I keep expecting rain, but here on the desert floor it rains less than three inches a year. The air at Kuhn Farms this February morning is agitated, nervous, dry, as if stirred by an invisible hand. Jim Kuhn, third-generation hay farmer and president of Kuhn Farms, doesn't seem to notice. Built like a linebacker, concentrated and intense, he wears short sleeves all day and I don't see him shiver once. He's showing me around his fields, where tractors troll back and forth, cutting some of the first hay of the year.
Large mowers consume wavy green alfalfa, strewing it behind like a rug.
Other tractors drag wicked-looking circular rakes, gathering the fresh hay into orderly lanes. Kuhn Farms, one of the largest hay operations in the Imperial Valley, harvests 14,000 acres, which is just about as far as the eye can see. There's more than hay growing here. Kuhn, '86, points out sugar beets, bell peppers and cotton. Drive a couple miles east, he says, and you'll hit Holtville, Carrot Capital of the World.