Laguna Beach of Early Days by Joseph S. Thurston Our Neighbors and Our Market
Page 11-12
OUR NEIGHBORS
"While I was too young to know much about how the living was made for the first two years, I do know that we were all the end of that time; that we had another cow, a flock of chickens and a few ducks. I was old enough, however, to feel the isolation of the place. One morning I asked my oldest sister, Sadie, how long she thought we would stay in this place. She looked up to the hills and said, "Oh, about forty years." This was not very consoling and I said no more. There was no one living along the coast from Newport Beach to San Juan Valley, a distance of about twenty miles, and three miles up this valley was located the old mission known as "San Juan Capistrano Mission." The man who owned the 22,000 acre ranch before mentioned lived eight miles to the north-east up Aliso Canyon, by the road we had to travel in going either to Los Angeles or San Diego. There was a family living near Capistrano, whose name was Rosenbaum and whom father met owing to the fact that the road passed their house, but none of the rest of us knew them until years later. This was about eight miles through the hills but about twice that distance by way of the road, so our neighbors were not important to us."

OUR MARKET
"It is impossible for me to imagine how father could have had anything of importance to take to the market in less than two years. Los Angeles and San Diego were the only places that he considered as real markets. The town of Santa Ana was only two years old when we arrived, the business section consisting of one store where everything was sold from pins to plows and from groceries to postage stamps. It was twenty-five miles distant. Anaheim was a little farther and a little older town, but both places were supported by their own local people. It was a number of years before father would stop at either of these places to trade for they had to depend on hauling their supplies from Los Angeles, and had to charge for this service.
It was so far to market that it was not profitable to haul anything except such things as butter, eggs and honey, so our efforts were bent toward producing these items; but this leaves the first two years blank, for I never learned what he had to sell during that time. There were some wild bees in the country. Father and George collected a few colonies of these out of the rocks or from the trees, wherever they were found, and we soon had some honey to sell. I presume this was the first product we had to market. As butter was a vital source of income we children were not allowed to have milk as a regular food. The folly of this is very apparent, but at least we were permitted to have a certain amount of butter. Hulda, the first child born on the homestead, was a little puny and was therefore permitted to' have a glass of warm milk every evening. One night we all went out to watch George milk the cow, and when she saw where it came from she refused to drink any milk for several days. We did not know the value of buttermilk as a food, but anyway it was needed for the pigs and chickens.
Father made a practice of going to market once every month. If he went to San Diego it meant seven days out of the month, and if he went to Los Angeles it took five days. At such times he would bring a newspaper, and we would learn what was going on in the outside world. In travelling along the road in those days, there were people who were always glad to have company, and I do not believe he ever paid anything for his keep. As he only had the farm wagon, he could take hay for the horses but not enough to last for the trip. If the weather was bad he had to make the most of it, and sometimes he would get caught in the rain, but one of the worst things was in travelling after the rain when the ground got sticky and would ball up on the wheels. Then he would have to stop and cut it off with a hatchet. I was too small to be of any importance at the time, and most of this information was gathered from listening. However, with all the difficulties I noticed that he nearly always got back on time."