Eden on the levee

This is the second in a series of occasional stories looking at the human and physical landscape from atop our levees.

It's an escape route for city dwellers.

In a serious flood, they could flee Marysville via the Hallwood Spur Levee toward higher ground.

And in a rash of urbanitis, some have relocated beyond the Hallwood Spur Levee to enjoy some peace and quiet.

Walking northeast along the spur is an aural progression away from traffic noise and toward sounds of cows lowing, roosters calling, goats bleating and songbirds singing.

"It's as close as you're gonna get to the country," says Frank Miller, manager of the Marysville Levee District.

That's what Victor Chernyetsky thought when he first looked over a former hog farm on Walnut Avenue that abuts the spur.

The Ukraine-born administrator of the Slavic Missionary Church in Sacramento helped purchase that 15-acre tract here in 1994 to create a summer and weekend getaway spot for the church's membership.

"It is kind of like a Russian dacha (rural vacation retreat)," he said. The property features a 60-year-old house, swimming pool, recently constructed pond, ball field and basketball court.

In this church's sanctuary between the Hallwood Spur Levee and the Yuba River, the Ukranian and Russian speakers have little contact with the outside world.

"There are not too many people here," Chernyetsky said of the retreat's surroundings, "kind of like in Ukraine."

Chivo

People may indeed be scarce. But animals are plentiful.

From the top of the levee, orchards and a handful of new resi-dential construction sites spread eastward.

To the west, the region's agricultural history — one chapter after another of it — layers the landscape into the shadow of Sutter Buttes.

But on the berm itself, about a dozen Nubian and pygmy goats graze along the edge of the crown and on the sloped sides, oblivious to the view.

"They mow. That's their only purpose," says Jeremiah Morrell, who gave up doing the job himself after his mower rolled over on him a third time.

"I said, 'Forget it. I'm gonna go buy goats,'" he says.

It wasn't a novel idea.

About a decade ago, the levee district considered buying its own goats to maintain the whole of this mile-plus stretch to Hallwood Road, Miller explains. "But then you gotta hire a caretaker."

In the end, government goats were deemed impractical.

A tall, red-haired Nubian, Chivo ('goat' in Spanish) leads Morrell's herd on its feeding expeditions around the property, which includes 350 feet of levee.

Chivo was acquired from a friend who was having trouble keeping the goat out of traffic. "He was raised with a dog and he thought he was a dog," says Morrell's wife, Jessie Morrell. "He started chasing cars, so they asked us to take him."

The couple and their four children tolerate the herd's preference for sleeping on the back porch of their mobile home, and occasionally making their way inside.

A new house they're building beside the mobile home will change all that, insists Jessie Morrell.

"No more goats on the porch," she says.

Roots in the spur

They moved to the spur eight years ago from Tierra Buena. Jeremiah Morrell, a Department of Water Resources employee, wanted to relocate into the foothills.

"I'll go as far as Hallwood," his wife had said.

One week later, they were ready to buy these several acres on Walnut Avenue, along with the swath of levee beside it.

Owning property along the spur is a convoluted matter, according to Miller, who oversees Marysville's levees, along with the Hallwood Spur.

"They own the levee, but they don't own it," he says of the 10 private tracts along the spur. "It's all iffy."

The district's easement rights permit full access to the crown for maintenance and safety inspections.

Each week, on his patrols, Miller confronts a series of locked gates that delineates one property owner's share of the spur from the next.

The 20-year veteran of levee system maintenance knows every inch of earth along this stretch. He spent part of his childhood in a house on what is now the Morrell's property and attended the tiny Cordua School, less than a mile north of the spur.

According to rules laid out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, keeping the levee clear of vegetation and rodent damage is his responsibility. And the locked gates aren't his only obstacle. Some of the plant species abundant in the area are protected under state regulations.

The levee district can be held liable by the Department of Fish and Game if a cottonwood or black walnut tree is harmed or removed, but held liable by the Corps of Engineers if those same trees interfere with the passage of an inspection truck.

"It's a pain in the neck," says Miller.

The Good Earth

About 30 feet below the peak of what the Morrells do or do not own, herds of beef cattle graze in low-lying fields between the levee and Highway 20.

On a recent weekday afternoon, residents next to the church property stood atop the levee and waited for the spectacle of a laboring cow to deliver her calf.

One big-league home run away from that mound, cars and trucks whizzed by on the highway, heading toward Marysville or toward foothill towns north of the spur.

Beyond that, dark soils of recently inundated rice paddies mark an outer boundary for Reclamation District 10.

Landowners once boasted that anything that can be grown in California could be grown in the narrow fertile swath that stretches from Jack Slough on the east to the Feather River on the west, and which widens northward to the Butte County line at Honcut Creek.

Out-of-towners referred to the district as "goose lands" for prized fowl and pheasant-hunting grounds that attracted vacationing movie stars and politicians from across the country.

In 1976, a book published by the Yuba County Historical Commission claimed "almost every nationality has been or is now represented in the population of District 10."

Chernyetsky says his fundamentalist Christian church membership — at 3,500, the largest Russian-language congregation outside of Europe — appreciates Yuba County's farming history, part of which they have inherited.

Among a series of new pro-jects on their property is a recently built greenhouse.

"Most of our people come from small villages and they are used to farming," Chernyetsky says. "So it is kind of in our blood."

At the Morrell's place, two properties south, the couple discuss how they might rid themselves of a pungent-smelling billy — the latest donation to their goat herd. Surely, someone somewhere in the area needs to breed some female goats, Jeremiah Morrell says.

Nearby, one of the family's three formerly stray cats waits to enter the mobile home.

"This is the only bad thing about living in the country," says Jessie Morrell. "Everything shows up and wants to move in."

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com