Looking down from Hilltop Road weeds conceal a burgeoning food forest
hundred-square foot beds of fantastic productivity. Each
individual bed contains four to six different crops, so that at
any given time the entire field offers between one and two
hundred different varieties of vegetables, herbs, and flowers
(all of which are also edible). Crops are in constant rotation,
with new varieties planted and old ones are harvested on
a weekly basis. Don’t like vegetables? Then come for the
fruits. Cloverfield also has a orchard with over fifty different
types, as well as a small vineyard with several grape varieties
you’ve probably never heard of. (If you’ve been tempted to
experiment with home winemaking, this is a great place to
start).
The disparate plantings fit Cloverfield’s business model.
Like many locals, I’ve occasionally made the trek out to
Brentwood to pick fruit in the summer, which is fun and
rewarding but the distance makes it impractical to do very
often. Cloverfield is also a pick-it-yourself farm, but It’s
intended to serve the immediate surrounding community.
Susan’s goal is to always have lots of different stuff available,
year-round. If one plum tree is finished producing, hey,
there’s a different variety next to it where the fruits just
beginning to ripen. Thus, you can literally come every
weekend, do most of your produce shopping, and take home
different stuff every time. Prices are also quite competitive
(particularly compared to the local natural grocery stores).
Susan sells by volume, charging only $30 for a large basket
(which is a lot of produce).
Cloverfield also has a small selection of herb and vegetable
starts for the home garden (basically extras of whatever stuff
they were planting recently) and usually some seeds and
dried herbs. And, time permitting, Susan or her staff farmer,
Michael, are happy to give tours of the place. The farm is
open from noon to 5:00 pm Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays,
and is also available to host school field trips and other
events.
Just up the road a bit, off Hilltop Drive at Marin Road,
is another farm owned by a nonprofit organization called
34 MARKETPLACECONTRACOSTA.COM DECEMBER 2019
Planting Justice. It’s not open for business per se, though
they do host volunteer workdays each Thursday and the first
Saturday of each month.
Compared to Cloverfield, the operation doesn’t look
impressive, though it’s actually larger. Indeed, you could
be forgiven for not realizing there’s a farm there at all. It
occupies four acres of moderately sloping hillside covered
with waist-high weeds – though young fruit trees can be
seen peeking up here and there. Don’t be deceived by
superficial appearances: Planting Justice’s farm is a product
of much hard work, considerable ambition, and suprising
ingenuity.
Explaining this requires briefly talking about the
organization itself (for the less-brief version I suggest
perusing plantingjustice.org). It was started in Oakland
with the twin goals of growing healthy, organic food while
creating living-wage jobs for disadvantaged communities.
In 2015 the organization acquired Rolling River Nursery,
a mail order nursery which claims to offer the widest
selection of heirloom fruit trees and perennial food plants
in the America. Earlier this year, in cooperation with the
Mira Vista United Church of Christ, they also acquired the
former Adachi’s Nursery property at the corner of Appian
Way and Valley View in El Sobrante, which is slated to
become a combination nursery and cafe. The El Sobrante
farm, the mail order nursery, and the planned cafe/nursery
(which will probably be the subject of a future article) will
work together in a clever synergy.
Gavin Raders, one of the founders of Planting Justice,
recently gave me a tour of the farm and explained its design.
The slope of the property, which would traditionally be
viewed as a handicap for farming, has been turned into
an advantage. Their first project (after clearing thistles and
poison oak) was to dig swales (basically, ditches), horizontally
across the hillside every eight to ten feet or so. The soil
from the ditches was piled up onto berms in front of each
swale, and the swales were then filled with wood chips. This