Gimme A Break

Laura Avery
Mirror contributing writer

   Last fall I went to one of those wonderful Thursday night prix fixe dinners at Angeli Caffe. The restaurant was laid out with long plank tables decorated with fall foliage, but over in the corner by the front door there was a tiny alcove with a table for two. The restaurant was filled to capacity by 7 p.m. and by 7:30 the two alcove diners finally arrived, having been stuck in traffic since Westlake and having spent a total of three hours on the road since leaving home in Oxnard at 4:30 p.m. This evening was to be a rare opportunity for Maryanne and Paul Carpenter, organic growers from the Wednesday and Saturday Santa Monica Farmers’ Markets, to take a break and have a dinner date. As it turned out, their leisurely evening plans were packed from start to finish with the unexpected exigencies of long distance travel in the nation’s largest metropolis.
   Actually the Carpenters were celebrating the successful transition of their farm from Camarillo, where they had unexpectedly lost their long-term lease, to new ground in Santa Paula, where they had finally begun to harvest their new crops. They felt fortunate that they had even been able to find a small piece of land to farm. Rapid development in Ventura County and the leasing of more and more large plots of land by big strawberry growers was making it difficult for small farmers like the Carpenters to find something in the 25-acre range. They did manage to find their 15-acre piece in an abandoned citrus grove that was part of the large landholdings of a “very nice lady,” according to Maryanne. But first they had to clear out the dead orange trees and work the soil for vegetable crops.  This is a scene that has become more and more familiar throughout the state – first the trees are cut down, then the stumps are dug out and everything is piled up for removal or for great big bonfires. Working the soil by turning it and adding amendments necessitated the hiring of a custom tractor operator with special earth-cutting blades that could break up the packed dirt.
   The next task for Paul was to install an irrigation system. He tied into the old pipes that were laid down when the orchard was established, but they had become damaged with all the earthmoving and kept springing leaks. Planting of the Carpenters’ organic row crops had to be delayed until all the pipes were water tight, and it was three months before the first seeds could finally be put in the ground at the end of July. Most of their vegetables, from beets to carrots to leeks and cucumbers, take 65-90 days to mature, so for awhile, as Maryanne notes, pickings were pretty slim.
   Things are coming along pretty well right now for the Carpenter’s Coastal Organics farm. They are bringing in the specialty baby vegetables and greens that the chefs love. Ordinary things like leek, fennel and brussels sprouts are exceptionally prized when they are harvested very young and small, which Maryanne sees to with great pride. She also has Paul planting white beets, golden carrots and some of the more exotic special requests from her chef customers such as the Italian wild mustard Puntarella and some strange-looking hairy cucumbers. Not all of these experiments are as well-received as they had hoped, and Maryanne recently gave Paul orders to just dig up the rest of those four-foot long black radishes that no one was buying.
   The Carpenters are long time organic growers, signing up first with California Certified Organic Growers (CCOF) when they first got into farming in the early ‘80s. It was during a serious medfly outbreak in the mid-80s that Coastal Organics was sprayed with malathion “drift” from the farm next door where flies had been discovered that Coastal lost its organic certification with CCOF.
   Paul went to local chapter meetings and undertook the expensive and cumbersome effort of having his crops tested in an independent lab, but CCOF code contained no allowances for acreage that was adjacent to spray areas. Coastal still farms organically under a “registered” rather than “certified” organic designation which means that organic practices are followed voluntarily and verified with record keeping in lieu of on-farm inspections. Come this October, the Carpenters are considering dropping the word “Organic” from their farm name altogether since that will be the deadline for all California organic farms to become certified as mandated by the 2000 Farm Bill. Whether or not they decide to certify, they will remain committed to growing their crops just as they have been for the past twenty years.
   The Carpenters are looking ahead to their busy summer tomato season, when Maryanne arrives at the Wednesday market by 7 a.m. to sort out hundreds of specially packed boxes of mixed heirloom tomatoes for her restaurant customers. Always experimenting, she is standing by her stalwart favorite reds, whites, purples, yellows and swirls and possibly adding a new beefsteak variety – color to be determined. This is assuming that the weather cooperates, that the pipes don’t leak and that the traffic … all she can do is hope for a break on that.