Smells Like Chino

There are just some things that you need to warn buyers about. Having myself relocated to the Inland Empire some years ago, there were some details that I discovered and feel duty bound to inform my out-of-area buyers about. One of these issues is ... the smell of areas that are transitioning from agriculture to suburbs.

When we first moved out here, I made a little joke to some friends that their neighborhood smelled "like Chino." You see, I've always been in the habit of setting my car's air conditioning to recycled air when passing through Chino, which smells like dairy farms. How was I to know that Chino and the surrounding areas would become incredibly desirable and expensive. Geez, if only I'd known then what I know now.

Even though we bought a home in an established neighborhood, there have been days when I walk out of the house and found that we smell "like Chino," too. The UCR campus often has that odor, depending on the wind and who is fertilizing.

North Corona, aka Eastvale, smells quite strongly of dairy farm. It doesn't matter that the farms are shutting down and moving out of the area--the manure will be in the dirt for many years to come. The upside, as I tell people, is that they will have gorgeous lawns and be able to grow most any vegetable or fruit suitable for our weather.

A couple of articles on how dairy farmers have been selling out to developers in Chino and Eastvale can be read at the following sites:
Chino Dairy Farms

LA Times article on Dairy Farms