Toolin’ Around Town: Swapping cows for machines

Petaluma’s Larry Silacci switched careers, and never looked back|

As youngsters we harbor dreams or make plans about what we’d like to be when we grow up. Some of us plan our future, while others don’t have a clue. For Larry Silacci - a descendant of pioneer dairymen - a life on the family ranch growing crops, milking cows and preserving open spaces seemed a certainty. But when other opportunities came into view, Silacci shifted gears, leaving the bales of hay and milking machines behind for a career working with heavy earth-moving equipment.

The decision wasn’t easy for the award-winning agricultural student who’d spent his youth in farming. Of the many life-changing moments he experienced as a young man, none compared to joining the Army and serving two terms in Vietnam. It was there he developed an affinity for operating large machinery, and honed his wide range of skills.

The Silacci dairy, a mainstay in the Lakeville area for more than 100 years, was begun by Quinto and Velaria Dado Silacci, who raised their six children, Truman, Paul, Alma, Esther, Walter and Lloyd on the scenic property.

In 1945, Paul and Walter Silacci began milking their 110-cow herd on a nearby 700-acre ranch bought from the Dado family. They constructed a parlor barn - just the second barn of its type west of the Mississippi - and were one of the first dairies to purchase bulk feed from Hunt & Behrens. When the brothers needed to build new fences, they bought the old Lakeville Telephone Company and sawed the telephone poles into fence posts.

The oldest of Walter and Loretta Silacci’s three children, Larry was born in 1946. As a child he was often told to “stay out of the way.” But that had changed by the time he was nine, when he began feeding cows and washing out barns. In 1961, as the ranch increased to about 200 dairy cows, Silacci joined the Future Farmers of America at Kenilworth Junior High and started buying registered Holstein heifers, which he’d show, but not sell, at the Sonoma-Marin and Sonoma County fairs.

He was an accomplished guitar player, and with cousins Ronnie, an accordion prodigy, and Don, on guitar, formed a popular trio, The Sheperds. The music group entertained at area events, including the variety shows that used to precede the fireworks displays at the Fairgrounds.

His accomplishments in dairy, crop farming and soil and water management led to FFA achievement awards. Silacci attained Chapter Farmer status for his senior year FFA project at Petaluma High (Class of ’64), which included eight registered Holsteins, one veal calf, 23 acres of oats and soil conservation. He was a member of the chapter dairy judging and Farm Mechanics teams. In 1965, he reached the State Farmer level.

With that much vocational preparation and schooling, it looked like Silacci’s life as a rancher was predestined. But once he joined the Army in 1965 and was sent to heavy equipment school and to parachute jump school - which paid an additional $55 a month - things changed.

“I had always planned to go back to the family ranch,” said Silacci. “It took a lot of work, but it was a good life and the only life I knew.”

Discharged from the service, he ran a small hay business and married Christy Raven. They moved to his father-in-law’s Bloomfield ranch and began raising a family, while Larry worked in agricultural construction, building reservoirs and effluent ponds. He then became a mechanic for Dolan Trucking, while still working at the ranch.

In 1991, he began working for Redwood Ag Management, before purchasing its equipment in 2004 to start his own business, Larry Silacci Grading & Excavating, a company that specializes in road grading, creek restoration, repairing dams and barn pads.

“Lately we’ve been building lots of horse arenas,” Silacci explained. “It’s very gratifying work and I feel I’m doing the right thing for the planet.”

Larry and Christy Silacci raised two sons, Doug and Lucas, and share Bloomfield Ranch with Christy’s sister and brother-in-law, Gene and Trina Corda, and other family members.

In honor of his uncle, Lloyd Silacci, who became a tool design engineer and aerospace machinist after owning a Petaluma automotive speed shop, and was regarded as Petaluma’s most accomplished all-around motor sports enthusiast for racing roadsters, hardtops, dragsters, and off-road vehicles, Larry Silacci has a framed blown head gasket hanging on his wall. A souvenir of his uncle’s failed attempt to set a land speed record at Bonneville Salt Flats.

When asked what he would have done differently with his life if he had it to do over, Silacci broke into a wide smile.

“Not a damn thing,” he said.

(Harlan Osborne’s ‘Toolin’ Around Town’ column runs every other week. You can reach him at harlan@sonic.net)

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