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PHONE: 619.662.1780
CSA Inquiries, please email rodrigo@suziesfarm.com
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For scheduled farm tours, our Kiki Town address is:
1856 Saturn Boulevard, San Diego CA 92154
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Did you know Suzie’s Farm delivers in San Diego five days a week? Not only that, several acres of our farm in San Diego’s Border State Park is dedicated to custom growing for the specific needs (and imagination) of our local chefs. Can you say boutique and convenience all in one breath? You don’t have to. Just say Suzie’s Farm. Visit our Chef's Page to view our delivery schedule and learn more about our partnership with restaurants.
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Now that our CSA has chugged merrily along, we’ve gotten lots of requests for fruit and people have cancelled their sponsorship because we don’t offer enough fruit.
It’s a connundrum to be sure.
Many of you know that last January, Ellie and I planted 40 fruit trees. Mostly stone fruit - apricots, nectarines, cherries, peaches, pluots - but also about 14 apple trees, pomegrantes, figs, lemons, oranges and vines of grapes, raspberries, boysenberries, blackberries, gooseberries and kiwi. Robin and I believe that San Diego can supply most of it’s own everything. We are blessed with the most forgiving growing climate and farmers who are willing to do whatever it takes to get the food to the people.
Stone fruit in particular has specific requirements regarding what they call “chill hours”. Stone fruit, apples, pears and many berries go dormant in the winter. “The dormancy is triggered by longer nights and dropping temperatures. Physiological changes occur in the cells so that they survive without damage by the cold temps. A period of time at temperatures between 32 and 45 degrees F is required to negate the effect of these physiological changes.
Once this length of time has passed, the plant is technically released from dormancy and can return to normal growth once cultural conditions have become favorable. That’s the chilling requirement!
Once the chilling requirement is met, the soil temperature need only rise above 45 deg F for 3 – 4 days to initiate growth. ” http://www.thegardenacademy.com
Well in San Diego we don’t often have sustained 32-45 degree F temperatures. But low chill varieties have been developed and that’s what we have planted here at Suzie’s Farm.
The first three years after you plant a fruit tree you focus on getting a strong root system established. You basically don’t let it send any energy toward making fruit. In addition to frequent deep waterings, we pick off any blossoms and fruit that may develop on the tree.
This is counterintuitive because we are an impatient people and we planted the trees to fruit in the first place! But Mother Nature always knows best, and we just work for her, so we do what she requires. Picking the blossoms and fruit is what we’ve done the last two seasons.
We cheerfully tell people that we should have a full fruit offering by late Spring early Summer of 2012.
We might as well promise them first class tickets to Pluto.
We’ve had a couple of the Big Fruit Producers contact us to offer their fruit for our CSA boxes.
We know These Fruit Producers. They are great guys. We really like them. We see them at the meetings and conferences. We buy fruit from their Farmer’s Market stalls. They have good fruit. The girls like it. We like it. It’s great. They’re great. Great!
We know you want it, but we’d have to pay for it. Which means you’d have to pay for it. And we’re not just talking about fruit here.
It’s a connundrum to be sure.
We’d have to pay for it in a different way.
If we go down that path, we can’t come back from it. If we start to offer the fruit line, you’ll come to expect it, which is normal. But it goes against what Robin and I originally dreamed, which is that Suzie’s Farm offer a complete CSA. That we personally care for and grow everything . That we know the story and the life of the food. That we can stand confidently in front of you and say, “this is our food - yours and ours”.
So we will offer fruit. We promise. Some will come sooner. Some will come later. We also plan to add more trees to further develop our inventory.
And when the fruit comes it will be sweet because we will have proven that appreciation rewards patience.
And we will flush with pride at our collective accomplishment.
And you thought I was just talking about fruit.