Vanessa Bogenholm: Take that, Mimi Sheraton!

The first thing I noticed about farmer Vanessa Bogenholm was that she is strikingly pretty. I'm used to that: Santa Cruz county is home to some of the prettiest farmers I know (Joe Schirmer, I'm looking at you), and some handsome ones, too. (Don't make me list them all. Go look at the "Some Farmers I Know" photo album.) The second thing I noticed about Vanessa was that she has beautiful hands. "Ten pairs of gloves" is her secret: these are not the hands that scream "I've been plowing all day and digging in the dirt." Cool. (I am the sort of person to notice nice hands, though. It's a secret obsession my mother passed on to some of her five daughters.)

Vanessa met me on a hilltop overlooking the Monterey Bay: the location is around 11 acres, up above San Andreas Road in Watsonville (or "La Selva Beach," as the denizens of the beach community that shares the 95076 zip code refer to it). Look south and you see Moss Landing and Monterey. Look north and you can practically see to Davenport. Here grow Diamonte and Aromas strawberries, and they grow profusely.

Here's the view from the hilltop, overlooking about five acres of Diamonte strawberries.

There is a lot to know about Vanessa. She's a dynamo and a powerhouse, and she gets things done. Working 120 hours a week, farming, chairing CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers),  consulting/traveling, working four farmers markets a week (of the 23 where VB Farms sells), and being married to a man "who does all the cooking and laundry," she has to.

Her company, Sunshine Organic, sells strawberries (and raspberries, and vegetables) to 23 farmers markets a week, to chefs from Carmel to San Francisco, and to a handful of fortunate stores as far away as Manhattan, Canada, and Japan. Those far away customers get the Diamonte berries, which I tasted, and which astonished me. Having long ago tired of hearing New Yorkers like Mimi Sheraton gripe about "the hollow, white Driscoll travesties from California," I can assure you that Ms. Sheraton obviously never tried a Diamonte. (She also called California "the state that in more ways than one, I consider a wasted miracle." Thanks, Mimi. We owe ya one. Here, have another Driscoll.)

However, unlike the truly horrid berries that offend everyone who tastes them, the Diamonte retains its excellent flavor and survives the shipping without being turned to strawberry jam. [Note: follow the discussion linked above, and read every word Russ Parsons has to say. Russ is the former editor and now staff writer for the food section of the L.A. Times. I have never had an exchange with him that didn't leave me a little more enlightened, or at least "lightened" -- he's a witty and well-informed man, and the author of a great cookbook-science book called How to Read a French Fry.]

Vanessa continued to shower me with information that would be hard to detail in one short blog entry. A short digest:
• Last year in the county, not a single protest against methyl bromide was staged. Not one. "News is only hot for three years." What the _____? Wake up, Santa Cruz.
• The average consumer of organic produce is willing to pay 30% more for it
• 10% of the lettuce grown in the country goes to Burger King, and is responsible for nitrogen contamination that produced blue babies in Soledad. Many consumers of Burger King's consider this fair and worthwhile.
• TRICAL Fumigation does about 70% of the methyl bromide fumigation in the state of California.
• Vanessa was instrumental in getting Kaiser-Permanente to sell organic produce in twenty farmers markets (Kaiser employees enjoy farmers markets as a company benefit). The first, in Oakland, started in 2003. (You can read a little blurb here: awesome. Scroll down to "Congratulations to Kaiser Permanente for Winning the Prestigious Ellis J. Bonner Community Leadership Award!" Who says good news doesn't sell?)
• The week before, she had arranged for a New York Times reporter and photographer a ride on the back of one of those machines that sprays the poisons on the "conventional" strawberry fields. She did so right under the noses of the farmers, who despite their differences in farming choices, remain her friends. (I can't wait to read that story.)

But the thing Vanessa told me that was the most compelling, and which has lingered with me as my "how cool is that" story of the day was that she coordinated with a host of local farmers to deliver organic seedlings and plants to Dominican Hospital for their 1000 square-foot organic garden. I'll have more to write about when I am able to visit and photograph the place (later this week), and interview the chef and participants. It's an amazing innovation in hospitals, and one that deserves more attention.

About the farming Vanessa does...she grew up next to a farm in Santa Maria, in a mobile home. Her father was a horse shoer, and the family was poor. But over the wall, she watched boxes of vegetables and fruits being loaded from the farm onto trucks, and knew that food would be traveling far and wide. Some of the romance, such as it was, lingered, and Vanessa pursued a degree in agricultural biology. Though she told me she just turned forty, she looks younger (er, not that forty is old). Ahem.

She laughed when I brought up the idea of farms being "the new black"--and has experienced this herself firsthand. A Marin matron pressed a $1000 check into her hand, a check bearing nothing more than her name (no address, no phone), for a delivery of berries to a soirée. The berries cost no more than $400; the rest was a tip. And the matron ferried Vanessa by helicopter to San Francisco, where she was ensconced in a luxurious hotel suite, with a personal attendant to draw her bath. She was then chaffeur-driven to a party, where she told a hospital big shot why he should give a damn about organics--citing the very information about Burger King and the blue babies that result from nitrogen contamination.

Sometimes having a great manicure can get you far in life. But having the brains and brawn to do the hard work, and keep it real, has to be underneath, or else you're just another pretty manicure.

This woman grows some awesome strawberries. I'll post the name of that store in Manhattan when I get it from Vanessa, but promise you won't tell Mimi Sheraton.

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At the Friday farmers market on the west side of town, I met two of the interns from the UCSC farming program, who will be graduating in October. Laura and Chris, pictured here, will be moving to Vermont, where a farm awaits them. Chris is from there, and Laura is a native California, so of course I couldn't stop laughing when she said she'd never experienced a Yankee winter. God bless her. I'm looking forward to getting up to UCSC soon, because the most important crop they're growing is all these young farmers.

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it." —Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Thanks for visiting.

Comments

[andrea]

blue babies? Can you tell me more about this, or point me to a good link? Googling now, but I'm sure you have more information.

[Tana]

Vanessa says, "You can just Google 'nitrogen contamination soledad ca' and lots on information will come up."

Hope that helps!

[McAuliflower]

Huh... Blue Babies is the descriptive term for babies born with a congenital heart defect (hole) causing them to be bluish in color.

I had never before heard of nitrogen theories of blue-pigmentation.

learning something new everyday!

[McAuliflower]

ps... not to make this a beauty contest or anything, but Geoff Palla has quite the jaw-line going on there. ;) I've always thought happy people were the beautiful ones.

[Tana Butler]

Heh heh heh, looks like you took my advice and went to the farmers' photo album. Geoff does have a jaw you could ski off of, it's true. And I do think he's happy--but I really don't know any grumpy asshole farmers. I think they work hard and sleep well at night.

Thanks for leaving comments, especially for the fun ones.

[cookiecrumb]

Tana: I love reading your stuff.
Speaking of pretty farmers: Jason McKenney!!! Mm.