Decades ago, on the family farm, Kathleen Barsotti asked her teenage son which part of it he thought was the most sustainable. He gave the answers a boy eager to prove himself would give: the land, the water, the seeds, the customers. The most sustainable part of the farm, she said, was the bottom line. Without a profit, the farm would disappear, and every good thing it did would go with it.
Kathleen has since passed, but that lesson has kept settling in over the decades, and it still shapes how we think about sustainability. Real sustainability means more than growing without synthetic chemicals — it means running a food system that can produce the same quality and quantity of food, with the same resources, for generations to come.
That belief shows up first in how the soil gets fed. Cover crops are where it begins. Rather than reaching for a bag of fertilizer, sustainable farm plant crops whose main job is to feed the ground beneath them. They pull nutrients up toward the surface and, as they break down, leave the soil richer than they found it. Cover crops are about as sustainable as fertilizer gets, and they form the cornerstone of everything that follows. When the fields need more, the next choice is whatever is most local. On some farms that means green waste compost, on others composted chicken or steer manure, depending on what the region has to offer.
In California, water is never far from anyone's mind. Drought has become a regular feature of life here, and how a farm handles water says a great deal about whether it can last. The goal is to give each plant as much water as it needs and not a drop more. Drip lines and micro-sprinklers carry water evenly across a field, so no corner drinks while another goes dry. The timing matters just as much.
Irrigation follows a schedule matched to what the plants actually need, adjusted for the weather and for how far along a crop has grown. Water a plant too much and the excess washes valuable nutrients down past the roots where they do no good. Water it too little and the plant cannot make the most of the sunlight and soil it has been given. Getting it right means the farm uses less water and grows better food, which in a dry state counts for a lot.
A field that grows the same thing year after year slowly builds up the diseases that trouble that particular crop, until the soil struggles to grow it at all. Rotating different crops through a field breaks that cycle before it starts. It also keeps a wider variety of plants in the ground across the seasons, which is good for the soil and good for the people who tend it. Because there is always something coming into season, the farm can offer steady, year-round work to its team rather than a rush of labor at harvest followed by a long quiet stretch.
Not every acre is planted. The land a farm sits on was once home to a great range of wildlife, and some of that gets left alone on purpose. Strips between the fields are kept wild or planted with California natives, giving beneficial insects a place to live and work. These pockets of habitat sit alongside the rigorous food safety standards the farm has to meet, and the two are managed together.
No seal on a box can promise that a farm has the whole equation right. What stands in its place is trust, built slowly between the person who pulls the carrot from the ground and the person who rinses it at the kitchen sink. Sustainable to our roots was never a slogan. It is the work of making sure there is still ground to grow in, long after we are the ones tending it.
How To Add Farm Stand Products to Your Delivery
Farm Fresh To You members: Head on over to our online Farm Stand Market to customize your upcoming delivery. Market is open from noon on Thursday until 6 p.m. on your cutoff date. After you confirm your produce items, click the orange button "Confirm and Continue To Other Farm Products" to add the products to your delivery.
