When I was growing up my mother was a self-proclaimed health nut. For a few years our childhood snacks consisted of rice cakes, carrots, celery and if we were really lucky, a treat of carob chips, never chocolate. While this menu may seem boring (and it is), it was introduced at a time when my brother and I were young. Too young to know the myriad of options out there that were chock full of calories, saturated fat, cholesterol and sugars that make other foods taste so good.

My mother was laying the foundation of our nutrition. Educating us about the food pyramid and to respect and appreciate what nutrients food provided us with. This was 1986 and I was 5 years old. She was ahead of the curve in teaching her children. And even though to this day I have a disdain for rice cakes, my appreciation for healthy food remains.

Mom taught me the what and why of our food choices at a young age but the where and how didn't come until later in life. In the 1990s, the idea of organic and local foods and products became more popular in the greater culture. I experienced this while working one of my part-time jobs for Iacopi Farms. My primary task was to sell their fresh peas and beans and other produce at various farmer's markets throughout the Bay Area.

Ostensibly, I was there to educate market patrons about the produce -- but I was the one who actually received the education about food. Many patrons were there to seek out organic goods. After being approached for organic peas and beans and pointing the customer to another vendor many times, I began to ask: Why were so many people seeking organic foods?

There were many reasons. Some had real or perceived allergies to chemicals used in conventional agriculture practices. Some believed there were long term health risks with consuming food treated with synthetic chemicals. And some others wanted to treading lightly upon the earth.  For me, it was that latter argument that most agreed with me. It brought to mind the Native American farming model I learned in 4^th grade.

In its simplest form, the Native American farmer plants corn seeds on a mound and also buries a fish carcass with it to fertilize the plants in a natural way. Having taken the lesson at face value, I learned that most Native American cultures lived in harmony with the surrounding environment. Many cultures still perform an adaptation of this natural cycle of life by tilling manure, animal and plant remains into the soil in order to maintain fertility.

At that time we were also beginning our farm at Tunitas and wanted to follow a similar farming model. When starting our farm we had great ambitions of growing organically, of getting back to basics and enjoying food the way nature meant it to be. We believed that the less chemicals we used, the better it would be for our health and the environment that surrounds us.

And so we began. We quickly learned after a few frustrating seasons that our labor input farming organic was significantly higher than conventional methods of farming. For the amount and type of produce we grow, it doesn't make financial sense to farm organic.

But because of our personal commitment to having less chemicals in our lives, we continue. In forging through with this, we have discovered many non-traditional methods of dealing with the same problems a conventional grower might throw chemical at.

Take weeds, for instance. A larger grower might use something called a pre-emergent herbicide. This is an herbicide that is applied to the soil to prevent new weeds from emerging. The only organic pre-emergent available, corn gluten, is not cost effective to use. So we rely on cultivating the crops both manually and mechanically much more frequently than a conventional farm. We also employ the use of a propane torch for occasional flaming of weeds. For our pumpkin crop, we plant on a grid so our rows line up vertically and horizontally allowing us to mechanically cultivate in multiple directions.

To return fertility to the soil we do not rely on petrochemical fertilizers as conventional farms might. We use a combination of our goat and chicken manures, crop rotation and cover cropping. We try to rotate our crops between legumes, squash and corn. Each crop returns different nutrients and has different nutrient demands on the soil than the other. Rotating crops not only helps balance soil fertility but also helps prevent disease. We have also begun resting some of the soils for 3-5 year periods. During the rest period, the area is fenced and pastured so our goats can naturally fertilize the area. In the wintertime we sometimes plant what is called a cover crop. This crop is grown for the specific purpose of not being harvested and rather tilled into the soil to return nutrients and organic matter to the soil. Additionally we have started to use Mycorrhizal fungi during planting. These naturally occurring fungi create a symbiotic relationship with the root systems of plants allowing roots to grow greater and extend further thereby allowing for a more efficient uptake of water.

For the crops we grow, we rarely ever have large insect infestations. In 2002, however, we had a particularly nasty infestation of cucumber beetles in our squash crop. Because we were committed to being organic we could not use the typical organophosphate or carbamate pesticides that conventional farms may have used such as Diazinon, Malathion or Sevin. After some research we discovered an organic alternative marketed as Pyganic. It is considered organic because is made from a naturally occurring compound (pyrethrin) found in the root system of chrysanthemums.

In the 12 years that we have grown at Tunitas, this was the only incident where an infestation reached a level needing intervention. We are quite tolerant of minor damages or blemishes an insect or other pest might cause to the produce we grow because we believe that is part of the natural cycle. No one illustrated this to me more than a couple that has visited our farm each year for the past 5 years.

Initially, the husband contacted us because they were interested in chicken eggs that hadn't been washed or refrigerated, preferably with poop still on the shell as proof no washing had occurred. Upon their visit, the wife took interest in the corn we grew. She had witnessed me feeding it to our goats. I explained that we had a particularly bad infestation of corn ear worm that had gone unchecked. This blemished the corn more than most consumers would tolerate so we were just feeding the corn to the farm animals. She seemed perplexed as to why a consumer would be afraid of corn with some worm damage. As if to prove she wasn't afraid, she shucked an ear and took a bite. She was elated to find not only corn that hadn't been sprayed but also corn that was full of the natural flavors she had grown accustomed to in her native Cuba.

She explained to me that American produce has no flavor. Farmers are too busy trying to make their produce bigger and heavier in order to make more profit. So they hybridize seeds and pump them full of water and fertilizers to produce more. But it is the flavor that gets lost in the process. In other words, she believed the smaller apples and strawberries of yesteryear -- even the smaller worm damaged corn ears that we grew -- had a greater concentration of flavor than the larger commercial versions available now. With that, they picked about twenty ears and were off, tickled with their "natural" discovery.

While this couple's food views may be extreme to some, it did resonate with me. I'm also finding that more and more people are beginning to value where their food comes from and how it is produced. More are beginning to understand how difficult it can be to produce these foods.  Locally, we are blessed with having so many farms that not only have committed to growing naturally or organically produced foods but are also open to educating the public in how they do so maintaining a much needed transparency in the area of agriculture. 

The following are some of the locally organic farms I am aware of. If you know of others, please post them in the comment section.

Early Bird Ranch

Jacobs/Del Cabo Farms

Pastorino Farms

Potrero Nuevo Farm

Pie Ranch

Tunitas Creek Ranch

Tunitas Creek Family Farm

For more information on products considered to be organic substances for agricultural use, click here.