Letters From Andy

I don’t care what Marjorie Taylor Green or the other “researchers” from the Q-anon community say, the Bacon avocado is not the unholy, genetically modified bastard offspring of a guacamole tree and a salt cured pork. No! The Bacon avocado is so named because it was hybridised by a Mr. James Bacon back in the 1920s.

He was farming near Buena Park in Southern California and he named his new variety after himself. The Bacon avocado has a very nice fruit but it is not as popular today as it’s rivsa, the Hass avocado, is. But popularity has its limits, as we’ll see.

The Hass avocado is so ubiquitous in the contemporary American marketplace that for many consumers it is almost the only avocado that they know, the ne plus ultra of avocados, but the variety was only discovered in the late 1920s by a Mr. Rudolph Hass, postman and rare fruit enthusiast, who lived in Southern California near Whittier. (His children actually deserve the credit for discovering the variety because it was the kids who noticed how rich and unctuous the fruit was compared to other avocados and they drew his attention to the first tree from which all other trees were cloned.) But the avocado is a tree native to the Americas, probably originating in what is now Southern Mexico and Guatemala. Our English word, “avocado” is derived from the Nahual word “ahuacatl,” meaning “testicle.” But that’s not the only fun fact about the avocado plant.

Avocado trees are not fond of cold weather. Scientists believe that avocados evolved during a warmer, more humid time in Earth’s history when our planet’s social life was defined by “megafauna,” the REALLY BIG prehistoric mammals reached gargantuan proportions by eating plants. One theory has it that avocados developed their oil-rich, flavorful fruit in order to appeal to the appetites of giant sloths, who would eat the fruits and then “disperse” the avocados’ big, round seeds around the jungle when they defecated. An avocado’s seed, or pit, is so big that you’d have to be a megafauna to “pass” one. Today, we not-so-mega mammals cultivate and disperse the avocado agriculturally and our attentions have changed the plant.

In nature there are many natural varieties of avocado with fruits that range in size from little quail’s eggs up to basketballs, but they’re all frost sensitive to a greater or lesser degree. When Mr. Bacon selected the “Bacon” avocado out of the different seedlings he was trialing, one of the positive attributes that the variety possessed was that it seemed to be a bit more tolerant of cold nighttime temperatures than other avocadoes. Here in California we’re at the outer edge of the climatic zone where avocado can survive- that was true for Mr. Bacon in Whittier and it’s especially true for us growers even further north up here in Central California. And the Bacon avocado does have a nice flavor and an appealing, buttery texture to the flesh.

Avocados are often self-sterile, which means they will not self-pollinate. A Hass avocado tree will set some fruit after it gets older but it can’t be a really productive commercial crop unless it is cross pollinated with another variety of avocado. As avocados became popular in the United States beyond Southern California the Hass won the popularity contest in the marketplace. But you can’t have a viable Hass industry if you don’t also cultivate the pollinizer trees. Here in Central California I’ve seen growers use Zutano and Fuerte avocados as pollinators, but most farmers around here look to Bacons to get the job done. I like Bacons; I made a guacamole the other day using Rangpur Limes and Bacon avocados that came out very nicely. (I’ve planted a bunch of Rangpur limes, but at present only one tree is bearing. The Rangpur lime is actually a very tart type of mandarin orange, with a loose, thin skin and a bright scent. We should have a small harvest to pick and sell next year.)

In Mexico it is possible for avocado farmers to get two crops a year, or at least 3 crops in 2 years. We’re so far to the north that we can only count on one crop per year- if we’re lucky! Sometimes we get a hard frost that not only damages the fruit that is hanging on the tree, but also the avocado flower buds that would be the following year’s crop. This year, though, everything worked out. The Marsalisi Brothers are getting a decent crop of Bacons now, and there’s a nice crop of the Hass avocados that they pollinated coming in a couple of months.

—© 2021 Essay and Photos by Andy Griffin.

Top photo is a Bacon Avocado on a Marsalisi Brothers Farm tree.

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His supporters say it was a “heart condition” but opposition politicians claimed that the late John Magafuli, then President of Tanzania, was being treated in Kenya for Covid 19 when he died last month. Mr. Magafuli’s death provoked more conversation on our farm than you might have expected, given that Tanzania is a long way away and there are plenty of people closer to home- and closer to us wherever they are- who have been affected by this disease. But Starr’s daughter, Yarrow, had been stationed in Tanzania as a Peace Corps volunteer until just before the pandemic started. Yarrow’s projects in Tanzania included helping HIV/AIDs survivors set up poultry projects for egg production so that they could help support themselves and their families. But the late Tanzanian president had a misunderstanding with a foreign NGO and chose to strike a politically expedient “Tanzanian First” stance by denying work visas to aid workers, effectively kicking all foreign aid organizations out of the country. At first, we were sad that Yarrow couldn’t stay in Africa until the end of her service term to see all of her projects through to successful completion. But the Covid 19 pandemic erupted almost immediately upon her return to the US from East Africa and our dismay turned to relief that she wasn’t stranded in Tanzania while a loud Covid-denying leader was in charge.

Yarrow and her friend, Trent, another Peace Corp veteran, showed up at our farm coincidentally just in time to get the Covid vaccination from the farm worker outreach program that was sponsored by the Farm Bureau/ Strawberry Commission. They’ve been helping us here since then and their efforts have been a “god/goddess-send.” Covid has been fatal to many small businesses, like some of the restaurant kitchens I used to serve, and it’s been difficult and awkward and stressful for most of the rest. For us, the dilemma has been that our packing shed and cooler and office are at our home. One of the most successful health protocols that a person can follow to minimize the spread of this highly infectious disease is to create a secure and virus-free place to retreat to. We decided that having workers show up at our home on a daily basis was not in our best interests–we’re 61 after all, the same age as President Magafuli was when he didn’t die from Covid. So Starr and I have been making up all the boxes ourselves, “sheltering in place,” you could say, and “working from home.” But those are heavy, wet boxes full of produce that we are schlepping, not weightless mouse clicks, so we’ve been feeling it. I’m not complaining. It is obvious to me that the ability for an average citizen here to enjoy or afford any degree of “social isolation” is entirely dependent on being affluent to some degree. Being stuck on a farm during a pandemic is a blessing, not a curse.

Looking at Pico Blanco in the distance.

Covid isn’t anywhere near over, I know, but we had an almost normal day this past Sunday. Trent is from Florida and Yarrow had arrived from Colorado, so we wanted to show them a little bit of California besides the shed and field here at home. So we took them to Big Sur for a hike up Serra Hill in the Los Padres National Forest, just south of the Bixby Creek Bridge. It’s a beautiful drive any time of year, but we were treated to a gorgeous sunny spring day with green grass, wildflowers and wild strawberries. Heading south of Carmel I always make a game of calling out the names of the creeks to myself before I cross the bridges and culverts, just for fun; “Rio Carmelo, Wildcat, Malpaso, Garrapata, Rocky, Granite, Bixby, Little Sur, Big Sur….Bixby Creek has a fame all out of proportion to the amount of water it conveys to the Pacific due to the graceful and photogenic arch of the bridge that spans its gorge. But for me, especially now during this pandemic, it’s Garrapata Creek that means the most to me.

When I was kid I spent a lot of time with my neighbor, Jimmy, a cattle rancher in upper Carmel Valley. Jimmy was a real old-timer, and he’d had a job as a mule driver on the grading teams that carved Highway One down the Big Sur Coast back in the 1930s. But as a child he’d grown up in a fisherman’s shack just off Monterey’s Cannery Row. When the 1918 flu pandemic hit Monterey Jimmy’s mother feared for his life, so she dispatched him to live in a healthier atmosphere with his Uncle Harvey. Talk about “social isolation!” Uncle Harvey had a remote homestead/ranch way up Garrapata Creek, accessible only on foot or horseback. Harvey was a near hermit, just minding his own business and cattle, choosing only to work as a cowboy on neighboring ranches when he needed a little cash. Jimmy spent several years growing up there in the redwood forests of upper Garrapata and he had a lot of crazy stories to tell about his experiences. When the pandemic ended he returned to Monterey and got schooled, but it’s fair to say he got his education in the Santa Lucia Mountains. Standing on top of Serra Hill with Starr, Yarrow and Trent, and looking into the interior of the Little Sur backcountry, I was thinking about Jimmy and his stories with an understanding that I didn’t have when I was a kid and didn’t know the contours of a pandemic.

So where to go from here?

I don’t think anyone can really know what’s going to happen next. We’re still taking the pandemic seriously, but we’re also planting as though life will open up. Farming always demands lots of forethought, because crops take “real” time to germinate and grow. We’ve picked the first handful of artichokes and the sun will bring the crop on fast now. The first basil has sprouted in the greenhouse, the tomatoes will get planted out this week, and the potato crop is already a few inches high. The squash crop goes into the ground as soon as the field is worked up and the beans and corn follow as soon as the soil warms up. Thank you for your support; we appreciate it.

© 2021 Essay by Andy Griffin.

Photos by Starling Linden. Top photo is looking back at the Santa Lucia Mountains.

Askelon is a port city along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Today Askelon is in Israel, but it’s an ancient city, and people have inhabited the site for at least 8000 years. It’s one of the biggest ports in the Eastern Mediterranean and the root meaning of the name, Askelon, may have something to do with business or mercantile activity. Whatever the name originally meant, the settlement served as a shipping point for onions that were exported by sea. That name of that sea, the Mediterranean, comes from the words “medi,” or “in the middle of” and “Terra” “of the Earth,” or “Terra” —the sea at the middle of the world. Askelon’s aromatic bulbs made for happy customers “all around the world,” and the port city became synonymous with the onion. In fact, our modern word “scallion” comes from Askelon, as does the word “shallot.” Recently we were asked by our friend, Colleen Logan, from Savor the Local based in Carmel, to write a piece on “why people should support local family farms. This week we’re picking scallions for your harvest box. Why should you want to get your onions from a local farm instead of buying a more famous or cheaper brand from “across the sea,” like they did in the good old days?

The food supply is a transnational dynamic these days, as indeed it has been for ages. We need to have the ability to move food around the planet if we’re going to guarantee food security to everybody and keep regional famine at bay. Also, it’s just nice to live in the Northern hemisphere yet be able to enjoy tropical fruits all year long. Food prices in the US are also often cheaper than they otherwise would be, were it not for foreign imports. Farm workers in Ecuador make as much in a day’s labor as a farm worker in the United States makes in an hour, so it’s no surprise that they can ship frozen strawberries from Guayaquil to processors much more cheaply than growers in California can. If produce from far away is not only sometimes more exotic and often cheaper than local produce is, why support local farms? I’m a local farmer; why support me?

1. Your local farmer is a neighbor, a member of your community. When you support a local farmer the money you spend on the farmer goes back into our local economy and builds our community. That’s true even when you live in San Francisco or Oakland and the farmer lives in Watsonville. Where does “community” begin and end? When I get on the freeway and listen to “the traffic and weather together every fifteen minutes,” the reports cover all the territory from 17 in the south to Petaluma and 101 in the north – that’s one big bowl of asphalt and concrete spaghetti we all share in common and have to deal with. Some of that traffic comes as local farms and farm workers spend money in your cities and buy your goods and services. It’s good for the community for the money it generates to travel from home to home in circles and keep more locals employed.
2. But farmers are more than just neighbors and consumers. The farmers around you are the custodians for the natural resources in your local area. Farmers and ranchers make their living from the soil and water and how they treat those resources directly affects you, whether you buy their produce or not. If you don’t want agricultural chemicals in the water you drink, then support the local organic farms that are producing food without recourse to the noxious chemicals that would contaminate your water or foul your air. If you enjoy the rural character of the hills on the horizon of your community then support the ranchers whose work it is to manage those rangelands. If restaurants and markets in your community make a point of supporting local farmers, ranchers, and fishers, then support them so that they can play their role in creating and maintaining a vital, viable foodshed.
3. Maybe not every local agricultural producer is doing a good job of caring for the environment that we all share; but support the farms that are good stewards of our environment and encourage them. And supporting local farms is good for the environment because they can have a smaller carbon footprint than larger companies. If you like having cleaner air, then don’t buy food that has to come into the Bay Area on a jet, cargo ship or long haul truck. Put your money where your mouth- and lungs- are. And cleaner air isn’t just about us; we have to breathe the air that blows in from Asia and someone else will have to breathe the smog we create. When there’s less air pollution anywhere in the world everybody wins.
4. Sometimes local produce costs a bit more than produce purchased in chain stores. Local producers may not use as much energy as distant suppliers in getting their produce to market but they often have significantly higher labor costs or water costs. In some cases local growers may be using practices that are more labor intensive but less environmentally damaging. The local growers need you. When the Covid pandemic hit and all the supply chain disruptions occurred those that had a connection to local food outlets learned the value of supporting their local farms. This farm to table relationship has been mutually beneficial. As a community, we are all better off when the lowest price is not our highest value.
5. You can get an education of sorts from supporting a local farm too. It’s so easy to find anything from anywhere that a person can almost be excused for having no clue what’s “in season.” It’s always summer somewhere in the world so there’s almost always going to be fresh corn on the cob at some price. But eating locally means living through the seasons with all the ups and downs of the region we live in. Here in the Bay Area we’re blessed with an extraordinary range of local products. Eating seasonally doesn’t have to mean having to give up on things when they’re out of season; we can think of each season as an opportunity to enjoy the best of what our region, our climate, our season has to offer.
6. Supporting a local farm can provide a sense of pride in feeling a connection to the people that grow your food and that live in your neighborhood. I’d like to take a moment to thank Colleen Logan for all the support she and Savor The Local have given our farm over the years. Colleen wrote, “I am passionate about what I do. I love supporting chefs who cook with local ingredients that are in season and I enjoy the challenge of bringing interesting and unique items for daily cooking or special occasions,” she says. “I am proud of the fact that the produce is harvested to order and delivered just in time.  95% of what I deliver was harvested that day or the day before. I directly help small farms thrive, by letting them set the prices, the minimum for each item and working with their schedules and means of communication. I also really enjoy the personal relationships I have with each farm and some amazing local chefs.” Her words sure gave me a sense of pride. Thanks, Colleen.
7. If you care about your local environment and economy it makes sense to find a farmer in your area that has values you want to support. We want to thank all of you reading this because most of you have supported us for a long time through the purchase of our Mystery Boxes and farm products. We hope you will continue to support us and help us get the word out to others that might be interested in good ol’fashioned, locally sourced, farm fresh produce!

The seasons are marching forward. We plant basil this week, and the first summer squashes get sown in the trays. By popular convention our “frost-free” date here in Santa Cruz County is usually thought of as April 15th so we’ll have lots of transplants coming out of the greenhouse around that time. Life is about to get really busy and I’m optimistic about the outlook for the upcoming season.

Thanks, for your support!

Andy and the Crew at Mariquita Farm.

© 2021 Essay by Andy Griffin.

Photo of Gayle at a Piccino Mystery Thursday by Debra Baida.

Photo of Linda Ferrasci’s sheep by Linda Ferrasci.

Photo of pick up site with totes and mystery boxes by Gayle Ross.

Photo of Colleen Logan and the Savor the Local van by Michael Troutman.

All other photos by Andy Griffin.