Farm Tours

Hey guys, we went to two more farms yesterday and had a blast.  It was a little drizzly, but it was actually a nice change since every visit so far has been in scorching hot bright sun.  A little blown out clouds with a little rain was great.  Especially going in to the depths of Fallbrook.  WOW, we kept going, and going and going and I thought we were gonna get to the ocean we drove so far west off the 15.  We actually went 45 minutes into the mountain side and ended up on this 60 some odd acres of paradise with citrus and avocado groves galore. 

George Cunningham, the farmer pictured with me here, has been farming this property for 35 years.  He told us that his ancestors had been in farming and somehow, through ghosts or some telepathic medium, told him that he should get into farming.  So, he took over this property, threw some seeds in the wind and voila!  It sure looked like he threw the seeds in the air; there were trees everywhere.  Geroge told us that he liked it that way, where there weren’t any rows.  His philosophy was that if there was a bug, they couldn’t kill his entire grove since the trees weren’t next to one another. GOOD POINT!  There were persimmons, then maybe some Fremont Mandarins, a couple of Cocktail fruit trees(which are frickin amazing, by the way) and then some persimmons again.

My girlfriend Jody accompanied us this time and we had a great time with Gayle, George and Kaylee their grandaughter.  We ate Fremont Mandarins right off the tree. A relative to the Satsuma Mandarin, but a much deeper, sweeter flavor and a bit harder to get the skin off.  George pulled off a Cocktail Fruit and cut it in half for us to try.  WOW! A cross between a pomelo and an orange, this little gem had some pop; a little tangy and a little sweet.

The second farm we visited, Morning Star Ranch, I had been to before when I toured with the Point Loma Garden Club back in October.  This was such an interesting place I had to come back to feature it in my book.  This is a community of people and a way of life for their families.  They home school their children and they all work and learn on the farm.  They are almost 100% self-sustaining using their own water and almost fully off the electric grid.  These folks have goats, cows, chickens and even Jake the Donkey on the farm.  Their crops vary, but the most widely sold product is their lettuce.  They have a variety of lettuces, broccoli, chard, onions and even kholrabi pictured here.  Growing on the farm are also persimmons, 4500 or so avocado trees and Marsh Ruby Grapefruits.  There will be more information on Morning Star and where to find their produce in the book.  Make sure to follow these blogs to stay up to date with the progress of the book.

Ciao!

My day started off at 6:30am at Starbucks getting a latte. Yeah baby, nectar of the Gods.  My journey took me up the 15 almost to Temecula.  The directions said to head West on the 76 and go past the small city of Bansall. Small is an understatement for a city in San Diego, I think there were probably more laborers than city dwellers.  The sign actually said population 1100.  The directions took me about 5 miles down the 76 west of highway 15 and then winding through some streets behind the “city” of Bonsall.  As I approached my the last few turns to the farm, I come over a hill and saw on my left “strawberry fields forever.”  It was the Beatles’ song coming to life.  First of all, I’ve been told that there are strawberries growing in the middle of winter, but I had to see this for myself.  I turned down the last road and then went down the driveway to Blue Heron Farm.  As I got out of my car, two rather large golden retrievers came to greet me.  One was extremely friendly and jumped up on me.  Now I’m a dog person and have two of my own, but these goldens had me a little freaked out for a second.  Andrea, the owner of the farm, was nowhere to be found so I began on my exploration.  I approached the house to find her laboring in the kitchen making coffee, peeling mandarins and making quiche for Mike, Paul and I for snacks.(Mike & Paul are the photographers for my book)  How cool of her to have some grub for us.

Andrea starts us off on our tour by recounting a story of last year’s October Camp Pendleton fire that came right up to and around her house burning many of her fruit and macadamia trees.  “The fire was so hot” she explains, “that it broke this back window.”  She points out the window and there’s still a crack in the glass.  We walked outside and could definitely see the burn marks on the side of the hill.

We proceeded to walk the farm and started off with the beans. She had two kinds, cascadia and sugar snaps.  I couldn’t believe the size of these vines. Where else in America could a spring time veg grow in the middle of December?  We then proceeded on to the mixed baby greens that she so happily sells to many Chefs in town.  She had tatsoi, arugula, red romaine and even some frisee in those rows.  We took a walk up the hill to find some sopote and guavas that were amazingly sweet right off the tree.  We kept a brisk pace sine we only had two hours for the tour, but we stopped for a ton of photo opps.  We had time to pick some baby zucchinis with the blossoms and some pepinos or cucumbers as we call them in English.  During our jaunt around the farm, I was happily engaged in conversation with Jose, the farm manager of 4 years.  Jose came to Andrea as a migrant worker over 15 years ago with no schooling or any formal farming education. Actually, Jose doesn’t even speak a lick of English. Woa!  That means your truly was carrying on a conversation with this guy in Spanish. Whoo, hoo!  All those years of Spanish in High School and speaking kitchen tongue has finally paid off: Bitchin’!  We finally ended up in the make shift greenhouse with a plastic tarp covering some 100 or so basil seedlings.  We walked through the washing area where they prepare their produce for market and I actually was watching them clean my lettuce.  Those 8 boxes were going to my restaurant that morning.  How frickin’ cool is that?  Well, our time was up and we had to proceed from Bonsall back on the 76 past the 15 about 14 miles through some more winding back country roads to Tierra Miguel.

We were driving on these mountainous two lane roads and then on the left hand side was a power plant and there it was. It was almost like driving into Vegas coming out of the dessert and seeing the first casino.  On the right hand side was Pala Casino & Resort.  I had never been out there, so this was new for me.  I almost crashed at least 5 times on this road trying to take in all the sites and glory.  We past Pala and then winding through citrus lined roads around and through the mountains came Casino Pauma.  Now I know Chef William Ramsey who heads the food operations there, so I knew that this was a smaller casino, but I had no idea it was a tent like thing nestled in the hillside overlooking Pauma Valley.  He had told me that Tierra Miguel, being on the Pauma Indian reservation was working with him on planting certain types of produce for him to use in his restaurants.

We finally made it to Tierra Miguel to open arms, an apple tart tatin and Mexican hot chocolate.  Hot damn, we’re being treated like kings today.

I’ve got to write a little for my book, so I’m signing off until tomorrow and we’ll finish this fantastic day.  Cheers!

Farmer Dave with baby carrots

Most Southern Californians think of Temecula and think wine and grapes.  Well, there are a few hidden gems in the countryside, one being Crows Pass Farm owned and operated by Dave & Tina Barnes; very humble and incredibly friendly people.  Crows Pass Farm, as they call it, was named for the crows that pass over the farm at dusk.  Dave, a Southern California Boy, grew up on an adjacent piece of land helping his dad farm acres of grapes back in the 70′s.  Over the years the family split off some acres, built spec homes and sold them off.  Dave went to school and studied agriculture and returned to the land and started Crows Pass Farm in 1991 with about 36 strawberry plants, some carrots, peas and a few other varieties of produce on 5 acres.  We saw the small sprouting strawberry plants that he just   put into the ground at a staggering 36,000 strong.   Dave said that he was just about to put the tarps over the strawberries to protect them for the winter.  These little morsels, as I remember picking them on my last visit to Crows Pass, were unbelievable.    We will return in the spring to pick some of the fabulous strawberries.

Strawberry Plants

Dave farms over 15 acres these days and rotates his fields and changes the soil every year.  While we were there he & I played around in horse manure.  Literally played in his compost pile full of vegetable scraps, horse manure, and fish scraps and bones he gets from restaurants on his weekly route.  He was teaching me about composting, good bacteria and the incredible 145 degree temperature the pile achieves to facilitate the cooking of the compost.  Dave made me touch the pile and verify the temperature: it was steaming.  Every field we walked with Dave was about the soil.  “It’s all about the soil,” Dave would say.  “Last year we had the strawberries in this field and this year I put them in this field.”  He would change where he would plant certain items and alter the soil with his compost.  He also said that burnt wood, because of the carbon content is a new addition to his soil additives.  Very simple process, yet extremely complex to think about.

Currently I get Temecula Honey Onions(almost like a cippollini but much sweeter), Persimmons,Fuji Apples, Mandarin Oranges, Pomegranates, Baby Fennel, Kabocha & Butternut Squashes and Escarole.  Dave rotates his produce throughout the seasons and also helps distribute Cunningham Organics citrus and Peterson Organics Baby lettuce.

Wife & Farmer

Dave and Tina have a two story house at the beginning of the property at the end of a dirt road.  The farm is just a few miles from South Coast Winery.  The patio of the house has ample space for fiestas that Dave & Tina like to host.  They’ve invited me to cook up a soiree the first weekend in May coupled with a farm tour, Chef’s demonstration and a late lunch.  Should be very cool indeed.  For more info vist www.crowspassfarm.com.

More info on Crows Pass Farm in another post.

It was 11:15am and we drove up to the orchard gates, which were wide open with Patrick waiting alongside some of his awesome sculptures.(We heard the stories about these works of art later around 1pm over some juice that he had just pressed and some lunch.)  We walked through the gates to this guy with the hat and jewelry and then gingerly approached him, made the appropriate introductions and then began a sort of interview process.

I brought a pen and a pad of paper without the intention of using them.  In the back of my mind I really wanted him to write the story for the book and then I would just integrate it and edit it for what we were looking for.  I just brought the pen and paper to look like I was interested.  Anyway, we started off talking about the Witchcreek fire of 2007 and how the Girl Scouts were out picking apples and at 12:30pm when he looked directly to the west(probably less than a mile away) and saw plumes of smoke and told them that for safety reasons he had to shut down and close the gates.  He then proceeeded to explain his philosophy of why he does what he does.  “It’s all about the relationship with the land,” he says.  “Taking $20 bills is not what it’s all about.”  His example is of an orchard, remaining nameless, who’s primary source of income is not from farming, but has a very good location and makes tons of money with the u-pic program.  That’s when people drive up and fill bags chalk-full-a apples for a fee.  Patrick continues to tell us stories of mountain lions that he’s seen and venison that he’s got in his freezer for dinner guests.  Okay, now we’re talkin’.  We’ve unofficially invited ourselves to dinner.

I asked him how he got into farming and he proceeded to tell us that originally he was into ancient rock sculpting and that the cycles of nature ironically brought him to Julian.(winter-death, spring-blossoms, summer-heat, fall harvest)  He and his brothers decided to get into business together in January of 2006 and soon thereafter thought that it would be best if they went their separate ways.  His brothers were very naive about how much work it was to run an orchard.  The spring blossoms are so fragile that during the end of April freeze, the brothers had to get up in the middle of the night to turn on the “supersonic” wind machine to blow air over the fields so they don’t freeze.  In the freezing sub-arctic northern wind of winter they had to prune trees.     Too much work and Patrick was left by himself with a teepee to sleep in.  Yeah, no permanent structures are allowed on this agracultural zoned 10 acre piece of property.  Patrick has spent too many frigid December nights in that thing, so this year he’s brought a camper on the property.

Patrick’s love for sculpting keeps him grounded with his spare time and allows him to make jewelry out of Gaelic coins that hold characters of old Irish tales. On the orchard he has his first piece, which was a table, that he bought back from a consigment store in Encinitas at a fraction of the price that he originally sold it for.   Other pieces were prominently displayed for everyone to see and ask questions about.

Empire Apples - the most delicious, scrumptious little things

Raven Hill Orchard grows seven types of apples; Jonathan, Empire, Gala, Gravensteen, Fuji, Golden Delicious and Pippin.  Interestingly, the Gravensteen ripens in August and since there’s not very many tourists coming into Julian in the dead heat of summer, the apples are not used.  They are a very sweet and mealy apple used primarily for juicing.  This is the variety that Martinellis uses for their sparkling apple cider. Patrick proceeds to tell us about a juicing plan that he’s working on and then juices a basket of mixed apples with his old fashioned hand press.  OMG!!!!  For some, the juice may have been too sweet, but it was amazing.  Bordering on orgasmic.  I told Patrick that if he had a problem getting rid of the Gravensteen next summer, call me and I would gladly drive up.

Patrick Brady knows what it takes to produce mouth watering apples, living on the grounds year round he tends to the orchard and pays close attention to the weather patterns ensuring the trees are adequately watered, pruned and protected from frosty winters and hot summers.  He’s a great farmer, having grwon up on a dairy farm in Ireland.  In 1993 he bagan writing poetry and just this year finished his first book.