AMERICAN DREAM

Claribel and José Gallardo’s journey from field workers to farm owners

BY EMILY BEGGS

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DORIANA HAMMOND / WEST CLIFF CREATIVE

As the sunlight begins to fade across the oak and redwood-studded hills of the Pajaro Valley, José and Claribel Gallardo quietly stuff my large market bag with lush bunches of Swiss chard, beets and fennel. I’ve never left the farm without a week’s worth of produce, insistently tucked into any available vessel.

On a previous visit, Claribel handed me an egg and broccolini taco, whipped up at the end of her workday in a makeshift farm kitchen, feeding me and my two young daughters after spending hours patiently explaining the details of her operation to us.

While I asked her question after question, she held my four-year-old daughter Kestrel’s hand, instructing her on how to dig carrots, chuckling quietly when Kez removed her shoes to plaster her toes with mud. The Gallardos wholeheartedly welcome and are generous to a variety of curious visitors who pass through their 18-acre organic farm in Watsonville.

They grow more than a dozen different crops, which they haul to six weekly back-toback farmers markets throughout the state. At market, José proudly lets customers know that they grow everything they sell, and that they are welcome to come visit the fertile patch of land his family tends for a tour.

What’s striking about the Gallardos’ hospitality is the backdrop of near-fatal adversity that paved their miraculous path from field laborers to organic farm owners. José uses an animated internet meme as a personal metaphor. In the animation, a rat is caught belly-up in a trap. Gradually, it pushes the snap bar off of its chest, then raises and lowers the bar as if bench pressing. The idea that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is an important mantra for José, yet his approach to farming centers on a commitment to creating a healthy work environment for his family, which in turn provides his customers with top-quality, nourishing produce.

José’s ability to deftly pluck a radish from fiercely hardened soil, oversaturated by rain then parched due to a storm-damaged water pump, masks the absence of three fingers on his right hand. As an 18-year-old, José had recently immigrated from Michoacán, Mexico and was living alone in Ontario, California when a workplace accident permanently altered his hand. An industrial press used to print text and graphics onto plastic bags crushed his fingers and wouldn’t release as José attempted to wrench his arm away. Factory workers fled the scene, except for one young man whom he calls his “savior,” because he helped and accompanied José to a local hospital.

During a lengthy, solitary recovery, post amputation of his third, fourth and fifth digits, stray bullets struck the apartment complex where he lived, narrowly missing his body and leaving him feeling cursed. He describes the depression he experienced in Ontario with candor, equally acknowledging the deeply faithful dreamer that remained alive inside of him even in the bleakest moments. It was years later, in the farm fields of Watsonville, that he had what he jokingly refers to as the “desdicha,” or misfortune, of meeting Claribel, tossing her a lover’s half-wink, he tells me as we stood in the shade of leafy oak trees talking about their life together.

Claribel, who is originally from the state of Chiapas, Mexico, and José were dissatisfied with labor conditions they encountered in conventional agriculture. Claribel recounts scolding a field manager for inappropriately grabbing female coworkers. It has been estimated that female farmworkers are indeed two to three times more likely to experience sexual harassment than workers in other sectors.

Claribel also developed asthma-like symptoms while working with crops including strawberries, which are often grown using harmful

FOLLOW US: @visitsantacruz fungicides and pesticides. In response, the Gallardos set out to improve their wages and working conditions by pursuing opportunities at the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA), a 1,000acre educational facility in Salinas that helps launch limited-resource farmers. José enrolled in the ALBA training program, and by 2012 the Gallardos were farming on ALBA land.

They started with half an acre, and describe the process of expanding as taking one step forward, then two steps back. “We didn’t understand the business side well,” Claribel says. In the beginning they sold wholesale, but when they figured out how to sell at farmers markets, things began to change.

For José, the income is only part of the benefit of selling directly to consumers. He views a “smile of satisfaction” from happy customers as being among the top perks of the job, and it is this connection that fuels his commute to markets as far away as Sacramento and South Lake Tahoe, as well as closer ones in San Carlos, Marina and Pacific Grove.

While José is on the road, Claribel works in the field. As the daughter of a farmer, starting an organic farm resonated with Claribel as she was brought up on a tropical fruit plantation. Her father tended his own family’s corn and vegetable plot in the Chiapas highlands while working in orchards of sapote and guanabana. Claribel possesses a reserved but stalwart dedication to her work that is particularly apparent when she talks about offering an array of accessible, pesticide-free vegetables to her own community at the Marina Farmers Market.

A mother and businesswoman, she is intimately aware of the challenges families face in trying to advance socioeconomically while nourishing their children, whether that means paying extra for higherquality groceries, or juggling work and childcare. At the market, she keeps in touch with women undergoing chemotherapy and working to manage diabetes. Customers tell her that the soups and juices they make with her greens are an important part of their healing.

I ask José and Claribel what their goals are for the future. They agree that they would like to grow slowly, expanding land under cultivation while maintaining a close eye on their crops to guarantee beautiful produce for their customers. Their 16-year-old son has grown up watching his parents build momentum as organic farmers, and they are proud that he is willing to help out in the fields, curious about learning to drive a tractor, and amenable to spending time at farmers markets. “It would be wonderful to see him stay in farming,” says José.

Like most California farmers, the Gallardos currently face significant losses due to winter storms, however, Claribel is quick to assert that they feel nothing but thankful, as “it could have been so much worse.” Their farm is on high ground and did not flood, unlike the fields and homes of so many others downstream in Pajaro.

When we last spoke, their irrigation system was still offline due to trees crushing a transformer near their property, delaying their ability to plant thousands of starts eagerly reaching for the sun in crates and boxes near their toolshed. Remarkably, the Gallardos didn’t seem stressed. Claribel asked me if I had a garden. I told her it was small and that I was a terrible gardener. She wanted to give me plants to take home.

Emily Beggs is founder and head chef of Kin and Kitchen, through which she creates Central Coast produce-focused recipes and menus for clients around California. She lives in Bonny Doon with her husband, two daughters and a semi-bad cattle dog. More information on her work is available at kinandkitchen.com.