Letters From Andy

The bedroom slash squash storage warehouse. If I leave the squash in the field the squirrels will eat them all. Here they are safe.

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.

A wheel barrow load of Rugosa squash. This is an heirloom Italian variety of butternut squash. I will save the best examples of the breed for seed and sell (or eat) the rest when they’ve cured.

“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.

An heirloom bean from Oaxaca that I’m growing out for seed. This type is typically eaten fresh, like a green bean.

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.

Our cat meets a wild turtle in the squash patch. She was curious, the turtle was not. It al;l turned out well.

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.”

Alache in flower with a green seed. This is a Oaxacan potherb that is used to thicken broths in much the same way as okra (a relative) is used to give body to gumbo. I love how the seed looks like a Dharma Chakra.

Victoria cleaning beans. We do the work by hand because we’re too small scale to make machinery much of an option.

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.

These corn plants have to be 10 feet tall- or more! I’m 6’1″

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.

A bowl of shelled “Otto File” corn. I grind it “as is” and it seems to work out fine.

I like a mix of fine and coarse ground cornmeal for the most toothsome and interesting polenta.

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.

This is the polenta “mud” that I stir into the boiling water- SO much easier than letting a thread of dry grain trickle into the boiling water.

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.

A tray of hot polenta cooling in a baking pan. Even relatively liquid polenta will “set” well iin an hour or so f it has been cooked for a long time.

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.

Slices of polenta are perfect fried or baked. I like to get the polenta squares crispy on each side while keeping them moist and tender inside.

Our cat, Samson, enjoys the cool of the corn patch.

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.

Setting up for the Corralitos Farm and Garden Market

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/

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.

Looking back at the van from over the flower display in Berkeley

Check this link if you’re interested in volunteering. https://www.mariquita.com/friends-of-ladybugs-labyrinth/

 

My feet are tapping. In my head, I can hear a vigorous horn section celebrating my every thought with a jazzy fanfare; it’s like I’m channeling Louis Prima today. If you don’t think you’ve heard of Louis Prima, he’s the hitmaker from back in the day who gained fame for his songs, “Yes! We have no Bananas” and “Just A Gigolo.” I’m in the fruit and vegetable business, not in the escort services, so it’s produce that’s got me jumpin’ and jivin’ with Louis. “Yes! We have no Tomatoes, Toot Toot!”  “But we will soon. Toot Toot!”

Musicologists will tell you that “Yes! We Have No Bananas” was a novelty song in the jazz idiom from the first quarter of the 20th Century. Louis Prima didn’t write the piece, but he had a hit off it in 1923 and, later, other artists, like Benny Goodman and Spike Jones, made popular recordings of the song too. Boiled down to its essence, the song is a lark that finds fun in a Greek produce vendor’s reluctance to say “no” to his customers. “Just try these coconuts, ” Louis sings.” These walnuts and doughnuts, there aren’t nuts like they…But, Yes! We have no bananas, we have no bananas today.”

Rainbow Cherry Tomatoes are not a special breed, but a mix of various breeds. The big, red Cherry tomatoes are actually an heirloom Italian paste tomato called “Piennolo.”

Heirloom “Persimmon” tomatoes

The tomato patch

Agricultural historians who listen to old jazz records hear something deeper at work and speculate. Maybe the Greek produce vendor couldn’t get bananas because of the Fusarium oxysporum plague that destroyed the Costa Rican banana crop in 1919. Also called “Panama Disease,” the fusarium fungus causes a wilting disease that has dramatically affected the banana trade any number of times. But what about the tomatoes? Why are we still singing, “Yes! We have no tomatoes.”

It was a cold spring and, so far, it’s been a cool summer. We planted the tomatoes right on schedule in early April and crossed out fingers that the frost wouldn’t get them. It didn’t. But it never got very warm, either, so the tomatoes didn’t grow very fast. We had weird, late rainfalls, but the rain didn’t hurt the crops. The rain didn’t help either. The late rains meant that we had to weed more often than we’d like, but the precipitation didn’t harm the tomatoes. Still, with day after day of overcast weather, the tomato plants were slow in taking off and flowering. If the tomato plant is thought of as an engine, then the nutrients in the soil are the fuel and the water is the lubricant, but the sun is the foot on the gas pedal. Some people think that you can speed a slow crop up with extra fertilizer, but if the issue is not enough warm sun then all the fertility in the world can’t help.

So, yes, we have no tomatoes, but we will. I figure we’re about three weeks late this year. The cherry tomatoes will come first because they are the smallest fruits and ripen the quickest. The dry-farmed Early Girls are “Early,” too, and will start to color up a week or so after the cherries.The rainbow array of Heirloom tomatoes come a bit after the Early Girls.The Heirlooms vary from variety to variety when it comes to the speed with which they mature. Cherokee Purple is usually the first and the Marvel Striped Tomato is usually the latest with the others, like the Brandywines and the Persimmons and the Aunt Ruby’s German Green falling somewhere in the middle. The San Marzano canning tomatoes and the Piennolo drying tomatoes come last.

Look at this big boy enjoying his Dry Farmed Early Girl tomatoes!

We will have lots of flowers this year too.

We will not be running our Mystery Box program this year, but we will be doing pop-ups around the Bay Area to sell our tomatoes, herbs, citrus, and flowers starting in August and running through the end of tomato season. We will be returning to Dogpatch in San Francisco, thanks to our hosts at Piccino restaurant. In the north of the City we will be back at our regular site in the Richmond District. Across the bay, we will be back in Berkeley on 9th street, and down the Peninsula we will be back at Ross Road in Palo Alto. The Pumpkin House is our hangout in Santa Cruz. Also, keep an eye on the newsletter for updates because we will be doing some open farm days with tomato and flower pickups. The sun is out now, the plants are in full flower, the green fruit is swelling, and it’s looking like we can get started in mid August. Yes, we will have tomatoes! Toot Toot!

Thank you, and we hope to see you soon!  Andy & Starr

Check this link if you’re interested in volunteering. https://www.mariquita.com/friends-of-ladybugs-labyrinth/

My daughter, Magdalena, as a child in the greenhouse. She’s 26 now.

  My theory on child raising was pretty simple- just throw them in the tub at the end of the day and call it good. My kids grew up on the farm, so they were surrounded by dirt. When they were little their mother, my late wife, Julia, was dealing with a first bout with breast cancer, so I had them with me a lot in the field when she was off at the hospital getting treatments or at home recuperating. I’d often be working with the crew for most of the day so the children would be more or less unsupervised, but we did have some rules: Stay out of the poison oak. Don’t drink from puddles.  Don’t play with harvest knives or propane weed burners. No turning on the tractor. Don’t pick up anything dead. No throwing rocks, sticks, dirt clods, tomatoes or zucchinis at each other. Always walk down the rows in the wheel track, not on the raised bed where the crop plants are. And Don’t leave your clothes in the field. I know it seems like a pretty strict  regimen, but they survived, and there weren’t too many problems. Until we had a tomato U-Pick on the farm and my son ended up mingling with the visiting children. Then I ended up facing down a posse of really unglued mothers. More on that in a minute….

Samson, the apricot blond farm cat, supervising the lavender harvest and remaining chill.

People go to U-Picks for a lot of different reasons. Some people see a farm U-Pick as an opportunity for bonding with each other. When I worked at Star Route Farm in Bolinas in the early ’80s we had a pumpkin patch in what we called the “Lagoon Field,” alongside the Olema-Bolinas Road and we did a U-Pick. Two separate and unrelated fathers showed up at the same time and parked by the side of the road. Somehow, in that very large field with thousands of available pumpkins in every shape and size, their two boys ended up needing- REALLY NEEDING!- the exact same pumpkin. Neither child could be convinced to select another, different, but equally charming pumpkin to take home and carve. Long story short, as the autumn sun got low in the sky giving Mt Tamalpais a golden glow, and as waterfowl circled overhead and came in to land in the placid waters of the Bolinas Lagoon, two fathers could be seen beating the stuffing out of each other by the side of the highway. Over a pumpkin. The cute hippie girl with a background in retail who’d been hired to oversee the U-Pick was horrified. Maybe we should have hired a bouncer. Luckily, fights between customers were rare. U-Pick is actually a very nice way to sell pumpkins, since there’s always a kid who wants the biggest pumpkin, another kid who wants the smallest one, and somebody who feels sorry for the Charlie Brown pumpkin that the other kids overlooked.

We did a potato U-Pick on our farm once. Some people come to a U-Pick so that they can “get their hands in the soil,” “get close to the earth” or find some balance from their typical day jobs in the cubicle mines of Silicon Valley. Boy, did those people get their money’s worth. When you encounter a round, close to clean potato in the store display there is little evidence of the “earthy” environment the potato developed in. But when you put your shovel blade in the soil and start digging you turn up all kinds of stuff besides potatoes. Yes, there are plenty of colorful potatoes, so a potato “U-Dig” can be a bit like hunting for Easter Eggs. But there are also the rotted remains of the mother, or seed potato that was planted in the ground by the farmer for the new plant to sprout from. And there are sometimes big, fat, nasty looking potato bugs chewing on the potatoes that are developing. And there are ants, and centipedes, the occasional scorpion, caches of pearly snail eggs, weird worms, unidentified pupae and larval forms of scary insects.  And it is dusty, heavy work. But our potato U-Dig was very successful. I’d taken the precaution of harvesting hundreds of pounds of potatoes before the U-Dig, and we’d washed, sorted, and weighed them out. It was a hot day, and after a half hour of digging all but the most adventurous diggers decided that they’d be happy to buy pre-dug potatoes. I heard the phrase, “I’ll never look at a potato the same way again,” again and again.

Some people go to a U-Pick to pick. We did a number of tomato U-Picks over the years and that’s where I ran afoul of the mothers. Even at age 8 my son, Graydon. had “leadership qualities.” As the visitors picked their way through the tomato patch some of the younger kids got bored and ended up doing a “farm tour” with Graydon, who was very familiar with the layout of the fields. But when nobody was paying attention he took his new friends to what he billed as the “Fun Puddle.” It was a hot summer day but along the edge of the field in a remote corner of the farm there was a large, shallow puddle that had formed where an irrigation pipe had leaked. At first the kids had fun stomping around in the mud with Graydon, but soon he showed them how much more fun it was to actually roll in the puddle. While their parents and older siblings were dutifully harvesting tomatoes, Graydon and his companions joyfully slopped around in the mud as though it were Woodstock ’69 and they were all tripping on acid. The $#iT hit the fan when the moms called it a day and loaded up their harvest and, for the first time in a couple of hours, got a load of what their “leaders of tomorrow” had been up to. “How could you let this happen?” they asked incredulously. But I’d been helping them learn how to pick tomatoes. My attention had strayed. It didn’t help much when I said, “It’s just good, clean dirt. It washes off.” I still feel a debt of gratitude to some Russian mothers from Mountain View. They’d been the most businesslike about picking tomatoes and when it came to their kids they dealt with the situation in a business-like fashion too. They weren’t thrilled with the mud, but they weren’t devastated either. I turned on the ag pump, got the irrigation sprinklers going, and they marched their kids into the spray to clean them up. Even some of the more delicate moms saw the wisdom in this maneuver, and soon everybody was on their way home to the cities and suburbs, tired but alive.

Graydon, the instigator, in the Hollister tomato field.

This Saturday, June 10th through June 23rd our farm will be open to make reservations for a series of dates to participate in a  lavender U-Pick. I predict a successful experience for anyone who chooses to come and visit us. The lavender is planted in raised beds that make up a huge labyrinth. It’s a serene setting. The scent of lavender is calming and healing, and there’a a lot of it, so I don’t expect to see anybody coming to blows the way that can occur when two fathers choose to stand up for their sons’ “rights” to a particular pumpkin. There are creepy crawlies in the soil, the way there always is, but the nature that any visitors experience is likely limited to birds, butterflies, and bees. For their part, the bees will be minding their own “bees-nis,” working hard to collect pollen and nectar for their hive at the top of the hill. The high raised beds of the lavender patch make for relatively easy picking, but we will have some lavender bunches available for people who want extras and there will be some other herbs, citrus from our orchards, edible items and treasures available in the farm store.

This is a great time to see the farm. We are also looking for volunteers to help maintain the labyrinth or those interested in roses that want to admire and help deadhead the plants.  Signup for U-Pick and check the website for all the ways to enjoy the farm. https://www.mariquita.com/features/lavender-u-pick/

The lavender field is our home and we have the well being of our neighbors to consider, so we are doing the U-Picks by reservation. Please don’t bring pets, even if they are in the car. The U-Pick is for Ages 8 and up only. A sun hat is highly recommended, as is a full water bottle. Thank you, and we hope to see you soon!  Andy & Starr

Starr’s grand daughter is a great volunteer and a meticulous weeder.

Check this link if you’re interested in volunteering. https://www.mariquita.com/friends-of-ladybugs-labyrinth/