Combine strawberries and California soil with a 28 year-old diesel fuel-injection mechanic and a health ailment that urges a career change. Throw in a dare from a doubting conventional farmer. Add a dash of innovation from a chef like Alice Waters and a sprinkle of what’s vogue. And, voila: Coke Farm. Age twenty five years and suddenly you find yourself nodding in agreement when Dale Coke, the ex-mechanic turned farmer, remarks on the successful years gone by, “It’s just how life happens.”
Coke Farm’s 200 acres are scattered among seven ranches poised around the idyllic crests and dells of a temperate climate just east of Watsonville. A 25,000 square-foot cooling warehouse located in San Juan Batista holds over 60 crop varieties throughout the year. Three docks load mixed pallets into trucks that eventually ship all over the nation and into Canada. Locally, Dale visits a farmer’s market once a week to display the best of the farm’s seasonal yield and “to keep in touch,” he says.
Watsonville is the strawberry capital, nationally renowned for its superior berries. When Dale bought his quarter acre, he mimicked the countryside around him and started growing strawberries. But he parted from the other farmers’ methods: He went organic.
At first Dale was especially determined to grow strawberries without any chemicals to prove a neighbor wrong. His neighbor just didn’t think it could be possible, not with strawberries. In the farm’s first years, Dale not only proved the possibility of organic strawberries but also that of snow peas and zucchini, accumulating knowledge as a first-time farmer.
The incremental education in organic farming that Dale received from working his few acres of land was directly reflected in the farm’s incremental growth—growing 10 acres and then 33 by 1985, and then 200 by 1990. Somewhere in between then and now, Dale’s farm became a large-scale operation of 500 acres, specializing mostly in salad mixes. Around the same time, even larger-scale operations stepped in and made salad mix a major commodity. “It got to a point where it wasn’t any fun,” Dale remembers. So, applying all his accrued farmer wisdom, he made an important decision and Coke Farm scaled back to its size today. These days Coke Farm continues to work with other area farms, making part of their mark by storing, selling, and shipping their neighbors’ product. “What has really expanded our farm in all these 25 years is our crew. Most of them have stayed with us the entire time,” says Dale of his fifty employees, “It’s quite amazing. So we’ve all grown together in our knowledge of organics and never did have to start at ground zero and retrain.”
To be sure, all this organic growth from farmer savvy and staying power has also been due in part to a different culture, California residents’ way with food called California Cuisine. It is often said that California Cuisine started with Wolfgang Puck or Alice Waters in the 1970’s. But others have noted the special geological and historical placement of California to be a major cause in these chefs’ remarkably different way of presenting food. California’s food culture includes the salmon staple of Native Californians, the citrus fruits, olives, and grapes carried from Spain by Spanish monks, a proximity to Mexico and its avocados and chili peppers, an influx immigrant population of Gold Rushers, and a large Chinese and Japanese population importing quick sauté cooking methods and common ingredients like rice and sesame.
Boldly improvise, bring it all together, and a fusion of healthy, attractive cuisine is created. The fertile coast of California was a long distance to ship traditional European ingredients. So it became obvious and necessary for residents that they use the fresh vegetables and fruits in their own backyards—and kitchens. In 1937, that is what the owner of Brown Derby in Hollywood, Bob Cobb, decided to do with ingredients in his restaurant’s walk-in, after his chef had gone home for the night—avocado, watercress, romaine, tomato, chicken breast, a hard-boiled egg, bacon, cheese, and French dressing.
Preparing fresh, local foods was simple, fostering an emphasis on simple farming methods—without chemicals. This is what the chef of Chez Panisse, Alice Waters, was looking for. Through a friend of a friend with more friends, she heard about Dale Coke’s organic strawberries, snow peas, and zucchini. So she approached him and requested baby fennel, baby beets, and unusual baby lettuces. A solid partnership quickly made Coke Farm popular in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. The superior varieties that could be requested and found on organic farms like Dale’s became vogue among the nation’s best chefs of fusion foods. So California organic farms multiplied.
Coke Farm is proud to have been one of the first. “Our certification number from CCOF is 01,” says Dale’s sister, Christine, the Sales Director of Coke Farms. The succession of farms to follow Coke Farm signals a bright future for organics. “Nationally, organics is growing at a tremendous speed,” Christine says, “And this growth is due to increased access. More access to organics has grown because more education has been presented on what organics does for our bodies and planet.”
As for the future of California’s Coke Farm, Dale and Christine are both open to possibility. When asked if he likes organic farming, Dales responds with, “Why—do you want to come down and farm for us?” He then describes the perfect weather conditions and the beautiful landscape it induces, quite the persuasive sales pitch. Finally down to the question, he candidly admits, “It goes in phases. Farming this way can be frustrating, with the bureaucracy of organics and the simple challenge of running your own business. But then there are parts that are truly satisfying, growing a changing variety, meeting new challenges. I take these phases with a grain of salt.” He trails off and then adds, “After 25 years of being a farmer, I don’t know how to answer that.” Even so, his steady, humble authority is gratifying, as if the answer somehow happened.
Mercedee Renz, Goodness Greeness
