Santa Clara County's Last Fruit Orchard Faces Closure

A fruit orchard in Morgan Hill has become a housing site on paper before its trees are gone. At Andy's Orchard, the future of the land now sits beside the ordinary work of growing fruit: rows, seasons, and the slow arithmetic of deciding which crops are still worth carrying.

A Southern California real estate investment firm is seeking approval for 376 homes on the property, putting one of Santa Clara County's last fruit orchards in the path of suburban development. The proposed change would take away a working farm and one of the community's nearby sources of fresh fruit, according to NBC Bay Area's report.

A farm caught between seasons

Owner Andy Mariani has pointed to climate change and the loss of winter crops as reasons he is considering a sale. For an orchard, winter is not empty time. It is part of the production calendar, and when the cold-season work no longer fits the farm's conditions, the year's crop plan loses one of its older pieces.

That makes the possible closure more than a land-use dispute. The orchard is also a record of what can still be grown near Silicon Valley, where agricultural parcels have spent decades being asked to justify themselves against higher-value uses. A Morgan Hill Times account reported that the housing project was already undergoing study.

When an orchard becomes a development site

The farm's identity has traveled well beyond its fence line. A Boston Globe profile described Mariani as a Silicon Valley farmer stepping away from the shears, a neat phrase for a less tidy transition: agricultural knowledge and established trees do not relocate as easily as a business office.

For neighbors, the loss would be measured in fewer chances to buy fruit grown close to home. For local agriculture, it would remove a visible working orchard from a county where farmland competes with housing in a particularly expensive part of the state. The trees are not just scenery; they are the infrastructure of a small regional food supply.

The proposal is not yet the same thing as a bulldozer. The county's review will decide whether the property can make the jump from orchard to subdivision, while the farm's future remains tied to a decision that began with a crop calendar and ends, potentially, with a neighborhood map.