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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.”

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.

“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.

 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.