Who will win the 2030 World Series?

If I told you that I knew who was going to win the 2030 World Series, would you believe me? Or would you think I was a lunatic? Obviously, you’d think I was nuts.

But what if I was really into baseball? I mean REALLY into baseball. If I’d read everything there was to read about the game? Imagine I watched every game (somehow) and could cite batting stats for obscure players from the 1920’s. If I was a genuine expert, would you believe me then?

You’d probably take me more seriously, that’s for sure. You might even respect my knowledge and opinions. But would you think I actually had the answer? If you did, you would be the crazy one.

We recognize that no matter how well-informed the source, predictions about the future are opinions, not facts.

At least most of the time we do. But when it comes to predicting the future of something even more complex than baseball, California agriculture for example, a lot of us have a near religious devotion to “our” team. We know who we want to win. We know why we expect them to win.  That’s why the topic of farming’s future often spawns heated arguments, not real discussion leading to practical and workable solutions.

Everyone related to agriculture, conventional or organic, has their own differing concerns, priorities, and fears but we share the same basic goal: we want to be able to feed people in such a way that works for everybody involved. And if we are doing it right, we’ll all be able to keep doing the same tomorrow, next month, next decade, the next century and beyond.

Like baseball fans, we have our differences, but we are all committed to the same game. We have our opinions, preferences and hopes for the future. But we don’t know how it will turn out, because we recognize that the game changes over time.. As they say, that’s why they play the game. The only way for us to know what California agriculture is going to look in 2030 is to play it out. I’m looking forward to it.

But I’m not putting money on the Cubs.

Using every part

In culinary circles, there is a reawakening to the concept of using “every part of the animal.” Feeding people involves the consumption of resources, regardless of whether the agriculture involved is “conventional” or “organic.” So it makes perfect sense to me that we should get all that we can out of our investment of resources. Cows are not all rib-eye and tri-tip. There is a lot more that is edible that can be put to use.

This Friday night, the Sidecar Restaurant will be hosting a dinner to celebrate this concept. Chef Tim Kilcoyne will be joined by TV chefs Adrien Nieto and Derrick Prince for a five course dinner described as “comfort food with a twist.” Look for oxtail, tripe, sweetbreads and marrow incorporated American classics like beef pot-pie. I hope people will check it out! Reservation information is here.

Next month, we will get into the act at the first of this year’s Totally Local VC dinner series. (Details here!)  Our fava beans will be paired with beef cheek from Ventura County’s Watkins Ranch. To me, this seems very fitting. Just as Chef Jason Collis is using every part of the animal, we are trying to use every part of the soil. Fava beans are not typically a cash crop for us. They are grown as part of our cover crop program. We want the space between our trees to be generating biomass, creating nitrogen, improving water infiltration, and (hopefully) yielding an edible crop.

 We only have so much soil… our challenge is to make the very best use of it that we can.

Is 80 too old for social media?

If it is, don’t tell our fig tree “Harry.” He’s still spry and active, producing nearly 300 pounds of fruit last season and already looking good for this year. In large part due to social media, he has made a lot of new friends recently: Sidecar Restaurant, Petite Reve Café, The Local Café, Rabalais’ Bistro, Totally Local VC and many others! Facebook has made him the official “Rockstar Fig Tree” of Ventura County. (OK, it’s not “official”… but who’s going to challenge it?)

Given Harry’s success in the social media world, we went out and got him 500 friends. We think you’ll “like” the younger generation too. This season we will have tasting sample quantities from the nine different varieties of fig that we have added.It doesn’t stop with figs. This year we have added apples, pears, apricots and persimmons.

How do figs and social media connect? Simply put, I don’t think we would have been able to make the connections to people interested in specialty fruit without social media. Without a network of tasters, buyers and eaters, experimenting with alternative crops on a significant scale would not be economically feasible. But social media has been a great tool for reaching new people, finding new fruit, and letting people know more about what we do. We would not be doing direct, local agriculture without it.

I don’t market avocados

I will sell you any type of fruit I grow, but I will not market avocados.

 Why not?

 I love to provide my customers with the freshest, ripest fruit possible. The citrus fruits and figs we supply are picked at the peak of their flavor and put into the hands (and mouths) of our customers as fast as humanly possible. It is a bit harder to do it that way, but that is how we deliver a great product. And that is what we market. That fresh off the tree flavor is our brand.

But what about an avocado, freshly picked, right of the tree? Hard as a rock. Absolutely inedible. When is the right time to pick it? Anywhere within a several month window. An avocado needs to sit quietly for 5 days, 7 days, or more before it is creamy ripe and delicious. So if I can’t pick it at the right moment, and getting it to the customer faster doesn’t help, what does that do to our value proposition? Our competitive advantage? Completely negated when it comes to avocados.

 Don’t get me wrong… I’m happy to sell you some avocados, and you will be very happy with them. But are they a “class apart” eating experience like our Meyer lemons or “Harry’s figs?”

 Nope… And that is why I don’t market them. I won’t brag about our fruit, unless I can back it up.

PS: We will have a few Gem and Lamb Hass late season avocados available when the only competition is Chilean fruit that has spent a month on boat…  You might see me marketing those.

Prune without pity

Just finished one of the emotionally toughest jobs in the orchard… pruning young fig trees. After a year of watching them grow and celebrating every leaf and shoot, the time had come to force them into shape before they put this year’s growth in the wrong place. Every branch lopped off held the promise of new fruit, eagerly awaited by customers.

The different varietals had different habits. The Brown Turkeys tended to sprawl low to the ground, while Desert Kings go for the sky. The Black Missions required very little… they seemed to grow in the proper “wineglass” shape with little training. Some trees look great… others had to get the “do-over” prune.

Tough as it was to cut away that much growth, it still felt good. Having a proper structure for the trees will pay off in the long run. And since we don’t have cooler facilities yet, keeping our crop volume down makes sense.

Now if the cuttings I transplanted will just take root and give me new trees, this will have been a very good day.

 

National Ag Day = Free Book

In the hopes of getting more people thinking and talking about agriculture, I’m offering my ebook free on Smashwords.com for the rest of the week. Coupon code GA26F will get a free copy!

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/122129

The 1-5-50 Rule

What does it take to experiment with specialty fruit within a larger orchard operation? I like to refer to my “1-5-50 Rule.” That is shorthand for my specialty fruit providing 1% of my income, using 5% of my land, and taking 50% of my time.

So why would I do this? First of all, I offer this ”rule” with tongue firmly in cheek, but the income and acreage numbers were essentially correct at the time I first said it. As a tree farmer, I experience a big lag between when I commit acreage to a crop and when it begins to pay off. So in early 2011, it was accurate to say that 1% of our income was coming from the specialty fruit planted on 5% of our acreage. But since these trees were quite young (5 years for our block of Meyer lemons, and 80 mixed citrus varietals, and 400+ figs planted that spring) it is no surprise that income trailed acreage. In fact the Meyer lemons, despite their young age, were already outperforming their older Eureka and Lisbon cousins on a dollars per acre basis. Over time, I expect the specialty fruit to outperform, but that will not happen until they begin to reach maturity.

And the 50% of my time? Well, that was probably a bit of an exageration. But I do spend a disproporationate amount of time looking into new crops and tending to young plantings. Since I hope to be doing this for another 30 or 40 years, that seems appropriate to me. But I do look forward to the day when I can enjoy the 60-50-60 rule.

(For the record, 2012 will probably look more like 2.5-5-30.)