Welcome to the very first episode of the real California. I'm here in the Santa
Maria Valley at Rancho Guadalupe to meet with owner/operator Mr. Dick Donati.
Mr. Donati. Hey JD! How you doin? Good sir, how are you? Good! Good, yeah glad you came.
Glad you came down this morning. I'm happy to be here. So what do we got going today bud?
Well we can go out and look at a number of things. I usually come to the
office first but we can go out look at some of the harvesting, some of the
planting. Just about anything. Thank you so much for having me out, I
really appreciate that. What are you harvesting today? We're in
June so we've got everything growing. Celery, lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli,
and strawberries. Great, well I'm ready. Okay! So, around the house there's no
shortage of salads and all the good vegetables. No, I'm always asked to bring
stuff home and when I forget, I get in trouble or I find out that she
has purchased *Oh boy* Oh, then she said you bought that lettuce? *JD laughing* I've got a hundred
acres of it *JD laughs hysterically* He says, well all I need is one hand out of 100 acres, you didn't bring
it home. You want to take a look at this celery? Yes. We'll prove to people that it
doesn't grow in the back of the store! *Laughing* That's what we're here to do!
Who are these nice folks? Well this is the celery harvest group. Basically, there's
workers cutting the celery, putting it up on the table. Right. The women
in the machine, there inside; they're sorting by size and packing it. Okay.
These guys are getting it cleaned up. Right.
Cutting the bottoms, trimming the tops. And they're packing it up for the
distributors. Correct. This will, this will be shipped... Well, basically all over the
country. Right. Texas, Florida... East Coast. So now from here, who takes it from here
to loading it up on to the boom. Yep. We're sealing an assembly line here. Right,
It'll go to the cooler and be cooled. For how long? It'll probably be shipped
out in the next day or two. Now some of these are smaller. Those are hearts.
Rancho Guadalupe farms grows nearly 550 acres of celery every year.
Once celery is in the ground it takes three weeks for the plant to emerge and
a total of 90 days to harvest. Compared to a lettuce crop that only takes five
days to emerge and is in the ground for a total of 70 days.
HCE Productions is
bringing the very first ever country music festival and AG show, Band of
Brothers benefit. In the Old Orcutt Plaza. This family fun-filled event will
feature AG vendors, CBR ranked Bulls on display, and country music from Terra
Bella, and me JD hardy! Purchase your discounted tickets now on JD hardy music
Facebook page, Rooney's Irish Pub, or Niteout.com. See you all there!
This logo was designed back in 94 when we started and we picked this hillside here where
it comes into the coastline as a backdrop to it. And that's it right there.
And... That's the depiction of it right there. So, I got to learn how to get
celery out of the ground or produce out of the ground. Get it prepared for the
market. Which is just one element of the hard work that goes into producing
vegetables. Tell me a little bit more about Rancho
Guadalupe and the culture of your company. Well we believe that a
strong labor force is so critical to what we do. You know, you can have the
land, and the tractors, and everything else but it doesn't happen if you don't
have a dedicated workforce who really buy in to Rancho Guadalupe and what
they're doing. That's right. And we can't stress enough how important mentoring
and training and promoting from within. Sure. How important all that is to making
these people feel that they have something they can really hang on to.
That's right and you make them feel a part of the Rancho Guadalupe family.
Correct. We have a leadership training program that we're in the middle of now,
where it starts at the top, where we're all trying to make ourselves better leaders.
That's right. But it's going right on down through the company to the
supervisors, the foremen, even the last man on the totem pole if you will. Right.
Because he's a leader to, believe it or not. Yes, he is. He's leading himself. That's
right! You can't lead others and tell you... Lead yourself. That's right, and that's
where it starts. We're getting the English-speaking part of our company
Spanish classes. That's great. If you want it. Yep. And we're getting the Spanish people
English classes. That's great. So they have the option to better themselves and
to better communicate with their co-workers. Absolutely. That's phenomenal
Dick, and so... You mentioned before, one of your talents was being able to
identify the potential and the abilities of your leaders and your partners that
you've created. Can you touch a little bit more on that? What we're trying to do is
help these people realize their own potential and abilities before they even
do. We're trying to promote their potential and get them working up
to their highest capability. So that takes some involvement from you to be
able to get inside there and realize the talents that these people
might have; certain people in different departments might have, and you're
placing them at the right place at the right time to maximize their *Correct* opportunity.
And we're always asking them "Do you enjoy what you're doing?" You know, we'll
take polls at our tailgate meetings. Right. "Would you rather be doing
something else" You know? What? Drive a tractor, manage irrigation. Right. There's
always opportunity from within and you have to keep that common that at
constant dialogue with those workers. Communication is a very important
element to any relationship because you've got a lot of different moving
parts going on here that one little misstep, one miscommunication can have a
big ripple effect. You said it. Right on the button.
You need communication every day. Yeah. And everybody has to buy into it. That's
right. It's got to go both ways. That's right, not a one-way street. No. So we're
pretty proud of what we've accomplished. We just have to keep it going.
Now Dick, you're a great leader of your company, and I was just curious a little
bit about your background as far as education goes. After graduating from
Santa Maria high school, I went to UC Davis. Okay. Attended there for four years,
got my degree and a curriculum called agricultural science and management. Okay.
With an emphasis on animal science. I see. Then I came back and I've been growing
vegetable crops my whole career. Yeah! Right, okay. Now was there any interim in
between graduating college and going straight to work. Yeah, when I was in
college I was in the ROTC program. Okay. And I was commissioned the second
lieutenant upon graduation in the US Army. And I served in the US Army for two
years and I was in armor. Went to Fort Knox Kentucky to armor school and spent
the rest of my time at Fort Riley Kansas. Wow. We went to Europe on a couple of
different november's on a NATO exercise. I gotcha. So that's where I learned some
of my leadership characteristics and principles. Right. And
it's been very helpful. So from your hard work growing up on the ranch with... Inside
a agriculture family to getting to go to UC Davis and being disciplined enough to
graduate with these degrees that you had. To your military experience; all
contributed to your success and getting you where you are today. It has and I
feel very grateful for the opportunities I've had for my education and the
experiences I've had I'm very grateful for it. I can tell, and you're a very humble man
and I just enjoy my time every moment I get to spend with you and pick your
brain about success and I really appreciate you spending time with me
today and let me come out and learn more. It is a pleasure JD, and let's do it again.
I look forward to it. My time at Rancho Guadalupe farms with Mr. Donati
was extraordinarily educational. I learned that all the land and tractors
in the world will produce a crop and the only thing that will produce a crop is a
strong leader with a relentless work ethic who surrounds himself with great people.
Explore our Santa Maria Valley Wineries in style.
Thanks for the new wine trolley. The wine trolley runs Saturdays and Sundays and
runs every 75 minutes from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
starting at Town Center West. This is some of our top-notch tasting rooms and
enjoy some time in Old Town Orcutt. There are several great places to visit.
You will absolutely enjoy your ride and the charm that the trolley offers. So be
sure to plan your next trip on the charming Santa Maria Valley wine trolley.
Only $10 per person in advance. Well worth the save, but a very fun filled ride.
Hey, now I'm here at Edna's bakery in San Luis Obispo California.
I'm going to introduce you to my good buddy owner and operator Phil Korte, and
we're going to see how we make these good old hamburger buns. Come on in!
Hey, there he is! How you doing brother? Good to see you. Good to see you too, man.
What an operation huh? Yeah,
yeah, we get a lot of things done here every day. This is not a little bakery. No,
not anymore. No we grown up. You sure have. When did
you buy this place? I bought it in 2006 in the summer time of 06. Okay. And took
it on and we had, I think was two delivery vans, about twelve employees. I
think we had about 140 customers and then over ten years now we're up to 80
employees, sixteen delivery vans, over 700 customers and *Wow* It's just been an
awesome experience. All over the Central Coast, and any other places? Yep, pretty
much; I go up to... We go as far north as Ragged Point Castle. All the way down to
Santa Barbara; excuse me, actually we're going to Oxnard now. Wow. Seven days a week,
we're rolling in the dough. Anything in the valley or? Yeah, we'll go over to Fresno all the
way down to Fresno, to Tulare and then we also run down to LA. If you
happen to be on the Amtrak train, you'll see some of our- Wow! So you're everywhere, how are you making all
this happen? Well with a lot of good employees, a lot of hard work, and...
I should probably introduce you to a couple of few people. Let's go meet them! All right!
JD, I'd like to introduce you to Joe Flores. Nice to meet you bud! Nice to meet you!
So, he is responsible for all this. Yes he's my head Baker and my
proud development guy. Well, I'll catch up and I'll talk with you later.
Nice to meet you bud, so how long you been here? Oh a little over ten years.
So Joe, what do you enjoy most about being here at Edna? Developing the new products. Right. And
how do you come up with developing the new products? Well you know, we have a
customer request. Right. Then I start working on the product. Right. And at the
end when the customer agrees that they like what they have, this is when we
start producing. So, you guys are listening to your customers. Yes. Through surveys and
requests and whatnot, and you take that back to the drawing board, and with your
extensive knowledge in being a baker, you come up with these new products to
basically tailor make for your clientelle. Correct.
That's amazing. Well, I love what I do. I can tell. It's all
over your buddy. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks!
HCE Productions is bringing the very first ever country music festival and AG
show Band of Brothers benefit. In the Old Orcutt Plaza. This family fun-filled event
will feature AG Vendor's, CBR ranked Bulls on display, country music from
Terra Bella and me, JD Hardy! Purchase your discounted tickets now on JD hardy
music Facebook page, Rooney's Irish Pub, or Niteout.com.
See y'all there!
Explore our Santa Maria Valley wineries in style. Thanks to the
new wine trolley. The wine trolley runs Saturdays and Sundays and runs every 75
minutes from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. starting at Town Center West. This is
some of our top-notch tasting rooms and enjoy some time in Old Town Orcutt. There
are several great places to visit. You will absolutely enjoy your ride, and the
charm that the trolley offers. So be sure to find your next trip on the charming
Santa Maria Valley wine trolley.
Only $10 per person in the back well worth the save, but a very fun filled ride
You're not just doing buns! What's all this good-looking
stuff. Well, I'm glad you asked JD. We do some killer scones, we have all kinds of
Danish we do. We have seven flavors of cookies, other scones, mini muffins
croissants, the larger muffins, brownies, loaf cakes,
all kinds of different breads, and including all these beautiful looking
things we have here. So it's just not all about hamburger buns is we have a full
line of awesome things people like to use of ours. Well you're not kidding.
So this is the stuff that is getting distributed all throughout the Central Coast LA Amtrak the valley. Yep,
just about everything in the Central Coast, we're blanketing it as
well as down to LA and people are just crazy about this stuff cause it's made
fresh daily and there's no distributor We deliver it, we make
it, we take the orders, and we a turnkey shop. What's really amazing you know...
Probably 10-15 years ago, there wasn't a food network. Right. You know, there
wasn't the chef... You know; battles, and we'll just think about this... The
breads and the pastries have also elevated themselves, I mean before you go
to the store you get, you know Wonder Bread, and maybe a wheat bread, but now I mean
we have over 400 products. I mean we've done so many different things with our
breads, we actually make pizza right now where we put beer and spent grain and a
Caputo flour out of Italy which is a high-protein flour and we're making a
signature pizza dough for some breweries now. Wow. With beer and spent grain. How
cool is that?! It is way cool, It's totally fun. Fun stuff we're doing. And creative!
This is the real deal bud. I had no idea that you have turned this little
mom, pop bakery into this commercial outlet. You've done so well.
You have a lot of great accomplishments. I'm really proud of you. Congratulations!
Thanks! It's always a pleasure! Yeah bud. I appreciate that. You got it!
Had a great day with Phil today at Edna's bakery. I learned so much
and also learned how to make hamburger, and slider buns.
Did you hear Phil say he used spent grains from local breweries to make
certain products? Well guess what? I'm headed over to Rooney's Irish Pub next to
make beer with Tim and Greg. And we're going to smoke a whole hog with Jake.
Now if I can just get Phil to let me drive... Nope.
Stay tuned for more of The Real California!
I'm here to see my good friend Tim Rooney, of Rooney's Irish pub to learn
how to make beer and pick up some spent grains for my friend Sadie Bowlin to feed her pig.
Brew day is a happy day at Rooney's Irish Pub. We start off
early. 7 o'clock in the morning. Come on back. Just gettin ready to set up for the day. Yes sir!
Song playing: *John Deere Town USA*
We start pretty early on a brew day. Seven o'clock in the morning. Right. Nobody's here. Right.
The staff's just getting here, and I'm going to introduce you to my brewer Greg
Carroll! JD Hardy nice to meet you bud my pleasure!
He's just getting ready to start the brew day. In a second he'll show you
the grains and what we're going to be making today; we'll talk all about this process.
Oh, yeah.
So Greg, what is your role here,
at Rooney's. I'm the brewer. Brewer, cleaner, I do everything that has
to do with the brewery. So when we get our grain, it comes un-milled so we take it,
we mill it... Which is the state it's in now, and then
Throughout the whole brew day, we take it, and put it in the mash time. Which extracts the sugars... Goes into
the brew kettle, where we add the hops and from there, there's a lot going on. Your
whirlpools and a bunch of other stuff. And then from there, we transfer to a
heat exchanger. Get it into a fermentation tank, and that's where we
add the yeast which creates beer. Up until that point it's called Wort. Right. So all
this is time-sensitive, it's heat sensitive it's... All these things have to
line up perfectly. Exactly. Time, and temperature. So you're like a mad
scientist! *Greg & JD Laugh* I can be. Of Rooney's! I can't wait! Well let's get this stuff brewing, what do you think?
Let's go. All right, come on guys!
Song Playing: *John Deere Town USA*
*Music Fades*
So, we're getting ready to transfer the wort over into the brew kettle and once we get up
to boil in the brew kettle, that's the latter Hops which will take that
bitterness off of the malt-iness from our wort. Gotcha, so what kind of hops are we
Usin today? So today we use a... In the beginning of the boil which we go for
sixty minutes... I put in a warrior which is mainly used strictly for bittering. It
has a high alpha acid and so that'll really cut some of that sweetness out
and then later on in the boil, I'll add the second addition hops and this one is
the Cascade, lower alpha acid. It'll still help with cutting out the bitterness but
not as sharp as you get from *gotcha* the wort.
Song Playing: *John Deere Town USA*
*Music Fades*
Explore our Santa Maria Valley wineries in style. Thanks to the new wine
trolley. The wine trolley runs Saturdays and Sundays and runs every 75 minutes
from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. starting at town center West. Visit
some of our top-notch tasting rooms and enjoy some time in Old Town Orcutt. There
are several great places to visit. You will absolutely enjoy your ride and the
charm that the trolley offers. So be sure to plan your next trip on the charming
Santa Maria Valley wine trolley only $10 per person in advance. Well worth the save
but a very fun filled ride.
This is what we're making today. This is the last of our
house amber. Cheers my friend. Oh, wow. This is an amber, this is what we're making today.
Very good.
It's got a little malt-iness. Not a lot of bite, it's very mild
Malt-Forward they call that.
Song Playing: *John Deere Town USA*
You can't make beer without tasting it. Oops! Looks like Tim needs to get back to work.
Nutritional value for livestock. Particularly pigs. Pigs love it.
There's still enough nutritional value. That's right. There are still sugars and proteins still left in there.
Gotcha. We pulled out as much of these sugars out of that we possibly can and are
usable for this... For the beers that goes into the wort, and those sugars will turn into alcohol and Co2.
Oh yeah. The best part.
Tim has been kind enough to give me some spent grain
to feed a pig we will be harvesting soon. Come on back! Stay tuned for more of
The Real California
Hey, Sadie Bowlin! Where you at? I'm back here, come on back. Hey, that's my line! *Laughs*
Got you some spent grains from Rooney's Irish Pub. How are you doing? Thank you! How are you? Good to see you Sadie.
Let's go check this out.
So how is your hog liking those spent grains from Rooney's?
She's liking them very well. Alright, so how long have you been in the
4H? I've been in 4H for 3 years. 3 years? Yeah. So how old were you when you
started. I was like 10? 10?! Yeah. So how was a 10-year old little girl able to handle a
big animal like this. Uh, I don't know. My dad kind of showed me how. He showed you
the ropes? I kind of got the hang of it. You got the hang of it, and now you're
hooked for life. Yep. You love it? Yes, I like it a lot.
What's your favorite part about it? My favorite part about it is interacting
with the animals and being able to like go to Fair and show the pig and also
like showing, cuz we do a thing for 4H in our group, and we go to Guadalupe
and we go to one of, like the rut camps that they do. Right. And we get to like, show
our pigs like, some people will bring their pigs and we get to tell them like,
about the animals cuz they really don't get to interact with tthe animals.
Neat, And we get to show them. and that's held up the rec hall? Yeah. Gotcha, okay. Now what
club do you belong to? I belong to Nipomo 4H.
Nipomo 4H, wow that's awesome and how many members do you guys have? We have 16.
in the pig group. In the swine, okay. So you've got cattle, you've got
lambs, and goats, chickens like just like FFA, livestock. Yeah. Cool.
There we go. So... Well awesome, well thank you so much Sadie for letting
me come out here today and see you and you know I wanted to bring you some
money too because you raised a good animal for me. Thank you, you're welcome.
Good job on that. And you keep up that hard work, it's
going to continue to pay off for you. Okay, thank you. All right Sadie.
I'll see you sweetie.
Hey Jake, is JD here with that hog yet!? He's right here dad! Hey I'm right here dad! Well, let's get this thing going!
Let's go. All right! Come on! Alright! now it's like
Looks like a beauty. Indeed. This ought to do it huh? Perfect.
Beautiful, great animal. Happy to harvest it from our friend Sadie Bowlin.
Nipomo 4H club. She did a great job feeding this, Rooney's spent grains didn't
she? Spent grains from the brewery. Yes. Make our beer and that spent grain give a
little to pig farmers and a lot of times we get them back and
put them in the smoker here and recycle everything. Nothing goes to waste and
that's the message here today. Yup. We try to be as green as possible
here. So Jake what are we going to do now bud?
All right, we're gonna have you squirt it down with a little mustard, the mustard acts as a little
binder. Oh yeah. Get the dry rub in there. Okay Try and get into every cavity we can, we'll
give it a good coat of dry rub. So gettin it down in here and everywhere? Everywhere you can, Okay.
So with that because we're
going to give it so much injection as the rub, the mustard acts as a good sticky
agent. Right. For your rub. Do you dry rub the outside of it?
The outside of the skin? Yes. No sir. No, that's all in here; as soon as you put
it on the smoker, we go for eight hours and then uncover, then after that we take
it out and inject it again. Wrap it in foil because you want them to smoke on
by then. And then the skin acts as, pretty much a leather kind of just holds in the
juice like a bucket of it. Right. So insulation for the juice that kind of
gets reciprocated up into the meat and it just has that little cycle going.
Is this a particular type of uh- It's a secret, we can't tell you. Of course! *Laughs*
Injection! Again, a little secret but a little apple juice,
Worcestershire, vinegar, a little bit of dry rub, brown sugar,
and a lot of your Rooney's Irish Pub secrets. Yes sir.
The more you can give that meat the better not just rub on the outside, you can get that
sweet in the middle of it too... Oh man. Well it's sweet and spicy what
you got going on *Yes sir* and that's the mustard. That's that mustard thing going.
Well you need to cut the other side of the pork. Oh bud... Tomorrow is going to
be a good day.
Look at that. Look at that! Yeah, buddy.
I love it!
So explain this to me real quick. So we've got the fire on this side. We got
the hog on this side. Yeah, we're able to
adjust the fire a little bit close the box you know we got to go right now. So,
indirect heat, you know? Like a smoker idea which opposite, is obviously the Santa Maria
style. So once you close those doors. Right. And dampers on the top, so you want hog
on this side. We're not barbecuing you know, we're still smoking. So
Right. We shut this, we shut this vent so the air circles through so there's all
the smoke and the heat just cooks that. No direct flame, no nothing like that.
It just circles around in there. Gotcha. Smoke, and the heat. So this is a Santa maria-style oven?
Yes sir. Well good deal.
Let's go get a cocktail. Let's do it.
How we doing bud? Well it's been 24 hours. Smells like we're doing good. 24 hours at
about between 200 225, so let's take a look, let's see and check it out!
Mind if I crank her up? Oh let's open that thing! Oh yeah. Yeah, after about eight hours last night we
took it out. Injected it again. With your same injection. Same injection. Put it
back in there depending on the color we'll leave it tented. Right. Just so it
doesn't get too dark so... Right. It's perfect right now.
Keeps the smoke in there, keeps the moisture in there. It kind of steams in its own juices,
and that marinates in there. With that skin like we're talking about... So I think it's about ready to come out. Bud I
can't wait! We're eating good today boss! Look at that!
Oh my goodness.
You mind if I grab it now. No, you can pull a little piece off of in there.
Oh my. Is that phenomenal? Yeah. If you want you
can always dip a little bit into the juices. That's what I'm talkin about.
Oh it turned out great.
That is so good. That's going to be fun. Yeah, just turned out awesome. It's so good.
Good job buddy. Fun! Great job. Thanks for the help. You got it. No problem.
Folks at Rooney's really know how to make it happen don't they? Taking spent grains to
feed livestock then cooking over an open fire is a great example of
The Real California. Come on back! If you want to enjoy some of this great food, country
music, agriculture... Join us, June 24th at the 805 Country Music Festival and AG
Show. Be sure to see my facebook fan page JD hardy music for participating Hotel
discounts for your weekend stay in the Santa Maria Valley. The Real California
brought to you by Valley Farm Supply and the Santa Maria Chamber of Commerce
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