All photos courtesy Anne Hamersky.

Clint and Ron come in each day for dinner, the midday meal. Afterward, the family may pay bills, or discuss the day's events. Since the "Hog Wars" in the late 1990s-when they organized with other neighbors to keep a 500,000-hog confinement facility from moving in nearby-Ron and Annette have become active in farm politics.

In one effort, Annette has allied with the local Sierra Club organizer and other activists to defend a state law that restricts corporate ownership of farms. The family has lost markets to large agricultural operations, whose exclusive contracts with packers and processors drive prices down. "Big companies don't want to take care of the land," Ron says. "They don't want to be playing in the dirt like us, because that's where the risk is. They just want the cheapest product they can get."