California Bio-Worm

Erosion and soil loss are history’s leading farmland killers, so we are always looking for ways to keep our soil right where we want it.

These pictures show a ditch stabilization project that we are undertaking with California Bio-Worm, a Santa Paula based startup. Elmo Iadevaia and his team have been great partners!

The next step is to backfill the wattles with compost. This will encourage root growth from the avocados and anchor a cover crop of mint to stabilize the bank.

A little more reconstruction of this ditch will widen it to slow the water, reducing erosion and improving infiltration into the soil.

We will also experiment with growing vegetables and cuttings directly into the soil filled wattles. But that is another story!

Do all local food experiments work out?

Of course not. A few years back, I tried a test plot of garlic. I had high hopes for it, since I knew I had some customers interested. But garlic turned out to be just too labor intensive for our operation. We weren’t manned for that level of cultivation, and the test plot was too small to justify adding extra manpower. A plot large enough to be viable would have required even more labor, and expensive changes to our irrigation system. That experiment fizzled.

A later experiment involved San Marzano tomatoes. I think these still hold promise, but that summer turned out to be one of the coolest and dampest on record. The soil never really warmed up, and the end of summer saw stringy little seedlings instead of the lush vines loaded with fruit I had been imagining.

This winter, I planned a trial of favas and garbanzo beans as an edible (and marketable) winter cover-crop. But weeks of dry weather set the favas back. And the garbanzos? My seed supplier wasn’t able to deliver on the order, so that will have to wait until next year.

I don’t like failure any more than anybody else. But as a small farmer facing an uncertain future, I know that riding our existing crops and business model into the ground is a guaranteed disaster. So I’ll make all the little mistakes I can, if it helps me avoid a big mistake down the road. Having access to a market for local produce doesn’t guarantee me success; there are no guarantees in farming. But it does allow me an opportunity.

I’ll take that.

Picking Our Future : Essays on Food, Change, and Farming

Regular readers of this blog may have suspected it was coming, but the ideas I have been discussing here are now available in ebook form. Kindle is available today, iPad and Nook formats will be released by Monday, January 16.

http://www.amazon.com/Picking-Our-Future-Farming-ebook/dp/B006WFVH36/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1326413935&sr=8-3

Why they farmed…

The good folks over at the “Why We Farm” blog at Homegrown.org have folded their tent. I followed their progress via their blog from time to time, and had always intended to provide a commentary on their progress. But last month they reached the point where they had gone as far as they could, and are leaving farming for more rewarding pursuits. I guess I need to write that commentary now.

I want to take a moment not only to wish them luck, but recognize their passing from the scene for what it is: A very real demonstration that the barriers to entry in agriculture make it nearly impossible for people of talent and commitment to succeed without an extraordinary amount of capital behind them.

We will never have a truly stable and sustainable agricultural economy if there is no chance for capable people to make a living. Neysa and Travis, you placed yourselves in the test-tube and conducted a three year experiment on yourselves. Thank you for that dedication. I hope that everyone carrying on has learned something from you.

I know I have.

Every Tree is a Living Experiment

I like just about every kind of fruit there is. (Sorry, eggplant.) And I live in a place that will grow just about anything. So experimentation is a natural part of our business.

Ten trees of this. Ten trees of that. Twenty of something else out in Santa Paula.

Of course, all these trees add up to some acreage after a while. They produce far too much for my family can consume alone, yet not enough for the Farmer’s Market, let alone larger channels. There are still more trees and more varieties that I want to add, but where will the fruit go? Better yet, how can I pay the bills?

Fortunately, this volume of fruit is very well suited to the needs of my chef and caterer clients. I get to experiment, knowing that I will not end up with non-earning acreage, and they get to offer unique, seasonal (and very fresh) specials. Everybody wins, everybody smiles.

Chefs make a great focus group. That’s the secret added benefit. They know what they like, appreciate the difference between varieties, and watch for what their customers respond to. This feedback often gives me new varieties to try.

Of course, the end goal of experimentation is not more experimentation. It’s information. Every tree is a thirty year bet on future food preferences. I like variety, but I’m really looking for the one or two crops that set us up for the next generation. So do I believe in the idealistic notions of fresh and local food? You bet. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be good for business.

More Food, Less System

I can’t grow an avocado or a lemon or a fig for less money than Hostess can produce a Twinkie. I don’t know how they can do it so cheaply, but they can, and I simply can’t compete with that.

Or perhaps I should say I can’t compete with that on price. I can’t play their game and expect to win. But I can play a different game, my game, and expect to thrive.

Value is about something more than the lowest price. There is incredible value in a cool apple, a sticky-sweet fig, or a tart Meyer lemon. These I can produce, and being blessed by geography, I can produce them at a reasonable price for customers who appreciate the value that they represent.

It may be a sad truth that not everybody appreciates good food. I’d like to think that the world would be a better place if this were otherwise. But I don’t need to wait for the world to be perfect, or even better. There are people who want what I grow, and I grow what they want.

We just need each other.

Now, perhaps this sounds like foodie elitism. Perhaps it is. But every trend starts somewhere. If good, fresh, flavorful food is just a form another of conspicuous consumption, maybe that is not a bad trend for others to emulate. If beet greens or fava beans or quince became as ingrained in American culture as formerly obscure espresso drinks have become, would we be worse off? I think not.

So if this elitism, I think we owe the elites our thanks. They are voluntarily subsidizing a grand experiment in creating a food system that places the emphasis on “food” and not “system.”

Harry Pardee’s Fig Tree

Family lore has it that the fig tree behind our barn was planted by my great-grandfather Harry Pardee. I’m not sure where this idea comes from. No living person remembers our ranch without it, or can recall a discussion about why or when it was planted. But Harry was an instigator. He took off for the Alaska Gold Rush after high school, returning home with only a nickel-plated .38 revolver and the hint of grand adventure to show for it. He built the 1917 house that is the home that I grew up in. He put our family in the citrus business, replacing the walnut trees with lemons and oranges. Harry seemed to make things happen, so maybe it just feels right to think he is responsible for the fig tree.

However it came to be there, though, it is a great specimen. Approximately 80 years old, it still produces a great crop every year. We harvested more than 200 lbs this past season, despite having pruned it heavily a couple of years back. Left to its own devices, most of the fruit would be well out of reach. We call it a black mission fig, but its variety is as uncertain as its origin. The shape of the fruit and leaves is slightly different than other black missions that I’ve seen, and the fruit tends to be a bit more teardrop shaped. Is it a hybrid seedling; the only one of its kind?

This one tree has opened up new customer relationships for us, and given us both the idea and the confidence to explore figs as an alternative crop. 400 young cousins are now growing on the property. I wish Harry could see. I think he would like that.

Of course, it might just be a seedling that sprouted in the barnyard after a passing crow pooped it out. I like our story better.

California Bountiful on Ventura Limoncello

My central strategy for marketing specialty fruit is a simple one: Work with people who make you look good. Anybody who has tasted Ventura Limoncello knows that they make us look Very Good Indeed. Press coverage, awards, promotional dinners… the Ventura Limoncello story is everywhere, and I’m proud to be a part of it. Today’s chapter comes from California Bountiful.

Who’s Talking About Economic Viability?

I have always felt that the notion of economic viability gets glossed over in discussions of sustainable agriculture. That is why one of the first pieces I posted to this blog was “Defining Economic Viability”. No definition? No problem. I’ll make my own.

“Economic viability means that the real returns from farming operations, relative to the farm’s asset value and labor inputs, are competitive with other small business, career, or investment alternatives.”

I might smooth this out a bit, but it is a solid, comprehensive working definition. (Refer to the earlier article to see why.) Over the three and a half years since I wrote it,  I noticed that this article always got more traffic than others. Perhaps I should have been more curious, but I hadn’t googled the definition for some time.

Until last night.

I was surprised to see that my article was the #2 hit on Google for “defining economic viability.” OK, so that is the exact title… perhaps not a fair test. But what happens if you limit the search to “economic viability”? Still high up the second page. Note that neither search was restricted to the economic viability of agriculture. It seems odd to me that such a central concept is not better defined.

Aconventional Agriculture

The dichotomy between “conventional” and “organic” agriculture is deeply embedded in our national conversation about food. (Am I being too charitable by calling it a “conversation?”)  This polarization has numerous downsides, but a very practical one for farmers like me is this: Which am I?

 I adhere to the “organic” philosophy that the soil of a farm is a living ecosystem. I want my ecosystem to include several species of plants, and dozens of life-forms from fungi and bacteria, to insects to birds. I’ve experimented with goats grazing the orchard covercrop.

Despite mimicking natural systems, my ecosystem’s purpose is un-natural. It exists to support a primary crop. But when that crop, or its supporting ecosystem , is threatened, I will use “conventional” means to restore balance. Too many gophers, not enough potassium, invasive weed species… not welcome scenarios. I will do what I need to put things back into balance.

 So what does that make me? Being neither a round peg or a square hole can be lonely. I’m certainly not “industrial organic”… the in-between category introduced to the world by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I have toyed with “artisanal conventional”, but that sounds slightly pretentious, and “artisanal” is getting used much too much these days. I meet my own definition of “sustainable”, but not everybody shares my definition. “Unconventional” suggests somebody who defies convention. That’s better, but I think my practices reflect an indifference to convention, rather than a rejection

“Aconventional?” Yes… I think I like that.