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few jobs, and low pay, unless you're into the Medical field or law.. then you're stuck with fast food, as the vacation market is down, due to the crash of 2008.. You do have the great weather, ( if you like it hot) the winters are mild and there is lots of sun, but then you have the I-5 corridor situation.. lots of homeless stuck here from trying to hitch-hike further south ( or do they just like it here?) and along with that issue, you have a big meth problem here ( lots of out the way places to make meth labs) , therefore lots of low life crime, stealing, etc..and loads of begging everywhere you go.. other than that, it's ok, no major traffic problems..and nice places to camp, visit, relax at, ( lakes ) and enjoy the nice climate..
I hear growing weed or cooking meth are the largest regional employers. Mean while when ever I go up to those northern California towns (we're talking the far northern part of the state) it seems like everyone is on some sort of government benefits program; state disability (often due to alcohol), welfare, or retired on social security. There just aren't that many ways to make an honest living without sucking up government cheese.
There is a lot of water up that way though and land is fairly cheap (compared to the rest of the state) so maybe an aqua farm might work up there though honestly the cost of transporting the fish to market might make it uncompetitive especially since there are already a lot of aquaculture farms a lot closer to the big cities. A vegetable farm? Not likely since there isn't a lot of flat land and you'd once again have the longer transport costs compared to the competition. Dairy cattle? Not with milk and dairy product prices for producers at record lows and heading lower. You're down to logging or gold mining which are heavily regulated in this state (and for good reason due to past abuse) so once again not likely to be viable for a small business. That just leaves something tourism related and the city isn't exactly a tourism hotspot.
Maybe a high value added aqua farm product like caviar could work and justify the high transport costs but that requires relatively high water temperatures to get the best fish grow out rates (68-70 degrees F) and something tells me warm water like that would be hard to find up there. Heating it would be economically prohibitive so that just leaves cold water fresh water species like trout and there is no money in trout especially as the Chinese are dumping farmed trout for pennies a pound.
Timber and logging were not really abused in Northern California. The logging industry looked at timber as farming just like a corn farmer does. They planted it, and waited for the crop to be ready to harvest.
Problem: The city based environmentalists wanted only to see green trees on the slope. They did not want to see forests harvested when they had matured.
Example: They raised so much fuss, that the Redwood National Forest was created, claiming they were ancient forests thousands of years old. If that was true, why was the first thing the park service have to do was take out all the logging roads and plant something on those roads. I don't think that Fred Flintstone was using logging trucks to log back then. No it was logged early in the 20th Century, and after about 80 years and time to re-harvest the forest they got logging stopped.
They sat in the Headwater forest trees, and caused the logging company that owned the land to finally just sell it off to the government. Again calling an ancient forest. When I was a kid, we had all that forest under a lease to run cattle on. Part of it was logged as I grew up, and some had been cut when I was a baby. In fact my family rented an area of our ranch for them to have a logging camp and office when it was logged off. I rode horses all over that forest when it was filled with new tree starting to grow and little trees. When it was time to harvest again, they simply took means to force the land to be sold to the government and never harvested again.
The land was not abused any more than a corn farmer abuses his land. They took care of it, and let their crops grow, just like corn crops are grown then harvested.
Logging companies did not abuse the land, and forests. They took care of it just as any other farmer takes care of their land and crops.
It was a lot of hogwash, that they were abusing the land. What happened, and why those areas are so dependent on welfare, etc., is that the majority of the people in the state live in the city, and some of those got everyone riled up to the point they destroyed an entire industry, which was the only well paying industry available. Thousands of people were put out of work, and no one took the effort to replace those jobs. Years ago the North West area of California had a healthy, and vibrant economy, that was taken away from them to please outsiders.
What we did was send those jobs to Canada, where they are cutting and supplying the lumber needed for this country to build houses, etc. Don't complain about Northern California not having employment opportunities, and poverty. The big populated parts of California stole their jobs, and shipped them out of the country.
WRT lumber, the big people who lobbied for stricter rules against clear cutting were NOT city people but instead were farmers who got upset when flooding damaged their crop land, silt filled up their irrigation canals, and silt reduced the holding capacity of the reservoirs they use for irrigation water. The salmon fisherman also got mad when salmon fry all died due to excessive turbidity. Sure, once the lobbyists for the farmers and fisherman bought the politicians the city folk responded to slick ads and hopped on board but you have to follow the money to figure out who is buying the politicians and thus getting the special legislation they want.
There are ways to log which don't cause such excessive run off of top soil but it means clear cutting must be out and instead selective harvesting must be used (as is done in Germany, Japan, and South Korea) but, no, it's not as profitable or as easy so a lot of companies just went to other countries which had no regulations or requirements that clear cut areas be replanted.
BTW does anyone know if there are any thermal hot springs up in that area? Something around 70 degrees F would do perfect provided water quality was good and the temperature was stable year in year out. Alternatively something warmer might work though then a perspective caviar aqua farm would need to blend the warmer water with colder water to get the ideal temperature and maintaining the ideal temperature would be a lot harder. What I'm looking for is a plot of land with a moderate volume production spring right around 70 degrees.
The problem is I don't even know where to find a map of hot spring locations in the state so I can start identifying perspective areas.
WRT lumber, the big people who lobbied for stricter rules against clear cutting were NOT city people but instead were farmers who got upset when flooding damaged their crop land, silt filled up their irrigation canals, and silt reduced the holding capacity of the reservoirs they use for irrigation water.
In the big timber areas of the state, there are no irrigation canals and reservoirs. It is not farm country, but timber country. Salmon and trout fishing, was much better when back when the big logging was going on. I know, as I did a lot of fishing back then.
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There are ways to log which don't cause such excessive run off of top soil but it means clear cutting must be out and instead selective harvesting must be used (as is done in Germany, Japan, and South Korea) but, no, it's not as profitable or as easy so a lot of companies just went to other countries which had no regulations or requirements that clear cut areas be replanted.
Cutting a tree here and there, is not practical in the big timber logging area. It also, makes it difficult to replant the forest, after cutting. By clear cutting the trees that are suitable for harvest, you are getting ready for the next planting and harvest. If you are growing corn, you don't just cut part of the crop, and if you are actually farming trees as they did in the past, you cut your crop, and replant for the next harvest just as you do if you are farming corn.
A lot of what you are talking about, is what the environmentalist nuts from the city preached. They took an industry that had for 100 years kept a steady supply of timber starting to grow, growing, and when the harvest was ready to harvest, they harvested it.
The out of area said that clear cutting was ugly, and we needed to keep those big trees so that the city people had a place to run away to, and see the trees. It was not enough for them to see forests that were going through the different phases of tree farming, they wanted no trees cut and only big trees to look at.
They do not realize, that trees after a certain age just go into a slow death phase. When the beetles started killing the pines, and some other trees, the loggers and the forest people wanted to go in and take out the dead trees and convert them to lumber. This could have kept a lot of the beetle kill to a minimum. But NO, the environmentalists said no. And using court suits to keep them from logging till the trees could no longer be harvested. We have just seen some terrible fires this year, burning hundreds of thousands of acres and hundreds of homes, and the experts now tell us this is because of all the dead beetle killed trees that made the whole forest tinder boxes. The environmentalists say this is O.K. as fires are natural in forests. There are going to be thousands of more acres and homes burned, as there is a lot more beetle kill areas in the west. Fires that they used to be able to control, that now go on and on completely uncontrolled, burning trees, homes, and killing people needlessly.
BTW does anyone know if there are any thermal hot springs up in that area? Something around 70 degrees F would do perfect provided water quality was good and the temperature was stable year in year out. Alternatively something warmer might work though then a perspective caviar aqua farm would need to blend the warmer water with colder water to get the ideal temperature and maintaining the ideal temperature would be a lot harder. What I'm looking for is a plot of land with a moderate volume production spring right around 70 degrees.
The problem is I don't even know where to find a map of hot spring locations in the state so I can start identifying perspective areas.
There are also some scattered springs north of Redding in Dunsmuir and the city of Shasta...
I would try this forum... SoakersForum • View forum - California do a search under "Redding" to get an idea of locations.
Dalek, thank you, I'll check out that forum as it seems a treasure trove of information.
Since 2007 when an international ban went into place on wild Caspian sea caviar due to sturgeon being literally almost fished to extinction (populations down 99.7%) there has been a boom in farm raised caviar with California being the lead producer (South Korea, Spain, and Israel are the only other competitors at this time). Nearly all of California's production has so far been centered on the area in and around Sacramento due to the ground water there being a rock steady 68 degrees but that area is now mostly built out for this industry as the various counties don't want too many more places opening up which extract lots of ground water because ground water levels are going down. The places in Israel, Spain, and South Korea (and they each only have 1-2 companies in the business) rely upon warm water natural springs instead of pumping ground water and it looks like such a model would work in California IF I could find a plot for sale which had the right kind of spring and the right geography.
It's this very narrow temperature demand and a requirement for just about flawlessly pure water (the slightest bit of the wrong stuff in the water and the caviar will have it's value slashed at market) which has kept the Asians and Latin Americans out of this business despite the fact that they dominate most other forms of aqua culture. That means if an American finds the spot which is just right, can put together a business plan, and attract investors then you can end up in a high margin business with very limited competition.
I have lived all over CA. from the Imperial Valley, San Diego county, Napa/Santa Rosa, Chico and Redding...
Redding is one of the worse places on earth...bad energy, white trash people, hotter then hell, dry, and just not a nice place. I was told by a Real Estate Agent that they stay busy from people moving there and then leaving within a year or two.
The only good things are shasta Lake and whiskeytown Lake if you like being on the water in 105 degrees weather...ruins the whole thing.... bad, bad place!!
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Redding CA.
