A surprise inspection of Fairview Gardens by the city last Wednesday put to rest some — but not all — of the concerns held by critical neighbors of the 12.5 acre urban organic farm at 598 N. Fairview Ave.

“We did a very thorough inspection,” said Steve Chase, Goleta’s director of planning and environmental services.

The inspection, he said, was in response to comments made by neighbors during the Aug. 13 planning commission meeting, where the farm, in its efforts to bring itself into compliance with city ordinances, presented plans for its worker housing and poultry operations. Unhappy neighbors turned out en masse to the meeting to air their concerns about the farm’s operations and practices.

“There were two main issues we wanted to address,” Chase said of the inspection. “Are they using the orchard as a toilet? And are they meeting sanitation standards with regards to the city’s code?”

The city’s inspection, which came on the heels of another inspection by county Environmental Health Services, revealed that while there had been evidence of toilet paper, the orchard was not currently being used as a restroom. The county reached the same conclusion.

Fairview Garden’s representatives, anxious about what could have been very damaging, ill-informed statements, point to the likelihood of trespassers using that part of the farm to congregate and use as a toilet.

“There was plenty of evidence that trespassers frequent this fairly hidden part of our farm, use it as a short cut from one section of Stow Canyon Road to the other, and drink and paint graffiti back there.  A reasonable person could conclude those trespassers are much more likely to be the source of the toilet paper,” Linda Halley, the farm’s general manager, said in an e-mail to the Voice. 

While the matter of human feces on the ground is more or less settled, Fairview Gardens will still have some work to do with regards to the gray water that comes from its kitchen facility.

“No, they’re not squeaky clean,” Chase said, “No one in any community is squeaky clean.”

Restroom criticized

Meanwhile, disgruntled neighbors are still anxious about Fairview Gardens’ plans to improve their facilities by installing yurts as semi-permanent dwellings for the farm workers and their families, and the planned composting bathroom as well as the mobile chicken coop.

“I do not want a (human) compost toilet 50 feet from my back yard,” said Charles Hamilton, a retired physician who has been living on Connor Way, a cul de sac that abuts the west side of the farm, since 1964. He has doubts that the composting toilet will be monitored sufficiently to allow for the proper decomposition of human feces, and the presence of human manure would contribute to the smell, horseflies and potential for illness as a result of the bacteria in the raw sewage.

Hamilton’s next-door neighbor, Jim Hurst, contends that yurts are substandard living spaces for the farm workers.

“They should move the workers near the main house,” he said, “and hook up to the city’s sewer system.”

Meanwhile, residents from the Via Fiori neighborhood, closest to the avocado orchard where the workers’ living spaces are located, complain of noise coming from both people and the mobile chicken coops the farm uses, and what they say are lower property values as a result.
The most common issue that neighbors have, however, is the farm’s seeming reticence about its operations.

“I just wish they would be more open,” said Judy Nybakken, who lives with her husband, Truman, on Kings Way, south of the farm. She and her family have lived at their home since the 1960s, and have seen the farm next door evolve from mostly orchard to potential housing (a plan dropped in the late ’60s because of the moratorium on new water hookups) to clandestine marijuana-growing plot to family-run farm to the urban agriculture operation that Fairview Gardens now is. While the Nybakkens had good relations with previous owners of the land, she said, their relations with Fairview Gardens have always been sketchy.

“They have all these people on their board,” she said, “but not one person from the surrounding neighborhood.”

A call for communication

For the most part, Nybakken said, the unhappy neighbors want Fairview Gardens to be there, but to be more forthcoming with plans that might affect them.

For their part, representatives of Fairview Gardens maintain that they are receptive to the complaints of neighbors. Halley, who has been with the farm for a year and a half, was surprised at the notion that some neighbors felt they had been ignored or kept in the dark.
“I’ve talked to neighbors who’ve had problems and resolved their issues,” she said. “This plan with the composting toilet has been in process for years.”

One of her main objectives is to clear up the mistaken notion that human waste is being used on the crops.

“We have sold fresh produce grown on this farm nearly daily for well over 20 years, to members of our own community. Zero incidents of food poisoning have occurred. I do not take the accusations of using human manure and being a possible source of E. coli contamination lightly in this day and age of many serious food poisoning incidents.”

Following the city’s inspection and comments made by neighbors, Halley said, the farm intends to make changes to its existing plans for the worker housing situation, and is planning to put together an ad hoc neighbor advisory group to work out issues like noise and dust, as well as inform the community about the ins and outs of organic technology, and the business of running an organic farm. The farm could hold regular events with the surrounding community, she said.

“It’s a difference between former management and current management,” commented Steve Chase on Fairview Gardens’ push to get permits and to consult with neighbors. The city, he said, “spent a couple years worth of cajoling” to get the farm compliant with city code, which includes permitting several structures that have been there for years, while obtaining proper living quarters for its workers.

“We’ve found that the trailers are not appropriate for human habitation,” he said.
Whether Fairview Gardens will continue with its stopgap plans for yurts, or upgrade to more permanent housing, will depend on information and input gathered.

Both the city and the farm agree that money is a major issue, but they also agree that a solution can be reached that might help with both the farm’s worker housing issue and the city’s affordable housing requirement.