Where and when do we first meet George and Lennie in Of Mice and Men?

Of Mice and Men opens with George and
Lennie drinking from a shore. Steinbeck opens the story with a physical description of
the land which is the Central Valley of California:

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'A few miles south of Soledad,' the Salinas
river winds through an idyllic scene of yellow sands, golden foothills, and deer that
come to the shore to drink at night. It is in this setting that we first meet
Steinbeck's two protagonists, George Milton and Lennie
Small.

Gearge is Lennie's
keeper. Lennie is mentally challenged and when his aunt dies, George begins to take care
of Lennie. George is "small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp,
strong features."

Lennie is "his opposite, a huge man,
shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, with wide, sloping shoulders." They have just
come from the town of Weed where Lennie had gotten into some sort of trouble. Weed is in
Northern California. Because of Lennie's trouble, they are forced to flee
south.

George and Lennie arrive a ranch to begin working.
They are temporarily working, saving money before buying their own
farm:

George
repeats, at Lennie's request, the story of how they are someday going to get out of the
lonely life of itinerant farm laborers and buy a piece of land where they can live by
working their own small farm
together.

Now, they are at a
ranch in the Salinas Valley in California where they will be working to make their dream
come true. This is happening during the Great Depression of the
1930s.