Wednesday December 10, 2025
Maven’s Notebook —
In 1962, when Mary Hildebrand was 10 years old, her family moved to their farm between the communities of Vernalis and Mossdale in the southern tip of California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The 140-acre farm sits on the banks of the San Joaquin River, which squiggles north through the flat expanse of the South Delta toward its confluence with the Sacramento River.
Together, these two mighty rivers funnel much of the state’s rainfall and snowmelt into the Delta that bears their names. The Delta ecosystem—including salmon and other imperiled species—as well as two-thirds of Californians and millions of acres of farmland depend on this increasingly contentious flow of freshwater.