Letters From Andy

Calendula officinalis, the “official” marigold, here pictured growing in our gardens in the spring. This is the preferred herbal variety. We have another, smaller, weedier form that is just as pretty but has smaller blooms. These are “Mary’s Quarters,” so to speak; the weedy forms are more like “Mary’s Pennies.”

Hi All: There’s gold, there’s “fool’s gold,” and then there is “Mary’s Gold.” As I sit down to write you a brief note, I see that gold is trading today at $2742.8 per ounce. We have a lot of “gold,” on the farm, but not this metallic, shiny, valuable kind, so I don’t usually pay much attention to price fluctuations in the precious metals markets.

“Fools gold,” or Pyrite, is a metallic, flakey, mineral that glitters and flashes in the pan. If you find yourself prospecting up along the American River in the Gold Country you might strike “Fool’s Gold.  Pyrite isn’t real gold, but”Fools’ Gold” may not just be for fools any longer. Pyrites can contain lithium, which is a material that is increasingly useful (and valuable) to the renewable energy markets for the production of lithium batteries. I don’t have any fool’s gold either. But I’m rich in “Mary’s Gold.” I’ve got lots of marigolds!

Before Mary was born, met Joseph, or talked to Angels, “marigolds” were known to Romans as “Calendulas,” which means “little calendars” in Latin. With its brilliant orange and yellow flowers, the Calendula was much esteemed in the Old World for its putative medicinal properties and its use as an ornamental and culinary plant. A Calendula’s golden petals can be plucked from the flower head and used to color food as a “Poor Man’s Saffron. ” The plant was historically treated as a “pot-herb,” and it found its way into soup pots AND into witches cauldrons. Some people alleged that drinking calendula tea would enable the seeker to see fairies.  And across South Asia, the Calendula’s bright orange wintertime blossoms were appreciated since ancient times and used to decorate shrines and honor the gods.

Even when the old, Pagan ways of doing things were upended across Europe by the moral demands of the new, upstart Christian religion, the calendula managed to hold on to its honored place in spiritual botany. Mary, the virgin Mother of Jesus, took on relevance as a cosmic Earth Mother in the new world order. The iconic, celestial blue cloak that Mary wears in so many statues and images represents the heavens that envelopes us all in its starry veil. And, just to bring things back down to earth, the story I heard is that as Mary walks the earth, bringing relief to the suffering, weary people who have faith in her love, marigold plants are sown in the soil by her footsteps. When calendulas sprout and bloom with the winter time rains  Mary’s tracks are carpeted with orange, daisy-like, calendula blossoms- her heavenly “coins,” so to speak, that spring from the earth, year after year.

It seems incomprehensible, but these Cempasuchil marigolds, Tagetes erecta, an inheritance from ancient Mexico, are often called “African Marigolds.” No! The Africans invented mathematics, coffee, AND the Blues, but the Mexicans have this marigold to their credit.

I flatter myself to think that Mariquita farm has been visited many times by the Cosmic Earth Mother, because our fields are practically plagued with wild marigolds every spring. It’s pretty to see the green grasses dotted with Mary’s gold but there can be so many wild calendulas popping up that they have to be hoed out for our crops to thrive.  When the Spaniards invaded the Americas they brought their arts, their guns, their religion, their livestock, their diseases, and their weeds with them. Some botanists would suggest that the hooked, burr-like seed of the calendula came into California as “stickers” in the tails of Spanish Cattle, but that’s “BS;” lol. I’m going with the Calendula’s presence in our fields as a seasonal manifestation  and reminder of a visitation from Mary,  Jesus’s mom and the Queen of Heaven and Mexico. forThe wild calendulas on our farm are very happy growing throughout Central California’s mild, coastal climate; it’s just like the Mediterranean conditions that they originally evolved in. 

Small farms that produce vegetables for local markets are called “truck farms.” Here’s our truck. I recently gave her a new paint job so that she wouldn’t feel out of place among all the colorful fruits, vegetables, and flowers that we grow.

The Spanish didn’t only take America’s gold bullion back to Europe. Besides gold, the Americas were rich in native crops previously unknown to Europeans.  Besides corn, squash, beans, chilies, tomatoes, potatoes, and sunflowers, America’s first peoples developed both chocolate AND vanilla! And the so-called  ‘African marigold.'” From Central Mexico down through Central America indigenous religious shrines were decorated with dazzling gold, aromatic, Cempesuchil flowers. It didn’t take long for Spain’s spiritual caste to accept the cempasuchil as a New World “marigold,’ and to employ its orange blooms  in festivals like “El Dia de Los Muertos.”  And for their part, Spain’s merchants were quick to export these “new” marigolds to Asia, along with the cargoes of stolen gold that they were using to buy the spices of the Indies. The cempasuchil promptly found favor in India as a bold, richly-scented alternative to the old-school calendula marigold. India’s warm, humid, climate proved to be a hospitable environment for the cempasuchil and soon its gold flowers were cultivated on an industrial scale to serve and ornament religious holidays like Diwali. 

We will be getting our wood-fired oven stoked up for our Day of The Dead celebration with the Jack O’Neil restaurant.

Just as Central California’s moist, mild winter is amenable to calendula marigolds, so our summers are perfect for growing cempasuchil marigolds. On Mariquita Farm we grow a variety of cempasuchil called “Chedi Orange,” which is a tall, sturdy variety with a flower exactly the same color of orange as a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk’s robes are. We aim to harvest flowers in time for both Dia De Los Muertos and Diwali. These two Holy Days usually fall around the same time of year, so for us, if I can get tiny marigold transplants into the ground by July 25th, I’ll have a nice crop by Halloween that’ll last through Diwali. When the field is in full bloom the effect is spectacular. We pick the flowers to sell either by the bunch or loose, by the 100 count of bagged blossoms, for garlands. It’s been fun to learn my way around this crop, and it’s a joy to be out in the middle of the flowers. We may not have any gold to spare, or even any fool’s gold, but we are the Mother Lode of Marigold! Come see for yourself! We are offering what I believe to be California’s ONLY marigold U-Pick! See the details on the events page of our website, mariquita.com.

The pumpkins are getting ready for their big day!

If you feel more about experiencing the marigolds without having to work you are invited to the Day of The Dead Celebration that we are hosting with our friends from the Jack O’ Neil Restaurant at the Dream Inn in Santa Cruz. Chef Gus has been supporting the farm for a number of years now. He and his team will be preparing a meal that reflects both his kitchen’s seasonal, our farm to your table philosophy as well as the traditional Mexican flavors of this colorful and evocative festival. Come help us compose a floral ofrenda that pays respect to those loved ones who have passed on.

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Some mariquitas making themselves at home in a sunflower. I was surprised to see how well sunflowers tolerate cold weather. Next year I’ll make the first plantings a good month earlier than I did this season. It turns out that sunflowers are a great trap crop for Thrips (Thysanoptera) so they a great crop; beautiful, edible, and beneficial for the other crops!

Our Lavender Labyrinth was purple with flowers and humming with bees over the last two months. We welcomed lots of new and old visitors to our farm for our lavender U-Picks during June and July. The lavender crop peaked this year as our lavender plants finally reached maturity and looked full and beautiful.

A lot of the tomato crop is at this stage right now.

A young helper and I hauling a lavender harvest out of the field in the Kubota Mule. Summer Camp @ Mariquita lol

This year’s late spring rains favored the lavender but the persistently cool and wet weather earlier in the year created a situation that has us waiting longer than usual on tomatoes. The soil was too wet to work well in March and, when we were able to turn the ground, it dried out blocky and rough, not fluffy the way the tender little tomato plants like it to be. We had rainstorm after rainstorm with the fronts moving in just frequently enough to keep us from cultivating. The first wave of tomatoes did not thrive, but the weeds did. In the end, we lost the early crop because it would have been expensive to clean and, given the stunted and tortured tomato plants lost in the grassy, lumpy clods, it was not worth the effort. But our second and third crops are doing well and growing according to schedule. The Early Girls and the Heirloom tomatoes will come first, towards the end of August. The Piennolos and the San Marzanos will come last, as always. It’s a drag that it was too wet early on for an early tomato crop, but the good news is that we got plenty of rain, so the dry farming practices that we employ to grow a flavorful tomato will not be as dicey as they can be in a dry year.

These are likely the very first tomatoes that will ripen. I’ll eat them to check for quality.

I know you’re wondering when you will see these tomatoes lining up to  jump on your plate, but it will take at least one more spin around the moon before the first fruit is ripe enough to leave the field. An heirloom tomato salad with the colorful slices all drizzled in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, sprinkled with basil leaf paired with slices of fresh mozzarella is our version of summer living. The anticipation is making us antsy but, rest assured, once the tomatoes arrive, they will have been worth the wait. There is nothing like a dry farmed Early Girl or San Marzano to get us up and readying our kitchens for a weekend of canning with friends. As August moves along we will begin to see lots of progress in the tomato crop. We will be doing our tomato pop-ups again this fall and will keep you posted via our newsletter and website (Mariquita.com) on all the places and dates we will be. You can also follow us on @https://www.facebook.com/MariquitaFarm/ and @https://www.instagram.com/mariquitafarm/?hl=en

The cool, wet, spring favored the citrus orchard we’ve planted at home. Here is Tassa loving up an Assadas Citron.

Mark your calendar for more farm activities scheduled for October. Mariquita Farm will be part of the Open Farm Tours on Sunday, October 13th. https://ticketstripe.com/events/3079105487429197.

Here are the first marigolds of the season.

One of this spring’s projects was the installation of 63 bee hives. Mariquita Farm was chosen to be the “beta site” by “The Bee Bank” to test their innovative hive design. More on this project later as it merits its own newsletter. The bees seem very happy.

I’m almost finished planting out our main crop of marigolds. We will hold a “Day of The Dead” event as well as open the farm up to a series of marigold U-Picks. Follow the newsletter for updates.

Several other local farms & vendors will join us here to celebrate their harvests; look for stalls from Fruitilicious Farm @ https://fruitilicious.eatfromfarms.com/, and @https://www.instagram.com/pricklypoppyfarm/. Prickly Poppy Farm shares the land here with us at the end of our dirt road and Bethany, the Prickly Poppy Pharmer, is our flower mentor. Our friends Arna & Linda from Farm Cat Preserves, as well as Aniko of Farm Chef https://www.instagram.com/p/C7XMSoxPaTN/  will join us as well. They are frequent collaborators and perpetrators, and use the crops we grow in their recipes.

Here on our home ranch you’ll see our crops of citrus, pumpkins, gourds, herbs, and cut flowers. Right now we’re planting the field of beautiful marigolds, the bright orange sacramental variety that is appreciated used in the celebration of Dia de Los Muertos as well as Diwali, which fall next to each other this year, on November 1st and  2nd We will be selling boxes of Marigold flowers for garlands to decorate your doorways and altars and we will be hosting a Dia de Los Muertos celebration here on the farm with a dinner and salute to our ancestors. This is a fun and colorful event that you won’t want to miss.

The other news we have to share is that our farm is hosting a bee research study with The Bee Bank and our fields have been buzzing all summer with their happy bees. The Bee Bank has an innovative design for their hives and a different perspective on how to care for bees and maintain hive health. If you are a bee enthusiast stay tuned for more activities regarding this project.

Thanks, everybody, for your support. Keep an eye on our newsletter to keep up with the events we will host on the farm later this year. We have been busy here and the farm is thriving. We hope to see you all very soon, tomatoes in our hands and smiles on our faces.

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Soda Lake, in the Carrizo Plain National Monument, is often dry for for long periods of time.

A recent visit to the Carrizo Plain National Monument got me thinking about sex, violence, and botany. If you’re still unfamiliar with the Carrizo Plain, know that it sits astride the San Andreas Fault, tucked in between the Temblor Range to its east and the Caliente Range on its west. “Temblor” means “earthquake” in Spanish and “Caliente” means “hot,” so you can make a pretty good guess as to what usually goes on out there. Maybe you’ve traveled down I-5 to LA from the Bay Area along the westside of the San Joaquin and looked out the window at the empty, bald, hills off in the distance. That landscape is usually a baked, drab, dun color, but for a few weeks each year- if the land has been blessed with any rain- the hills and plains can be a bright, grassy, green splashed with a psychedelic array of brilliant yellows, oranges, purples and blues as wild flowers explode in glory. I’ve been going out to the Carrizo off and on since I was a child because my father was a native plant botanist, and it was he who first told me, “Never turn your back on a bull.”

In the aftermath of a 2017 LA Times story on a Carrizo “super bloom,” it seems as though half the world has found out about this relatively recent addition to our National Park System and, when the wild flowers do happen, a visitor may even experience an incongruous LA style traffic jam on the typically lonely Soda Lake Road, a good twenty miles of which is still just a dirt track across an empty land. My father didn’t need a colorful wildflower display to attract his attention. The Carrizo Plain is almost a desert, and it is an “endorheic basin,” which means it is a sink with no drainage. What water that does fall onto or flow into the Carrizo Plain puddles up in Soda Lake. But the water soon evaporates and Soda Lake is usually no more than a baked, dry, salt playa. The Carrizo Plain is too droughty and remote to be of much use agriculturally, in stark contrast to the neighboring San Joaquin Valley, which is one of the most intensely managed agricultural valleys in the world. For California native plant botanists, like my father, the Carrizo Plain represents one of the last opportunities to study an environment that approximates the now extinct native ecosystems of California’s Central Valley. Dad began going to the Carrizo when he was a grad student at UC Berkeley beck in the mid-1950s, long before the land was framed as a national monument, and when the idea of a traffic jam on Soda Lake Road would have been insane.

Cattle still range across sections of the Carrizo Plain.

Today, as you enter the monument on Soda Lake Road from the north, you cross a cattle guard and there is a yellow road sign with an iconic image of a cow, intended to alert the driver that there may be range cattle crossing the road ahead. I’m sure that sign didn’t exist back in the fifties, but if dad had seen it he would have smiled. My father grew up on dairy ranches up and down the Salinas Valley and he knew as much about cows as he wanted to.  Anyway, the prominent outline of a huge, swollen udder identifies the creature on the sign as a milk cow, which is funny because milk cows are just about the last creatures you’d be likely to see on a seared and scant range like the Carrizo Plain. The rough and rowdy breeds of beef cattle that can sniff out distant waterholes and lick up enough dry grass to survive on an open range are quite different animals in physique and behavior than their placid dairy cow cousins. Dairy cows are like sports cars that must be given the best fuels to perform; they beg to be fed with leafy bales of alfalfa, and they must have LOTS of water available if they are to make all that milk. Dairy cows are generally docile by mature. It is interesting, though, that dairy bulls have a reputation for being quick to anger and prone to violence.

Dad did have a story about a kid he knew on one of the ranches he grew up on who dreamed of escaping the smelly routine of life on a dairy for the excitement and glory of the rodeo arena. The unfortunate boy thought that he’d practice for the big time by riding a Holstein bull in the dairy pen. The kid perched himself on the roof of a shade shed until he had a chance to drop himself onto the back of a passing bull as it headed out into the sun to eat, whereupon he was promptly thrown to the ground and gut stomped to death. Never turn your back on a bull, and definitely DON’T get on a bull’s back! Bull riders at the rodeo may be incredible athletes, but they are crazy to the bone.

A lovely stand of Phacelia rimed with frost, photographed just after dawn at the south end of Soda Lake.

Many consumers think that if a bovine critter has horns then it’s a bull. Not so! Female cattle usually have horns too, if they haven’t been cut off or burned out of their infant skulls in the bud. Male deer, or bucks, have antlers and female deer, or does, don’t. An antler is different from a horn.  A buck will shed its antlers at the end of the rutting season. True horns are bony structures that are part of the skull. A cow can come into heat at any time of the year and a horny bull will always be ready to breed her. It’s not for nothing that a crude and popular  term for the condition of being sexually excited is to be “horny.” A healthy bull is always ready to mount a cow or a…..When I was a teenager working on the Bell Ranch in upper Carmel Valley, two new, purebred, Angus bulls were delivered. The young bulls would be quarantined for a couple of weeks before being introduced to the herd so that we could be sure they didn’t harbor any communicable diseases. The bulls were excited after their bumpy trip in the livestock trailer and one bull mounted the other. “Will he be interested in cows?” I asked. The cowboy who had just unloaded the pair laughed. “Look, kid, ” he said. “That bull is so horny he’d screw a knot hole.” An indelicate observation, perhaps, but not inaccurate.

This young bull of mine was tame, as bulls go, but you should never turn your back on a bull. They aren’t dumb, but they can easily forget that they have been “domesticated.”

Cattle are ruminants. That is, they have four stomachs and, after walking about the landscape and grazing, they will cough up the grass they’ve just consumed from their first stomach, the rumen, and settle down to “chew their cud.”  As they chew away and “ruminate” cattle look introspective and peaceful, which has led some writers to use the verb “ruminate” to mean “to think deeply.” I’m not saying that bulls are not capable of having deep and philosophical thoughts, but even a ruminating bull can be moved to a display of fierce, primal violence in a heartbeat if  provoked. A bull’s skull is so very thick and their gaze can be so inscrutable that we can’t ever know what exactly is going on mentally between their horns. It’s a good practice to keep oneself a respectful distance even from a ruminating bull and “let the mystery be.” Dad knew all this when he turned his blue Ford sedan down lonely Soda Lake Road back in the mid fifties, his new wife riding shotgun, and headed out into the boonies to look for rare, endemic milkweeds.

My father as a young man in the Salinas Valley. There’s an irony at play in this photo. Maybe the tractor was stuck in the mud, but he wasn’t, and he’d soon flee ranch life for a career in academia. I, by contrast, have a genius for atavism, and I would flee a life on a scientific field station for a career of getting stuck in the mud on a series of farms. Go figure….

Soda Lake may usually be dry, but every once in a while it has standing water in it. Last week, when we visited, we saw a real lake with water and ducks. More often, Soda Lake boasts a crust of white salt on top of a slurry of sticky mud. Even when the lake bed is dry from its sun baked surface all the way down to hell it’s still not a good idea to drive off the road. It is easy, even for a four wheel drive vehicle, to get stuck in Soda Lake’s crunchy, slimy salt. It’s a long road. And narrow. When you are driving it you can really get a feel for the wide open spaces of the Old West, and you feel glad you’re not walking. The middle of Soda Lake would be  a terrible place to get stuck or break down. The nearest tow truck, even today, would be hours away and back then, of course, there were no cell phones. The sedan kicked up a little cloud of salt dust as it rolled down the narrow road and the odometer scrolled the miles away.

My mother as a young woman, clowning with a cigar in a bathroom at UC Berkeley. Dig the Saddle Oxfords! So chic!

Yes, it may have been a long trip, and the morning might have been heating up past the comfort zone as the sun rose higher in the sky, but dust, a sore butt, and annoying heat are just some of the personal sacrifices that botanists (and their partners) must expect when they set out on a quest to find rare, endemic milkweeds. And milkweeds really are worthy of attention, even if they are not flashy like orchids or scented like roses. Milkweeds host Monarch butterflies, and without them the Monarchs cannot survive.

My father was in that generation of plant ecologists who were moving past the era when doing botany meant going into a “dark continent,” “discovering” a plant that the “natives” had known about since God, and then naming it after themselves. Academic colonialism was giving way to a new, more holistic, interdiciplinary approach to scientific inquiry which sought to explore the web of life and the interconnectivity of all living organisms. “Woke” botany? The Carrizo Plain may not have a flashy waterfall like Yosemite, or a spurting geyser like Yellowstone, but the dry hills and the dusty flatland have secrets to reveal.

Mom and dad were most of the way across the lakebed and nearing the grasslands when they saw a large, dark object in the road ahead. As they draw close they observed that their path was blocked by a big, black Angus bull, apparently asleep. Dad approached but stopped the car at some distance, expecting the bull to wake up and move out of the way. But the bull was content to snooze in the warm sun. He had all the time in the world to ruminate on deep thoughts.

Dad honked his horn.

The bull opened one eye, but he didn’t move. What does scientific inquiry into the interconnectedness of all living beings matter to a 1800 lb, drowsy, black bull on a vast salt flat? Maybe later he would walk to to the hills, eat some grass and check in on his harem of cows. But for now…..snore….

Dad honked again.How annoying! The bull opened one eye and observed a humble, blue, Ford sedan. He swished his tail. The morning had been more pleasant when it was just him and his halo of flies, thinking his deep thoughts and chewing his cud.

Dad didn’t have all day to wait. Mom was hot and tired. They didn’t dare drive around the bull for fear of getting stuck in the loose, slimy salt. Dad edged the car forward and honked again. This was too much for Mr. Bull. He was the black Lord of the Plains. He ceded his path to nobody, man or beast. He’d been peacefully enjoying his “alone time” but now that the tranquility had been disturbed by this meddlesome couple and their absurd car he’d show them who was boss. The bull lumbered to his feet in rage to face his new enemy. The world would soon see who turned tail and ran.

The bull lowered his head. Dad put the car in reverse; he couldn’t turn his back on the bull because if he tried to turn on the narrow dirt track he’d likely get stuck in the salt and be stranded miles from anywhere with a new wife while a mad bull pummeled and gored his sedan.

The bull charged. Dad hit the gas. Bulls move fast. Of course, a Ford can go faster than a bull under laboratory conditions, but backing up at high speed on a narrow, dirt road is a nerve racking proposition. I’m here to tell this story, so obviously my parents escaped the wrath of the Lord Of The Plain to tell me the tale, but I smile when I see the yellow diamond shaped sign with the placid dairy cow and the words, “Impassable during wet weather.” It is rarely wet on Carrizo Plain, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the road is passable on a hot, dry, summer day.

There will be no bulls attending our Saturday, May 4th, celebration of World Labyrinth Day. Yes, I know that the original Labyrinth was created by Daedalus and Icarus for King Minos of Crete to constrain his bull headed monster, the “Minotaur.” The story of the Labyrinth is another of those foundational, mythic tales of the Western tradition that the moralistic book-burners among us would ban if they ever chose to read Classic Western Literature. It’s said that Pasifae, the daughter of the sun, brave Helios, out of an ocean nymph named Perse, grew up to be the Queen of Crete, and by some accounts she was also a powerful sorceress. But Pasifae, herself, was put under a cruel love spell by Aphrodite, which provoked in her heart a powerful sexual lust for that perfect, white Creten bull that her husband, King Minos, kept in his royal herd. To realize her amorous intentions, Pasifae contracted with Daedalus to build her a wooden, cow-shaped crate with a glory hole at one end. You’ve heard of the “Trojan Horse?” Well, this was the “Cretan Cow.” Daedalus draped his construction with a cow hide to approximate the scent of a bovine in estrus and Pasifae backed into her love shack. The Royal corral gate was opened, the perfect white bull entered the pen, and one thing led to another. In due course, Pasifae gave birth to a bull-headed male child, named Minotaur. “(Mino” for Minos, the cuckold king, and “taur” for Taurus, which means “bull,” as in the constellation, Taurus.) King Minos was NOT happy and he incarcerated the half bovine bastard in the Labyrinth. But our labyrinth is peaceful and inviting. We followed the outline of the labyrinth that was constructed in the Middle Ages at Chartres Cathedral when we created ours. World Labyrinth Day is a moment that people observe all around the world by a silent, meditative walk in a labyrinth as an expression of hope for peace.

If you can’t make it to the farm for World Labyrinth Day consider coming down for one of our seasonal workshops, like our Create A Garden Stepping Stone event on Saturday, June 8th which includes a labyrinth walk.

The Carrizo Plain in 2023 with more flowers but no water in the lake.

Range Cattle in the Temblor Range. The Carrizo Plain National Monument uses range cattle as a tool to remove annual Mediterranean grasses which are “weeds” in the context of preserving native California plant species.

Hi: I’m a cow, not a bull, and I have horns.

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Here’s Jai harvesting Prickly Pear fruits, called “tunas” in Spanish. Jai also harvested LOTS of marigolds. We also had volunteers help us with weeding, special projects and event management. Thanks!

As we wrap up the 2023 season and head into 2024 Starr and I would like to thank you all for your support. The folks that volunteered to help out on the farm deserve special recognition for their help and good will; we could not have made this season the success it has been without you.

The lavender labyrinth proved to be a joyful and aromatic attraction for bees and for human guests to gather and pick fragrant bunches of flowers to take home. In 2024 the young plants will be even fuller and more mature with lots more blossoms to pick.

We enjoyed hosting a number of special U-Picks on the farm this year. As we look forward to 2024 we hope to build on the progress we’ve made in making our farm a destination for people who appreciate food, flowers and quiet meditation.

Besides seeing our lavender labyrinth come of age we were successful in producing a wide range of other floral, herbal, and vegetable crops in 2023. We’re already buying seeds- and saving seeds- for our 2024 harvests.

The Zinnias have been a fun and beautiful project this year. Zinnias, like the corn, squash, beans, tomatoes, chiles, and marigolds that we grow, originally come from Mexico.

Zinnia flowers that Starr is saving for seed.

Our “Top Cat,” Samson, relaxing in the red corn. Besides the red corn, which is good for corn meal, we’ve also grown a lovely green Oaxacan corn for corn meal and a yellow corn, Otto File, which is an heirloom Italian corn appreciated for making polenta.

This is an heirloom bean from Oaxaca that can be appreciated as a purple”green bean,” or as a dried bean. We have enough seed saved now to plant a generous sized crop in the new year.

For our edible harvests on our home ranch in 2023 we focused on the “Three Sisters,” or the “Holy Trinity,” of the traditional Mexican milpa-corn, squash, and beans. We will rotate our crops around the farm in the new year but plan to plant to the same logic and schedule in 2024. We like to focus on heirloom, open pollinated varieties from seed we save ourselves for our food crops.

We are saving seed of the heirloom Italian Zucchetta Rugosa. In my estimation this is the most flavorful winter squash variety. We always save the nicest examples of the variety to replant so that the crop doesn’t degrade genetically over the years.

Victoria sorting beans. The Akahana Mame and Shirohana Mame that we grow are so beautiful they’re like little vegetal jewels.

We can’t forget the sunflowers; here’s Starr with a beauty. We grow Mongolian Giant, a lovely variety that is as ornamental as it is edible.

Our neighbor’s horses are grazing our lower field, getting rid of the grass thatch and preparing the land to be sown with wildflower seed. In 2024 we will convert this land into a bee pasture for 100 bee hives. The site will be a study area for an experimental way of raising bees in a chemical free manner. Details to follow as the study develops.

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  Starr harvesting the Akashiso we grew under contract for a farm supporter who makes her own herbal based dyes for fabric.

  

  

  Happy Holidays from Mariquita Farm

  Don’t forget that you can still share the farm’s harvests with your family and friends by gifting them one of our holiday baskets.

The sanctuary of the Watsonville Buddhist Temple was lined with huge displays of colorful flowers. People dressed in black filed in until the room was full. It was quiet. There was incense. There would be a chanting of sutras and the Dharma message would certainly be about the impermanence of all created things and the inevitability of suffering and loss. We were gathering together to honor a prominent local farmer, Mr. Akira Nagamine, who had just passed away at ninety eight years of age. While it can’t be a surprise when a very elderly person dies, there was still a sense of shock in the room. Mr. Nagamine had seen so much life, and was so relentlessly determined and energetic, that he seemed as much a force of nature as one of its creatures.

Here at Mariquita Farm we knew Mr. Nagamine as “Senior,” or “El Senor.” Over the past eight years I’d had the opportunity to lease several of his greenhouses on Hikari Farm for my own production, so we worked right alongside Senior and his crew. We even grew some of the same crops as Senior, like mizuna, shungiku, shiso, and Akahana mame. I’d keep an eye on everything Mr. Nagamine did, hoping to learn by example. I know he observed my practices and he’d be especially curious when he’d see me grow a crop he was familiar with but which I’d harvest or present it in an unexpected, or non-traditional manner, like harvesting tiny mizuna plants for green salads rather than waiting until the crop was large and robust and then bunching it. Senior was a traditional Japanese farmer- truly “Old School”- but his curiosity and interest in the world made him seem far younger than his years.

I’ll always remember Senior seated at his workbench in the packing shed, carefully sorting and bunching the “negi,” or Japanese scallions, that were one of his specialties. Most commercial farms have their workers wad green onions into bunches as fast as their hands can snap the rubber bands, but that was not Senior’s style, not “Old School.” Senior had a reverence for negi that were properly grown, harvested, and packaged. Negi are not “just green onions.” A properly grown spear of negi can take almost a year to produce and it might have a foot of pure, white, tender stalk under its display of deep, green leaves. And a proper cook knows how to utilize and appreciate every centimeter of the negi onion, from its roots to tips of the pointed, tubular leaves. I don’t want to put words into his mouth, but it’s possible Senior didn’t believe anyone under 60 even had the skills, appreciation, or wisdom to bunch negi correctly. At any rate, Senior bunched most of his crop himself, and I’m sure that it was as much a working meditation for him as it was a chore or responsibility.

One morning my once-upon-a-time employer, later business partner, and always friend, Toku Kawaii, called me up. She had a childhood friend visiting from Tokyo who would like to see a bit of the “real” California that lies beyond the freeways, malls, and convenience stores; could the two of them visit the farm?

“Of course!”

Toku and her guest arrived at the farm gate and I went to greet them. They stepped from their car, chatting in Japanese. Senior may have been 92 but he could hear plenty well when he wanted to. And he heard two women outside speaking Japanese, so he abruptly set his negi aside and popped out to see who had arrived. I introduced Senior to Toku and her friend and he was beaming. He welcomed them to Hikari Farm and asked them if they wanted tea and a visit to the greenhouse.

“But, of course!”

So, in due time, we entered the first greenhouse, a huge, glass enclosed space that Senior had planted out in orderly successions of his principle crops- Napa, mizuna, shiso, kabu, daikon and, of course, negi. The women admired the tidy crops in their neat rows and they enjoyed Senior’s animated answers to all of their questions. I can’t say I learned much from their conversation, because I can’t speak Japanese, but listening to the three of them speaking did remind me of Senior’s dexterity with language.

Mr. Nagamine was born into a farming family in rural Kagoshima, Japan, in the first part of the 20th Century, so Japanese was his birthright. But he could speak Mandarin too. In 1944, as a 19 year old Akira Nagamine was drafted in the Imperial Japanese Army and shipped off to the war in Manchuria. The war soon ended, but in the chaos of “peace” the Japanese soldiers in Northern China were abandoned to their fates as the Chinese Communists fought the Kuomintang. It would be eight years before he could be repatriated to Japan. During that time Mr. Nagamine lived by his wits, by his positive energy, and by his will. Senior Nagamine’s negi were tender to the core….but Senior was a very tough man. When Senior and his brother immigrated from Japan to America they found work first in the strawberries, so Senior learned to speak Spanish. They saved enough money up to buy their own farm and he learned English too,

When Toku, her friend, and I reached the beds of radishes, Senior asked his new friends a rhetorical question; “Do you enjoy daikon?”

“Of course!”

So Senior set to picking each of his guests a daikon root to take home. The first root he pulled was giant, but it had some unfortunate scarring from Cabbage root maggot, so he set it aside and searched for another. The second daikon that Senior pulled was 24 inches long, two inches wide, and pretty clean, but still, if you looked, you could see discoloration at the tip from root maggot damage. And the third root too displayed a bite mark or two, if you really looked. Senior reached for another daikon.

Toku could see where this was going and she made it clear to Senior that these roots that he’d already picked were spectacular and more than enough. Senior grudgingly acknowledged her concerns and stopped pulling roots, but it didn’t come easy. Before his later-in-life career as an organic grower of traditional Japanese vegetables, Senior had been a successful cut flower grower and shipper. Flowers can hardly help but be “pretty” but Senior always aimed at “flawless.” for his blooms, and he carried that baseline expectation of perfection into his life as a vegetable farmer. I’m not sure he knew the word “mediocre” in any language. In his own eyes he might have fallen short by gifting Toku-san a merely spectacular daikon, but the women had a grand time. Mr. Nagamine had a great time too, and I’m left with a treasured memory of a very pleasant morning with friends.

I’m glad I got a chance to get to know Mr. Nagamine. Sometimes I’d come into the farm in the morning and I’d be crabby because the wholesale prices were so crappy, or the weather wasn’t cooperating with my designs, or a pile of paperwork at home that I absa-f-inlutely didn’t want to deal with was waiting for me back at home, or my back hurt, or my tires were low,. And then I’d see Senior methodically checking his side of the greenhouse, frowning at the weeds until they wilted and coaxing his negi to grow straight and tall. “Holy cow,” I’d think. “I’m 63 and Senior has thirty five years on me and he’s not complaining; his stuff looks great, his customers appreciate his efforts and he has a good attitude. So shut up, Andy, and buck up. We live in a paradise so enjoy it while it lasts.” Serious respect!

So there was a Dharma message from the Reverend about the impermanence of all created things. “Every introduction will inevitably lead to a parting, to a “goodbye” if we’re lucky, to an unresolved sense of loss if we never get to say our goodbyes to our loved ones or make our peace with those with whom we had misunderstandings. Death and sadness are inevitable and every religion, every culture, has figured out ways to help people confront this reality.

I’m not a Buddhist so attending Mr. Nagamine’s memorial service was a learning experience for me. If anything, I’m a lapsed Lutheran. I can remember the Lutheran pastor talking once about religion and about how some people just want to treat the array of religious expression we see in a diverse place like California as though Ultimate Truth is a “smorgasbord” of sorts where we just pick and choose different practices to follow or beliefs to endorse as though they were so many “hot dishes” we could serve ourselves with.

“Yeah, that’s me,” I thought. I’m as Californian as the day is long and I’ve caught myself looking over the various religious convictions I’ve been exposed to and thinking, “nah- that looks like jello salad with mayonnaise,” or “yeah; I can swallow that.” What can I say? I’ve been exposed to diverse traditions and I was schooled in scepticism when I got a degree in Western Philosophy at UC Davis, so being a true believer comes hard. But that doesn’t mean I think that all spiritual expression is “jello salad.” No. Grief and loss are real and while we can’t ever change that we find ways to make beauty out of pain and we keep on plugging away. Day of The Dead celebrations are one way that some cultures have chosen to find beauty amidst grief. Following in the Mexican tradition you can see what we’re doing for the Day of The Dead, or Dia de los Muertos, by looking at our events page..

This year Starr and I have again created an extensive planting of marigolds as an exercise in farming, gardening, art, and meditation. Marigolds are appreciated in a number of religious traditions because of their rich color and pungent scent. With over 3000 tall marigolds planted around a huge lavender labyrinth the whole field is practically a shrine crafted from plants, but we’re putting together a small altar to honor the loved ones we’ve lost. This year we’re opening the farm up for a Day of the Dead, “Dia de Muertos” celebration in association with the “little bears” from Osito restaurant in San Francisco. You’re invited to come share a traditional celebration meal that Chef Seth Stowaway and the crew from Osito will put together on Saturday, October 28th. Come and walk the labyrinth, take in the amazingly bright and beautiful marigold planting, hear stories, and join in several traditional Mexican Day of the Dead activities like face painting, the gifting of sugar skulls, and the sharing of the Pan de Muertos. Maybe you’ve got a photo or memento that you’d like to contribute to the community ofrenda. Or pick some marigolds and take them home to fashion your own personal bright and aromatic altar. The farm is beautiful right now. Don’t miss out on your ticket to this fall event at Mariquita.com

See you soon!

Starr and Andy

Mariquita Farm

The work never stops here, and we welcome volunteers. We can especially use help weeding the labyrinth since we use no herbicides. During the rose season it’s great to have some help “Dead-heading” the roses. Right now it’s bean season so we’re threshing, winnowing, and sorting beans. Here’s the link to our volunteer signup. https://www.mariquita.com/friends-of-ladybugs-labyrinth/

As always, keep an eye on our website or subscribe to our newsletter for info on upcoming pop up tomatopallozas and events. https://www.mariquita.com/events-and-workshops/

Thanks, and we hope to see you soon.