Museum of Hiram:
Summer of 1973 working conditions

This graph demonstrates just how hot it is in the San Joaquin Valley
in the summer time. I arrived at this summer job from my school year in Berkeley where the climate is very pleasant. My first three days at work were temperatures of: 105, 108 and 112 degrees fahrenheit. (41, 42, 44 degrees C). For 28 days of work the temperature was over 100, for only 38 days of work the temperature did not go above 100. It was a hot summer.

We worked in the cotton fields of the Boston Ranch Company on the West Side of the San Joaquin Valley on highway 198 between Lemoore and interstate 5 near Coalinga. Heat like this is quite typical of the summer in this area. It was especially intensified by the humidity of the cotton field itself.

This was an interesting summer job. We were a small group, mostly students, working for a professor from the University of California, Riverside. We measured the growth of the cotton over time. He was trying to demonstrate how cotton could be grown without adding insecticides. His theory was to allow the natural preditor and prey insects to reach stable populations. These populations were theorized to be low enough for the insects that damage cotton, that no applications of chemicals would be necessary. Unfortunately, since the rest of the San Joaquin Valley was swimming in a sea of insecticides, this untainted field was a wonderful place to hang out if you were an insect that summer. An addition to this theory is to have crops next to the cotton that would be attractants to the insects that damage cotton at the critical time when the plant would be susceptible to damage.