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A
Way to Return to the Past: Grower Profile of Peter Willsrud,
an Ojai-based CSA Grower
Ojai Produce: Stone Fruits - A Profile with
Ojai Grower, Camille Sears
A
WAY TO RETURN TO THE PAST:
Grower Profile of Peter Willsrud, an Ojai-based CSA Grower
By Steve
Fields
Hidden
from the street by a row of densely-packed trees, Peter Willsrud
works his patchwork of vegetable beds, coddling and nurturing
a wide array of produce destined for 15 lucky Ojai families,
many of them his neighbors.
In his
own quiet way, Peter is making a giant social statement. He
is helping reconnect people to the land and bringing farm
fresh vegetables to people who wouldn’t easily have access
to it.
Sometime
in the middle of the 20th Century, the way Americans grew
and consumed produce radically changed. There are a great
many reasons for it. But the bottom line is that where once
many people had either direct access to farm-fresh produce,
or grew large vegetable gardens of their own, they have now
become reliant on supermarkets for their fruits and vegetables.
Because
of this change, the link between the grower and the consumer
is severed. And the results have been significant: produce
is being grown to be stored and transported thousands of miles,
rather than being consumed locally at the pinnacle of ripeness,
tastiness and nutritional value.
In recent
years, though, there have been some new alternatives developed
to reconnect the farmer and the consumer. These include the
rapid increase in the number and quality of Farmers’
Markets across the country as well as a much less well-known
concept called Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). CSA’s
reconnect families and farmers in a new way that not only
regains the benefits of the past, but also takes it several
steps further.
We know
of two CSA organizations in Ojai. Peter Willsrud started the
first one about three years ago on two acres in a quite residential
neighborhood off of Fairview Road. Peter’s father had
bought the property in 1970’s and the family had spent
weekends there when Peter and his sister were children, working
in the orchard and growing vegetables.
When Peter
returned to the property after the death of his father, he
wanted to turn it into a farm, but the idea of the CSA (as
they say) grew organically. He had trained at a 40-acre organic
farm in Mendocino County that was self-sustaining and used
no motorized vehicles. He brought those concepts to his plot
of land, which at that time had been overrun by neglect, El
Niño, and a variety of other problems.
But in
just three years, Peter not only has nurtured the land to
feed 15 families per week, but also has raised a flock of
30 egg-laying chickens and built a wood-burning oven, which
he uses in the winter to bake bread for his member families.
Nearly
all CSA’s are unique, adapting to the local needs, climate,
culture, etc. The concept started in Japan over 30 years ago
when a group of women who were concerned about the increase
in food imports and the corresponding decrease in the farming
population initiated a direct growing and purchasing relationship
between their group and local farms. This arrangement, called
“teikei” in Japanese, translates to “putting
the farmers’ face on food”. This concept traveled
to Europe and was adapted to the U.S. and given the name “Community
Supported Agriculture” at Indian Line Farm, Massachusetts,
in 1985. Now there are over 1,000 CSA farms across the U.S.
and Canada.
Participants
of CSA’s are called shareholders and they contribute
their “share” of the total operating expenses of
the farm in return for a weekly basket of produce.
Shareholders
of Peter’s farm pay $50 a week throughout the year in
return for their share of the harvest, which he describes
as currently being a half subscription. Eggs and bread are
extra. He is hoping to expand the size of the baskets and
the number of participants in the near future. Shareholders
pick up their baskets on either Tuesdays or Fridays, which
means that Peter has a ready market for what is ripe in his
garden when it is ripe.
Many of
Peter’s shareholders are neighbors who wandered over
to see what he was up to, and became excited about the idea
of having fresh produce (as if it were harvested out of their
own backyard) available to them throughout the year.
And so
the connection between consumers and farmer has been repaired.
Carol Wade, one of Peter’s shareholders, said, “I
know these are the best vegetables that I can get and they
are produced in the best method possible. We get healthy produce
that is fresher than in supermarkets, and Peter gets a steady
income. There is no cold storage, no transportation, no middle-person;
it is just you and the farmer.”
The connection
goes even deeper, because Peter’s shareholders come to
the farm to pick up their baskets. As a result they see, touch,
feel and smell the farm. And for today’s child who generally
thinks the answer to the question, “where do fruits and
vegetables come from?” is “the supermarket”
it is an eye-opening experience. “My eight-year-old goes
straight for the chicken coop,” Wade said. “He knows
that eggs don’t come from a carton.”
Frequently,
CSA’s also become a nexus for the community. In Peter’s
case, he has brought his shareholders together for pizza parties
featuring pizzas topped with his own produce baked in his
wood-burning stove. Also the members have chipped in on building
projects on the farm. “Work parties are a great way to
build communities,” said Wade.
There
are some down sides to being a shareholder. You get whatever
is ready for harvest which, depending on weather conditions
or the time of year could be a lot or a little. You also may
end up with something that you may not care for or you are
not familiar with. But generally shareholders do what they
would do if they had their own backyard garden, and they find
some creative use for those items. Giving them to a neighbor
or learning new uses for abundant items are just two ideas.
CSA farmers
like Peter get the benefits of a regular, guaranteed income
and outlet for the produce without having to spend time marketing
it. In addition, there is almost no transportation expense
because most of his shareholders are neighbors and they drop
by to pick up their baskets. Shareholders get the benefits
of having a huge backyard garden without having to put in
the time and energy necessary to regularly feed their families.
To exemplify
the CSA concept, Peter and his 15 shareholders have created
a mutually beneficial relationship that builds healthy families,
healthy soil and healthy lives.
Editor’s
Note: Ojai’s other CSA is run by Steve Sprinkle as part
of the Farmer and the Cook in Meiners Oaks. Steve augments
his shareholders’ baskets with produce from other growers
along the Central Coast. Both CSA’s are currently fully
subscribed but they do keep waiting lists.
In addition
to local CSA’s and the Sunday Ojai Farmers’ Market,
you may purchase farm fresh produce at several places in the
Ojai Valley. For example, you can buy Steve Sprinkle’s
produce daily at the Farmer and the Cook. Also, look for locally
grown produce at Westridge Market and Rainbow Bridge.
OJAI
PRODUCE: STONE FRUITS
A Profile with Ojai Grower, Camille Sears
By Jim
Churchill
Ojai did
not begin its agricultural life as a citrus growing community.
Before citrus there was stone fruit. We all know this because
we wait each year to see if K.B. Hall’s Upper Ojai apricots
survive into summer. In an echo of that time, Camille Sears
and her family have planted one of the most interesting orchards
in town, and this summer Ojai residents can sample her wares
at The Farmer and The Cook and the Ojai Farmer’s Market.
Camille
is a meteorologist. Growing up in Meiners Oaks, she used to
bike and drive around the Valley during weather events collecting
data: how cold did it get, how much rain fell. Until the trees
grow up, she finances her organic ag habit by serving as an
expert witness in environmental pollution lawsuits. The brain
which makes her such an effective expert witness - the memory
for numbers, the ability to see their patterns and understand
their implications - is the same head that caused her to notice
many years ago that a property on Lomita Avenue (then a citrus
orchard), was the coldest property in Meiners Oaks. Cold would
be good for stone fruit.
In 1996
Camille bought the 8-acre property. It was covered with feral
valencias, abandoned after the 1990 freeze. She planned an
elaborate orchard to service a fruit CSA which existed only
in her head: 3 varieties of Asian pears, 5 varieties of plums,
9 varieties of peaches, 5 varieties of nectarines, 6 varieties
of apricots, 4 varieties of pluots - 470 stone fruit trees
in all (Pluots? Yes, pluots: an interspecific hybrid between
plums and apricots). The different varieties would ripen more
or less sequentially; she would be able to sell small quantities
of fruit over the season direct to consumers.
Upon purchasing
the property, Camille had the valencias, long starved for
water, knocked over and ground up. A meteorologist specializing
in environmental pollutants, she didn’t want to burn
them. She planted cover crops - bell beans and vetch and other
sources of organic matter and nitrogen that she tilled into
the soil for two years prior to planting to build soil organic
matter. Since the previous orchard had been abandoned, she
was able to qualify the land for organic right away. She planted
her stone fruit in the spring of 1998; that year, the cover
crop of bell beans, vetch, rapeseed, and peas grew so tall
you couldn’t see the trees at all. Now she uses shorter-growing
berseem clover or lana vetch to keep from burying the trees.
Camille
studied meteorology at U.C. Davis, coincidentally a great
Ag school. As a grad student she was a teaching assistant
not only in meteorology but also in plant science, where she
met the folks who tend the nation’s fig germplasm repository.
Sicilian on her mother’s side, as a child she fell in
love with the huge fig trees that bracketed her grandparents
home in Messina. Through a lifelong collection and from her
friends at Davis, she now grows about 75 varieties of figs,
one of the great Mediterranean fruits. She also has lined
the fence along the north and east sides of the orchard with
Italian bay laurel trees, interset with herbs, palms, and
climbing roses.
In the
warmer north end of the orchard, taking early note of the
tangerine tendency in the Ojai Valley, Camille has planted
tangerines: pixies, seedless kishus, and gold nuggets.
Twists
of fate have so far prevented her from forming the fruit CSA
that originally informed her vision of the stone fruit orchard.
Her property is zoned Rural, not Ag, so she cannot have a
permanent farmstand (not that she would have time to run a
stand anyway). The apparent absolute need of Ojai youth-with-cars
to exorcise testosterone build-up by driving donuts in the
mud has forced her to put up a fence. She has learned that
some stone fruit varieties are better for her than others:
they have better flavor, they yield and hold better. Of the
stone fruit, the pluot varieties Flavor Queen and Flavor King
are her favorites. Peaches and apricots, although wonderful,
ripen and fall off the trees if the borers don’t get
them first (stone fruit are as attractive to insects and birds
as they are to us; being an organic stone fruit grower is
a challenge and an exercise in frustration). The pluots hold
and ship better. Her current plan is to end up with 720 tangerine
and 300 pluot trees, with fruit that can be sold locally and
regionally; the rest of the stone fruit will be solely for
local markets.
You can
find Camille’s summer bounty at The Farmer and The Cook
in Meiners Oaks, and at the Full Circle organic stand at the
Ojai Farmers Market on Sundays (if they get the certificate
requirements worked out). For more information on how to find
her fruit, you can email her at: clouds@rain.org
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