Bob Cuddy: Ag ally still toils for soil — even after retirement

You may not know Ella Honeycutt’s name, but every time you drive by a working farm in the South County you should give her a mental salute. She has been helping agricultural lands and farmers for 30 years.

Honeycutt just retired from her post with the Natural Resources Conservation Council. But don’t expect her to climb into a rocking chair. She still has work to do.

Nevertheless, 30 years is quite a benchmark, and county supervisors have honored Honeycutt for her work.

“In the South County, she’s considered to be the best steward of farmland and the great protector of earth erosion control,” Supervisor Katcho Achadjian said. “Pismo Lake in the 1980s was almost destroyed” until Honeycutt started working to bring it back, a task now close to complete.

Honeycutt grew up in Colorado, where her father and grandfather farmed. She came to California at age 13, graduated from high school in Colton and attended San Bernardino Valley College.

When she moved to San Luis Obispo County, Honeycutt hooked up with the soil conservation service, learning a great deal from the late Clark Moore. In the early days, she said, she worked more with family farmers, who came for advice.

“The one person who is forgotten is the farmer who wants to stay in farming,” Honeycutt said.

Later, her reach broadened.

She met Shirley Bianchi, who is now a retired county supervisor but at the time was beginning her political career.

“Those were really wild and heady days,” Bianchi recalled last week. She said prominent developers were “putting out the word that ‘agriculture is dead in San Luis Obispo County.’ ”

Bianchi said Honeycutt “attended meeting after meeting in an effort to protect the prime ag land in South County and elsewhere.

“Ella is the one who used to say, ‘If it is bad being dependent on foreign oil, think how bad it will be to be dependent on foreign soil.’ ”

And she used her own technique: “forceful, but gentle and constant pressure,” said Neil Havlik, natural resources manager for the city of San Luis Obispo.

Honeycutt was a key player in protecting South County farmers and residents from the ravages of Arroyo Grande Creek, which used to fill regularly with silt and is now safe because of her lobbying.

Honeycutt also was an educator. “ She was … instrumental in bringing to the attention and then educating people on the need for the protection of ag land” from the consumer and environmental points of view, Bianchi said.

Honeycutt, who has written several local histories, is working to finish saving Pismo Lake, a small body of water that few people know exists in Pismo Beach.

It is visited by 260 kinds of birds, including blue herons, cormorants and egrets. Honeycutt hopes to see an observation plat-form and trails there one day.

Honeycutt looks back on her years as an advocate with satisfaction, all the more so because she and her husband have passed on their community-oriented values to their four adult children.

It’s been fun and rewarding, she said. “How many people can sit back and say, ‘I helped save it’?”

Reach Bob Cuddy at 781-7909.