Letters From Andy

Fresh broccoli is health food, but it almost killed me. It was in the early 1980s, when I worked at Star Route Farm in Bolinas. After a day in the fields, I’d walk downtown, buy a six pack at the liquor store, and sit on the sea wall at the end of Brighton Street looking out over the ocean. When it wasn’t foggy I could see the San Francisco peninsula off to the southeast across the Gulf of the Farallons. As the evening sky grew dark, the distant city lights would brighten, and soon San Francisco would float free from the hills she’s moored to and sparkle in the night from across the water like a magical ship. If I was going to make the drive south to the city later that night to deliver the farm’s harvest, I wouldn’t drink. But San Francisco glittered all the same for being so near at hand yet so far from my world at the same time.
Now that the largest organic farms are owned by the largest corporate farms, and most of the little independent hippie natural food stores have been swallowed whole by the big fish, vegetables are displayed for retail like sculptures or jewels and it’s funny to think back to those early days of the natural food movement when consumers half expected organic vegetables to be beat up, wilted, or dirty compared to “regular store-bought vegetables.” Some perverse customers even needed organic produce to look battered, as if being unclean or un-cooled was proof that the vegetables had really sprung from the earth. In the early eighties Star Route Farm had thirty acres under cultivation, which made it one of the largest organic farms in California. The vegetables we grew were beautiful in the field. But the industry was young then, and farmers and store keepers alike lacked the tools, and sometimes the knowledge, to perform the post-harvest handling procedures that could help deliver on the whole promise of organic, fresh and natural.
Take broccoli for example. Truly fresh broccoli is a revelation. When I worked at Star Route Farm I didn’t earn much money, and I saved my wages for important things, like beer and toilet paper. ate everything I could from the fields. The first time I cut a head of broccoli and steamed it four minutes later, I was amazed . The broccoli had a sweetness I’d never tasted before. Any dressing or sauce would have only clouded the fresh purity of the flavor. But to deliver some facsimile of that green sweetness to a distant customer is tricky. As broccoli ages it begins to express the odor and flavor of the mustard oil that is a characteristic component of every member of the Brassica family, from arugula to broccoli to cabbage to kale. Nowadays, organic growers follow the same post-harvest handling practices for broccoli as chemical farms do. These procedures help retain some semblance of freshness in the crop over time and distance. But back then post harvest technology was beyond our reach and the economies of scale that make it possible were not yet present.
As soon as commercial broccoli is harvested it’s packed into a waxed cardboard carton, and the boxes are stacked on a pallet. The pallet of broccoli is then fork-lifted into a hydro cooler, where water chilled to 34 is rained down through the boxes, washing away the field heat, until the core temperature of the broccoli drops into the thirties. Then the pallet of chilled broccoli is forked from the hydro cooler into a chamber where each box is pumped full of slush ice so that the broccoli is embedded in a square artificial glacier. The broccoli is then held in a refrigerated warehouse until it’s sold. The ice melts, but it melts slowly, trickling cold water through the broccoli stems. After the sale, the refrigerated truck that comes to carry the broccoli away backs up to the portal of the refrigerated warehouse until the rubber lips of the insulating diaphragm .kiss the square mouth of the refrigerator trailer and create a seal. Then the doors are raised, and the pallet of broccoli is trundled from the refrigerator warehouse into the refrigerated trailer. The doors are closed, the truck pulls forward, the lips unlock, and the truck drives off across America.
The pallets of broccoli will move from the reefer truck into another refrigerated warehouse at a regional distribution center. Food scientists will tell you that it is almost as important to the shelf life of green vegetables that the temperatures they’re stored at be stable as to be cold. Fluctuating temperatures cause tissue breakdown, just as warm temperatures do. At the regional distribution center pallets of broccoli are broken down into smaller units for delivery in other refrigerated trucks to outlying stores, where the boxes of broccoli will be stored in walk-in coolers. From there, individual bunches of broccoli will be lifted from the boxes where they nest, and laid out for the consumer to ogle on beds of crushed ice, or perhaps stacked in a pyramid beneath florescent lights and treated to an intermittent icy mist. These are the links in the “cold chain” that makes our “fresh anytime anywhere produce departments” in chain stores possible. Unless or until the frantic increase in the cost of oil one day makes waxed boxes, water chillers, freezers, ice, and trucking too expensive to ignore, it’s this cold chain that makes fresh broccoli cheap enough to waste.
But in the early eighties in the natural food industry was only just coming to grips with the techniques of post harvest handling or the goal of serving a national market. For Star Route Farm, as for most organic farms in the greater Bay Area, marketing a crop meant harvesting vegetables during the day and hauling them to Veritable Vegetable in San Francisco at night. Veritable Vegetable, or “V.V.” to produce insiders, was a feminist organic produce distributor collective. The women at V.V. delivered to the all the little hippie health food stores. Veritable has matured into an institution. Even men work there now. It makes me happy to see Veritable’s trucks on the road today because I know she’s a survivor that’s managed to evolve in the face of stiff competition. When the women at V.V. complained to us that our broccoli was turning yellow we had to listen. They suggested we find some way to ice it down.
We didn’t have an ice machine on the farm, and we didn’t know where to go to buy one that could
make the quantities of the crushed ice slurry we would need, so my boss had me buy ice in town. There isn’t much town between Bolinas and San Francisco, especially if you consider I delivered at night in a big truck that was hard to park. So I’d leave the farm around nine PM, late enough to avoid traffic, but early enough to get to the liquor store before it closed for the night. I’d drive slowly around the Bolinas lagoon to avoid hitting animals. The eyes of the racoons and possums crossing the highway to forage for food on the tidal flats would flash in the glare of the headlights. Just past Stinson Beach I’d gear down for the slow grind up the grade that hugs the rocky cliffs. I’d stay in low third past Slide Ranch and gear down even lower for the descent to Muir Beach. The swirling fog in the headlights was disorienting, but I’d keep the window cracked open so the fresh air would keep me alert, and I could smell the brine of the ocean and hear the boom of the surf at the bottom of the cliffs. The uphill grade past Green Gulch was steep, and the road downhill into Tam Junction was curvy. I wouldn’t pick up speed until I got onto southbound 101.
The streets of San Francisco were jarring after the wilds of West Marin. I’d blink against the brightness and watch for drunks and tourists instead of coons and possums. Veritable Vegetable was located in the warehouse district south of Army Street. I’d stop at a liquor store on Bayshore Boulevard that was nearby and stayed open late. The night clerk got to know me. He couldn’t leave the register, but he’d take my money, hand me the keys to the freezer they had out in back, and I’d load all the bags of ice they had in their cooler onto my truck. I’d spread the boxes of broccoli out across the loading dock at V.V. and open them. Then I’d rip open the bags of ice, one by one, and pour the ice into the boxes, then close them, re-stack the pallet, and roll it into Veritable’s cooler. It wasn’t cheap, it wasn’t efficient, and it probably wasn’t even effective, but back then, that was the best we could do.
One night when I got to the liquor store both lanes of Bayshore Boulevard were blocked by a couple of pimps with flashy cars. I don’t know for sure they were pimps. They could have been librarians dressed to kill, out for a night on the town in dark glasses and comporting themselves like fighting cocks, so that ignorant country boys like myself would presume they were successful pimps. The casual manner they took the whole street for their own was threatening. I parked behind them and stepped into the liquor store.
“Sorry Boss,” the clerk said. “No ice in back, but you can take what we’ve got in the store.” He waved me towards the refrigerator cases full of beer. “It’s closing time anyway.”
I went down the aisle, past the display racks of potato chips and the shelves of cheap wine. In the back corner there was a freezer locker with some ice— not enough that I’d be able to ice down the broccoli in conformance with optimum post harvest protocol, but more than I could haul out to the truck by hand. I went to get my dolly.
The two pimp/librarians were still blocking the street, but out of their cars now, strutting, boasting and swaggering. They knew each other, but it wasn’t clear they liked each other. One of the girlfriends was thirsty. “Come on baby,” she called out over the dissonant blare of music pulsing and clashing from both cars’ stereo systems. “Get me a drink.”
I pushed my dolly back to the liquor store, and proceeded to the rear of the store. I laid the dolly down so I could load it. I was on my knees pulling out ten pound sacks of ice when I heard the two pimp/librarians push their way into the store. Ding went the bell. They both wanted liquor— Courvoisier for the one, Johnny Walker for the other. And they each wanted to be served first. It
wasn’t going well for the clerk, who had to decide which arrogant prick of a customer to offend. I straightened up to pull my dolly. From where I stood I could see that the clerk had slipped one hand under the register. Just then, another man entered the store, white, bald, and wearing a camouflage army surplus jacket. He grabbed the first bottle of wine he came to and shoved it onto the counter next to the register.
The pimp/librarians pushed forward to object, and the white guy reached to pull a handgun out of his jacket. If he was intending to rob the store, he’d picked a bad night. Before he had his pistol drawn and leveled, the clerk and both pimp/librarians pulled their guns on him. I dropped down behind the Cheetos and the Ding Dongs. There was a frozen moment while the bald man with the gun decided whether or not he cared if he got shot. The clerk broke the ice.
“No worries Boss, just leave”
And he did, moving slowly backwards out onto the sidewalk. I peeked around the snack rack. The clerk pushed the two bottles of liquor towards the pimp/librarians.
“Thank you sirs. On the house. Come back soon. We’re closed for tonight.”
If delivering produce into the city in the middle of the nights had its film noir moments, there were things about it to appreciate too. The night-shift always plays by its own rules. Meddlesome middle managers are tucked away in bed. Working nights means never getting enough sleep, but the stress of having your circadian rhythms scrambled is partly compensated by a degree of freedom not often seen during the day. There’s a “we’re in this together” feeling that gives you something in common with everyone else you meet, and there’s a camaraderie among strangers at night that’s missing in the daylight.
I remember one night run from the farm into the city. It had rained off and on all day, and at dusk the storm intensified. I left the farm at ten in the evening and drove slowly around the Bolinas  lagoon. The tide was rising. The incoming wall of sea water acted like a dam at the mouth of the lagoon and blocked the outward flow of rain water streaming down off the ridges of the G.G.N.R.A. The lagoon was full to the brim and wavelets already lapped at the pavement. At Stinson Beach the wind hit the broad side of the truck like it was filling a sail. Highway One was closed ahead due to a mud slide, so I turned up the Panoramic Highway and away from the coast to take a detour over the shoulder of Mount Tam. There was no traffic and no creatures to be seen. All intelligent sentient beings were snug in their nests, tucked under rocks, sheltered in the holes of tree trunks. The road was covered in twigs and fir needles whipped from the trees by the wind. I stared into high beams and navigated around loose rocks in the roadway. When I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge I felt the full force of the gale, and I held the steering wheel tight in both hands to keep the truck from bucking.
Trucks that cross the Golden Gate always pass through the toll plaza in the far right hand lane. Since I entered the city on a regular schedule, every Tuesday and Thursday around eleven PM, I’d gradually came to know by sight the woman who worked for the Bridge Authority taking tolls. When her mustache and beard grew out enough to contrast oddly with her eyeshadow and rouge it became obvious, even to me, that she was a transvestite. I’m embarrassed now to say that I told jokes at her expense back on the farm, because she had wings under her vinyl windbreaker.
When I pulled up to her booth that night she was waiting for me.
“You hauling potatoes, sugar?” she shouted up.
“How’d you know?”
“You’re allover the scanner! Northbound C.H.P. turned around to look for you. Your potato box lids have been blowing off all across the span.”
“Oh, shit!”
“No shit!” she replied. He’ll ticket you . Littering. Spilling your load. Causing a traffic hazard! Take the Presidio off-ramp. They won’t look for you there.”
I gave her my money and took her advice, dodging back into the cover of the tall black cypresses in the Presidio. Sure enough, when I got to Veritable Vegetable the top layer of potato boxes, 50 in all, were missing their lids. I hadn’t secured the plastic tarp well and it had blown away, exposing my cargo. The strong winds I encountered on the Golden Gate must have sent the lids flipping and twirling off in the night like bats. The potatoes were wet from the rain and glowed bright red under the florescent lights in the warehouse.
The following morning I returned to San Francisco in my Volkswagen bug with a load of dry potato
box lids folded flat so the warehousewomen could efficiently stack the order I’d delivered. As I crossed the bridge I stayed in the far right lane hoping to thank this person I’d been making fun of, but she was gone. I guess she only worked graveyard. I never saw her again.
Several years ago in the dead of winter I took my family for a vacation in the City. It rained the entire time, but we had a nice time anyway. Some friends who were off traveling let us house-sit their home in Sutro Heights. Late one afternoon I took my daughter, Lena, and my son, Graydon, for a walk in a lovely park that perches high on the cliffs above Ocean Beach, and we wandered down the rain washed city streets to Baker Beach The clouds over the sea lifted long enough for me to see the outline of Bolinas Head on the northwestern horizon. So much had changed in twenty five years. The same rocky Marin Headlands, the same black cypresses in the Presidio, the same gray, choppy water under the Golden Gate Bridge, but I was different. I had my own farm now, south of San Francisco, with a wife, kids, employees, and a sagging body to care for.
My kids got bored as I stood there looking out across the Golden Gate, and they tugged at me to
leave. So I left. I knew what had happened to the organic food movement I’d come of age in, and I
keep in touch with my friends at Star Route Farm, but I left wondering whatever happened to the clerk, the pimp/librarians, the thief, and my drag queen toll taking angel. So much water under the bridge, but what a beautiful bridge.
copyright 2007 Andy Griffin

It’s easy to rent land or borrow money to buy a tractor, but having a family farm means having a family, and that starts with a good woman. The world is full of good women, but not every woman is an asset on a farm. Like many people, I took a few missteps when I first went looking for a life mate. Diana was my most striking failure.
Argentina was a duller place once Diana left to come to America. She’s a beautiful woman, with blond hair and strange golden eyes. She’s a smart woman, who besides her native Castilian, speaks fluent French, Italian, Portuguese, German, and English. The French she speaks properly, because she learned it at an English-style boarding school, the German she learned on her mother’s knee, the Italian she learned from the ladies her mother was friends with in Buenos Aires, and the Portuguese she picked up in a Brazilian women’s prison where she served time for cocaine trafficking. Her affluent father bought her way out of Brazil by selling one of his racehorses.
When I met Diana she used no drug stronger than hierba maté. The herb of hierba maté is a South American desert shrub, Ilex paraguariensis, the dried leaves of which are brewed into a strong tissane called  maté.  Maté is also the word for the dried gourd which is used by the maté drinkers as a cup, or vessel. Maté is prepared by putting a small quantity of hierba maté  leaves in the bottom of the dried gourd, then pouring hot water in to fill it. The maté is then sipped through a silver straw, called a bombilla, that has a spoon-shaped strainer on the end to filter out any particulate matter. Serious Argentinians drink maté daily, or even many times daily.
Diana took her hierba maté like a sacrament, and made a point of using water that was hot enough, but not too hot, else the scalding water drive bitter alkaloids from the stems of the hierba. She considered it important that the drink froth up with a fine foam, not in big bubbles. The only hierba she’d consume was of the highest quality, imported straight from trusted sources in Argentina. Hierba maté is delicious, and because it’s loaded with caffeine, it’s stimulating, but perhaps the most charming thing about the hierba mate ceremony is its social nature, because it is considered right and proper for a hierba sipper to pass their gourd and bombilla around, and in this way people are brought together, and conversations are born.
It was always interesting to hear Diana talk. “These hippies in Santa Cruz,” she’d start out, with exasperation in her voice, and I’d lean forward with a smile, waiting to hear what would come next, because of all people Diana was always the one to have a vision, or feel energies, or talk to birds. She was as close as someone born to Buenas Aires high society can be to being a flower child. And to hear it from her, her neighborhood back home had always been a cradle of non-conformists— the Guevaras lived just down the block. “And wasn’t their son their a disappointment!”
“These hippies in Santa Cruz calling people Nazis because they vote Republican!” She’d continue, and wave her hand in scorn. “In Argentina, we have real Nazis, like my brother, that ignorant, #%^@&*$% prick, tripiando en Hitler!”
But if Diana wasn’t “tripping on Hitler” like her brother, she had a few rough edges, as we all do. When she moved in with me I still was still sharing my house with Ramiro Campos and his family. She and Ramiro crossed swords, and she called him an “indio” — and not with the reverential tone she reserved for a guru she’d visited on an ashram in India. Ramiro called her La Dianamita, The Diana-mite, because she was usually having an explosive emotion,  passion, enthusiasm or scandal.
In San Francisco, Diana understood the empty curb sides by the fire hydrants to have been painted red by the City so that She would always have a place to park. All the yellow, blue, green, and white curbs were marked for her convenience too, and the delivery trucks, the handicapped, and the cabs, taxis, and limousines could all wait. When meter maids failed to appreciate this distinction, she’d  give them a piece of her mind. But Diana was generous to a fault, and she’d give anyone anything. “If we all shared what we had, and took what we needed, then we’d want for nothing, because life is a miracle, and greed is the constipation of the world!” Meter maids loved hearing that.
“I’m telling you, if you want for something, expect a miracle, and it will come,” she’d insist. But if the city ever got a penny from Diana for her parking fines, THAT would be a miracle.
Diana loved the United States for the freedom of opportunity that it offers, and she wouldn’t stand for our country being trashed by pathetic self-loathing Americans. One day we were selling produce at the Santa Cruz Farmers’ Market, and from across the parking lot she saw a trio of well-dressed, bronze-skinned women with platinum hair and Gucci bags approaching.
“Oh shit,” she said, and turned to busy herself unloading the far side of the pick-up truck where she couldn’t be seen.
But the women had already seen her, and soon there were hugs and kisses and much chatter in rapid-fire Spanish and Italian. The three women were friends of her mothers from Buenos Aires, visiting the United States, and “what an unexpected surprise to see you Diana— and looking so good, so thin, so tan!”
But when the ladies left, Diana’s smile left too.
“You watch,” she said. “When those #%^@&*$%  bitches get back to the hotel room, they’re going to call my mother up and tell that they saw me skinny, in rags, and selling potatoes in the streets like an Indian. They’re running for the phone right now!”
And sure enough, when we got home, there was a message from her father, appalled that she’d fallen so low— the prodigal daughter— and offering her air fare home so she could get her life together once again.
“You see?” she said. “Argentina is so stupid! That’s what I love about America!— that anyone can do anything, and if they want to sell vegetables in the street, then that’s honorable too.” Then Diana went down to the beach and threw her Argentinian passport into the ocean, vowing never to return.
As it turns out, Diana went back to Buenos Aires three weeks later, and her father didn’t pay her airfare. It was her aunt— her favorite aunt— who wrote her a letter with an airplane ticket in it, and begged her to come to Buenos Aires as the guest of honor at her upcoming wedding.
“This is important,” Diana said. “This is her sixth wedding, and nobody in the family takes her seriously anymore. If I don’t go, then no one from the family will be there, and what is family, if it’s not standing by your people?”
I agreed.
“Plus,” she added, “Tia’s weddings are so much fun. Last year she booked the reception at the finest hotel in Buenos Aires. Then she got drunk, stripped naked and danced in the fountain in the lobby. The security guards tossed her out of her own party!”
Diana had airplane tickets, but she didn’t have her passport. It was sitting on the seabed 10,000 feet deep in the Monterey submarine canyon off of Moss Landing. So she called the Argentinian consulate in San Francisco and explained the situation to them—  that she’d lost her passport and a family emergency in Buenos Aires had arisen. The consular official listened with all due concern, and promised her a copy of her passport within a month. Diana hung up, scowling. A month wasn’t good enough. The wedding was next week.
She called back.
“Perhaps there’s been some misunderstanding,” she said.
“No, we don’t think so,” the clerk replied.
“Because you don’t want to mess with me!” Diana started in. “My father is an ambassador!” (Not true. That would be her Uncle. Her father was an alcoholic, a gambler, and a race horse afficionado.) “And my mother’s lover is a prominent general!” (Not sure there, but Diana’s father may have been a retired army officer)  “And I am the close personal friend of….” and here she veered off into a litany of socialites that would have been known to anyone current with the beau monde of Buenos Aires. She concluded by slamming down the phone.
The passport arrived the next day, by special post.
“And that’s what I love about Argentina,” Diana said.
Diana left for the wedding, and all was calm on the farm. When she returned it was high season, and we were busy harvesting everything from Apple pimientos to Green Zebra tomatoes. She helped me load the truck to go to the farmers’ market in Santa Cruz, but we were late. I was speeding down Highway One through Aptos when I heard a siren, and saw a highway patrolman in my rear view mirror. I pulled over.
“You let me handle this,” Diana hissed. “You keep your mouth shut!”
The patrolman approached my pick-up on the passengers side, to avoid being sideswiped in the heavy freeway traffic. My truck was piled high with wet vegetable cartons, tables, tents, and all the paraphernalia of the farmers’ market stall. I was hoping I wouldn’t get a ticket for exceeding my load limit too. Diana rolled her window down. The officer stuck his head in the truck and asked me for my driver’s licence.
Diana looked up at the officer with her golden eyes, and tears began to well up. She sobbed. Then, choking back tears, she began to jabber and plead in German. The office stepped back, looking concerned. She gesticulated, spouted more German, spouted more tears, and when she was done with the cop, he’d welcomed us to Santa Cruz, apologized for frightening us, given us a pantomime of directions to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, and wished us a happy stay in America. The patrolman walked back towards his car.
“Go!,” Diana whispered. “Go!”
So I went. The cop didn’t follow.
“What did you say to him,?” I asked.
“Are you happy you didn’t get a ticket?” she asked me.
“Yes, I’m happy. But why were you speaking in German?”
“Your cops,” Diana said. “So cute, and so stupid. If I’d spoken in Castilian, he’d of thought I was a Mexicana, and given you a ticket. And if I spoke in Portuguese, he’d of thought I was a Mexicana, and given you a ticket, and if I spoke in Italian, he’d of thought I was a Mexicana, too, because you Americans can’t tell anyone apart. Everybody knows Americans feel shamed by the French, so I spoke German.”
That’s a snapshot of life with Diana. She lived for novelty, adventure, travel, excitement, and spontaneity. When, after twelve months she tired of the endless cycle of winter, spring, summer, fall, she took off, and moved in with an insurance agent who lived a mile away. I cried with tears of relief to see this striking woman with the golden eyes go. I’m a farmer, and I can only take so much spontaneous combustion. Besides, I agree with Diana.  “What is family, if it’s not standing by your people?” Diana found her family before I found mine, but mine was worth the wait. And that’s the lesson of farming— Nature wants to renew herself, but she takes her own time doing it.
copyright 2007 Andy Griffin

Party Animals
Growing vegetables is my business, but raising farm animals is my hobby. I’ve got sheep and goats, but my special pets are my two donkeys, Primavera, a six year old jennet, and her nine-month old foal, Sweetpea. In the evenings, when the scandals and stresses of running a small business can be put to rest for the day, I enjoy taking my donkeys for a walk around our home ranch. Sometimes my daughter, Lena, helps me brush them until their coats are glossy.
You can tell when donkeys are relaxed and happy because they hang their heads in contentment and close their eyes. When Prima is being groomed, her lower lip hangs down as if she’s beginning to melt. Sweetpea likes to be brushed too, but as she’s young and energetic, she’s often impatient to go on her walk. When she and I do go walking, I have to pay attention, because she’s only half-trained. At nine-months, Sweetpea already weighs 400 pounds, and she is strong in both body and spirit.
The other evening, Lena was helping me with Sweetpea, and she took a turn at leading her around the barnyard. I explained to Lena that managing a donkey is a question of will – donkeys are stronger than we are, and their big ears serve as radars to pick up even the slightest tremor in our self-confidence – then I handed Lena the lead rope.
A covey of quail flew up from the grass at the edge of the corral with a flurry of wings, and Sweetpea took advantage of the surprise to lunge in terror. Lena lost hold of the halter rope instantly, and Sweetpea proceeded to race around the pen, bucking and snorting, with the lead-rope dragging behind her like a purple snake. When Sweetpea calmed down, I picked up the rope.
I was a surprised at how easily Sweetpea had been able to break free – my daughter doesn’t scare easily – but then I remembered a traumatic incident involving a donkey in Lena’s early childhood.
When Lena was three, she had her first experience of a Mexican style birthday. It was a picnic at Palm Beach in Watsonville for her friend Saiya. Saiya isn’t Mexicana – her mother, Senai, is Japanese and her father, Mark, is German – but they’d met in Paraguay when they both worked for the United Nations. Spanish and English are their common languages. Watsonville is overwhelmingly Hispanic, so it was natural that little Saiya would adapt to local birthday customs.
Mark went to Happy Burro Market out on the edge of town, and selected a bright piñata from the display that hung from the ceiling above the brooms and mops. He could have chosen a chartreuse and orange Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle piñata, or a blue and red Spiderman piñata. But Saiya was more interested in animals than action heroes, so he picked out a classic donkey piñata, and bought enough candy to fill its round belly.
Mark and his brother hung the donkey from the overhanging branch of a eucalyptus tree in the middle of the picnic grounds that lie behind the beach. The piñata swayed gently in the breeze. The gray crepe paper strips that made up the donkey’s coat were nicely set off by the animal’s cream colored nose and belly. Black crepe paper made for a pretty mane and tail. The piñata donkey was dressed with a colorful paper saddle of red, yellow, green, and blue, and it even wore a little straw sombrero. Saiya, who was turning four, loved the piñata, and so did her five young guests, Lena, Lydia, Maija, Anwen, and Iliana. There were no brothers present.
When the time came to hit the donkey with a stick, it was difficult, because it was so beautiful. But the violence had to be done. The piñata always comes before the presents, and most importantly, before the cake. These little girls had never beaten a piñata before. When her papa handed Saiya a stout, dry stick he’d picked up from underneath the eucalyptus tree, she looked confused. He showed her how to swing it. Because the girls were so young, the parents present decided to forgo the typical custom of blind-folding the children when they struck at the piñata.
Saiya was the birthday princess, but she was a gracious hostess, so she let Lena go first. Lena missed the piñata on her first swing, and only grazed it with the stick on her second. On her third attempt, she struck a solid blow across the ribs of the donkey, and she turned to me with big eyes for a sign of approval. Lena had hit the piñata hard enough for it to swing in an arc on the end of its rope, but not so hard as to crack it. The donkey made a half turn in the air and came back at Lena like a pendulum, kicking her in the back of the head, and knocking her face-flat in the sand.
The other little girls didn’t have much luck either. It was the first party I’d ever been to where it looked like the piñata was going to win. The little gray donkey with the straw sombrero raged at the end of its tether like a rodeo bronco, and one girl after another bit the dust. Finally, Saiya begged her Uncle to do the deed. While the girls covered their eyes, he took up the stick and delivered a mighty whack to the paper donkey. The piñata’s belly finally tore open, spraying a rooster tail of brightly wrapped candies across the white beach.
The girls swarmed the sand like baboons, and minutes later, when they trooped off to the picnic table for the ceremonial unwrapping of the birthday presents, there was nothing left for the seagulls but a couple of pieces of red and silver foil that smelled like chocolate kisses. I guess the moral of the story is that no matter how sweet and lovely a donkey may appear, you always want to be careful when you’re around the business end of an ass.
copyright 2007 Andy Griffin

When my farm has me stressed, and I want to leave it all behind, I throw the kids in the minivan and head down the coast highway to Big Sur. I call out every stream we cross on our way south like train stations. “ Salinas River, Carmel River, San Jose Creek, Maldonado Creek.” It never fails that when we pass over the Garrapata Creek bridge, a cry goes up from the back seat, “Tell us about the pancakes!”
“But that story has no redeeming social value,” I protest.
“Pancakes, pancakes, pancakes,” Graydon and Lena chant.
So I tell them again. When I was their age, a great friend of mine was an old cowboy named Jimmy Bell. Jimmy had a story about when he was a kid growing up on a little homestead up Garrapata Creek with his Uncle Harvey. This was back in the 1920’s, when life on the south coast meant growing all your own food and only going to town for essentials a couple of times a year. Uncle Harvey earned what little cash he had from selling a few head of cattle. Kerosene, bullets, baking powder, nails, wire, flour, and clothing all came from Monterey. Liquor came from local bootleggers, who traded it for dried beef. A lot of things we take for granted, Jimmy and his Uncle Harvey did without.
Uncle Harvey had a friend named Doolan, a hermit. He might have been a fugitive from the law. Doolan lived further down the coast, back in the wilderness, in a little cabin tucked away in a dark redwood canyon along a stream that fed into the Big Sur River. Locals called the remote spot “Doolan’s Hole.” Doolan hunted wild game and panned for the few flakes of gold hidden in the river gravel. But mostly he just laid low.
Every once in a while Uncle Harvey would saddle his horse, pack some supplies on his mule, and ride down the coast to visit Doolan and trade for gold. Jimmy would go along as part of the baggage on the mule.
Doolan’s Hole was dank and shady with ferns, moss, and mushrooms growing lush in the dim light. Sunbeams only penetrated the gloom for an hour or so a day during the height of summer. Doolan always had a cold, or maybe it was an allergy; anyway, he snorted like a pig.
A visit from Uncle Harvey with his mule load of supplies was like a visit from Santa Claus for feral old Doolan. Jimmy and Uncle Harvey would stay the night before starting out again for their homestead on Garrapata Creek. In the morning, Doolan would celebrate his guests by making his favorite treat: pancakes. While the little fire of manzanita burls burned down to coals, Doolan would get out the flour Uncle Harvey had brought him, and any chicken eggs that had survived the bone-rattling journey by mule from Harvey’s hen house. The skillet was pulled down from its nail on the wall of the shack, and greased with deer fat.
The jug of fresh milk Harvey had packed for the trip would be shaken by its mule ride, so the butterfat in it would already be churned into lumps. Jimmy would fetch the milk jug from the creek where it had been left to chill overnight, and fish the lumps of butter out with a spoon.
Once all the ingredients were gathered up, the batter could be ready in a jiffy, but you wouldn’t wan to pour it in the skillet too soon, or you won’t get a pancake that flips easy. To make sure his skillet was hot enough, Doolan had a method. He’d plug up one nostril with his right thumb and blow the contents of his runny nose into the pan. If the skillet sizzled, it was time to make the first golden brown pancake. If a cheery sizzle was missing, Doolan would stoke the coals in the fire pit and wait a bit before trying again with the other nostril.
“Oooh, gross!,” the kids cry out. “Tell it again!”
“No,” I answer. “Once is enough.”
We keep driving south, past the Little Sur River, past the huge rock that rises up like a small mountain from the surf and forms Point Sur. My great-grandfather, Marius Jorgensen, helped with the stonework in 1902, when they built the keepers quarters for the Big Sur Lighthouse that sits atop the rock. If the kids are bugging each other, or me, I’ll make them listen again as I tell them all I know about Marius.
I know that Marius came to Watsonville from Denmark in the 1890’s. Denmark is a small country and back then it was poor. When Marius was born, Denmark had just gotten even smaller and poorer because the Germans had invaded and seized the province of Schleswig-Holstein. For the youngest son in a farming family, the choice was to work on the farm for the oldest brother when he inherited the land, or go to sea. Marius emigrated to Germany and found work as a plasterer, a mason, and a painter. My uncle told me that when the Kaiser tried to draft Marius into the German Army, he too the money he’d saved, returned to Denmark to say goodby to his family, and sailed for America.
In the last century Danish immigrants had a reputation in America for being ignorant and stubborn peasants who were usually drunk. “Square-head” or “block-head” were two common derogatory epithets for Scandinavians. But Marius found that his skills as a plasterer, mason, and painter made him a marketable laborer. “Money is so easy to earn in America,” he wrote back to his family, “ that work is like stealing! Send me a wife!”
So they did. Marius met Petra for the first time at the train station. They married and had three daughters: my grandmother Anna, and her sisters Katherine, and Helga. Petra died young in 1905, shortly after the birth of her third daughter.
We pass over the bridge that crosses the Big Sur River and drive past the Forest Service Headquarters. I can remember back in the summer of 1967, when there was a line of hippies that extended from the Forest Service headquarters all the way up the grade to Post Ranch, hitch-hiking south to L.A. So many flower children tried to go back to nature that the Forest Service had to shut down some campgrounds because there was human feces in the river.
When I was a kid I asked someone why so many people wanted to come to Big Sur, and they said it was because Big Sur was a “power spot” where spiritual energy welled up out of the earth like a spring, and that a person could renew themselves by simply being there and soaking up the good vibes.
My father heard that and grinned. He was a scientist— empirical— and he said that what goes up must come down. If Big Sur was a fountain of energy, then Salinas must be the drain. Even now I wonder, because the Salinas Valley is a veritable salad bowl that feeds America, and yet despite all the wealth its land produces, not much seems to stay in Salinas. The money drains away.
The Post Ranch goes past the car window. Nowadays there are rooms for rent, and a very fancy restaurant. My grandparents, Anna and Graydon, stayed at the Post Ranch for their honeymoon in 1918. Post Ranch was a ranch at the end of the road back then, and only cattle trails stretched south along the coast. They took a romantic walk up the Big Sur gorge, and surprised some bootleggers who fired a shotgun at them. My friend Jimmy Bell would have been around the area at that time. In fact, he told me a curious story that I’ll tell my own children someday.
Jimmy said that one time he and his Uncle came south after visiting Doolan to see “the old Chinaman.”
This old gent lived in a cottage built of driftwood on a rock just above the surf some miles south of Post Ranch. He made his living gathering seaweed and abalone. He cut the abalone into strips, salt it with sea salt he collected, and laid the meat out to dry in the sun on a rock set back from the sea spray. He dried the seaweed he collected in the same way.
When the abalone and seaweed were properly cured, he would pack it in bags for storage. The next time someone like Uncle Harvey came along with a horse, he would pay them in dried abalone to haul the packages to Post Ranch, from where they would be sent by wagon to Monterey, and eventually to Chinatown in San Francisco— where a relative would sell them in his market. Sometimes the old man would carry his wares to Post Ranch on his back in a sack, but he didn’t like to visit civilization very often.
One day, as Jimmy and Uncle Harvey were passing by the Post Ranch heading south, they saw a strange sight. There was a long, black limousine parked at the end of the road, with a Chinese man in a formal black business suit brushing the dust from his black shoes. They called out “hello” to him, but he didn’t turn to greet them. He stepped into the back of the car, and it pulled away. Seeing a car that far south was odd enough. Jimmy told his Uncle Harvey that this was the first time he’d seen a Chinaman drive a car. Uncle Harvey reminded him that they hadn’t seen the Chinaman drive, only step into the back— and they hadn’t seen the driver at all.
Past Post Ranch the road got worse, and by Castro canyon it was no wider than a cow track. Jimmy and his Uncle counted the times they crossed streams, because the trail to the Old Chinaman’s shack was hard to find. When they did find the trail, they dismounted and led their horses on foot. The trail was steep and the brush closed in tight. To make matters worse, the old fellow was afraid of demons, so he had fashioned the trail as a maze, with false spurs and disorienting loops. In places there were little brass bells that tinkled to startle the evil spirits. It took someone with skill and patience— or better yet, prior experience with the Old Chinaman— to reach the rocky cove where the cottage stood.
When they got to clearing, they shouted out a hello, as is proper in the country when you drop in unannounced. They could see the abalone drying on the rock, and the strips of green-black seaweed, but there was no sign of the old gentleman. The driftwood door was open. They heard the buzz of flies before they entered. The old Chinaman was sprawled out his back dead, his body riddled with bullet holes. Maybe that was Death back there, getting into the limousine, Uncle Harvey said. Maybe the Devil is Chinese, or maybe he can look like anyone. He couldn’t say, not having really seen his face.
copyright 2007 Andy Griffin

“My salad days,” Cleopatra said, recalling her youthful tryst with Caesar, “When I was green in Judgement.” At least that’s how Shakespeare wrote the story. We’ve all got regrets about our salad days. In his book, Jeremiah Tower Cooks, celebrity chef Jeremiah Tower writes, “In the early 1970s at Chez Panisse, I smuggled in seeds from France and had them grown for us, little edible greens and wild greens to make a mix of various leaves….. The concept, now ubiquitous and misunderstood, is one of the major culinary sins that can be laid at my feet.”
I’m not quoting the lamentations of Jeremiah because I believe that he’s “responsible” for either the ubiquity or the mediocrity of processed salad mixes—let’s call this statement  an example of  “Towering” hyperbole. But  I do find Mr. Tower’s assertion interesting, because out of all of the competing claims that I’ve heard over the year by individuals who claim to have “invented” baby salad greens, Mr. Tower is the only one I’ve found who regrets his role, and I find this stance refreshing and provocative.
Now that the largest organic farms are owned by the largest conventional food producers, and organic practices are embraced by farmers of all stripes because they are cost effective and practical, it’s a good time to think back to the “salad days” organic farming. Mesclun salad was a very important product in the development of the organic produce business. The first self-described organic farmers supplied the nascent natural food market with organic alternatives to conventionally grown crops, like organic potatoes, organic tomatoes, organic corn, etc. But once salads of mixed baby greens became available from organic producers everything changed. For several years there were practically no conventionally grown salads in the marketplace competing in the mesclun category at all, so the sudden popularity of baby lettuce salads gave the organic sector a credibility and a profitability earlier than would have otherwise been possible.
The early identification between “organic” and “baby mixed salad greens” was so complete, that now, years after conventionally produced mesclun salads entered the market, I still occasionally hear people talk as though all baby salad green are organic, just because they’re made of baby mixed greens For many consumers the convenience and flavor of baby mixed greens made the premixed salad the first organic crop they ever bought. It’s almost as if  mesclun, which was commonly mispronounced as “mescaline”, as if it were the psychotropic alkaloid derived from the peyote cactus, was the entry drug for square shoppers, and heavier crops, like organic meats, came later.
When I was a kid salad meant a wedge of iceberg with a slice of pink tomato and a blob of ranch dressing. I grew up in the hills to the south of Soledad on the Hastings Reserve, which is a biological field station managed by the Museum Of Vertebrate Zoology at the University Of California in Berkeley. Every once in a while my father’s boss, Dr. Frank Pitelka, would visit the reserve and stay at our home. Dr. Pitelka was an erudite and worldly gentleman (read snob) and when he was “at table” he liked to talk about food. It was the early seventies. Dr. Pitelka would sit down for dinner, look at the salad my mom had prepared, and begin to wax misty eyed about this “charming little place on upper Shattuck in Berkeley called Chez Panisse, where they serve the most delicious mesclun salads.”
I know now that the word mesclun comes from the Vulgar Latin verb misculare, meaning to mix thoroughly. Originally mesclun salads were made by farmers, and their seasonably variable composition perfectly reflected a peasant’s “waste not, want not” ethic. The baby lettuce leaves were the young leaves thinned from the rows of lettuces in the cottage garden that were destined to be grown to full size, and the lettuces were augmented with chicories and herbs and edible flowers, like arugula, borage, or cress, which were gathered from the fields beyond the garden gate, where they could be found growing wild in forest and pastures and boggy areas, or sprouting out of rock walls.
Dr. Pitelka didn’t tell me any of this. He said that mesclun salad was a perfectly balanced mix of tastes, textures, and colors. In Berkeley, within the confines of what journalists would one day come to call the “Gourmet Ghetto,” these perfect little salads were causing quite a stir. Salads of baby mixed greens, or the idea of a restaurant as a phenomenon remained abstract notions for me until I was in college myself, at the University Of California in Davis.  I got a summer job on a French Intensive Biodynamic farm on Garden Highway, north of Sacramento, owned by a fellow named John Hudspeth who worked at Chez Panisse restaurant.
It was 1979.  Jeremiah Tower, who’d once smuggled the exotic mesclun seeds into the U.S., had already left Chez Panisse, but the restaurant was still working to develop local sources for the best ingredients. When there were no local sources for a particular item, Chez Panisse took a leadership role in subsidizing the efforts of gardeners who were willing to try. The farm on Garden Highway was only one of a number of garden projects with a direct link to the restaurant  On John’s farm I learned first hand about a world of lettuces I’d never heard of before like Merveille de Quatre Saissons, Rouge d’Hiver and Lollo Rossa. We even grew a lettuce named La Reins de Glace, from the French for “Ice Queen”, which can fairly be described as an iceberg lettuce that speaks French.
Salad greens weren’t the only crops we grew at the farm on Garden Highway, but they were the most salable. We grew hundreds of kinds of crops from purple artichokes to valerian root, but much of what we grew was never harvested or sold. We weren’t peasants, the people who ate at Chez Panisse weren’t peasants, and certainly John Hudspeth, was no peasant; he was a rich party-boy. The first year I worked for John I was told that the farm lost twenty thousand dollars. The second year I was told it lost twenty six thousand dollars. It was clear that all the money the fields generated was being spent painting the fences white and garnishing John’s porno-Provencal lifestyle. It seemed to me that if a person approached organic farming with a production ethic it would be possible to make some real money.
I smile now when I think of the conventional vegetable growers and County Agricultural Agents that I met in the 1970’s who were so dismissive and hostile to the idea of organic farming that they prompted me, and lots of my peers, to keep on trying to make it past our failures just so we could stick our thumbs in their eyes. It soon became apparent that the baby lettuces we were growing for the mesclun salads were perfectly adapted for the sort of small, profitable farms we were trying to create.
Baby lettuces were a quick crop to produce, so the first payoff came quickly for undercapitalized, start-up farmers, and there were many potential crops per season. The oddball import french lettuces that “hippies” like me were growing could be harvested at a young stage, so the tip burn damage that’s always threatens the heart of a of mature lettuce during summer hot spells wasn’t a problem, and the harvest of baby lettuces could be easily cooled for local sales in a horse trough full of clean, cool water. Pest insects didn’t have as long to find the baby lettuce crop and destroy it before harvest the way they did with the full-sized lettuces. Baby lettuces were tolerant of a wide range of environmental conditions, suffered only a minimal amount of disease pressure, and above all, they commanded a premium price from sophisticated customers who were proud to pay.
By contrast, iceberg lettuce needs  along the narrow to be grown along the coastal fringe of California where the foggy weather and marine influence provides the iceberg lettuce plant with the cool conditions it needs to achieve it best, most commercial, quality. Because arable land along the coast is limited, land and rent costs are high. And to handle iceberg lettuce successfully after harvest meant you needed to be linked with the huge forced air coolers necessary for chilling the lettuce down to its core for maximum shelf life. Because iceberg lettuce was already an industrial commodity, successfully selling iceberg lettuce meant  having established relationships with the large shippers. No hippies allowed!
The fact that conventional lettuce growers didn’t follow sustainable farming practices meant that after years of mono-culture production they had ferocious soil born disease issues to contend with like sclerotinia. When commercial growers said that it wasn’t possible to grow lettuce organically, what they really meant was that THEY couldn’t grow iceberg lettuce organically. The Titans of the fresh produce business didn’t mingle with the chefs who were jaded on iceberg either, so that they had no idea about how to market specialty lettuces. For the big boys in Salinas, iceberg WAS lettuce, and the  full sized heads of red leaf -greenleaf-butter-romaine- lettuces passed for specialty lettuces. The heirloom varieties of lettuces that restaurants like Chez Panisse were at best considered a novelty, and at worst a joke, and the people who paid high prices for them were fruitcakes or chumps.
The first customers for baby greens were restauranteurs who were passionate about a return to seasonal values and they made their salads to order. But the market for mesclun salads soon grew beyond the needs of a handful of restaurants and began customers among the restaurant patrons who wanted to make these salads on their own at home. For the convenience of the public, so that a rabbity mesclun consumer wouldn’t have to buy separate heads of half a dozen different baby lettuces, plus a head of chicory, a bunch of arugula etc. the farmers began washing and mixing the salads on the farm and selling the blended greens to the public for a high price.
Consumers swarmed the farmers markets to get the salads they couldn’t find in supermarkets. For the small farms the mesclun boom was a bonanza. But because the salad fad had sprouted in alleys of Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto it was also politically suspect. Mesclun, the one time peasant salad inspired by thrift had become upscale fodder for foodies. “Yuppie chow,” sniffed puritan minded, sourpuss lefties. Real proletarians didn’t eat babies. On the right, the old guard of Salinas scowled at the specter of dirty longhairs selling foreign weeds. I was in the middle, and having finally begun making a modest living as an organic salad grower after years in the fields, those were funny times.
As the numbers of farms making salad green increased growers sought to distinguish them selves from each other by increasing the number of ingredients. Isn’t more always better? Customers who weren’t confined to a Mediterranean palate began asking for something different in their salad mixes, hence the introduction of tat-soi, mizuna, and Japanese red mustard. The charm of the tat-soi was a deep green, spatulate leaf that contrasted nicely with the lighter green of the lettuce. Mizuna’s spiky, serrated leaves stood out in sharp contrast to the other salad green, and the Japanese red mustard had leaves that were purple on one side and green on the other. Because we were farmers producing for consumers, not peasants plucking greens from our gardens for subsistence, visual effects that would increase the eye appeal for consumers inevitably took precedence over any notions of a balance of flavors.
At Riverside Farms, where I worked as a managing partner in charge of the salad harvest, we employed over two hundred full time cutters, with twenty more employees mixing salads in the refrigerated packing sheds. Sales climbed from 300 pounds a day to over 30,000 pounds a day. The gourmet ghetto couldn’t consume that much mesclun. We shipped the stuff to New York, Chicago, Boston, Miami and Dallas by the jet load, and so did our competitors. As the sales of pre-washed baby salads took a bite out of iceberg’s market share the large farming corporations from Salinas jumped into the salad game, and they brought their economies of scale with them. The price for salad greens began to go down as the supply increased. Isn’t bigger always better?
A different aesthetic went blending the salads compared to the early days—call it a “production aesthetic”. Mizuna picks quickly so a lot of mizuna found its way into mesclun. Chicory frisee can be harvested in advance, hydro-cooled, and then torn into the mix as needed, so it became an essential ingredient. Bitter radicchio had always been a potential ingredient in seasonal mesclun, but since its brilliant purple leaves help a salad mix sparkle in a plastic bag, and since radicchio is heavy and can be held in cold storage for a long time after harvest, consumers began to find more and more of it in their salads.
Food service giants like Sysco, and Markon, Ready Pac began to compete for the institutional market. The big buyers demanded year around supply, so farms started up winter mesclun production in the low desert valleys and in Mexico. If one salesmen promised the corporate customer “14 different ingredients year round” the competing sales manager offered “16 different kinds of leaves in every bag,” so the lawyers began writing ingredients like baby Red Russian kale into the supply contracts the industrial salad packers made with their growers. Isn’t more always merrier? The constraints of shipping meant that salads needed to last up to twenty days in refrigeration, so a lot of chlorine went into the chilled wash water to eliminate bacteria. The complex chemistry behind successfully embalming baby mixed greens in sealed plastic bags created new restrictions for the recipe of mesclun which put a premium on tough little leaves that could take a lot of handling.
“You buy mesclun and it has bloody kale leaves in it,” thundered Jeremiah Tower in a New York Times interview of April 18, 2001. “What is the most disgusting thing you can eat? It’s a baby kale leaf. Even the cows hate it.” Jeremiah’s right, of course, and I say that as a person that went from picking salad greens in a garden by hand with a few other long-hairs for Chez Panisse back in 1979 to managing hundreds Mexican farm workers on an industrial plantation in 1995 . Yes, at times we made salads with too much mizuna, too much radicchio, and too much baby red Russian kale. But our salads tasted like success and we shipped thousands of cartons of them every day to wholesale buyers all over the America.  Thanks to the efforts of a lot of people the simple salad of mixed baby greens that took its cue from the seasons and the native thrift of the Provencal peasantry had been warped into a standardized U.S. commodity.
There’s a tang of irony to Jeremiah Tower’s chagrin over his salad days because in his book California Dish, Mr. Tower also takes credit for the invention of the concept of “California cuisine”  The mass produced salads Jeremiah abhors are no longer European, even if the seeds for the lettuces are still imported from France. Whether you enjoy them or not, the bagged salads of mixed baby greens with lettuces, arugula, mizuna, tatsoi and radicchio, are Californian in the purest sense. They are mass produced by huge farms, and California has always been the land of the large scale enterprise. The mixed salads are produced year around without respect for the seasons, and California has been at the forefront of the effort to convince people that we can have an endless summer. The typical industry name for mesclun became “spring mix,” because California worships the freshness of youth. Salad mix is mechanically harvested now to reduce labor costs, and then triple washed  in stainless steel factories, before being merchandised nationally using gauzy images of nature and flowers and little farm girls. Pure Hollywood, California uber alles.
In 1996 my partners and I sold the farming corporation that I worked for to one of the biggest Salinas vegetable producers. There was a non-competition clause in the sales contract, and I was pleased to sign it. I had no wish to compete with Salinas any longer. In the space of sixteen years I’d gone from being a farm worker to being a field manager, and finally to being an owner and corporate vice president sitting behind a desk. And I’d grown to dread my job. The non-compete clause would prompt me to start out small again, and the money from the sale would allow me to start a new farm so that I could do things my way, whatever that would be.
As I sat with my partners and the lawyers and signed page after page of documents I thought back to the days when I was just starting out on my organic adventure, fresh with enthusiasm and green of judgement. I was still working at the farm on Garden Highway when I visited my parents one day.  Dr. Pitelka was “at table” at their house. Mom had cantaloupe wedges for desert. When Frank went off again about “this perfect little French restaurant where the Charentais melon paired with prosciutto was so divine.” I  cut him off.
“They don’t get the very best Charentais melons,” I said.
“Have you ever eaten at Chez Pannise, young man?” he asked.
“No, I haven’t,” I replied, “but I work on a garden that supplies them, and when I see the very best melon, a melon that is beyond compare, in the beauty of its form and the succulence and scent of its flesh, since I’m only a farm worker and I know I can’t afford to eat at Chez, I cut that Charentais open and pop the slices in my mouth until the juice runs down my chin.”
What would Pitelka say about the state of mesclun salad if he were alive today? Yuppie chow no more, baby mixed salad greens can be found at McDonalds. If there’s anything original left about the salads of today that we can trace back to Provence it’s that once again small, fresh lettuce and chicory leaves are being eaten by working class people. There’s no shame in that. But bigger isn’t better. Big is big, small is small, and the best is the best, where ever you find it