Things are going to jump from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye, I’m warned. Karen, who runs our CSA program, has been gently reminding me for a few days of how right now, I’ve got the easy job. In a couple weeks when the first of the cherries start coming in, no one’s job will be easy.
It’s probably a good thing I like to keep on my toes, and it’s definitely an even better thing that it feels like I’ve been here longer than just over two weeks. When I applied to Frog Hollow, I had no idea that what I would end up doing on the farm is, when it comes right down to it, the culmination of all my previous experience and a merging of my interests. Quality organic food, sustainable practices, and a high-standard of customer satisfaction are where my passions lie, and only over the last few years have I discovered how deeply they run. But that’s a different blog post entirely.
If you follow us on Twitter or Facebook, you might have seen that we had a group of kindergarten kids visit and take a tour with Farmer Al, much the same as I did. (Their tour ended with goodie bags from the kitchen, whereas mine had me sorting paperwork on Farmer Al’s desk.) Seeing the kids out there today, and Farmer’s Al daughters popping in and out of the packing shed’s office throughout the week, I wanted to make a post about something in my inaugural entry. I said, ”It’s been fifteen years since I walked through a field and felt truly connected to crops destined to grace a table.”
Let me expand on that, because I say it with equal parts reverence and guilt.
My uncle’s farm was all strawberries; while traveling I’ve seen boxes of the growers’ Co-op we belonged to in grocery stores in several states. But while my uncle’s farm was about the same in acreage that Farmer Al began with here at Frog Hollow, my family didn’t make the same commitment to organic farming.
Certain days would have a smell in the air, and those were the days I had to stay inside, watching through the picture windows as our truck rolled down the lane with a big white plastic tank on the hitch. It might be fertilizer, it might be pesticide, I’d only know if they stopped near the cherry tree that stood twenty feet outside my bedroom window. The fruit trees in the yard were fertilized at the roots, so if they sprayed down the cherry tree, it meant Danger! Peligro!
In the fields, the little wooden signs stamped with a skull and crossbones would be posted at the end of every few rows, and for two days after the truck had sprayed I wasn’t allowed to go outside and play in the field or yard. I had to stay clear of the bonsai and couldn’t float toys in the old ceramic bathtub swimming with tadpoles where my grandmother grew reeds for flower arrangement.
A strawberry farm in Watsonville, CA, my hometown.
Image ©Jerry Burke 2009. Usage rights granted by owner.
The childhood memory of that sharp chemical smell is one of the things that came floating back to me when I was out in the orchard with Farmer Al. It’s one of the things I’m likely to recall when I’m in a market.
Walking through a grocery store, I look at the foods that are not certified organic and I think about how often I’d see our trees and our rows of strawberries sprayed down with poison. How unbelievably lucky am I to live in California—in the Bay Area on top of that—where so much organic produce is available. And still there are so many issues of food justice to face, the tough question of whether to buy local or buy organic when there isn’t the option to do both. I want everyone to have access to safe, healthy, delicious food so the only hard decision is what variety to eat. I want there to be variety.
So yes, pretty soon things around here will hit full-speed ahead and I’m going to be neck-deep in processing orders and tracking shipments and making sure that all of Frog Hollow Farm’s customers are getting the best service and the best fruit possible. But you know what? I’m pretty happy about it.