There's a smell to a farm. Many don't care for it. To me, however, it just smells like the country...nothing citified about it. While we live in a crowded, suburban area of Los Angeles, there's also a horse ranch behind our house. When the wind blows just right...yeah, that's it...the aroma of manure wafts over.
I love it.
In decades past, the suburbs ran out somewhere around Pomona. Going eastward from here...into Chino, Corona, Ontario, Upland, Mira Loma...you'd be deep into farm country getting nostrils full of the smell of cows, pigs, chickens, and more.
Today, Los Angeles has grown. It's more urban than suburban far into the Inland Empire. Most of those old rural features like farms and ranches have disappeared.
At The World on Wheels, we've made it one of our missions to keep visiting what's left to record it before it's gone. Let's take a drive to see if we can make a meal from what is still hanging on.
In 1920, Giovanni Filippi and his son Joseph immigrated from Italy and planted grapes in the Cucamonga Valley. At the time, this was the largest grape growing and wine producing region of California.
With real estate booms, prices rose and demand for open land increased so that many of these vineyards were swallowed up by housing developments and industrial parks.
Still, the Filippi Winery hangs on with their winery and tasting room on Baseline Road in Rancho Cucmonga, not far from the massive Victoria Gardens shopping center.
Like many wineries today, Filippi does not offer free tasting anymore but $7 (refundable with a purchase) will get you five tastes. You can sip while imagining what it had been...the small vineyard and production facility now hemmed in by housing.
Before the big boom at Ontario Airport, you could picnic in the shade of eucalyptus trees amid the quaint old village of Guasti with the Filippi tasting room at one end, the massive pancakes of the Homestyle Cafe at the other (now relocated to nearby Chino), and great views of jetliners taking off across the street.
Now, a new terminal blocks the view. Most of the old buildings have been demolished, and a few that remain for historical purposes have been shrink-wrapped while the City of Ontario builds yet another business park here.
Luckily for us, the other winery that still exists in the area, the Galleano Winery in Mira Loma, still sits in a time-warped property of barns, animals, tractors, and vineyards amid the giant warehouses with names like "Costco" on them.
It's like driving through a portal into the past where one second, you're in the sterile land of factories and warehouses. The next, you've stepped through a portal with barns, fields, animals, and their smells permeate the area.
At the end of the old tractor garage, a shack invites you in for a friendly round of wine tasting. It's $5 for five tastes...refundable with purchase, of course...and you're bound to find something you like from the ultra-cheap jugs of local zinfandel, chianti, and port to some of their award winning reserve wines.
There's also a small branch of Los Angeles' San Antonio winery nearby in Ontario but it's just a tasting room...no vineyards or winemaking there.
We'll go with some sherry for cooking and a bottle of chianti to go with our dinner later from Galleano. If you have some extra time, you can also bring a sandwich or two and have a picnic with their barn animals in the little park across from the wine-making barn.
(Check out our California's Hidden Wine Country article for a more indepth look and a video about these Cucamonga Valley wineries.)
Heading back west a few miles, not far from the old downtown section of Ontario on a quiet residential street, we pull into Graber Olives. Since 1894, the Graber family has been processing olives here for canning. The original Mr. Graber planted orange trees, like everyone else around him (you can still see a tiny plot of the original trees just west of the gift shop) but wanted to do something to stand out.
Olives were the solution he hit upon. One thing he did different than other olive farmers was to let the fruit ripen on the trees. Most other growers picked green and artificially ripened them for easier canning. The Graber olives became very sought after because of their tree-ripened flavor.
Take the free tour here and see how they still brine and pack the olives the old-fashioned way. You won't even see a computer in the office where the bookkeepers still add everything up on old adding machines and send out paper bills in the mail.
We'll grab a bottle of olive oil from here. See our Tasting History article and video for more about this Olive ranch.
Next up, while we're still in Ontario, we'll head to the southern section of the city where there is still a bit of the farmland that gets gobbled up at every housing boom. Amy's Farm is a small one that hangs on by not only growing crops, raising animals, and selling the output but also by charging groups to come through, take tours, and learn about farm life.
You don't have to pay if you just want to come to the farm stand and maybe walk around to see the animals.
That's the fun part...going snout-to-snout with a cow, scratching a goat behind its ears, or watching the piglets scamper about their pen.
We do know that farm life isn't about raising some different kinds of pets, though, so we pick up a little of their farm-made Italian sausage, garlic, onions, and tomatoes for our dish.
If we weren't cooking, however, we would head to nearby Centro Basco, on Central Avenue in Chino, for an authentic Basque dinner.
Since 1940, this boarding house for a area's Basque shepherds has been slinging their hearty food in the communal dining hall up front. In the back is a regular dining room where you can have a table to yourself.
Either way, you might want to come a little early to have a strong Picon punch in one of the two bars.
We'll finish up at Claro's, a local chain of Italian delis that's been around sine 1948, to pick up some lasagne noodles and a couple of cans of San Marzano tomatoes. Out here, we can stop at their Upland location or just swing by the easier Covina location on the way home.
Now that we've spent the day picking through some of the remaining historical gems of this former agricultural Mecca, we'll head home and put it all together for a fantastic, historical, scratch made lasagne...sherry from Galleano winery in Mira Loma; olive oil from Gaber Olive House in Ontario; sausage, garlic, onions, and tomatoes from Amy's Farm, also in Ontario; and some pasta from Claro's.
We'll sit back and enjoy our haul with a glass of chianti and hope that civilization can be slow to erase these gems of the Inland Empire.
If you'd like to make the lasagne, just click here for the recipe.
Darryl Musick
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