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Lost Treasures: Kern County Union High School Agriculture Farm
| Wednesday, Nov 8 2006 2:03 PM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Nov 8 2006 2:02 PM
Kern County Union High School Agriculture Farm
Marvin Cross ran the 100-acre Kern County Union High School agriculture farm located at the corner of Stine and (what is now) Ming Avenue in southwest Bakersfield in the 1930s and 40s.
Future Farmers of America students from Kern Union High School (now BHS) and junior college students learned how to farm and care for animals.
Students helped raise sheep, or cows, or pigs, among other animals, to show at the county fair.
The farm opened in 1919 with four students, and grew to nearly 400 students by 1937.
Marvin Cross ran the 100-acre Kern County Union High School agriculture farm located at the corner of Stine and (what is now) Ming Avenue in southwest Bakersfield in the 1930s and 40s.
After World War II, the GI Bill encouraged veterans to go back to school; some of them went to school to learn how to farm in Kern County.
Ken Whitney taught every subject at the farm between 1953 and 1986, including crops, mechanics, poultry, and horticulture.
Students experienced hands-on work at the farm, from working with a 50-head herd of Guernsey dairy cows, registered shorthorn beef cattle, and Poland-China breeding hogs, he said. And they learned how to castrate animals and work in the slaughter house.
Whitney continues to work with kids teaching them how to prepare sheep for the Kern County Fair on his six acre farm on Buena Vista Road.
One of Marvin Cross’ duties was to visit individual farms run by students.
“My father had to go out and visit their farms once a month, and we would ride with him,” his son Dave Cross said.
He would always say, 'you get to do that,' and we would say under our breath, to ourselves, 'we have to do that!'” said Cross, who spent his first six years on the farm.
High school girls would also come to the farm and cook big country breakfasts for the hired farm hands. When the cooking was done, they watched over the three Cross brothers.
Vina Cross, Dave's mother, was an artist, and she used the farm's backdrop to paint watercolors. She also became something of a local star for her paintings of wooden oil derrick towers that hung in the lobbies of many Bakersfield oil companies.
The farm closed in 1971 when West High School was built. A smaller teaching farm operates east of Bakersfield near Mount Vernon Road. Today the eucalyptus trees that shaded the original farm still stand on Stine Road. The bridge across the canal to the farm leads into a gated community.