by Seth Zuckerman
May 10, 2001

Visitors to the Mattole eventually scratch their heads and ask, "what do you all do here for a living?"

It’s easy to understand their puzzlement. Both for those who grew up here and for those who’ve been drawn to this compelling place in the course of our lives, it has always taken ingenuity and perseverance to turn the land’s gifts into a livelihood for oneself and one’s family.

That challenge has become even more difficult lately. In this issue of the Mattole Restoration Newsletter, we explore our economic relationships with the land, and look at a few locally based enterprises that turn the bounty of the Mattole into saleable products and services.

Understanding our local economy is important because the way we sustain ourselves on the land is essential to its health and recovery. Economic relationships are powerful in our society; they are the engines that drive our impact on the land for better or worse. Imagine the benefits to our communities and the watershed if we nurture and sustain the land as it nurtures us in return.

For decades, the backbone of the Mattole economy has been the production of raw or barely processed commodities — petroleum that was refined elsewhere, tanbark that was hauled away to be turned into leather-tanning chemicals, fleece that was spun into wool in faraway factories. Today, live animals are trucked out of the valley to auction, and most wind up in faraway feedlots before they are slaughtered. Many lumber mills operated in the Mattole in the 1950s and ’60s, but the last one of that era closed in mid-1970s. Since then, all but a tiny fraction of timber cut in the Mattole has been trucked elsewhere in the round, with the remainder cut into boards on mobile mills for local use.

The commodity economy has become a harder row to hoe for a number of reasons. As free trade shrinks the effective distance between overseas suppliers and U.S. markets, Mattole producers face cheap competition that drives prices through the ground. Auction-yard prices for young calves have roughly tripled since the early 1960s, but haven’t kept pace with the quintupling in the cost of finished goods such as clothing and cars. As a result, the proceeds from the sale of a calf have 30 percent less buying power than they did forty years ago. Calf prices are also held down by the concentration of the slaughtering and packing business in fewer and fewer hands. Today, just three main packing companies draw on the county’s only auction yard in Fortuna.

The raw-material economy is faltering for another reason: the productive capacity of our watershed is temporarily diminished. Young trees and brush have taken over substantial areas of grassland, reducing the amount of forage available to livestock. And the vast majority of the merchantable timber was cut during a forty-year span following World War II, so the lion’s share of second-growth harvest is at least a decade away.

These challenges are augmented by a problem that has plagued the Mattole since the earliest Euro-American settlements: the distance to markets. As early as 1888, Humboldt historian Wallace Elliott wrote that butter and cheese were the only commodities that could be raised for sale in the Mattole, as shipping costs made it impossible to earn a profit on unprocessed farm commodities such as milk or grain.

Transportation options have improved since then. First, a wharf at the mouth of the Mattole was built to ship tanbark and apples in the 1910s. Later, two-lane county roads provided motor vehicle access year-round, except when blocked by occasional slides and slip-outs.

Even though the physical barriers have been reduced, the logistics and cost of shipment remain a hurdle for local businesses. It’s no coincidence that the most profitable local agricultural commodity sells for thousands of dollars a pound, making the cost of transportation a small factor for Mattole producers. Indeed, the area’s remoteness has always been an asset for those who are outside the law, such as rum-runners and moonshiners during Prohibition.

Despite all these difficulties, the entrepreneurial spirit thrives in the Mattole. The traditional businesses of ranching and timber production continue, although somewhat reduced from their heyday in the last century. In addition, watershed residents — from farmers to foresters to horse-trainers — are testing new business ideas, and in some cases, making a substantial part of their living that way.

One focus of local enterprise has been to increase the market value of each pound of raw material produced, either by processing it into a finished product, or producing it in a manner that brings in more value for every log, green pepper, or egg. This strategy is known as "value-added" production, and it is especially important where the production of raw materials has declined.

Mattole-based value-added businesses abound. Beyond the ones described in the sidebar below, craftsman Pieter Cooskey has begun making rustic furniture from madrone branches. Uprising Gardens brews herbal tinctures from plants they cultivate, under the slogan, "local medicine for local people." And a few entrepreneurs gather wild huckleberries and bake them into pies.

Apart from businesses that make use of local raw materials, many firms add value to basic materials that they buy from out of the area. One example is Gold Rush Coffee, founded in 1980, which roasts beans from several continents (though of course, none comes from the Mattole). Gold Rush proprietors Joe and Karen Paff employ up to eight part-time staff. Other artisans make jewelry, pottery, candles, cabinets, windows, doors, light fixtures, and fabricate sheet metal. Some make baked goods, including pizzas, burritos, and pies, to sell at local general stores. There’s even a winery and a silk-screening studio.

Although it doesn't derive its revenue from the world of commerce, the largest source of wage and salaried employment in the Mattole is public education. Between them, the Mattole Unified and Southern Humboldt school districts employ 50 people (full- and part-time) with an annual wages in the watershed of between $900,000 and $1 million. The two principal watershed restoration groups play a much smaller but nonetheless significant role, employing 59 people between them (56 of them part-time or seasonal), with total 2000 payroll of $148,000.

Other enterprises offer services to people who live in the Mattole and
beyond, such as a handful of lodging establishments and a couple of taverns. Three general stores and a building materials yard make up the Mattole retail sector. A residential summer camp provides badly needed employment for local teenagers (as camp counselors), and a rancher has begun offering classes in horseback riding to kids from around Humboldt County. (See the interview with Cindy and Sterling McWhorter, facing page.) Numerous operators provide heavy equipment work and road repair.

Logger Dave Kahan has carved out a niche for his work, thinning stands of young trees, and doing small logging and clearing jobs with a self-loading log truck. His largest jobs these days are in fire hazard reduction and stand improvement, including the removal of the smallest trees and limbing those that remain to reduce the chance of a ground fire igniting the canopy. For $200 a day, a landowner can hire him along with an assistant whose job is burning the slash. Between them, they can cover an acre in two to six days, depending on how thorough a job the landowner wants, for a cost per acre of $400 to $1200. Of that, the state-funded California Forest Improvement Program can cover $225 to $360, depending on the site and how heavily it needs to be thinned.

All of these Mattole businesses contribute to the health of the local economy by employing people and by keeping their wages circulating in the neighborhood. When Mattolians buy products at Costco, the money goes instead to owners of distant farms and factories. Besides, local products are invariably fresher than those shipped from far away, and they reflect the people who made them, as well as the place where they were made. They offer a welcome break from the sameness which the ever-expanding global economy peddles around the world.

As our local economy comes to be made of businesses that respect the land and live within the limits it describes, the Mattole can attain a sustainable prosperity. As Dave Kahan says, "I’m thankful for the opportunity to make my living from the land, in a way that is beneficial for the forest and for us all." May we all be able to say that soon about our work.

(Note: the Restoration Council plans to publish a directory of all Mattole-based businesses that would like to be listed. See the announcement on page 8 for more information.)


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Table of Contents for Mattole Restoration Newsletter, Issue 16 - Spring/Sumer 2001