures running around. i think it's their land. that's what i think. [ratchet clicking]

leonard: sometimes i get up, like, about 4:00, start the truck, maybe have another cup of coffee. then you take off, go down to the watering point. don't be lazy. got to be up before the sun. well, this place is the life point. it's the life point of our community's livestock. it's not only for our community. there's people that come out, like, about 30, 40 miles all directions, and i feel for those people that live way out there by the canyon. for a whole round trip, they, they do, like, about 60 miles just to haul water to their livestock. they have kids out there. they have grandkids out there that herd sheep and look after the cattle and all that, and they don't have no running water, no electricity. they have to haul water. it's hard

to see them struggle. in my days, we used to go to earth dams to load up water in wagons pulled by mules or horses. this is where water collects. you can tell where it sits with all these drainage from little, little valleys or little gorges. from way out there, they come and sit here. it used to be full. maybelle: the last time we had water was back, oh, about 5, 4 years ago, just drizzle, a few drops, you know. you get all happy getting little drops of rain, call all my deceased family and say, "help us!" but

still no rain. [birds squawking] [thunder] woman: everything in your cropping schedule revolves around the weather. if you have a very wet spring, you don't get in the fields till late. you can't get seeds planted in the ground. the later you get it in, the later harvest is gonna be, and then you run into snow. [birds chirping]

it's just so different from when we were kids. the summer wasn't overly hot. you didn't have these torrential rains. on a farm, you know, the weather, it predicts everything for you. man: we're constantly battling the weather. it's either too wet or too dry, too warm or too cold. we were so dry and we wanted rain, and now it won't quit raining, so this is what we're dealing with, working around these windows that we have to grow the feed for our cows. my name is randy roecker, and

i'm a third-generation farmer from loganville, wisconsin. we have about 300 people in my little community here. [cattle lowing] my parents are 81 and 82 years old. they farm every day. they start their morning at 3:30. my mom loves to mix feed, and she drives in the tractor, and she always likes working with the cows because, she said, "cows don't talk back to you." it's truly a family farm, and sometimes i really wonder. there has to be a better way of life out there someplace that you don't have these problems that you struggle with all the time.

[cattle lowing] statz: my name is brenda statz. well, my farming was my main thing. it still is a lot of my life, but i do work full-time off my farm, also, so i probably milked here 30-plus years i milked in this barn, and i milked for my dad before that. i was, like, 12 when i started milking cows at his barn, so i've milked cows a long time, so-- [cattle lowing] and some of them, yeah, you get special cows. you get pets, and some of them, you're just like, "no. i don't want nothing to do with her," and you wait for her to go on the truck, you know,

to sell them off, but for the most part, i mean, farming is-- good girl. keep watching. it's a good life. it was a good life. i see you, carmen. ha ha ha! leon and i, we met, actually, in reedsburg at a bowling alley. i was not a person who went out much, and i went out with my sister to watch her bowl, and that's when we met, and he had gone to school with my sister, who she's, like, 3 years older than me, and we just started dating, and we both came from farm backgrounds, and we both come from big families, so even our wedding was big. we did everything together. from the time you got up in the morning till the time you went to bed, you worked together. that's just the way farming is. he had his chores. i did my chores. we never vacationed much. if we did, it was a weekend. once a year, we'd go somewhere, but it really wasn't far away because,

he said, "can't go too far." leon would say, "you know, can't go too far but far enough that they can't call us back to do chores tonight." it was just more memories of it than you think. you know, you always thought of that time, it was just a lot of work, but then when you look back now, you know, it was probably some of the better times because we spent so much time together then and just working, milking cows, and raising your family. that's what farm life is. [cattle lowing] roecker: i can remember my mom always had a little book for, you know, every year that i was in school, and it always said on there, you know, "what would you like to be?" and it always said, like, "fireman, policeman, doctor," you know, and you were supposed to check what you wanted, and then there was a blank line, and then she would always write in, "farmer," and i just felt that