The Family Jewels!
One of my earliest living memories is of being on a farm,with my father teaching me how to pull the silky green skin back on an ear of corn to be sure there were both white and yellow kernels on the cob, and that bugs hadn’t eaten any of the love inside that green monster. I remember vividly a rusty tractor with a giant ‘sled’ attached to it, filled with baskets of greenish-red tomatoes, potatoes, apples, strawberries, watermelons, green-beans….. I was maybe 4 years old. I remember stopping at Breirmeire Farms in Riverhead; the jams, the jellies, the pies the COOKIES(cookie monster was my thing in those days)!!! And thus began “The REIGN of CORN!"
Today I often stroll through the OB farmers market with my notorious smirk, reminiscing about those pure memories of organic vegetables and farmers, long before we even needed those stickers or corporate buzzwords on our produce. I remember those farmers and their wives names to this day. The Hay-Rides, the Pumpkin Patch, the ‘Scare-Crow,” BOO! Corn stalks growing as far as a child’s eyes could see and the most insane part: I was standing an hour and a half from midtown Manhattan or downtown Brooklyn where we lived and worked most of the week. This is my idea of “therapeutic.”
My memories and experiences of those places growing up on Long Island’s East End during the summers are probably the biggest reason I’m the chef I am today. They are also one of the main reasons I moved to Southern California 17 years ago and call San Diego home, the reason I jumped at the chance to write this article on sustainability when Jolee Pink asked if I was interested; the reason I have chickens, and a year-round garden, and a dog,and, and– are you with me yet?!!
According to the 2012 Census, there were 16,525 farms classified as organic (either certified or exempt)–roughly 0.7 percent of all farms in the U.S (2,109,303). The majority of those farms are in California and the Pacific Northwest. Sustainability means the capacity to endure; it is how biological systems remain diverse and productive,indefinitely. In more specific terms, sustainability is the endurance of systems and processes– what I call BioSystemic.
As I watch my farmer friends decimated to a couple of acres of land in the middle of 3 housing developments, with shady guys promising bags of money to lure them off their “Garden of Eden,” and utility companies rationing their water because a hundred breweries need it more than he does, I stop and smirk again, because they are fighting the good fight. I smile because our friend Laurel Mehl and her sons at Coral Tree Farms in Encinitas are showing me the‘family jewels,’ a collection of heirloom seeds that feed her land and allow it to grow. Laurel, a 4th generation Encinitas farmer whose roots span back to Midwest agriculture, has the same mischievous grin on her face as I do while we walk her land and talk our story. I smile because of Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard and other mentor chefs that are alive in the horns of plenty that grow right here in San Diego as far as the eye can see.
If you do your homework on any of the farms that remain in our county you will find that development, town-codes, HOAs, bugs, drought, lawyers, ISIS, you name it, arecompeting with the land and a way of life. They seem to wish to eradicate their very existence, even as their own wives stroll the produce aisle buying ‘organic’ vegetables for the kid’s dinner.
Now my real story starts. Look, up in the trees! up in the trees! It’s not a monkey. It’s Avocado, Persimmon, Mulberry, Guava, then Lemongrass, Chimayo, Pepper seeds from New Mexico, Four Corner Gold Snap Beans–all of which come with stories spun into folk-lore and folk-tales by Indians, farmers, and now, moi. Laurel introduced me to the Ark of Taste, a slow foods inspired website that can help you find true heirloom seeds. Imagine that: you need to go to a website to find seeds for a REAL vegetable that hasn’t been GMOed…. That’s horrifying to me, and I hope to you as well.
As we prepare for our Foodie Fest Encinitas– and the farm to dinner table for a 100 VIP’s that the Coral Tree Farmswill be hosting and setting up in the middle of their working farm on May 20th– we should think about the bounty of produce and fruits that Coral Tree and Coastal Roots Farm will supply our dedicated chefs. Their energy, combined with their talent and love of the craft, will create an obscene four-course meal paired with local wines, brews, coffee, and sustainable meats from Hamilton Meat Company, along with seafood from our generous sponsors at Fishbone Kitchen and Wholesale in Liberty Station Market.
Our gracious sponsors will also be donating product to ourEncinitas Foodie Festival, a family fun event is bringing the community together to elevate public awareness about locally grown sustainable foods and products while promoting the arts, local business and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. This event happens on Saturday, May 21stfrom 11am-4pm in the Lumberyard Shopping Center on South Coast Highway 101 in Encinitas.
One of the coolest things I learned about Laurel, and something seamlessly woven into any farmer’s soul, is that they grow because they want to “bring real food at a reasonable price to your table.” That said, Coral Tree Farms sells ridiculously-reasonably priced boxes of produce,grown in their organic compost, with the option of having eggs from their chickens included. The produce is picked and boxed the day you pick it up, and the mixed bags are gorgeous and robust.
If you are interested in something like this for yourself, or your family and friends, please personally reach out to Laurel at CoralTreeFarm@gmail.com and she will help you get where you want to be. Let Laurel know I sent you and PLEASE thank her for being part of the sustainable solution for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Encinitas Foodie Fest, and for our community. Also, If you see me at the fair please make a point to stop me and say hello, and please continue to check me out at BioSystemicConsulting and Word of Mouth San Diego– where I always have something sustainable cookin’ up and worth reading!
