TULARE, Calif. – Tricia Stever Blattler still remembers the call she received on a Sunday in September of 2020 from Tulare County Animal Services.
She was the executive director of the Tulare County Farm Bureau, and the county employee was asking for her help managing large animals as thousands of residents evacuated from their homes during the SQF Complex Fire.
“‘We're starting to see mass evacuation concerns in places where people have pockets of a lot of small livestock,’” Stever Blattler remembers the county employee saying – including alpacas, llamas, donkeys, goats, sheep, horses and cattle – and the county was setting up a shelter for large animals at a fairground in Woodlake.
“And so I deployed on a Sunday afternoon to the rodeo grounds and ended up having about a 22-day stint of running the evacuation operation alongside county animal services,” she said.
In the end, although the fire burned through 174,000 acres of land, destroyed more than 230 structures and is estimated to have demolished around 10% of the world’s population of giant sequoia trees, all Tulare County residents – and their animals – escaped alive.
This would be just one of many emergencies Stever Blattler would respond to in her tenure at the county farm bureau. She retired from the agency on June 30, after 19 years at the helm.
Farmers, coworkers, lawmakers and community members said she leaves behind a legacy of mentorship, compassion, collaboration and clear-headedness under pressure, at an agency that advocates for agriculture in one of the top ag-producing counties in the country.
“She has been a tireless champion for farmers, ranchers, and the entire agricultural community, as well as a strong and steady voice for the farm bureau itself,” said Zack Stuller, a row crop grower and outgoing farm bureau board president, during a speech at a recent farm bureau banquet.
Larry Peltzer, a fourth-generation citrus grower and past farm bureau president, said he was immediately impressed when he met Stever Blatter around 2007.
“We couldn't believe that we had somebody with that exceptional talent come to little Tulare County Farm Bureau,” he said in a video in Stever Blattler’s honor.
‘A really strong advocate’ for ag
Since announcing her retirement earlier this year, Stever Blattler has been formally recognized in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressman David Valadao, who called out her “outstanding service and lasting contributions to the Central Valley,” and in the state legislature by a handful of local assemblymembers and state senators.
In May, the county farm bureau honored Stever Blattler at its annual awards ceremony and banquet.
Around 350 people gathered for the event at the International Agri-Center in Tulare, where tables were adorned with cowboy boot-shaped vases and guests were served locally produced wine, ice cream, almonds and candied walnuts.
“Being your executive director the last two decades truly has been the biggest honor of my lifetime,” she said to the rapt crowd. “It's hard to even believe this moment has arrived, but it's like closing the most meaningful chapter of a story that I have written alongside of you, and that has shaped who I am.”
Shannon Douglass, President of the California Farm Bureau, told KVPR that Stever Blattler stands out in a county that’s already a standout.
“I think the role of running the Tulare County Farm Bureau is really an important one, because it is one of our most productive counties in the entire country,” she said of the county that produces more milk than any other county in the nation and reported more than $8 billion in agricultural sales in 2024.
Douglass explained that one of Stever Blattler’s main responsibilities has been to represent agricultural interests in county-level decisions – not just budgeting, but also permitting, zoning, pesticide application rules and and other land-use decisions.
“She has been really a strong advocate for them for a very long time,” Douglass said.
Where Stever Blattler also stands out, Douglass said, is in her support of agricultural education.
Not only do county schools offer 4-H and FFA programs, Douglass also praised the farm bureau’s Youth Leadership Program, which sends high school juniors on field trips to Sacramento and college campuses to learn policy issues and leadership skills.
“Tulare's Youth Leadership Program is pretty unique,” Douglass said. “Not a ton of our counties do put that much time into a Youth Leadership Development program like that…and I know that it's been an absolute passion project for Tricia.”
“She’s kept those programs growing and growing,” echoed Teri Bontrager, Executive Director of the Santa Barbara County Farm Bureau. “She does a magnificent job.”
Stever Blatter, who grew up in Exeter and participated in 4-H and FFA herself as a child, then earned ag-related scholarships to attend California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, said returning to her home county in a position of leadership was a full circle moment for her.
“Coming home to this opportunity was everything about giving back, returning the investment, paying it forward, putting local talent back into the community that grew that talent,” she told KVPR in an interview. “That was really important to me, and that's important to me as I watch young leaders coming up from our high school program now start moving into careers.”
Tulare County hit with multiple disasters
The 2020 SQF Complex Fire, it turns out, was a warm-up for later disasters.
The livestock-transporting protocols and contacts that Stever Blattler developed during that crisis were also used in early 2023, when snowmelt rushing hurling out of the Sierra Nevada flooded parts of Tulare and Kings counties.
And again in 2024, when dairy farms across California were forced to triage sick and dying cows during an unprecedented avian influenza outbreak.
It was late one night in March 2023 when the swollen Tule River breached a levee and began flooding tens of thousands of acres of farmland that made up the historic Tulare Lake bed.
Anja Raudabaugh, CEO of the trade group Western United Dairies, remembers that, in the days after the breach, she and Stever Blattler jumped into action to relocate at least half a dozen dairy farms in the path of the rapidly rising water.
“We were literally calling dairies up and down the state, begging them to take animals…we initially moved about 40,000 animals in 24 hours,” Raudabaugh said.
At the time, dairy farmers in the path of the flood told KVPR that kind-hearted strangers were showing up in the middle of the night with trailers to move their cattle and calves to safety.
“If we did not move the dairies, they were going to not only be flooded, but their calves would have been stuck in their stalls,” Raudabaugh said. “I mean, it would have been bad.”
Plus, Raudabaugh said, Stever Blattler’s direct connections to permitting and land-use agencies came in big, because they had to request permits to be relaxed in order for dairies to increase their capacity by taking on displaced cattle.
“It's a model that helped us tremendously when we got hit with the flood in 2023,” Raudabaugh said. “It was something for the record books.”
Then, in late summer 2024, avian influenza, which had been ravaging poultry flocks for years, was detected for the first time in California – in a dairy herd in Tulare County.
In the following months, hundreds of the state’s dairies would go into quarantine, thousands of cattle would become sick or die, and state regulators would rush to avoid spreading the virus to humans by distributing personal protective equipment (PPE) and conducting outreach among dairy industry employees.
“Tricia was on hand to make sure dairies were not only getting the PPE to the workers, but she also made sure she was coordinating with the local public health department” on matters related to quarantine and outreach to creameries and dairy producers, Raudabaugh said.
Raudabaugh also said Stever Blattler helped dairy farmers apply for crop insurance and obtain emergency funding to help treat sick cattle and make up for lost profits.
“Tricisha was an integral link, because Tulare County was kind of ground zero for that entire outbreak across the state,” Raudabaugh said.
“That is something I am very proud of, because it really wasn't maybe in my original job description that I would become part of these catastrophic response teams, but it has made a lot of sense,” Stever Blattler said. “And it has provided me a lot of rapport and credibility to work with our emergency partners and first responders on some of these bigger crises that we've faced in recent years.”
A tragic end, and a new beginning
Earlier in 2024, Stever Blattler suffered her own disaster: on April 28, her husband, Robert Blattler, died by suicide.
The precipitating event, she said, was a change in the medications he had long been using to control chronic conditions like hypertension and headaches. Those conditions were being managed, she said – but not the psychological side effects of a medication change.
“All of a sudden, in the span of about 11 weeks, he spiraled, and his mental health crisis went to a really bad place,” she said. “He took his life at our home in our garage while I was sleeping.”
She said she took a few weeks off from work then returned to the office on a part-time basis.
“It crippled me for a while...and I spent a lot of days in this office crying,” she said. “I will tell you, the board and the leadership and the members of this farm bureau, and this entire farm community…just really embraced and lifted me up for the last two years.”
She has since written blog posts and articles advocating for more communication and stronger mental health support within the agricultural community.
“We need to create opportunities for farmers and ag people to have that conversation, and the word ‘suicide’ can't itself be so taboo,” she said. “It's something that has to be part of mainstream conversations, and we do have to recognize that farmers, veterinarians, a lot of ag professionals really do struggle with suicide rates a lot higher than the norms across America.”
Indeed, the suicide rate among farmers is 3.5 times higher than among the general population, according to the National Rural Health Association.
The loss of her husband became an impetus to start a new chapter, she said, and after some introspection, she gave the board six-month notice of her retirement earlier this year.
Stever Blattler’s last day in the position was June 30. But at just 49 years old, she said she isn’t ready to finish working just yet.
She’s interested in consulting with farmers on succession planning and other administrative matters, and is considering teaching some college-level agricultural courses. She also hopes to step up her involvement in the Labrador Retriever Rescue of Fresno, where she’s been fostering dogs for years.
But the agricultural industry has been in a tough spot in recent years, with inflation, dwindling water availability, and federal interference in import and export markets all squeezing farmers’ bottom lines.
And when asked whether there’s a future for the young farmers she’s so avidly mentored, Stever Blattler said there’s as much of a need as ever for agriculturally-minded professionals.
“I think the industry in California will continue to be one of adaptation and overcoming adversity. I don't think it's all that rosy. I think there are some tough years ahead,” she said.
But she reinforced that understanding agriculture is critical to so many industries.
“Whether they end up in a law school career in Sacramento or Washington, D.C., or they settle back here in a small town in the Central Valley, their agricultural acumen is such an important part of who they'll become as a professional, and they really do have an opportunity and an ability to influence policy,” she said.
