From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro. This is the daylum.

For years, a mysterious company has been buying farmland on the outskirts of Silicon Valley,

eventually putting together a plot twice the size of San Francisco.

But at every step, those behind the company kept their

plans for the land shrouded in secrecy. Until my colleague Connor Doherty

figured out who they were and what they were up to. It's Monday, March 11th.

It's Monday, March 11th. So Connor this story begins as a real estate mystery that you took it upon yourself

to try to crack wide open so tell us about where this mystery unfolds.

Okay, so if you imagine you're in San Francisco and you drive north further up into the

Bay Area into an area called Salano County and then you go

way east and you end up in this very rural corner of the Bay Area that not a lot of

people know about and it's over here in this rural corner of Salano County

where our story takes place.

And it's these open sort of rolling landscape of yellow hills with almost nothing on it.

The largest structures there are wind turbines and a lot of the families out there are

farmers.

They farm sheep, feed crops, and cows.

And many of the people out there have been there since the 1860s.

This is a place where families stay in the same place for generations

and pass the farms down several times. This is a place where not a lot changes.

But then in 2017 something very unusual starts to

happen. A company called Flannery Associates,

...