Arts & Culture

Edward Ortega of Ortega Berry Farms was recently selected by the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau as the 2019 Farmer of the Year.

In the decade between 2013-23, volunteers and nonprofits picked up 439,358 cigarette butts from Santa Cruz County’s beaches and natural areas, accounting for a quarter of all litter found here. That’s according to Save Our Shores (SOS), a Santa Cruz-based nonprofit that works to support...

Strawberry season in the Pajaro Valley is in full swing, and experts are reporting that demand has steadily increased despite a difficult kickoff. As the Covid-19 pandemic hit the California region in mid-March, strawberry producers initially saw a spike in sales. But it was soon...

While our travels have taken us to far away spots like Finland, Mexico City,  China and Quebec, the road trips my wife Sarah and I have taken over the last several years have also proven to be tremendously fulfilling and loaded with surprises.  In April...

TEAM WORK A chef and other staff at the long-standing Loma Linda Restaurant in Watsonville help Watsonville firefighters tackle a major fire that tore through the restaurant on  Nov. 17, 1956.  (Sam Vestal/Pajaronian file).

A trip to Las Vegas typically calls for a long walk along the Las Vegas Strip for great entertainment and, in my case, delicious food. This past weekend my fiancée, Luisa, and I made the seven-hour trek to Sin City in search of some...

SACRAMENTO—A bill that would increase protections for California’s farmworkers during hazardous smoky conditions created by seasonal wildfires is making its way through the state legislature. Assembly Bill 73, also known as the Farmworker Wildfire Smoke Protections Act, recently passed the Assembly Committee on Labor and...

On Saturday morning, 48-year-old Gerardo Gutierrez was one of about a dozen men sitting in the day room at Salvation Army’s Watsonville location, quietly watching an old Vicente Fernández film playing silently on a television mounted to the ceiling. The men—most of them homeless—had stayed...

Watsonville Police search for two men who jumped out of this Honda sedan late Friday on the Pajaro River levee. The incident began at 9:15pm on Locust Street when police tried to pull over the car with two men aboard. The driver failed to...

Several community leaders and community members gathered at MacQuiddy Elementary School Tuesday evening to call on Driscoll’s, Reiter and other companies to stop using toxic pesticides around schools. “Choosing to farm organically is a decision based on hope and a deep understanding of our interdependence...