In the Fields

from Edible Monterey Bay: Spring 2013 | No. 7

Edible Inspiration

In the Fields The Pezzinis and their artichokes

A farm makes its passage to a fourth generation

By Lisa Crawford Watson Photography by Rob Fisher and Patrick Tregenza

When Tony Pezzini eats an artichoke, he doesn’t pluck the leaves one by one. Instead, he removes the tough outer leaves and gets “straight to it,” pressing the entire thistle between his fingers to eat it “like a sandwich.” Then he picks off the purple fuzz and gets to the heart of it, mashing the meaty core with a little mayonnaise. Tony doesn’t like broccoli, has no interest in cauliflower and tolerates carrots. But he could eat artichokes every day. And he usually does.

Pezzini’s affinity for artichokes—which are now in their prime season in the Monterey Bay region—comes not just from being raised on the family staple but also from growing up in a family sustained by raising artichokes. In fact, he is the third of now four generations of Pezzinis who have been growing Green Globes on the Central Coast since 1929.

“Our name is artichokes,” says Pezzini from his tiny office behind the expansive family farm stand in Castroville. “It all began with my grandfather Valentino, who brought his expertise and artichokes from Italy.”

Valentino planted artichokes in Half Moon Bay before moving to Carmel to farm the Odello Ranch with the other “official family” of artichokes. There, his son Guido grew and worked in the Odello business until 1944, when the Pezzinis branched off to cultivate their own 300-acre ranch in the rich soil and cool climate of Castroville.

Tony Pezzini was born in 1958, the same year his father, Guido, expanded his operation by opening a roadside produce stand. This Castroville store quickly became a popular way station for locals and passersby lured by fresh produce and fried artichoke hearts. In 1974, with the completion of Route 1 and the resulting increase in traffic, Guido opened a larger store just off the highway on Nashua Road, adjacent to the family home.

Two years later, Tony graduated from Salinas High School, having grown up knowing the arduous work of the artichoke fields intimately and feeling certain that he would never go into farming himself. But the year he graduated from California State University, Chico, with a degree in business and finance, the family farm all but floated away in the floods of 1983. Tony’s father asked for help.

Thirty years later, Tony runs the family business in partnership with his father, and has never looked back. He and his wife Jolynn live in a remodeled version of the family house where Tony grew up and where they raised their two sons.

“I never thought I’d go into farming, and I definitely didn’t expect to live in the family home as an adult. But it’s perfect, and I guess we’ll be here forever,” Pezzini says, referring to the lifestyle that farming affords. Although he grew up knowing no other, it’s a life that he doesn’t take for granted.

“Being here, we eat a lot of produce and vegetables—ours and other local growers’. It’s a simple, grateful life. I get to see my wife and kids all the time. I don’t drive two hours to work or get on a plane to go somewhere. Running a business is never easy, but I like walking out into the fields, seeing what we’ve grown, and knowing it’s a good product.”

These days, Tony’s elder son, Scott, lives in Santa Monica, where he studies biology at Santa Monica Community College and hopes to transfer to UCLA.

Sean, 23, has returned to the Peninsula after studying viticulture for two years, and he plans to study agri-business at CSU Monterey

“I never thought I’d go into farming, and I definitely didn’t expect to live in the family home as an adult. But it’s perfect, and I guess we’ll be here forever.”

“It’s a simple, grateful life. I get to see my wife and kids all the time. I don’t drive two hours to work or get on a plane to go somewhere. Running a business is never easy, but I like walking out into the fields, seeing what we’ve grown, and knowing it’s a good product.”

Bay. In the meantime, he is getting more involved in the family business, investing a fourth generation in artichokes.

“I’ve always thought the family business would continue; it has always been our life,” Tony says. “My father, now 80, is just getting out of it, while Sean sees so many different directions to take it, particularly in developing gourmet foods and in marketing through social media.”

The new company Facebook page has received nearly 1,000 likes. Perhaps this is in response to the roadside sign that reads, “10% off when you like us on Facebook.”

In 1989, Tony and brother Paul, who operates Pezzini Berry Farms in Salinas, opened a Pezzini Farms store at The Crossroads shopping center in Carmel. Providing fresh produce and gourmet goods, including their own Pezzini Artichoke Marinara and Artichoke Pesto sauces made from family recipes, the store thrived for nearly a decade before the brothers closed shop in favor of expanding the Nashua Road store.

Today, the Pezzini Farms Gourmet Foods include, in addition to their signature marinara and pesto sauces, garlic-Dijon, lemondill and pesto dipping sauces, prepared by Blossom Valley Foods in Gilroy, which annually produces 500 cases of each. Known for its frozen French-fried artichokes, Pezzini Farms sells some 200 pounds per week, plus piping hot offerings from the “Choke Coach.” The farm also produces and ships 70,000–85,000 cartons of fresh artichokes annually to stores and restaurants throughout the state, and satisfies artichoke orders across the country via its website.

In recent years, the company has extended its artichoke audience through guest spots on television cooking programs hosted by the likes of Martha Stewart, Bobby Flay and Lidia Bastianich.

“The demand for artichokes seems only to be increasing,” says Tony. “Through The Food Network and these other cooking shows, celebrity chefs are showing people different ways to prepare and enjoy the artichoke. The traditional way is to steam them, but I like them French fried or tossed in the oven with chicken or a roast. I also sauté them real quick with onions, and throw them in with fettuccini pasta and an Alfredo sauce. I think they go best with red wine.”

However artichokes are prepared, it all starts in the fields. The Pezzini family continues to grow Green Globes, just as Grandfather Valentino did, because the root-based plant produces a meatier, more succulent vegetable than the now-common, rounder chokes raised from seeds.

And perhaps in a sign of things to come as the influence of the next generation of Pezzinis continues to blossom, the Pezzini family offered their artichokes regularly over the last year at Sand City’s hip Independent Marketplace and plan more pop-up farm dinners of the sort they first hosted last June.

At last summer’s dinner, a benefit for Rancho Cielo, Salinas’ vocational training center for at-risk youth, the Pezzinis put on a magical and heartfelt celebration of the artichoke.

The guests—some extended family, some friends and many growers themselves—were seated at a long wooden table lined up right alongside a field of the Pezzinis’ prehistoric looking plants. To guard against the evening chill that makes the coastal property so hospitable to the artichokes, the family created a picturesque threesided shelter using the back of an adjacent building and two walls of vintage Magnolia Citrus packing cases.

Chef John Cox, then of Casanova and La Bicyclette restaurants, and now of Sierra Mar, together with La Bicyclette Chef James Anderson and a number of graduates of Rancho Cielo, put on a wildly creative multicourse dinner, with artichokes featured in each course, including dessert. Georis Winery provided the wine, and the whole Pezzini family pitched in to help, clearly showing how close they are and how much they enjoyed the collaboration. The overall tone was rustic-elegant, the best example being when one of the servers produced delicate mugs of coffee from the waxed cardboard artichoke carton she was carrying.

“Whenever we get invited to parties,” says Tony, “folks always say, ‘Bring us Pezzini artichokes.’ Now we’re bringing the party to Pezzini.”

Lisa Crawford Watson lives with her family on the Monterey Peninsula, where she is a freelance writer and an instructor of writing and journalism at California State University, Monterey Bay and Monterey Peninsula College.