Hansen Trust Advisory Board recommends selling Faulkner Farm

The recommendation by the board majority has been forwarded to the university, and attempts to hold a meeting with directors - spearheaded by Supervisor Kathy Long - were declined.

Faulkner Farm, 27 acres located at West Telegraph and Briggs roads, was purchased by the university in 1997 for $1.5 million from the proceeds of the estate of Thelma Hansen. For years the farm and its familiar Victorian home and red barn have been an area landmark, familiar to people from throughout Southern California who visited the annual Pumpkin Patch.

In a recent interview Chris Sayer, the advisory board’s chairman, said the trust felt operating Faulkner Farm was not fulfilling the trust’s mission and they would seek more property elsewhere for research.

Not so, according to past board members and Larry Yee, the former longtime university director of the trust, as well as area farmers and members of the Santa Paula Rotary, who revived the Pumpkin Patch several years ago.

The plan surfaced a little more than a month ago, and according to Mike Mobley, spokesman for Save Faulkner Farm, there has been a scramble to address the issue formally with the board as well as determine just why the sale was proposed. “We’d like to see the board reverse their decision, basically rescind their letter” to the university recommending that Faulkner Farm be sold. And, Mobley added, “We just can’t believe they’ve made this decision without any community input, and elected to ignore 20 years of decisions by previous board members, their own staff and the community.”

Sayer said in a June interview the trust was created for agricultural research and education. Trust advisors “found the expenses in maintaining that property are a large enough drain on trust resources that it prevents us from doing everything we could do” to reflect the “core purpose” of the trust.

He said the advisory board had been discussing the issue for “about a year,” and that about $900,000 of the approximately $1 million trust goes to farm operating expenses. “If we didn’t maintain the property” that funding could be otherwise used, which Sayer said directors believe would better reflect the intent of the trust, including enlarging research.

“Two possibilities, both of which would be under consideration, are either acquire a different property with a less expensive footprint,” as Sayer said the “house and the barn are what really eats up the lion’s share” of trust income. Sayer said the “other possibility would be to remain landless and have all that money available” for grants, education, research and ag programs run throughout the county.