Houses are replacing cows on what used to be farmland in Carson Valley, where the way of life is changing from rural to suburban.

"There's no agricultural future here," said Crystal Hellwinkel, sixteen, whose family operates one of only two dairy farms left in the valley. "All the people are moving in. We're getting crowded out." Once, Carson Valley had many dairy farms. A short time ago, the number fell to a mere dozen, but Crystal's father, Chris, a third-generation dairy farmer in the valley, wants to stay.

"I've been in it all my life," said Chris Hellwinkel, who milks 150 cows twice a day. "I'll keep it going as long as I can hang on."

The family has discussed moving to Idaho, or to somewhere else that's not filling with subdivisions and residents who dislike sharing their new neighborhoods with old cows and dodging slow-moving farm machinery on the roads.

"When the tractor's on the road, people don't have enough patience to wait," said Crystal Hellwinkel, who wants to become a doctor, not a farmer. "You can tell they're all from the big city. People don't like the cows - the smell and stuff."

Douglas County's human population has risen from 28,810 to 41,420 since 1991. Many of the newcomers live in subdivisions such as the Gardnerville Ranchos, which has 10,000 people.

"We have a lot of retirees," said Bob Spellberg, manager of the Gardnerville Ranchos General Improvement District. "We have a lot of people who work up at (Lake Tahoe)." Many are in the Stateline casino business. They aren't farmers.

Dick Bonebrake is a Carson Valley resident who isn't a farmer, but he doesn't mind the cows or the smells. "I'm not a big open space advocate," Bonebrake said, "but I love the ranches. I love the smell of them. I think we do need some kind of growth control. One thing I am against is everybody throwing up fences around their yards. People talk about open space, but the live in boxes."

Craig Witt sell them fertilizer. That's how Witt, forty-three, who used to milk cows, keeps his farm in business. "We have lousy soil, "Witt said of the front and back yards in Carson Valley. "When people used to come to buy manure, instead of turning them away, I'd say, "Yeah, I'll load you.' We'd have people come with ten pickups." Then suddenly Witt, who filled the suburban trucks with fertilizer between milking cows, hit on a new business.

"I started realizing what they wanted," he said. "They wanted nice fine stuff to spread in their gardens. Business was starting to pick up. I said, 'someday, the manure will be worth more than the milk." So, in 1998, Witt sold his herd of 350 milk cows, He still raises the cows for a dairy in Yerington, but his new business makes compost to spread in the Valley's suburban yards. He also runs farm tours for kids and has a gift shop for their parents.

"We looked at selling the farm, but we don't want to sell the farm," said Witt, who owns 160 acres and leases another 140. "We created these other businesses to be a part of our farm to make it sustainable, to make it work." Witt charges $4 per child for his farm tours. Annual business increased from 1,200 kids to 6,500 in 1998. "I can see us being a model for a farm , showing how farmers interface with urban change," he said.

The valley's most modern farmer is probably Bently Nevada, a worldwide engineering company based in Minden that is growing a variety of crops on 8,000 acres. Ironically, the headquarters for Bently's engineering operations is the brick creamery building in Minden constructed in 1916 for the valley's growing dairy business. It closed in early 1961. Early in this century, the creamery exported  butter overseas. Now, Bently does the same with precision instruments. Farming is a relatively recent company focus.

   "Mostly, we improved our irrigation methodology so we use much less water than the typical rancher around here does," said company boss Don Bently, a scientist who grew up an Iowa farm boy and now specializes in equipment for industry. "We use flood irrigation only as a last resort. We sprinkle the soil with overhead sprinklers, There's nothing really fancy or novel about what we're doing, just common sense." Bently raises garlic, alfalfa, oats and wheat. He also produces animal feed and compost. "I don't really treat it as experimental," he said. "It's how to produce profitable crops. It's not a playboy ranch."

Still, there are some things modern farming can't replace. Witt, who has worked with Bently, talked about his days growing up in Carson Valley: "My grandfather had a 1965 Chevrolet truck and we'd go down for the afternoon milking. The cows walked down the road. Old Petunia, she was the one I could ride. You waited for her all the time. My grandfather, he always had oranges. We'd eat these oranges; we'd talk about life.          Written by Don Cox

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