When it was founded just after the Civil War, the National Grange – officially called The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry – was one part fraternal society, one part advocacy organization.
There were rituals involving marching in lockstep with staffs in hand. But the grange also became a practical network for small farmers, serving as community hub, ag education center and crop insurance provider.
The grange had a populist bent in its early years, advocating for so-called “granger laws” that were strong on government regulation, giving the little guy a leg up. Its influence and membership surged in the 1870s to as high as 2 million nationwide.
Membership today: not even 200,000.
Many modest halls in rural areas are closed, and members are aging. Grangers now advocate for things like national debt reduction and lower taxes.
A push to modernize the grange – and remind grangers of original traditions – has created a stir, and the divide has origins in North Monterey County.
In 2011 Alan Hicks approached the old board of the Springfield Grange, just on the Monterey side of the county line in Watsonville, which looks like a gym with faded shuffleboard courts printed on weathered wood floors.
In 1933, it started at an elementary school. Members grew sweet peas for 19 years to raise money to build their hall in 1952, the same building that now screens documentaries on GMOs and offers classes in tai chi, zumba and Latin dance.
Hicks’ idea: to host a panel discussion on hemp and its many practical uses.
That didn’t go over well. Hicks wasn’t granted the keys to the building, which had been used on weekends as a church for about a decade. So he changed course.
“I thought we better do something simple and innocuous,” he says.
“THE OLD PEOPLE THINK WE’RE A BUNCH OF HIPPIE MARIJUANA GROWERS.”
He planned an open house, hoping to renew interest in the place. But even that wasn’t popular among old-timers. Hicks remembers two people driving up to the open house, shouting, “Get out, you’re not real grangers!”
Elsewhere chapters have been on a fast track to change, embracing modern foodies and homesteader types who might grow small plots of veggies or make their own organic granola. In 2012, the California State Grange endorsed Prop. 37, which would have required the labeling of foods with genetically modified ingredients.
In the context of that cultural shift, Hicks wanted to recruit new members to the hall. The Springfield Grange members planned to sell the building, and take the profits and its members to nearby Prunedale Grange, rather than let new members take over.
“It’s old people wanting to hold onto something they’ve taken care of for a long time,” Hicks says. “They think we’re a bunch of hippie marijuana growers.”
The crux of the battle was over transferring assets, not culture, according to Ed Mitchell, who became Prunedale Grange Master following the property dispute. “It was an issue with the state master touching our trust fund,” Mitchell says, “and giving us direction that was not according to grange law.”
California State Grange President Bob McFarland intervened, and stopped Springfield Grange from going on the market. Then in October 2012, the National Grange sued the California State Grange for going rogue. That lawsuit is still in court, along with a federal trademark suit over whether California can use the name “grange” without following traditional rules.
But McFarland views the changing culture as a good thing.
“We find ourselves on the threshold of a Grange Renaissance,” he writes on the California Grange website.
Before Hicks took the place over in 2011, the grange had fewer than 30 members, mostly white. Today, Hicks counts about 100: half Anglo, half Latino, and the average age has gone from 65 to 45. (Annual membership costs $28 for an individual and $56 for a family.) Springfield Grange hosts tamale festivals and keeps an active Facebook page.
Hicks himself isn’t a farmer. He’s a Los Angeles native and retired financial analyst who grows a couple acres of Pinot Noir grapes in Aptos.
As for the hemp panel, he did pull one together. It addressed heavy pesticide use on cotton and the multiple uses of hemp, fiber and seeds for protein among them.
For Hicks, it has nothing to do with pot laws. It’s about re-opening minds to a once-popular crop. That’s what he’s aiming to do with the grange, too: reinvigorate something once vital.