David Retsky - County Line Harvest

Tell us about your farm.
We’re farming on 26 acres. We are growing mostly salad greens, baby lettuces in the summer months and chicories and radicios in the winter months from Northern Italy. The climate is really suited to what we grow because you get warm days and cold nights, which brings out the sweetness in all those salad greens so they taste really good.

Are you also still growing on your original 6 acres at County Line?
Yes. They tend to call it satellite farming, so we have our other ranch where we first were established and that’s six acres, that’s where we got started in April 2000, eight years ago in April. And we’ve been here since January 2007.

Does your family have any history in farming?
Promise you won’t hold it against me - I grew up in Beverly Hills. My Dad is a pathologist, Doctor. No one has a green thumb in my family. I am definitely a first generation farmer. When my family comes up to visit they’re like “OK, wow, this is different! . . .OK, let’s go.” It’s dirty up here on the farm, and I’m talkin’ real dirt, not tabloid dirt. You don’t see dirt like this in L.A.

What attracted you to farming? how did you land at County Line?
I grew up not knowing where food came from, but I remember watching our gardener as a kid and being fascinated. In 1992, I started working on farms in England, Portugal, New Zealand, and Israel. I volunteered at the Fairview Gardens in Santa Barbara, and then studied Agroecology at UC Santa Cruz. I was searching for balance, for a connection to the earth, and I found it in farming.

In ‘99, I put an ad in a few newspapers: “Organic farmer seeks 6-12 acres, must have water.” When the County Line property surfaced, my family loaned me the seed money. I bought a couple tractors and just gave it a go. I paid back the loan in three years. Eight years later, we’ve grown our production from 6 acres to 32 acres - 2007 was a doozy of a year. We’ve helped some other farmers get started, and we still can’t meet the huge demand for organic vegetables.

Did you feel welcome, joining a community that has multi-generational family farms?
Marin? Sonoma? Well when I first arrived, you start to ask yourself the basic questions of “why am I the only one growing vegetables around here?” So I started asking around, I got soil tests, is there something wrong with the soil? Why am I the only idiot? Why am I thinking about doing this? I found out that this historically was Portuguese-Italian folks, and it has historically been dairy and chicken ranchers. And people just don’t grow vegetables around here. So we’ve kind of been a change of scenery. The land is great. The water is an issue. The water is always an issue in these coastal hill.

Any thoughts on County Lines and locavores?
It’s been interesting straddling the Marin-Sonoma border. There are definitely some eccentrics in the county, looking to eat only what grows in Marin. I say, to each his own. I open my door here for people to come visit, to see what I’m doing. If they want to look in my sheds, check out what I’m putting on my field, great. We’re growing the same quality of produce on our acreage in Sonoma as we are in Marin. At the end of the day, the boundaries of a food shed are up to the consumer. It’s a personal decision based on the relationships you have with the
farmers who are growing your food.

Farming has its fair share of challenges. What keeps you going?
Sometimes I look out at our rows when I’m nervous and I wonder,“Who’s gonna buy all this food?” But there’s not a person that wakes up and says, “You know what, today I’m not gonna eat.” People eat every day. They may skip a meal. They may not eat vegetables all the time. But there’s only so much junk food you can eat, before you gravitate back to what’s good for you.

Greatest triumph?
Every year has its challenges. That’s one great thing about farming as well, there’s always a new challenge around the corner it’s never the same. For someone that has a short attention span, farming is awesome. It’s different everyday. It’s weather, it’s people, it’s crop, it’s demand for a crop, it’s always changing. I’d say that the biggest triumph, well starting this field, going from six acres to 32 acres has been huge. We did great. It was profitable and the crew hung on. So I’d say seeing the farm growing and seeing us growing. You know as the farm has grown, and expanded in sales going to farmers markets, going to distributors, we could never meet their demand. And it wasn’t because I was some lazy, hippie farmer. I’m out of bed everyday. There was just never enough land to grow for the demand. There’s a huge demand.

So I’d also say to any young farmer that wants to get in to it, there’s a huge demand for organics. You just need to find out what it is, dial it in. Don’t be too ambitious, stay focused, and things will grow. Like your business will grow.

Will you encourage your son Nikko to farm?
He’s out here in training. If he wants to farm, great. If not, I’m not going to push him. Only if he wants it. At least he’ll eat well. He eats chicory every night. I’m just waiting for him to give it up and start eating pizza and ice cream.