Well, I guess if we're going to tell our story we should start at the beginning. Joseph Peixoto immigrated from the Azores in the late 1800’s and started farming in the Pajaro Valley. His youngest son, Francis, was born and raised in Watsonville, California and spent his whole life around agriculture. In 1948 Francis married a local girl, Sadie Howes and they proceeded to raise a family. That family consisted of 7 children... 5 boys and 2 girls. Their 6th child, Richard (Dick) was the one that seemed to inherit Francis' love of farming. As a young boy while the other kids became interested in sports and other activities, Dick always wanted to know more about what made those crops grow all over the valley and who was growing them. Francis at this time worked for a local fertilizer company and Dick spent as much time as he could tagging along behind his dad to learn as much as he could about farming.
By the time Dick was in eighth grade he tried his first farming venture. His older brother Jim, who also enjoyed farming, had grown some tomatoes on the family ranch out on Green Valley Road. When Jim, thought that the tomatoes were no longer viable, Dick said he would like to take over and see if he could harvest some. He proceeded to hire a few neighborhood children to pick and pack the tomatoes so that he could market them. Well that was the beginning of a career that would span the next 35 years.
His senior year of high school Dick started getting more serious about the farming business and with the guidance of his Ag teachers at Watsonville High he started his own business the Dick Peixoto Company. With his mother Sadie doing his bookkeeping for him he grew a variety of crops over the next several years including tomatoes, pickling cucumbers for Del Monte, green beans and strawberries. In 1976 he partnered with his brother Jim in growing string beans. They each went their separate ways at the end of that year and Jim started his own farming business growing mostly specialty vegetables.
Dick went on to try his hand at several different crops but settled on lettuce and expanded into other agricultural areas as well. In 1984 he and his brother Bob started Pajaro Valley Laser Leveling, doing ground work and leveling for local farmers. In 1985 Dick opened Pajaro Valley Irrigation which is managed by his brother Gary. By 1989 his companies had become too large and involved for Sadie to continue doing the bookkeeping alone, so he asked his sister, Joanne Lynch, to come to work and help mom run the office.
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