Letters From Andy

The dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes are coming on strong and they taste great. We will be offering them by the 20# crate for $50 or by the pint basket for $3 apiece. We will be bringing around 20 cases, for sure, and maybe more. We will see what the sun does this week.

Carlo of @linger___longer and @mealkittymeow will be making tomato toasts at the Sunday Sesame Tiny Bakery pop-up.

Thanks to Sesame Tiny Bakery for inviting us to their event. We’re excited to find another landing spot in the East Bay. We will have San Marzano tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, Early Girls, and Piennolo tomatoes by then. Maybe we’ll even have a few Heirlooms to offer.

San Marzano tomatoes are starting. We figure on picking around 10 x 20# cases to bring to Berkeley. We’re asking $60/case. Dry-farmed Piennolo tomatoes kick in too; maybe 10 of those to pick as well. I’m asking $40/flat on the Piennolos.

Hello Tomato Lovers, flower people and friends we haven’t met yet: You’re invited to our first 2025 season pop-up sales events. We’re near home in Corralitos again this weekend at the Jett & Rose Boutique from 11 am until we run out of tomatoes and flowers. It was such a great event last weekend that Amy at Jett & Rose decided to do it again this weekend! Dry-Farmed Early Girls will be $50 for a 20# case, or for $3/pint basket. Cherry tomatoes will be $4/pint basket or 3 baskets for $10. San Marzano Tomatoes will be $60/20 lb case. We will also bring herbs, flowers, and other goodies from the earth.

The Dahlias are looking strong on the farm these days. Starr will bring a quantity of mixed garden bouquets that I’m sure will have some cool Dahlias.

Our second pop-up of the weekend will be at The Sesame Tiny Bakery on August 24th from 11am to 2 pm. The Bakery calls itself “A pocket sized bakery down a secret alley at 2533 Seventh Street in Berkeley.” Who doesn’t love being “in” on a secret? I’m looking forward to their pastries too. We will also be sharing this event with our friend, Chef Carlo of @linger___longer . It’s fun to be back in Berkeley and fun to work with Carlo again. He and I have worked together for many years in Santa Cruz, SF, and the East Bay! Thanks, Carlo, for being such a long time supporter of our farm, and thanks Sesame Tiny Bakery for inviting us to join you and your supporters. (Carlo will be making tomato toasts with our tomatoes this weekend at the event and I will “toast” to that!)

One of my favorite discoveries this year has been the Tithonia, or Red Mexican Sunflower. It seems to really feel at home on the farm.

Rosie at Deer Creek Farm helped Starr distill Lavender oil from our crop of fresh lavender flowers. Here is Rosie’s still.

On Sunday, August 31st, we will be popping up in front of Piccino Restaurant in San Francisco, 1001 Minnesota Street, down in The Dogpatch.

As the season progresses we will schedule pop-up events in Los Gatos, Palo Alto, and West Berkeley. We look forward to seeing you. As our sacramental marigold crop comes into focus we will announce a series of U-Pick Marigold events. Thanks, Starr & Andy

And here are some bottles of lavender oil and lavender hydrosol that Starr has bottled up. We will be bringing a quantity with us to Berkeley.

I just had to share this picture because I’m so stoked that our Brugmansia sanguinea tree is so happy.

This is one of Starr’s favorite Dahlias.

Marigold season is just around the corner; we’re making our first harvests of the year this evening.

Selfi with Chilacayote. It amazes me that a gourd this big and heavy can hang from a squash plant that has decided to climb a tree.

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I’m very happy with our 2025 season Dry Farmed Early Girl Tomato crop. The plants are happy, the fruit is ripening well and it tastes great.

A big “Thanks!” to our friends and neighbors at Corralitos’s own Jet & Rose Boutique for inviting our farm to their event this coming Saturday. Tomatoes, herbs, flowers, and other goodies. Come by the stand and visit us and the other vendors.

This informal cherry tomato mandala is only half a basket’s worth.

Hello, Everybody: We’ve been blessed with good weather so far this season. We did the field prep and planting work on time, the plants were cultivated and weeded well, and now our summer coastal tomato season is  upon us. Fresh tomatoes and basil are a nice distraction from the infinite number of stupidities and cruelties to negotiate in this spastic, reactionary political moment. At least the sun and moon have been above it all, shining away and helping our crops.

Our first pop-ups will be a couple of “first come, first serve” affairs. We are excited to share these events with other vendors. The first pop-up will be at the Jett & Rose Boutique in Corralitos, only two miles from our farm. We will bring a rainbow of fresh tomatoes, plus basils, herbs, fruits and flowers, and elaborated products.

We will be picking baskets of Shisito peppers for the pop-ups.

Our second pop-up will be at The Sesame Tiny Bakery. The Bakery calls itself “A pocket sized bakery down a secret alley at 2533 Seventh Street in Berkeley.” Who doesn’t love being “in” on a secret? I’m looking forward to their pastries too. We will also be sharing the event with our friend, Chef Carlo of @linger___longer . It’s fun to be back in Berkeley and fun to work with Carlo again. He and I have worked together for many years in Santa Cruz, SF, and the East Bay! Thanks, Carlo, for being such a long time supporter of our farm.

These Dahlias in the packing shed easily outshine the bright Mariquita Farm truck in the distance. Yes, we have a “Truck Farm.”

With all their diverse shapes, sizes, and colors the dahlias are so much fun. We even have a tree dahlia!

As the season progresses we plan on scheduling pop-up events in Los Gatos, Palo Alto, San Francisco, and West Berkeley. We look forward to seeing you. As our sacramental marigold crop comes into focus we will announce a series of U-Pick Marigold events. Thanks, Starr & Andy

Lemon juice is essential for basil pesto, and luckily we are harvesting Lisbon Lemons right now.

Black-Eyed Susan is looking at you.

The 2025 San Marzano crop is starting to ripen. We will have a few cases to bring to our first pop-ups and after that the fields promise a big main crop this year!

A big “Thanks” to Corralitos’s Deer Creek Farm for her still and guidance and to Farm Cat Marmalade for their help distilling lavender oil & hydrosol from our 2025 crop. Farm Cat Marmalade often “pops up” with us to display their wide range of marmalades and preserves.

Not all the tomatoes that we grow are destined for the dinner plate; these tiny-fruited wild cherry tomatoes are harvested for their foliage and sold into the LA Flower Market thru our friends at GatherFlora LA to be used as an aromatic and fun filler in bouquets.

Phlox is becoming one of our favorite flowers to grow.

Here’s a view looking out across our first marigold row of the season. This is “Chedi Gold.” Chedi Orange & Chedi Yellow are here as well. Keep an eye out on the newsletter for details if you’re interested in coming to one of our Fall marigold U-Pick events.

Chedi Orange sacramental marigolds coming out of the field and getting ready to go to market.

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Hi Friends: Sharing our farm with visitors is a rewarding experience. A few years ago Starr & I extended a formal invitation to any passing Bluebirds to please come and hang out on the farm. Much thanks to our friend, Jo Ann Baumgartner, for her help and advice on getting and placing the bird houses. This year a Bluebird couple took us up on our invitation and moved in. Bluebirds are great creatures to have on a farm like ours that grows its produce without recourse to insecticides since they eat lots of insects that could damage our crops. It was disturbing to know that Bluebird populations have crashed across the US as their habitat has gotten destroyed. It feels good to try and push back against this trend by creating a welcoming habitat. We want to grow healthy, tasty herbs, greens, fruits and flowers for you, but in a way that honors and protects the diversity and beauty of the natural world.

You all are invited to visit the farm too, though we will steer clear of the Bluebirds’ house and give them their privacy. We still have a couple of open spots for this upcoming Saturday June 21st Summer Solstice Self-Care event from 11-2 pm. Tickets are on our website at Mariquita.com . The gate opens at 10:30. This event promises a taste of a variety of self-care offerings while celebrating the Summer Solstice with us. We will be joined by several event guides and practitioners that will provide you with a taste of their art and profession such as a mini facial massage, an acupuncture session, a sound bowl meditation and walk in the very purple lavender labyrinth or a sit down with a channeler. All of this and a nice time to enjoy the gardens and hear the birds.

We’ve also been opening the farm for a series of lavender U-Pick events. Check the website for signup details.

Besides our public events we do open the farm and host events for groups and individuals; painting clubs, blessing ways, staff parties, and fund-raising dinners and picnics have all been on the calendar. Let us know if you have an event in mind that would benefit from a beautiful, peaceful rural surroundings with an out-door kitchen, a handy labyrinth and a lot of flowers! Starr does flowers for events and weddings too. Let us know.Given that some of you may drop in I thought it would be fun to share some photos of the various creatures that have passed through or taken up residence here at Mariquita Farm. Thanks for checking in. Andy & Starr:

This little frog has found a beautiful little studio apartment on the farm. In the 1920s my Great Grandfather leased the property to a flower grower who planted Calla lilies. That grower is long gone but some Callas persist in the swampy area beyond the edge of the field.

This cute little fox let me photograph it as it made its evening walk through our spiral garden. Foxes like to eat gophers and ground squirrels so I like it when they visit. Sometimes we hear them yipping and barking in the night time. They pose no threat to people.

I found this little Robin’s egg on the pathway to the windmill field. I’m not sure how it got there but lots of wild critters want to eat bird eggs so I’m sure there was some drama.

Every magic garden needs at least one snake! This is a mature gopher snake that has made its home on the farm. Gopher snakes are a farmer’s best friend.

This is a baby gopher snake, not much longer than a pencil. May it grow up to be big and fat!

The lavender field is breaking into bloom as I write. I wish I could photograph the scent! Besides the honey bees that come from the hives on the farm the lavender patch also host numerous bumble bees and othe native bees. This flower patch literally hums. But don’t worry; the bees are all hard at work and they don’t feel threatened by us or pose a threat. Just walk down the pathway mindfully, pay attention that you don’t grab a bee when you’re picking lavender, and everybody will bee happy.

Starr uses her farm store as a herb drying room when it’s not open to visitors. One hundred years ago this little building was a carriage house turned garage that housed my Great Grandfather’s Pierce Arrow motor car. But today it smells like lavender.

This silly turkey was one of the first visitors to the farm store after Starr created the space to show off the herbs, flowers, and other goodies form the earth that she sell, but the turkey was only interested in the “other” turkey!

Yep, we have Mountain lion visitors to the farm. This beauty was photographed just beyond the deer fence that encircles the gardens. Farmers know that Mountain lions are the best “deer fence.” Mountain lions are no pussy cats, that’s for sure, but they were here first and deserve our respect. I’m happy that we almost never see them, but I’m glad that they’re there. It’s impossible to farm where there are too many deer.

Before they were “The Beatles! ” they were a cover band called “the Silver Beetles.” So I smile when I see these iridescent, metallic beetles on the farm. Yeah, yeah, yeah! Nature is so psychedelic. Starr and I want our farm to be “Psych-idyllic!”

And I’m glad that house cats are the size they are. This kitty’s name is Tassajara, or “Tassa” for short, and she follows me around like a dog and finds delight and interest everywhere she goes. What a way to live!

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When several recent visitors, at different times and completely unprompted, used identical language to tell Starr & I that our farm was “magical,” it got us thinking; “Why?”

I’m a farmer, not a magician, so I stand ready to be corrected by any Magus who might read these notes, but it seems to me that magic is always extraordinary, never “business as ordinary.”  Farming, by contrast, is precisely a business. Nor is magic transparent, the way a legitimate business ought to be, or even easily explainable to investors, regulators or tax collectors. If we are to believe the AI bots lurking under the internet bridge, farming contributed roughly $1.537 trillion to the $ US GDP in 2023. What did magic do for capitalism? Who could know? Magic is mysterious. Besides, is everything of value measurable in dollars, pounds, pesos yen or bitcoin?

Magic is “occult.” The word “occult” may sound evil or threatening to some Christian Fundamentalists’ ears, but it’s just Latin for “hidden” or  “secret.” Think about it; the magic on display in the public square is the pulling of bunnies from hats. Doesn’t the deeper magic always happen in sacred groves, away from the gaze of the uninitiated rabble, where the sorcerers and witches gather in a circle for their ceremonies, illuminated only by moonlight or by the coals glowing from under the cauldron?  Unless you are raising rabbits for meat or fur, the last thing any farm needs is another bunny. So what are the things that could make Mariquita Farm “magical?”

When my daughter was a girl she played in the redwood grove too. My Grandparents got married in these redwoods. It’s a sacred grove.

For one thing, our farm is at the end of a private road and you have to go through three gates to enter the property. (Mystical numerologists will tell you that 3 is a magic number, a perfect number, and the number for harmony, wisdom, and understanding.) Even locals who grew up in our Corralitos/Salsipuedes neighborhood have expressed amazement when they visit. “We never even knew this place was here!” they say over and over again. True, being at the end of a shared private road with three gates may be awkward and challenges our sense of harmony, wisdom, and understanding sometimes, and sometimes it’s tedious to respect our neighbors’ rights and demands and drive SLOWLY past their homes, but our hidden location does grant us a rare privacy and tranquility that can seem magical in this crowded and noisy age.

Magical thinking does seem to look back in time to a more mysterious era. The newest AI meme fodder available for public consumption on Insta or Tik Tok can never be as magical as something inscrutable from the deep past. In the canyon below our herb field there are redwood trees, including one broken giant that must be 1000 years old. Maybe the proximity of such a wise and ancient life form casts a spell over our herb field.

Plants play an important role in magic; they are not mere commodities like cotton or alfalfa or head lettuce. When I was a child in the 60s and this property was my grandparent’s sheep farm I would visit the redwood groves and bathe in their magic. Then I’d come to the house and my grandma would scrub the poison oak off. When my uncle was a child in the 20s and this property was his grandparents’ place, he played in the redwood groves. When my uncle sold me the ranch in 1998 he put a deed restriction on the property such that the redwoods could never be cut down. I signed the documents happily; this land belongs to the redwoods and the creatures they tower over- we’re just passing through.

Redwoods are majestic, but all plants are magical in some way. Anyone who has ever watched a seed germinate can feel the mystery if they let themselves. Starr and I have planted lots of flowers, so the landscape is splashed with color. All the roses and snapdragons blooming may seem magical enough but as you walk around the property you will see — and smell—- a lot more than pretty colors. Magic engages all the senses and incense is a core magical tool to connect with arcane realities. By coincidence and design we grow a lot of powerful, aromatic plants on the farm that have healing powers, from various basils, mints, sages and lavenders to more arcane plants like huacatay, cempasuchil, and hoja santa. And of course we plant the holy trinity of corn, squash and beans. (There’s your magical number 3 again.)

The labyrinth is modeled on the floor plan of the Medieval labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral.

Symbols count for something. We chose to plant our lavender patch in the form of a gigantic labyrinth 110 feet in diameter. Then Starr fit a cool little stone spiral walk into an unoccupied nook of the yard and we were pleased to see it sprinkled with volunteer wild violas in the spring. The fact that we didn’t even plant the Johnny Jump Ups  seemed magical to us. If you look carefully under the roses or behind the cacti you will see a growing population of Gnomes who remind us of the mysterious forces at wor k and play undergroundSo maybe our farm is magical. We hope so, and we invite you to come see for yourself; here is a brief outline of a number of events we have coming up soon:

Ziggy The Gnome stands sentinel under the roses and cacti.

Outstanding in the Field, is bringing their traveling celebration to the farm on May 31st. Mariquita Farm was the site of the very first Outstanding in the Field dinner twenty five years ago and we are excited to come full circle after a quarter of a century with a 25th anniversary meal prepared by Chef Gus Trejo from The Dream Inn’s Jack O’Neil restaurant using produce from our farm and from our friends and neighbors at Lonely Mountain Farm. The wine pairings will be from John Locke/Birichino. It’s going to be tasty and the lavender labyrinth will be in bloom, so it’s going to be an aromatic time too. Click here for link https://outstandinginthefield.com/

A silly wild turkey admiring its reflection in the door to Starr’s farm store, where she sells her shrines, dried herbs, crystals, and preserves.

2. We will host a series of Lavender U-Pick with a first date on Saturday, June 7th.  We will keep the U-picks going through August 1st and perhaps longer. A car full of folks can come and pick 5 bundles. Get all the details and make your reservation at Mariquita.com under events. Other herbs, like basils, thymes, oreganos, etc will be available for U-pick at (dates tba, check newsletter updates)

3. Summer Solstice Self-Care on Saturday, June 21st will bring together a grand group of special practitioners for a three hour journey into self-care. You can relax and enjoy the countryside, explore the gardens filled with flowers, while looking out at hillsides  covered in citrus and roses. Indulge yourself in  a variety of self-care offerings while celebrating the Summer solstice with us! We will be joined by several event guides and practitioners that will provide you with a taste of their art and profession. https://www.mariquita.com/features/summer-solstice-self-care-saturday-june-21st/.

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Besides our public events we do open the farm and host events for groups and individuals; painting clubs, Blessing Ways, staff parties, baby showers, and fund-raising dinners and picnics have all been on the calendar. Let us know if you have an event in mind that would benefit from a beautiful, peaceful rural surroundings with an out-door kitchen, a handy labyrinth and a lot of flowers! Starr does flowers for events and weddings too. Let us know.

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Behind the palm trees are the orange trees. At this time the entire area was covered in orange groves for miles and miles. It smelled heavenly when the trees were in bloom and it stuck like hell when the farmers ignited the smudge pots and burned oil to keep the threat of frost at bay.

If you know where to look there are still tiny fragments of the past clinging on to the present in the Inland Empire- an old orange tree in a yard here and there, an building that was once a fruit packing shed etc. Mostly you can read about the past in the street signs, where citrus themes like “Valencia St.” or “Orange Show Speedway” point to the past.

Happy Thanksgiving and thank you for supporting our farm this year. Thanksgiving always marks the end of a season and a moment of rest before we commence a new year’s production schedule, so it’s a good time to look back and reflect. This year wasn’t the easiest of years, with a cold, wet, and late start for planting, and the cool weather continued, punctuated with heat spells that were hard on the tomato crop. But we made it through. That another year has passed by, and so quickly, has me thinking about time.

The horse in the top picture was named Fanny. The boy in the woman’s lap is Jack, Fran’s father. Fran is my mother in law.The woman holding Jack is her grandmother, Magdalena. They were posed in their orange orchard in Colton, California, at the corner of Olive and Rancho, in 1924. This last week, Fran, my mother in law, and I, drove out to Colton, a hundred years later, to revisit the scene. Thankfully, the palm tree is still there. Everything else in the neighborhood has changed dramatically for miles around. Millions and millions of people now live where the orange groves once carpeted the valley floor. “Time waits for no one,” I’ve heard. The traffic certainly wouldn’t wait for me either, so I wasn’t able to stand in the street to recapture the precise perspective of the old photo. I wanted to hug the old palm tree and hear it tell me a hundred years of stories.

I decided to go home and look through my own photographs to see how well my family has documented the changes on this little patch of ground we’ve called home for the last 120 years.

The picture below was taken sometime in the 1930s when the farm was being used to graze livestock. This field is where we have recently situated our lavender labyrinth. You can see that my family kept cattle at the time, not sheep as they did later on, because the coyote brush in the field would have been nibbled back by sheep, whereas the cows prefer to lick up grass. If I stopped farming the field tomorrow the coyote brush, Baccharis pilularis, would promptly pop up again. Time doesn’t wait but Baccharis has the patience and persistence to wait and wait and wait for its chance to return. Sometimes I get distressed when I see how aggressively stupid we humans are about fouling the natural world we’re born into, but then I remember that nature has all the time in the world to heal itself. I’m thankful that I’ve had the opportunity to farm this land that my great grandfather worked on 100 years ago and hopefully “do it right.”

Only the barn at far right of photo is still standing, albeit remodeled on the same footprint. The other outbuildings are now gone and our present day home is just off the left hand side of photo. My grandfather built it with the lumber he re-used from the old house that is in this photo. And the “old house” had been built using the wood from the “old, old house,” which had been built from the redwoods logged on the property in the 1860s.

Here’s the corner of the field on a quiet Sunday morning in 1987 when a hot air balloon landed after it ran out of gas overhead. The pilot gave us a bottle of champagne which he kept aboard for emergencies like this.

Our lavender labyrinth is now mature. This perennial lavender planting occupies the emotional center of the field and around the margins of the labyrinth we plant our other crops. During our 2025 growing season we intend to plant 18 beds of herbs, ranging from anis hyssop, thru a spectrum of basils to lemon thyme, marjoram, nepitella, oregano and zaatar. We rotate crops, so where the pumpkin patch grew this year we will plant our sacramental marigold patch next year. We look forward to inviting you all to herb and flower U-Pick events when the crops are in. 

In the 2025 season many more of the citrus trees that we planted on the slopes of the field will be maturing and giving their first, meaningful crop. Besides Lisbon and Meyer lemons we have planted Buddha’s Hand citrons, Limequats, Kumquats, Finger limes, Thai Limes, Makrut limes, Yuzu limes, Sour Oranges, Blood Oranges, Sudachi, and Assadas citron. Keep an eye on the newsletter for updates on mid-winter citrus theme pop-ups. And coming up soon, on December 7th, from 11am to 5 pm, at the Corralitos Cultural Center, 127 Hames Road, we will be participating in the 2024 Holiday Sip & Shop with a wide range of other local vendors. There will be music and wine. We’ll be bringing seasonal farm goodies, citrus products, herbs, veggies and gifts. Swing by and visit us.

The field on a quiet, damp morning years ago when a large flock of wild turkeys showed up. They’ve never really left, though their numbers go up and down. A turkey gobbling outside my window woke me up this Thanksgiving morning.

Graydon and Gerardo enjoying the spectacle of a large tractor hauling a laser-leveling rig when it got stuck in the field, circa 2001

Samson keeping an eye on me and snoozing as I worked to construct what would become the lavender labyrinth. You can see the young citrus orchard on the slopes. This was sometime during Covid.

A recent drone shot of the labyrinth.

Alexis and I inspecting the lavender crop last year with Green Oaxacan corn on right.

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  Looking up the slope from the field towards the farm gate and the house during peak marigold season.

  
  
  

  Somethings about farming are universal and timeless, lol. Here’s my dad with a tractor stuck in the mud on some ranch in the Salinas Valley circa 1946.

  

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