Local farm honors Jewish Earth Day

Tu BiShvat event draws hundreds to Coastal Roots

By Laura Place ENCINITAS

— Hundreds of community members flocked to Coastal Roots Farm in Encinitas on Sunday to celebrate Tu BiShvat — the Jewish New Year of the Trees — with nature-focused activities, organic food, music, and education around giving back to the land.

Sunday’s event marked the 8th annual celebration of the holiday, which is essentially a Jewish Earth Day, Coastal Roots communications director Kesha Dorsey Spoor said.

“This holiday is really about the trees, but it’s become this global appreciation,” Spoor said. “There is something magical, there is some faith in that.”

Coastal Roots Farm, a nonprofit Jewish community farm and education center founded in 2015, is located on 17 acres of land off Saxony Road that is part of the larger 67-acre Leichtag Commons property. The land consists of vegetable fields, an education farm and gardens, chickens, a “food forest” and compost operations.

The farm is currently producing 80,000 pounds of food annually, nearly double that of eight years ago when it was founded, Spoor said.

While community members often engage with Coastal Roots at their bi-weekly farm stand near the property entrance, the Tu BiShvat festival provided folks the rare opportunity to see the farm itself, from its rows of crops to the chicken coop.

Booths set up on the grounds also offered organic produce, lemon balm tea, and activities like dyeing fabric with natural dyes, identifying local plants and yoga. Attendees could also take a tour of the farm’s food forest.

“In the time that I’ve been here, this feels like one of the highest attendances that we’ve had. It’s been really nice to see the community come back out for this event and get really excited about seeing the farm,” said community gardener Virginia Fall, who led the natural dye activity.

Coastal Roots Farm also partnered with local food vendors and hard kombucha company Local Roots, which uses farm ingredients in some of their beverages, for the event.

For those who have seen the farm grow from its infancy, the event is also a chance to celebrate how far their operation has come.

Daron “Farmer D” Joffe, Coastal Roots’ founding director, said he remembers when the community first came out to the farm years ago to help plant around 1,200 trees, many of which now stand several to over 10 feet tall.

The appreciation of trees is also a reminder to Coastal Roots leaders of the importance of giving back to the land rather than just depleting its resources — a concept known as regenerative agriculture.

“The idea always from the beginning was, can we grow community as we grow this diverse food and ecosystem here,” Joffe said. “It’s so important to demonstrate this more regenerative approach to agriculture. It’s something you don’t see very often, but I think we’re gonna see a lot more of it.”

Coastal Roots Farm is located at 441 Saxony Road. The farm stand is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays and from noon to 3 p.m. on Thursdays.

Residents of District 2 have until Feb. 8 to submit questions or topics for the council to ask applicants during the appointment process. None of the council members are permitted to contact applicants since the Feb. 2 deadline has passed.

During the special meeting, each applicant will have a four-minute oral presentation, and appointing a new member requires a simple majority out of the four current members.

If no appointment is made by Feb. 24, the seat will go up for a special election on Nov. 7, costing the city between $240,000 to $500,000. If an appointment is made, the successful candidate cannot run for reelection in 2024.

Four of the applicants currently sit on city commissions — Coelho and Fowler (Traffic and Mobility), Luna (Planning), and Jacobs (Historic Preservation). In addition, Jacobs and Fowler are alternates on the Carlsbad Tomorrow: Growth Management Citizens Committee.

Ahlquist is a 1969 graduate of Carlsbad High School and spent 38 years in financial services, including 10 years in senior management, and worked as an executive director of resource ministry at one of San Diego’s “mega-churches.” He said growth and traffic are the two most pressing issues in the city.

Coelho is a former U.S. Marine and currently works as the director of project management for the Irvine Company Apartments. Before the Irvine Company, he worked for the Clark Construction Group, where he managed the engineering disciplines of the North Torrey Pines Living and Learning Neighborhood.

Coelho said traffic, homelessness, housing crisis, airport, beach and Coast Highway corridor are some of the city's most critical issues.

Fowler ran for City enforcement shortly after the attack. groupchat between Keshishian and other friends. was not moving, and appeared to be hitting him repeatedly.

Razdan’s defense attorney, Kerry Steigerwalt, argued in opening statements on Monday afternoon that his client was being targeted with frightening content on Snapchat, by someone he believed to be Keshishian, and that he had gone to Keshishian’s neighborhood to confront him on the day of the attack.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a murder case. This is a case where Kellon had every right to self defense,” Steigerwalt told the jury. “This case is about cyberbullying.”

Razdan, who was dressed in a button-up shirt and glasses in court, testified that in the spring of 2021 he began seeing disturbing content on his Snapchat discovery page, where users can find suggested content channels based on their individual interests.

The defendant said the content started out as images of war, torture and beheadings, and then progressed to content about police brutality toward minorities.

According to Razdan, this content did not align with his interests in sports, music and sneakers, and he was unable to stop it showing up, despite reporting it to Snapchat and attempting to block or unsubscribe from channels.

“I’m kind of, in a way, being forced to indulge or take note of topics I’m not interested in, and they incite negative emotions, negative feelings,” Razdan said. “It was meant to fearmonger. After a while, I would say the goal had been reached. I was fearful, paranoid, anxious, on edge, uneasy.”

As spring turned to summer, Razdan said he grew increasingly afraid for his safety and paranoid that someone was out to get him.

Razdan claimed he opened Snapchat one day and all of the content had “changed from English to some Middle Eastern language,” and he began thinking Keshishian, who is Armenian, may be responsible.

The two young men attended elementary, middle and high school together and were in the same grade, but according to Keshishian’s family, were not friends past elementary school.

Razdan claimed that he believed Keshishian to still be his friend through high school, despite speaking infrequently or beyond their graduation from San Marcos High School in 2019.

In describing the day of the attack, Razdan said he showed up to Keshishian’s gated community in hopes of confronting him about the activity on his phone.

Razdan said he was intending to go to the Keshishian's home, but saw Keshishian walking his dog upon arriving in the neighborhood and stopped the car. According to Razdan, Keshishian was exhibiting a “hostile energy” from the second he arrived. Razdan also claimed that Keshishian specifically picked the shirt he was wearing — a gray t-shirt that read ‘I don’t give a rat’s ass’ — to provoke him.

Razdan said he put a Toldadi folding knife, which he would later use to stab Keshishian, into his pocket out of fear for his own safety.

After making small talk, he mentioned what was happening with his phone and said Keshishian started getting aggressive and “lunging” toward him.

Razdan said the two then started pushing each other. When he showed Keshishian his still-closed knife as a warning, Razdan claimed a struggle ensued to gain control of the knife.

At some point, Razdan said the knife blade opened and his hand was cut, and he realized he was “fighting for his life,” and began to hit Keshishian repeatedly.

Razdan said he could not remember how Keshishian’s shorts, shirt, shoes and hat wound up in the road, or how they wound up in the driveway, or when he began stabbing him.

“I had blacked out during the fight,” Razdan said.

When a neighbor came on the scene and told them to stop, Razdan said it brought him back to reality, and he left. Razdan added that he was worried he would bleed out and die from the cuts he sustained

Specifically, Kim noted during his interview with detectives the morning after the attack, Razdan never mentioned the frightening content on Snapchat or how Keshishian had supposedly started a fight with him.

Razdan claimed that he one actually showed up. on his hand.

During cross examination, Deputy District Attorney Helen Kim questioned Razdan about several parts of his testimony that appeared to conflict with statements he made to law misunderstood some of the detectives’ questions and that he was on pain medication after being in the hospital to treat his hands, which involved stitches and amputating part of his right pinky.

Law enforcement also discovered a portion of Razdan’s severed left pinky finger at the scene.

When Kim asked him to confirm that he had left Keshishian bloody and dying on the ground, Razdan said, “I was bloody and dying as well.”

Razdan also denied that he stabbed Keshishian when he was running away, despite there being stab wounds and drag marks on Keshishian’s back.

San Diego County Medical Examiner Greg Pizarro testified that some of Keshishian’s wounds, including one on his back, were over 7 inches deep, while the blade itself was just over 3 inches.

“This was also one of the few autopsies with [over] 40 sharp force injuries,” Pizarro said.

The defense did not produce any proof of Keshishian contacting Razdan over Snapchat or any other messaging platform, aside from a screenshot of a text conversation found in a

In the screenshot depicting someone receiving texts from a non-saved number matching Razdan’s phone number, Razdan sends, “wya” (acronym for “where you at?”) and the recipient says, “Who is this lol.”

Razdan testified that the conversation was between himself and Keshishan in May of 2021, and that he felt like he was being taunted when Keshishian appeared not to have his number saved and then pretended to be outside his house.

Aside from Razdan, the only other witness called by the defense was Keshishian’s father, Henrik.

Razdan then tells the recipient to come to his home, seeming to indicate that Razdan wanted to fight, and the recipient says “I’m outside,” although no

Steigerwalt asked him whether Keshishian had mentioned wanting to hang out with Razdan prior to the attack, and Henrik said he mentioned Razdan once while considering who to hang out with during COVID.

Closing arguments and jury deliberations were scheduled to begin Wednesday.

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