People

Mike Singh Sandhu, Gentleman Farmer: California's New Landed Gentry

by JENNIFER WADSWORTH

 

Mike Singh Sandhu's nearly finished house is more than just a home to him.

It's a $10 million monument to his late father, who died last year, having never realized his vision to build a place where his entire family could spend the holidays, each with their own room and plenty to spare.

More than 34,500 square feet of marble mansion - the largest in Northern California - it's an elaborate tribute to one immigrant Sikh family's American dream.

It's a place to marry, celebrate anniversaries, host funerals and feast together for the holidays, Mike said from one of a few marble-pillared balconies overlooking some 15,000 acres of family orchard.

"It's what my father always wanted," said Mike, a 42-year-old Sikh, a father of three and - with two of his six siblings - one-third of Sandhu Bros. Farm. "We had the biggest house in (one county) in India, and he wanted the biggest house here. He wanted us to all be together."

The dream took more than two decades to materialize.

Construction on the 19-bathroom, 15-bedroom home just off Durham Ferry Road southeast of Tracy (California, U.S.A.) started just months after Mike's  father, Sardar Ramjit Singh Sandhu, died about a year ago at the age of 74 from stroke-related ailments. Two strokes just months apart robbed the elder Ramjit Singh of his memory and trapped his once-energetic self inside a paralyzed body.

In the six months before his death, the man never spoke and seemed to have lost all recognition of his family.

"I would have given a million dollars to have heard him speak to me," Mike said.

The only glimmers of life came when Mike's grandson or older brother would inspire tears or a quiet laugh from the sickly patriarch.

"Those were the only two he reacted to in the end," Mike said, tears welling up in his own eyes. "Other than that, nothing."

A devout Sikh, Mike honors the memory of his father with his inherited work ethic, charity to local needy families and a belief that what God created, he had a right to take away.

Though he's now one of the richest men in town - his temporary home off Larch Road has 16 bedrooms - Mike is no stranger to hardship and hard work.

Old World roots

His family began farming 500 years ago in Punjab, an agriculture-rich state in northern India. Generations of farmers acquired land that passed from father to son through both famine and plenty.

As one of several brothers, Ramjit inherited a few hundred-acre shares of land to grow vegetables, as his ancestors had before him. When Mike turned eight, he, too asked for a slice of land. His father proffered a few acres.

"I wanted to do what my father did," he said this week from his Tracy mansion, a few months shy of completion. "So my father gave me a little bit of land and let his workers work for me, to do what I said."

The young farmer planted carrots, which failed to turn a profit, but succeeded in teaching him a valuable business lesson.

When he was nine, he wised up, deciding to plant a more diverse vegetarian crop, nix carrots from the mix and sell what he grew at a local market.

A few years later, he actually made some money.

"Farming became a way of life for me, even that young," he said. "I'd come home from school, have some tea, and then go out to my land."

He continued his trade until he was 17, at which point he had acquired 13 acres from his accommodating father.

That was in 1984, the year his dad took Mike and one other brother to the U.S. to start a new life for his family.

An American story

Though the soil and the weather here are similar to those in Punjab, practical differences in American agriculture forced the three Sandhus to start from the ground up.

Row crops like eggplant and peppers, a profitable business in India, require much more overhead here. So the family learned instead how to manage orchards by working as farm laborers in Yuba City.

They had enough money to hire employees to do all the work for them, but the three men wanted to learn from practice.

"If you hire people to do things and you don't know how to do them yourself, they don't respect you," Mike said. "That's not what I wanted. It's not what we wanted."

Gradually, as Mike's father became more invested in his new life in America, he began to sell his land in Punjab and snatch up California acreage.

Even after the family acquired California land, Mike and his brothers continued to work as manual laborers.

Mike took a job at a sprinkler and irrigation company in Hayward, where he learned more about how to water crops, landscape and manage a big business. Using that knowledge as a foundation, he started his own irrigation company and added to his landholdings in Tracy and Texas.

In 1996, a dozen generations of family history reincarnated into the Tracy-based Sandhu Bros. Farm.

Laying a firm economic foundation in the States freed up the family to resume their charitable giving - a pillar of their Sikh faith.

In Punjab, Ramjit used to give money to families who otherwise were unable to afford marrying off their daughters - an Indian tradition that requires the bride's parents to pay for the ceremony and dowry.

In the U.S., Mike read about a Punjabi farmer who committed suicide with his wife - by dousing his clothes in gasoline and lighting himself on fire - when business tanked, leaving behind three children. So Mike, having never met them but moved by the account, offered to pay for school until the three orphans got married.

In and around Tracy, Modesto, Stockton and some Bay Area cities, thousands of needy families and homeless folks know the Sandhus for their annual winter charity giveaway, when the family spends upward of $50,000 to buy new coats, gloves and hats for anyone who shows up to get them.

"What they do is amazing," said Dottie Smith, director of the Larch-Clover Community Center, where more than 1,200 people picked up their winter wear from the Sandhus last Saturday. "All I know is that hundreds of children will be a little bit warmer this winter."

Mike said charity, family and faith are his highest priorities.

"The biggest room in my house is my prayer room," he said, referring to a 1,500-square-foot temple-like space. "We pray here every day, twice a day, me and my family."

 

[Courtesy: Tracy Press]

December 25, 2008

 

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