Home on the Grange

By DIANE PETERSON, The Press Democrat |

Being a member of the oldest, continuously operating local Grange in the country can be a burden.

Last June, when a rainstorm swept through Santa Rosa during the Bennett Valley Grange’s annual barbecue, the farm organization faced a conundrum. Could they break a 138-year tradition?

“We’ve never missed a year … We’ve never canceled before,” said Granger Karen Sommer. “So they put this tractor out and a big tarp over the barbecue and everything was held inside.”

The National Grange organization was launched in the U.S. after the Civil War, when Oliver Hudson Kelley surveyed the rundown farms of the South and came back to Washington, D.C. proposing a “fraternity” for farmers. In 1867, the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry was founded as a grass-roots coalition to help farm families network, fight railroad monopolies and advocate for common interests like low-cost loans, water and other resources.