Letters From Andy
Ladybug Letters
One Step At A Time
Starr and I once got lost in a labyrinth of our own creation. I’m not speaking metaphorically; in 2019 she and I decided to plant a giant labyrinth garden in the field that lies to the south of our home. In the years to follow, we dug over a quarter of a mile of curving, raised beds and set out over 3000 lavender plants. We had a goal, but at a certain point in our construction project we got lost.
A labyrinth is different from a maze. A maze will lure you down a false path and puzzle, teach, terrorize or entertain you. A labyrinth, by contrast, offers you a single path to follow, and if you keep going, if you don’t quit, you don’t turn back, and even if you don’t cheat and “jump across the lines,” you WILL find the center. Labyrinths can be meditation tools, and they are certainly an obvious metaphor for life; sometimes the “path we’re on” in life appears to be leading us astray, even though (in hindsight) we can see we were being drawn closer to our “center” all along. Other times, our life’s goals seem to be within reach when, suddenly, our pathway veers away from our targeted destination, or even seems to cause us to reverse ourselves. When Starr and I found that we’d dug ourselves into a “dead end” in our own labyrinth we had a laugh about the irony of our predicament. Then we went back to the drawing board, back to our shovels and, after three more days of work, our “a-mazing” lavender planting had become properly labyrinthine. We are now a full five years away from having conceived of this garden, and the lavender plants are now mature and reaching their prime. We invite you to come and visit the Ladybug’s Labyrinth on Saturday, May 4th, for World Labyrinth Day.
Labyrinths have been created by many different societies and cultures around the world and some designs are thousands of years old. Starr and I modeled the labyrinth that we built on the medieval era labyrinth located within the Chartres Cathedral. But where that classic, Catholic, labyrinth is laid as a mosaic into the floor of an overarching stone building, we wanted our labyrinth to grow up out of the earth, with nothing overhead but the birds, the butterflies, and the blue vault of the heavens; an inviting garden framed by redwood trees, camelias, roses and cacti, not stone walls; we’re farmers, after all, not Popes, and the earth is our church. So, with the creation of a beautiful labyrinth as our goal, Starr and I set out, one step at a time, to create a beautiful labyrinth; here’s how we did it:
Step One: Site Selection.
Sometimes in life we don’t get to “select.” Sometimes we have to play the cards we’re dealt. At Mariquita Farm we’re lucky enough to have several potential sites for a labyrinth so we chose the field that lies to the south of our home. The southern exposure of the site means that the field is warmer, and potentially drier than our fields to the west or to the north. Our southern field is set in a bowl with the gentle northern slope acting to shelter the site from any winds over the mountains to the north, while the southern edge of the field is screened by a riparian forest, sheltering the spot from any wind off the Pacific ocean three miles to the south. A different patch of ground, with different exposure and a different micro-climate, might have called for a different crop, but we figured that lavender might really enjoy this sunny and sheltered setting.
Lavender needs good drainage to thrive and I knew that our southern field could offer that! Life may be a spiritual journey through “a labyrinth,” but a career in farming is definitely a maze to negotiate with many false starts and dead ends. Back in the year 2000 I had this field laser leveled by my neighbor, Bobby Peixioto, who runs the Pajaro Valley Laser Leveling Company. Bobby took all the top soil off an acre of ground and piled it to one side. Then he graded the underlying clay formation until it was flat and smooth, giving the ground a slight downhill pitch to the east so that excess water would drain off. Then he spread the topsoil back evenly across the whole field. I erected an acre of metal framed hoop houses across the land with an eye to growing wintertime herbs and veggies. But a freak snowstorm came before I had a chance to plant a single crop, and it flattened my brand new greenhouses. I was crushed. I cleaned the field up of all the debris and returned the land to pasture. Until now. The soil is rich, well drained, and well rested. The field even has a pipe to it that can deliver thousands of gallons of water from my storage tanks. If commercial farming had been a costly failure on the site then maybe that was just fate telling me to take a more artistic, meditative approach to working the land in the future.
Step Two: Study and Research
Normally, step two would have been to build a very high deer fence around the field. But I had done that years before. Here in Corralitos, if you don’t want to build a deer fence around your land you shouldn’t even bother to farm. Lavender is not known to be attractive to deer, but that’s not all we want to grow in the labyrinth garden. Our dream for the lavender labyrinth is for it to be set in the landscape like a purple jewel, embraced by flower beds, herbs, milpas of corn, rows of roses, and by citrus orchards, and those crops definitely need protection from deer. Yes, we sometimes have mountain lions in the canyon below the labyrinth, and a healthy mountain lion will eat one deer a week, but “unfortunately” we see a lot more deer than lions looking in through the wire mesh fences. Starr and I used the time we didn’t spend building a tall deer fence to go and visit other labyrinths, learning what we could and absorbing the inspiration they offered. The Sibley Volcanic Preserve’s labyrinth in Oakland was as strange and as beautiful as it was unexpected. The Lands End labyrinth in San Francisco was majestic. The labyrinth at The University Of Saint Thomas in Houston was as calm as that city is frantic. Starr took a course from Lauren Artress of Veriditas on labyrinths. We read books, or tried. Some of the literature was too esoteric for this dirt farmer. We learned a lot.
Step Three: Field Fertility and Crop Selection:
Being left fallow as livestock pasture for nineteen years had definitely given the ground a good rest, but I wanted to get rid of turf and create a more malleable and weed-free seedbed for the lavender crop I’d be planting. Contemporaneously with prepping the outdoor ground I planted trays of lavender seed indoors of a short, purple bloomed variety of lavender called “Ellagance.” I also sourced a thousand each of seedlings of Hidcote lavender and Provence lavender. The idea was to have the shortest and earliest blooming lavenders ring the center of the labyrinth, and reserve the taller, later blooming varieties for the outer beds. I thought about what the labyrinth would look like to a Google Earth satellite passing overhead, and I imagined an open eye with a purple iris looking up at the sun.
Step Four: Design Placement
Setting the labyrinth in the field was a task that called for me to march around the field with a flag on a tall stake while Starr stayed up on the hill and directed me to the left, to the right, back this way and then over there, until she found a spot that felt like the emotional center of the field. We had envisioned an eleven circuit labyrinth. We got some string, tied it to the central metal fence post and then circumscribed the outline of the outer edge of the potential labyrinth and marked it with tiny flags. It turned out to be 110 feet wide! Using the rototiller pulled behind by my little Kubota tractor I then tilled up all the ground that encircled the labyrinth site and we were left with a bright, green grassy disk of the field marking out the footprint of our future labyrinth. Starr and I looked down on the field and we were satisfied with how we had centered our garden-to-be.
Step Five: COVID
Step Five did not follow Step Four the way that thunder follows lightning. Life got in the way. Covid erupted. The disruption to everyday affairs that was provoked by the Covid plague would eventually “give” us the time away from our normal lives we’d need to get the labyrinth’s paths dug and planted, but the actual construction of the labyrinth was a disjointed affair that we completed over two springs, when the rain softened the soil enough to work. We measured out the width of the resting space that we wanted to have at the center of the labyrinth. We conceived of an area wide enough for a dozen people to sit comfortably and look around themselves at all the flowers and trees and birds and bees and clouds. I dug the first ring-like trench around the center and heaped up the soil to one side to form a round, raised bed about two feet wide. That first, central bed would obviously be the shortest bed of the entire labyrinth, but still my back said, “Are you kidding? An eleven circuit labyrinth? Ten rings to go?”
“One step at a time,” my meditative brain reminded my aching back. “One step at a time.”
Step Six: Getting Some Help
We were still farming in the greenhouses near my home as the impact of the Covid restrictions hit. My employees there needed as much work as they could get, but the farm’s winter sales were uneven. When the harvests were light the guys would come over and help me dig the labyrinth so that they could get enough hours. When we were busy on the farm the gestating labyrinth would quietly wait in its field for us to return. Meanwhile, back in the greenhouse, the tiny lavender plants were growing. We up-potted the seedlings from 250 cell trays to trays with bigger one square inch cells, and finally up to 4 square inch pots.
Step Seven: Irrigation
When the eleven concentric paths had been dug out and the planting beds raised and smoothed off it must have looked from above as though the field had a target carved into it. At that point I dug a ditch from the edge of the field that cut across the beds through the center of the labyrinth and I laid out a pipeline with half a dozen risers coming off of it so that I could connect up hoses for hand watering or install a drip irrigation system. Given that below the topsoil layer there’s a deep bed of water-retaining clay soil I was hoping that after an initial “watering in” the young lavender plants would be able to tap into that subsoil moisture. Then too, there’s subsoil moisture seeping down from the higher ground as the irrigation I provide for the citrus grove soaks into the soil. I’m hoping I won’t have to irrigate the labyrinth, but you never know, and the time to install irrigation is BEFORE the crop is planted, not as an afterthought.
Step Eight: Design
An outline of the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth gave us the blueprint for the map of our labyrinth. Starr made copies on sheets of paper that we could clutch at as we marked out all the spots amid the concentric garden beds that we’d have to cut or fill to create the sinuous pathway that guides a seeker to the center. Starting from the outside Starr and I began digging openings between the beds to create a path to the center and plugging up some of the trenchlike pathways to create the looping, labyrinthine path. We had the Chartres Cathedral’s maps in our hands to follow. How hard could it be?
Well, it wasn’t as easy as it seems like it ought to be and as we tried to dig our way to the center we kept bumping into dead ends or looping back on ourselves. We had created a maze! We had a laugh about our situation, took a rest, and returned the next day. And the next. On our third day we made our way to the center of the labyrinth without cheating and hopping over the beds. Success! We sat down in the calm center, looked back up the hill across the lemon orchard and took a deep breath. All that remained to do was …..,.,
Step Nine: Planting
I brought the 3000 little lavender plants over from the greenhouses, one variety at a time. There was still a lot of moisture locked up in the raised, earthen beds so all we did was to mark out location for each plant by removing a measured shovelful of soil and then Starr filled each hole with of water. One by one she planted the little lavenders and smoothed the soil out around them. Our three cats came down the hill and watched her work with great interest. Wild turkeys and Valley Quail came in the evening to walk the labyrinth, peck at ants and seeds and sprouts and meditate on the changes to their field. The deer and the mountain lions looked through the wire mesh fence and wondered what fresh craziness we were up to.
Step Ten. Weeding and watering.
Watering didn’t turn out to be much of a problem. As it stands, after two years Starr has only ever watered a few struggling plants with a splash or two of water, and last year we didn’t water anything even once! The lavender plants did reach down into the subsoil and find the moisture they needed. The beds are raised very high and the trench-like pathways are dug deep, so despite having two very wet winters in a row the lavender never flooded or died because of poor drainage. Naturally, the weeds also thrived-especially the bindweed. We have spent plenty of time weeding the labyrinth but as the lavender plants grow the task gets easier. We’ve had some amazing volunteers come and help from time to time. Weeding the labyrinth is a frequent “meditation” for Starr and I too. We poke along the beds looking for weeds and we enjoy the “om” buzz of the honey bees as they work the flowers for nectar. We also see lots of Bumble Bees and butterflies in the warm months when the crop is in flower.
Step Eleven: Sharing
Our labyrinth is a garden that we harvest lavender flowers from but it’s also a work of art and we created it to share with you. Our first event of the year will be our celebration of the 16th Annual World Labyrinth Day on Saturday, May 4th. The roses should be looking good then too.
Later in the season when the lavender patch is in full bloom we will host some U-Pick events in the labyrinth as well. Keep an eye on the website and on the newsletters as we will be posting details and updates about registration .
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Thank You
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.
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.
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.
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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.
Pop Up and Event Schedule
Celebrate Fall with Mariquita Farm!
The Tomato season is really moving along now and we hope to continue to harvest tomatoes for several more weeks. That said, we are not able to predict the weather. We’re hoping for the best and we do have more Pop-ups and Farm events scheduled throughout the remainder of the year. Please see below for details and check our website at Mariquita.com
If nature favors us and we have an extended season we will revisit lots of our pop-up locations too. Stay tuned for updates.
Tuesday, Oct. 17th– Inner Richmond, Earthquake Memories, Block Party on 10th ave. Visit our booth from 4-6:30.
Saturday, Oct. 21st– On Sale now; Pre-sale items listed on our website for our Dog Patch Pop-Up, next to Piccino Restaurant in SF.
Wednesday, Oct. 25th– We’re in Santa Cruz at the Pumpkin House on California Street. Come fulfill your local-centric, plant-based, trick or treat needs at our Pop-Up; lots of farm goodies will be available along with pre-orders which will begin on line Oct. 18th.
Saturday, Oct. 28th– Celebrate beauty and visit the farm for our Day of the Dead Event. Dinner creations by Osito restaurant in SF using our Wood-Fired Oven. Join in the activities that will celebrate our deceased loved ones and the spirit of coming together as a community to celebrate life. Extra bonus is a stunning field of Marigolds and a Lavender Labyrinth! https://www.mariquita.com/features/a-day-of-the-dead-gathering-october-28th/
Saturday, November 4th -11-3pm. – We collaborate with Prickly Poppy Farm and put on a Flower Celebration at the Jett & Rose Boutique in Corralitos on Freedom Blvd. Make your own Dried Flower Bouquets and Wreaths. “Make-your-own” bouquet or pick up finished items crafted by flower farmers Bethany and Starr.
Saturday, November 26th– 11-5 – Shop “Small Business Saturday” with Mariquita Farm at Jett & Rose on Freedom Blvd. in Corralitos. We will have lots of great gifts from the farm. Shop Local and Support small businesses!
Sundays from now through December 17th– 11-3pm – Find us at the Corralitos Farm and Garden Market on Hames Rd. at the Cultural Center. The market is a friendly gathering of local farmers, gardeners and crafters right around the corner from “downtown Corralitos.”
As noted, weather and fate permitting, we will circle around again to our locations in SF, Berkeley, Palo Alto and Los Gatos.
Hope to see you all at one of our events,
Happy Fall,
Starr and Andy
In Loving Memory
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.
© 2023 Essay by Andy Griffin
Pop Up and Event Schedule
Upcoming Schedule for Tomato Pop-ups & Events
Note: The order page on our website for the Tomato Paloozas opens on the Friday a week before the pickup and closes on Wednesday at 10 pm.
TOMATO PALOOZA
SF, Piccino Restaurant on Saturday, Sept. 23rd. 10:30-12:30pm
TOMATO PALOOZA
Corralitos/Watsonville at Jett and Rose Sat. Sept. 30th 10:30-3pm
TOMATO PALOOZA
Berkeley, Sunday, October 1st – 11:30-1:00
FARM EVENT
Mariquita Farm, Oct. 7 & 8th Participating in the Santa Cruz County open farm tours visit our farm, sign up at Open Farm Tours
FARM EVENT
Mariquita Farm, Oct. 9th
Harvesting Culture Feast – 4-7:30 pm. Tickets at Openfarmtours.com
TOMATO PALOOZA
Palo Alto, Saturday, October 14th- 10:30-12:30 pm.
TOMATO PALOOZA @ Earthquake Block Party
SF, Richmond Dist., Tuesday, Oct. 17th 4:30-6:30 pm.
TOMATO PALOOZA
Piccino Restaurant, SF, Saturday, October 21st
10:30-12:30
FARM EVENT
Santa Cruz, Jack O’Neil Restaurant/Dream Inn,
Jack O’Lanterns, Vines, Bites & Brews
Thursday, October 26th,
6-9 pm. Tickets on the Dream Inn website
FARM EVENT
Mariquita Farm, Saturday, October 28th, 3-7 pm.
The Ladybug and the Little Bear play in the flowers…
Join Mariquita Farm and Osito Restaurant of SF for
Traditional Dia de Los Muertos dinner and activities at Mariquita Farm
Space is limited. Get your tickets for this special dinner event here.
A Taste For Pachamama
Five school girls followed me down the steep cobbled street at a distance, giggling, until one of them got up the nerve to dash past, turn, and confront me. “Would you please come to my house for tea?” she asked.
Her friends crowded around. They were thirteen or fourteen years old, dressed alike in the matching skirts and dark sweaters of their school uniform and their hair was tied back in long black, glossy braids. Having gotten over their initial shyness, they made the quantum leap to boldness and began pelting me with questions; “Are you German? Why are you here? Are you married? Do you believe in God?”
“Shut up,” barked the boss girl. “He’ll answer our questions one by one in a proper interview.”
“Why, yes,” I replied. “I would be delighted to come to your house for tea.”
The girls went into a brief huddle, and arrangements were made. One girl wrote out the address on a piece of notepaper, another girl drew a map, and a third girl left to get some cookies. “We’re looking forward to visiting with you at 5:30,” they said. “Please come.”
They didn’t need to worry. I’d been traveling alone in Bolivia for a month. I was just coming back to town from a walk in the mountains when the girls stopped me. It was late in the day and windy. I was cold and tired. Hot tea sounded nice. These bronze faced girls were bright eyed and charming. I was curious to see how they lived.
I scrubbed up at the room where I was staying and found a clean shirt. The town was tiny, so the girl’s street wasn’t hard to find. I made sure to knock on the door precisely at 5:30, and the leader of the posse welcomed me into her home. I entered a small living room with a sofa against one wall. My young hostess motioned for me to sit. Her friends brought in chairs from the rest of the house and we all sat around the edges of the room, facing each other, with our backs to the walls. Hanging from the walls was a framed image of La Virgen del Socavón, a clock, and a calendar with a shiny picture of the Swiss Alps. The Alps looked like the painted backdrop for a toy train layout compared to the sullen peaks of the Andean Cordillera that loomed up behind the street outside. And rising up in the middle of the floor, almost filling the room to the ceiling, was a conical mountain of freshly dug potatoes.
The girls poured cups of mate de coca and passed around the cookies. They each spilled a ritual drop of tea onto the floor. “A drop for Pachamama,” they recited, “a drop for me.” Then came the flood of questions. “Are you German? Why are you here? Do you like our town? Have you been to Miami? Are you married? How many children do you have? How much money do you make?”
“One at a time,” I pleaded. So the girls slowed down and introduced themselves. Their homework assignment was to study a foreign country and write a report. I looked German. They would get good grades and extra credit for interviewing me. Formalities observed, the girls got down to business and I swung at their questions almost as fast as they pitched; “No, I wasn’t German. Yes, I liked Bolivia. No, I didn’t have children yet, although yes, I was already 32 years old and I did want a family, but no, I hadn’t met the right woman yet, and yes, I’d been to the Miami airport, but no, I don’t live there, and anyway California is nice too.” I even tried to ask the girls a few questions of my own.
“How come you keep the potatoes in the house?” I asked.
“Because they’ll freeze outside or someone will steal them,” the girl said.
“In California I’m a farmer and I grow potatoes,” I said.
“Oh, everyone grows potatoes,” another girl said. I suppose she was right, at least in her world. “Besides,” she added, “you’re not a farmer; you are an ‘ingeniero agronomo.’ Germans aren’t farmers and farmers are too poor to travel.”
An ‘ingeniero agronomo” would be an agronomist or agricultural consultant. I understood where she was coming from; in rural Bolivia people as white as I am are not farmers. And farming there isn’t a trade people chose to do the way I decided to “become” a farmer; Their parents were born into a life on the land when they were born on to this planet and alternative existences seemed foreign and fantastic. And who would choose to be a farmer and labor outside? Their world was harsh. In the Andes the day may dawn icy, but by mid-morning the sun can be hot on your back. After sundown the temperatures drop again, until your hands and feet are numb. The atmosphere is thin and the air is dry. The sky overhead is deep blue by day, and by night it is jet black and sparkles with majestic drifts of stars. Outer space seems close.
Most people in Bolivia live on the Altiplano, which means “high plains” in Spanish. The Altiplano is high– the altitude ranges from 9,000 feet above sea-level to around 14,000 feet– but the land is nothing close to being as flat as its name implies. The daily extremes of temperatures in the Andes have prompted a number of plants to evolve tuberous growth habits. A tuber is a swollen, underground stem that stores up energy so that if a “killing frost” burns off all the foliage above the ground, the plant still has enough life protected under an insulating mantel of soil to sprout again. The concentrated sugars and starches found in tubers have made a number of them important food crops. The sweet potato, for example, is a tuberous morning glory from Peru that’s now cultivated all over the world. Andeans also cultivate an edible tuberous oxalis, called oca. Potatoes are tuberous nightshades that evolved in the Andes, and they are cultivated there in great profusion.
While we find just a few varieties of potatoes on our supermarket shelves, a farmer’s market in Bolivia has potatoes of every imaginable shape and color heaped up for display. Little marble sized potatoes are piled up next to long, skinny ones and big round ones in colors ranging from blues, reds and purples to yellows, whites and browns. The different kinds of potatoes were not simply appreciated for their rainbow of “decorator colors.” Each kind of potato had its own unique attributes; some were more drought resistant, so if there was very little rain they might produce a crop, even when the other kinds didn’t. Some breeds of potatoes were more disease resistant than others, or stood up to storage better, or tasted especially good in certain dishes. There is a logic behind their rainbow of potato varieties, not just a fetish for novelty.
Bolivian farmers have turned the extreme climatic conditions they must contend with to their advantage, and they use Mother Nature’s mood swings to preserve their harvests for the hard times they know lie ahead. Potatoes are cut into pieces and laid out on rocks under the sun to dry, while the farm dogs prowl and bark any marauding crows away. At night, any residual surface moisture that sweats out from the potato chunks is frozen into a spiky beard of ice crystals, which evaporate in the morning sun. After a few days of this treatment, the potato slices are essentially freeze-dried. These black leathery potato chips are called chuño, and can be kept without spoiling almost indefinitely. Chuño is an acquired taste, but when you get used to it, it’s earthy and satisfying in stews and broths.
Half the people I met in Bolivia talked of making their way to Miami. But among traditional people, it is still considered polite to thank the Earth Goddess, Pachamama, for the blessing of food. Even as the Virgin of the Mines looks down from the wall, the people will spill a drop of their beverage or let a crumb of their food fall to the ground before taking a drink or swallowing a bite. “A taste for Pachamama,” they’ll murmur, “a taste for me.” I heard this phrase so often in Bolivia that I began to notice the people who didn’t give thanks for what they had. Spilling drinks and food makes for sticky floors on buses and in public places but in the absence of any SPCA, giving “tastes” to Pachamama also keeps skinny, stray Bolivian dogs alive. Bolivia can be a tough place, but the habit everyday people have of giving “thanks” lends a hard and austere country a grace and humility that the populations of affluent countries can only aspire to.
I don’t think I ever convinced the young ladies that I wasn’t German. I answered some questions about life in California and had them laughing, even if they were disappointed that I didn’t live on a sugary, white sand beach with Gloria Estefan Y Miami Sound Machine.
When the tea party was over my hostesses thanked me profusely for helping them with their homework.
“Encantado,” I said, as I negotiated around the pile of potatoes and headed for the door. “The pleasure was mine.”
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.
© 2023 Essay by Andy Griffin
Pop Up and Event Schedule
Mariquita Farm
Tomato Palooza Pop-up Deliveries
&
Special Fall Farm Events
Dear Friends and Long Time Supporters,
There is still confusion about our delivery schedule. We are no longer creating Mystery Boxes this year, but we are doing Tomato Palooza Pop-ups and Special Events!
The way Tomato Palooza Pop-ups work:
Each week on Friday we are posting a pop-up event on our website. You have until the following Thursday at 9am to order the items we are offering on the order form for Saturday delivery that week.
1. This week we are taking orders for Los Gatos, order window will close on Thursday September 7th at 9am, and delivery will be on Saturday, September 9th.
2. On Friday, September 8th we will be taking orders for Berkeley, order window will close on Thursday September14th at 9am for delivery on Saturday, September 16th.
3. On Friday, September 15th we will be taking orders for SF, Piccino Restaurant in the Dog Patch area, order window will close on Thursday, September 21st at 9am for delivery on Saturday, September 23rd.
4. On Friday, September 22nd we will start taking orders for the Corralitos/Wastsonville (Santa Cruz County) area order window which will close on Thursday 28th at 9am for delivery on Saturday September 30th. We will also be doing an Olive Oil and Tomato tasting at this event which will be held at the Jett and Rose boutique on Freedom road at 2905 Freedom Blvd, Watsonville CA. next to Alladin Nursery. Belle Farms (Olive Oil) whose oil we have been carrying for many years will join us!
NOTE: We will be posting additional Tomato Palooza dates as the locations are clarified and the produce becomes available.
A few upcoming events in October to put on your calendar, with opportunities to visit
Mariquita Farm:
1. Saturday, October 7th, Sunday, October 8th.
We are one of the featured farms on the Open Farm Tours in Santa Cruz County. For a small fee you can visit Mariquita Farm along with other near by farms. Go to Openfarmtours.com for more information and tickets.
2.We are also the host for the October 9th dinner from 4-7:30pm, “Harvesting Culture Feast” sponsored by Edible Monterey Bay Magazine.
3. Thursday, October 26th, we will be part of the
“Tasting of Santa Cruz” at the Dream Inn. More details will follow.
4. Saturday, October 28th, We will host a special dinner with Chef Seth Stowaway of Osito Restaurant in SF for Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration with a Marigold u-pick, face painting, an alter and more. More details will follow.
5. Look for our Marigold U-pick announcement September/October to be determined with details to follow.
You can pre-order for the our upcoming Los Gatos pop-up here https://www.mariquita.com/tomatopalooza-popup/
A “Slow” Recipe For Polenta
Here’s a “Slow Food” recipe for Polenta: I start by planting the corn.
Actually, it was my friend, Annabelle, who started the recipe for me by giving me some heirloom “Otto File” corn seed that she collected when traveling through Italy a number of years ago. “Otto File” means “eight rows” in Italian, and each ear of Otto File corn does display only eight rows of golden kernels. While other varieties of corn might be be more productive, Otto File is the “go to” corn for real, old-school polenta. Since I had Italian restaurants eager to make their own polenta “from scratch,” Annabelle’s gift of the correct seed was well timed and much appreciated. We planted the seed and grew it out for 3 years, saving only the best, longest ears of each year’s harvest until we had enough quality seed for a commercial scale planting. If you want to plant your own patch of Otto File corn all you need to do is buy a pound of seed from us at our next pop-up and save it to plant in the spring instead of milling it up to cook.
If you are going to make polenta, know this: “Store bought” polenta is “shelf-stable.” That is to say, each kernel of corn in store-bought polenta has been cracked and “de-germed.” The “germ,” or that embryonic part of the seed that germinates, has been mechanically removed and processed to make other, value-added products. When you make your own polenta from the corn meal you grind yourself you will probably not be able to (or want to ) de-germ the corn before grinding it up. The downside of grinding whole corn is that, once ground, the fresh ground meal will not hold up for as long as the industrial corn meal that has had the hearts removed. If you buy our corn to make meal from take care to grind what you intend to use promptly or the meal will eventually spoil. The upside of grinding your own “whole grain” corn is that it will be much richer and more flavorful that store bought polenta meal BECAUSE it is whole grain.
To grind the corn into meal I use a Vitamix food processor. No, I am not an influencer who is going to profit from brand promotion. I find that three, separate 15 second pulses on the “smoothie” icon works out to make the best meal. To my taste, a blend of finely powdered meal with some larger chips or pieces of corn makes for a more interesting texture. I generally pass the meal through a sieve at least once to remove any really large pieces of corn that may not cook at the same rate as the rest of the meal. If necessary, I will re-grind the biggest pieces one pore time before preparing the polenta.
Marcella Hazan, the quintessential Italian Grandmother and the author of “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” recommends a ration of seven cups of water to one and 12/3rds cup of corn meal for perfect polenta. I’m not going to argue with her, but I always keep a tea kettle of hot water nearby when I’m cooking polenta so that I’m ready if I need to add more water. Think about it; polenta really only has four ingredients; corn meal, water, salt…….and time! If you want to cook a pot of polenta for a long time you will be rewarded with a richer flavor and a more velvety texture. Marcella cooks her polenta for 45 minutes but I like to cook mine for six hours.
Once I have my pot of water boiling I add a pinch of herbal salt to the water. Then I stir a big spoonful of “corn mud” into the roiling water. Once the water is at a boil again I add another big spoonful until I’ve put all the meal into the water and the water is boiling again. Then I turn the flame down so that that polenta is barely bubbling. I’ll come back and stir it every 15 minutes or so but, basically, the idea is to let the polenta cook and cook and cook and cook SLOWLY. You may notice that the level of cornmeal gradually drops in the pot over time. I will add a dash of hot water if I feel like things are getting too thick too quick, but I usually just leave the pot to slowly bubble away.
After five or six hours of slowly bubbling away I feel like the polenta is ready. I’ll pour the hot, soft polenta into wide ceramic casserole dishes and let it cool at room temperature. Once it is cool the polenta will congeal into a substance thicker than jello, which can be easily sliced and baked or fried. I like to fry the polenta in long, thick rectangles, taking time to turn each piece so that it is gilded and crispy on each side. If you wanted to you could fry up little tiny squares to use as croutons in a salad. I like my polenta served with a sauce as though it were a pasta. I always make a huge batch and freeze half of it so that I can whip up some polenta even when I don’t have time.
We are in the middle of pop up season. This coming Saturday we will be in Los Gatos. In the weeks to follow we will return to Berkeley, San Francisco, and Palo Alto, as well as popping up here in Corralitos at the Sunday Farmers Market. We will be featuring lots of tomatoes, tomatillos, herbs and flowers, but we will also have Otto File corn for sale. Keep an eye on our newsletter for updates. You can pre-order for the our upcoming Los Gatos pop-up here https://www.mariquita.com/tomatopalooza-popup/
FIELD OF FLOWERS
Let me start with a simple disclaimer; I do not intend in this article to promote, dispute, or ridicule any religious faith or tradition. Nor do I have any religious authority or aspirations to speak for god, or the gods. My only interest is in sharing what I’m learning about how to grow marigolds. It’s just that you can’t do much research into the interesting ethnobotany and Linnaean taxonomy of the marigold without soon becoming enmeshed in the theories, traces, and rumors of the divine. And that’s on top of the obvious misdirections and dead end paths that have been provided by marketing experts. The “African Marigold,” for instance, is not from Africa. We’ll get to that, but first let’s deal with our first Divinity.
In the early 1990s the Virgin of Guadalupe was said to have made a presentation in a grove of live oak trees in Pinto Lake County Park, here in Watsonville. An impromptu shrine grew up around the site. Predictably there were howls of outrage from Constitutionalist activists who were offended by a religious site being hosted on public property, but they soon got bored and went away. The shrine became part of the local landscape. Nowadays Mary’s oak tree no big deal, and soccer teams ritually visit the grove to be blessed by a Padre at the outset of the season the same way that a priest goes down to the harbor in Monterey to bless the fleet of fishing boats before they venture off into perilous waters. But while the “Just say ‘No’ to Mary in a public space” people were still squared off against the folks leaving flowers (AND CANDLES!) at the foot of the Virgin’s oak tree I took time to talk with the people on my farm crew about the controversy.
“What do you think about la Virgin de Pinto Lake?” I asked Ramiro Campos. “Are you surprised that there was a presentation there, so close to where we live?”
“Well, no,” he replied. “Mary goes everywhere.” And he pointed to a random scattering of calendula weeds blooming along the drain ditch at the edge of the lettuce field where we were workingwith their cute, little, orange-yellow flowers glowing in the green grass.
I was puzzled.
Ramiro laughed. “The grandmas say that marigolds sprout along every path the Virgin takes.”
I laughed too. “She gets around!” I’d seen these so-called “marigolds” growing on disturbed ground on every farm I’d worked on all around California, usually popping up from late winter to early spring, and I recognized them as the wild cousins of the larger Calendulas that we often grew as edible flowers for the restaurant trade.
“It’s said that the Virgin walks the Earth at night and leaves gold coins in her wake for the poor to gather. “Mary’s ‘gold’ is easy to find, but hard to spend.”
Two years ago Starr and I visited friends in Texas who have a flower farm. https://www.texascolor.
I read up on marigolds in the off-season and discovered that the heavy scent of the African marigold is known to repel mosquitos. We’ve got a swampy canyon on the farm below our house that can host mosquitos in a wet year, so planting an aromatic boundary to the field seemed like a good idea. And it was fun to learn that the “African marigold” is from Mexico. Before the Columbian exchange, the marigolds that were used in Indian and Buddhist religious ceremonies were the same small flowered, cool season, calendula type, Old World “marigolds” that were appreciated in European Catholic traditions. But once that Spanish treasure galleon shipped into Manila from San Blas, Mexico, the “East Indies” discovered that these “new” marigolds from the “West Indies” thrived in their warm, tropical conditions. And the “new world” marigolds were everything the old ones were, but bigger, brighter, and heavily perfumed. Frank Arnosky gave me the information on the best varieties of Tagetes marigold for sacramental purposes that come from seed companies in Thailand, and I was off and running.
The south facing field we have on our home ranch seemed the best place to situate a crop of flowers. The field is sheltered, flat and gently sloped, so it would be easy to work and the soil would drain well. The first step was to plant a cover crop in the fall ahead of the first rains. I chose to plant a blend of oats, vetch, winter peas and barley to cloak the soil from heavy winter rains. And rain it did! We stopped counting at around 60 inches. We did have some erosion from the unexpectedly heavy-and early- rain, but the young oats and barley kept most of the silt in the field and I was able to turn the cover crop under in late april. The next step was filling trays with seed. I wasn’t in a hurry; if you want to have a nice marigold crop in October and November you should plant it in the field no later than July 25th. I had my plants ready to go right on time.
I rototilled up the first curved bed with the tractor and laid out a single line of drip tape. The marigold field embraces the circular lavender labyrinth that Starr and I created, so no row was ever going to be straight. Once the tape was soaking the row I used the tape itself to measure out where I would put each plant. The high flow drip tape that I use has an emitter every six inches, so I could use the spreading stains of wet earth around each emitter to mark where to put the tiny seedling. I planted well over two thousand plants, one every 18 inches. When I’d finish one row I’d start another. It took me a number of days to finish, but I liked working in the fog at dawn because the cool temperatures were best for the tender, young plants. Now, after a thorough weeding, the plants look strong, happy and healthy. We’ve even got the first blooms showing on a trial bed I did a few weeks earlier than the main crop to test the vitality of the seeds.
When I first met Starr 5 years ago she was making tiny little shrines for people using Altoids Mint containers. Her shrines reminded me of similar tiny “to go” shrines I’d seen in little markets in Ecuador and Bolivia but they were uniquely American with a riot of different cultural elements. If you are a surfer she can make you an oceanic shrine, if you’re a Goddess worshipper she can make you a goddess shrine. If you are struggling in the ganja business she can make you a shrine that speaks to those concerns. And as we looked at the field we thought it would be interesting to make the entire field into a shrine of sorts, celebrating all the plants and creatures that make up a healthy, diverse, and beautiful farmscape. For her, it would be a way to mix her passion for gardening with her interest in making shrines and to do it on a scale that you could see from a plane. For me it was an opportunity to take what I’ve learned about growing plants on a commercial scale but to bend all the straight lines and make the effort as much about beauty as about productivity.
Come down and see what we’re creating when we do our Marigold U-Pick this year. Keep an eye on our newsletter and on the website for dates and details.
We don’t just grow marigolds either. Beside the milpas of corn, squash and beans that we have on the farm, and the beds of herbs we are also cultivating a wide range of cut flowers. My favorites are the zinnias, which happen to come from Mexico originally, just like the marigolds. Starr is partial to her collection of Dahlias, and we both love the sunflowers. Starr will be bringing bouquets to all of our farm pop ups. And speaking of which, we just added more tomatoes to this coming weekend pop up on Ross Road in Palo Alto. The warm weather is helping bring the crop on, late but welcome. Look to our sales page to see where inventories are at and order some before they’re all gone!
On the 30th of September we will be doing a pop up at Jett & Rose in Corralitos with our friends from Bella Farm Olive Oil. Details TBA.
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. Here’s the link to our volunteer signup. https://www.mariquita.com/friends-of-ladybugs-labyrinth/
Thanks, and we hope to see you soon.
© 2023 Essay by Andy Griffin
Mariquita Farm Pop Up Schedule for Tomato Season 2023
Hi Everybody: Tomatoes are ripening as I write these words to you. As our harvest permits, we will be selling our tomatoes at a series of pop ups around the Bay. The season arrived late this year, but the plants are sound, healthy, and we are hoping for good harvests. We have a rainbow of cherry tomatoes planted, plus dry-farmed Early Girls, Piennolo, San Marzano and Heirloom tomatoes We will announce each sale and post what we can confidently offer for pre-sale on the Friday morning eight days before the sale date to give everybody (including ourselves) time to plan. We intend to bring extra crops to the pop-up for walk-by sales and time, labor and harvests allow, as well as a range of dried herbs, fresh flowers, citrus preserves, and other farm goodies. We may add dates if time and harvests allow. Keep an eye on our website and on your “in box.” If you don’t hear from us check your filters in case the algorithms think that we’re selling spam instead flavorful tomatoes, herbs, and flowers. Subsequent notices will give updates and additional information as to times of day, quantities and varieties of tomatoes, but here’s the schedule as we see it now:
August 19 Corralitos at Alladin’s Nursery at Freedom Blvd and Corralitos Road
August 26 Piccino Restaurant in San Francisco’s Dogpatch
September 2 Palo Alto off of Oregon Expressway on Ross Road
Thank you, and we hope to see you soon! Andy & Starr
And don’t forget, Starr is at the Corralitos Farm and Garden Market which is held each Sunday from 11 to 3 in the parking lot of the Corralitos Cultural Center on Hames Road. We look forward to seeing you.
Check this link if you’re interested in volunteering. https://www.mariquita.com/friends-of-ladybugs-labyrinth/