Making the grade

So, I am pretty new to cycling. I'm still undecided on the correct pronunciation of "panniers"; I still get nervous that I'm going to tip over at a stoplight clipped in on a loaded bike. On the other hand, I have been excited to be the one helping someone else change their tire tube (lord knows I have experience wielding a tire iron); I've been the one lending maps to cyclists going in the opposite direction and recommending campsites. I'm getting there.

In spite of the number of miles under Ollie's tires, I am still learning the language and culture of the biking world. And the math. If my bike computer tells me I'm biking at roughly 12mph, why do I only make it about 7 miles in an hour? Oh. Right. The snack breaks. And the hills. One thing that I'd heard seasoned cyclists talk about often when I was back at the bike shop during the weeks leading up to my departure from DC was this or that "insane climb for x number of miles at an x% grade...." What the heck was "percent grade"? 2 miles at 8%? I had some vague sense that this was meant to be impressive, perhaps something I should know before setting out. I was too shy to ask.

Not long after I departed, I believe it was somewhere early on in my battle with the Appalachians, I began to recognize these truck-pointing-downhill signs. (Usually the signposts were back over my shoulder, facing traffic heading down a hill I had just dragged a fully loaded Ollie up.) More recently, I learned that percent grade simply refers to the slope of a hill. So a 7% grade means a rise (or fall) of 7 feet for every 100 feet of forward travel. That doesn't sound so bad, right? Except that it is. (Ollie, back me up here.)

My god, if I ever meet the man who designed Highway 1, or any of his descendants, I'm going to punch 'em in the nose. The 5-mile uphill stretch going into Redwood National Forest back in northern California? 6-7% grade. How about Big Sur? Ditto, with screaming downhill lengths cramping my brake-gripping muscles as intensely as the narrow, twisting, murderous uphill stretches wore out my legs. I mean, who *does* that? Didn't anyone think about the math?

Say a cyclist bikes 13.5 miles uphill on an unknown but constant grade (x), and 2.5 miles downhill at a 7% grade. Assuming equal elevation at the starting and ending points (total distance biked is 16 miles -- that's the bottom of your triangle), what was the uphill grade?

You know how real life math problems are all the rage in education? This is a real life example: even without taking into account the unflagging headwinds or knowing exactly how much weight I was hauling the ride south from Lompoc 2 days ago was intense. My question is: how intense? There was a cute, sweater-vested math teacher at the school where I used to teach whom I might've asked if I'd come across this problem a year ago. Since he's not around, I'll ask my fearless readers. Go on, break out your pencils and your calculators. How intense *was* it? Whomever posts the correct answer for the percent grade on the way up that thirteen-and-a-half-mile-long incline gets a postcard from Joshua Tree when I get there. (And if math isn't your forte, fear not. I used to tell my students to do their best. If they couldn't think of the right answer, if they could make me laugh I'd give them partial credit.)

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An inconvenient question

I've grown up debating. It's part of how my family works: in the midst of every major life decision, whether it's where to go to college or whether to take a job abroad or why the heck I am leaving a paying job to bicycle myself around the country, there's been a debate. Before engaging in any of these discussions, I learned quite young to come with my points and my evidence and my answers to anticipated questions. And there were always multiple sessions with follow-up questions and character witnesses, between which the courtroom participants broke for snacks and deliberation. Anyone speaking up for another family member being grilled on the witness stand -- usually the dinner table -- was accused of being a public defender. Mom used to say I should've gone to law school. (Now she's proud I didn't.)

The other night included yet another chapter in a series of phone debates between dad and I on the importance of sustainable food. Dad gets most of it -- less chemicals; better treatment of land, animals, and workers; mindful water use -- but I have yet to convince the judge why it's important to change our behaviors to support a better food system. How our individual choices make a difference. The item on the evening's docket: seafood. Dad had read my post on the Seafood Watch guide and while he's not out to actively destroy the planet he made some strongly worded points about the inconvenience of shopping and eating sustainably. "How am I supposed to know how the tuna on the menu was caught?" he argued. "Do you really think the guy at the Giant knows where the shrimp came from?"

"Well," I answered, "Ask. If they can't tell you, choose something else."

Now, let me reiterate here that I am not a purist. I eat things sometimes that are not local, not in season, and, yes, even sometimes not sustainable. Am I to turn down the friendly offer of barbecue from the next campsite over? No. But I do try my best, especially when I am paying for it. If there's something on the menu or at the store that might be questionable, I ask about it. If I don't get a good enough answer and there is another option, I choose something else. "Is the chicken local? Is it free-range?" or "Do you know where the shrimp come from? Are they wild or farmed?" If there's no option to have a free-range turkey at Thanksgiving, consider me a vegetarian.

I can't unlearn what I know, and I cannot (and would not choose to) divorce what I am learning from how I live my life. I actually get physically anxious throwing something that could be composted into the trash when I'm at someone else's house. (It's true.) There will no doubt be growing pains as I continue to become a more knowledgeable consumer. If dad's happy about how inexpensive steak is at the supermarket, or how cheap Alaskan crab legs are on sale this week, how do I explain without coming across as self-righteous that food *shouldn't* be that cheap? That supermarket chains are not charging us for the true (health and environmental) costs. That if we paid a fairer price for more humanely produced meat, it would cost more. Too expensive? Eat less of it. Look at how relatively inexpensive organically grown kale is. (And I know you love that massaged kale salad....)

I am not a doom and gloom kind of person -- ask anyone -- and I actually look at making more positive food choices as something joyful. Instead of looking at food and grumbling about what you're passing up, how about reveling in what you can happily enjoy with your conscience as well as your tastebuds? "Yay, strawberries are in season again!" or "Maybe I should try a glass of this organic cabernet and sample some raw, local sheep's milk cheese." or "Oh, look, farmed oysters are in the 'enjoy' column on the Seafood Watch guide. Another reason to indulge in oysters." I can go on like this all night....

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Something fishy

I've spoken with a good many people recently about "the true cost of food." Often, the topic comes up during a conversation with someone I've met along my journey who is new to the idea of sustainable food, and I, in an attempt to explain what the heck it is I'm doing (and why), invariably bumble about trying to articulate what "sustainable" even means. It's a definition in progress, to be sure, but it takes into account not only the production costs (seed/animals, water, labor, equipment) but environmental (chemical runoff, soil health, erosion), distribution (petroleum-based, usually), and human health costs as well. It's all related, sure, but as I headed further down the California coastline I was about to discover how our food-related behaviors impact not only the land but our oceans as well (and the amazingly diverse undersea world that inhabits 3/4 of the earth covered by water).

After a day and a half in Salinas (the self-proclaimed "salad bowl for the world" where I curiously had a salad made from local Earthbound Farms' romaine lettuce imported from Mexico) getting over a cold, Ollie and I made our way to Monterey Bay with the hope of checking out the fabulous Aquarium. Back in Seattle, where I had started researching sustainable seafood, I'd come across Seafood Watch -- a guide put out by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium that clarifies which varieties of fish and shellfish should be enjoyed and which should be avoided. The recommendations are based largely on the methods used to catch the animals, but also take into account things like if a species is being overfished or if there is a high likelihood of heavy metal consumption. (I'm not talking tuna listening to Iron Maiden, mind you. Mercury, mostly.) I had the good fortune to meet with Alison, one of the members of the Aquarium's communications team who had been involved with the publication of the Seafood Watch guide. A lifelong ecology educator, she gave me a bit of background on the program and pointed out a few key exhibits pertaining to sustainability and food.

As Alison departed for an afternoon meeting, I wandered over to the "Real Cost Cafe," where I was both entertained and educated by the interactive diner exhibit. Each menu item on the touchscreen monitors prompted a brief mini video montage about the costs behind ordering wild salmon, farmed shrimp, oysters, and more. I learned, for instance, there is something called "bycatch" that refers to the unintended victims of a fishing haul. Methods like "long-lining" -- which employ sometimes multiple miles of lines with baited hooks dragged behind a boat -- capture bycatch animals (other fish, sharks, sea turtles, even birds) and drag them for hours until the line is hauled back in and the undesirables, now dead or crippled, are tossed aside as waste. Considering four bycatch per one intended catch is not unusual, these reckless fishing methods -- and long-lining is just one of them -- wreak havoc on our sealife. There's also overfishing, where the consumer demand for *more* is pushing some species to the brink of extinction. And it's not just wild species, either. Irresponsible farm management, like the shrimp farming that has permanently decimated coastal areas, has turned formerly flourishing waterways into a stagnant pit where nothing can survive. (I saw evidence of this a few years back on my way through Costa Rica and it is shocking. And the stench!) The allure of short-term money has trumped long-term repercussions for too long. We need to do something. And we can.

Until fishermen and restaurants cease to have a paying market for things like codfish or long-lined tuna or eel (a sushi favorite these days), they will keep doing whatever it takes to get these fish to our plates. There is a powerful opportunity we have here with our collective individual choices -- by what we spend our seafood dollars on -- to change the system. Get yourself a copy of the Seafood Watch guide. They're free and downloadable from the Monterey Bay Aquarium website. (There's even an iPhone app for it...if you're into that kind of thing.) There's a guide for each region of the country, and a new version that's hot off the presses this January specifically for sushi (I just sent you a wallet-sized hard copy of this one, my sashimi-loving little brother) that lists which kinds of the raw delicacies should be enjoyed freely, which are good alternatives, and which should be avoided. And don't be sad about avoiding the unsustainable "ebi" (eel): some sushi joints have started getting creative, serving "fauxbi," which is made with different fish but mimics the texture of the original and of course has the same delicious sauce. (It's way more convincing than, say, fake bacon.)

It was in the company of my lovely new friends Mack, Joan, and Clay on my way through Los Osos last night that I again had an opportunity to enjoy some fish tacos. This time -- unlike the unsustainable codfish tacos last week -- they were Alaskan salmon, wild-caught by a friend of theirs, and notably in the "enjoy" section of the Seafood Watch guide. I'm not sure if it was because they were really fresh, made with love, washed down with a cold beer, or because I knew that I was enjoying something sustainable, but they were almost impossibly delicious. It may have been all of these factors. (Oh, and the inclusion of 11-year-old Clay's secret fish taco sauce. I would bathe in the stuff if I could: it was that good. If I ever write "Bikeable Feast: The Cookbook" some day, that recipe will be in it....)

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Could be worse...

As I sat by a roaring campfire roasting marshmallows with my new friends Adam and Dave last night -- finally, other touring cyclists! -- one of them turned to me and asked if I was capable of negativity. Oh my, yes. Not often, but yes. Today, for example....

This morning I'd turned down the guys' offer to join them for omelets. I'd woken up early and had packed my stuff and scarfed the better part of a pot of 7-grain cereal (aka gruel thinly disguised as food by the addition of dried cranberries, some walnuts, and half a banana) by the time they emerged from their respective tents. I wanted to get a jump on today's biking and try for a 60-miler. As it turns out, I made it exactly 34 miles to one of the lamest campsites ever. But I'm getting ahead of myself....

So: Big Sur. Beautiful, but I'm fairly certain it means "Biker Purgatory" in another language. The hills! Not even a mile into today's ride, I found my legs tired. Half a mile up the first hill I had to hop off and start pushing. After a mile of dragging Ollie, I stopped -- still on the same [censored] hill -- to get a cup of coffee and a carrot muffin (with cream cheese frosting). I downed the coffee in about two gulps, deciding to save the muffin as a reward for reaching the Miller Library, which was only about another mile and a half ahead (the first half of which was, you guessed it, straight uphill). Arriving at the museum, I was surprised at the proliferation of posters sporting negligee. Odd, I thought. I started chatting with the lovely archivist who politely pointed out that I'd stopped at the Henry (not Arthur) Miller Museum. That explains it. I ate my muffin and contemplated. Not quite the literary stop I'd imagined. I'd never really cared for Death of a Salesman anyway. The day was not lost. Yet.

I biked all day. There were some breaks in the headwind but the hills never stopped. What did stop was the appearance of open campsites and/or places to refill my water bottles. By 20 miles I'd gone through most of my water; by 25 miles I was ready to pitch a tent on the next scrap of grass near a fountain; by 27 miles I came to the 3rd closed campground of the day; by 29 miles I almost cried reading a "water at next campground: 5 miles" posting. At 34 miles, well short of my usual average, I wobbled into a campsite proffering potable water. But no showers. Or handsoap. Or electricity in the restroom. (Raise your hand if you can guess whose headlamp battery just died this evening.) And those stupid sinks that won't stay on so you have to freeze one hand at a time (because, of course, they only run cold water). Seriously? People pay to camp here? It was not one of my finer moments. I think I may have even dropped the f-bomb once or twice under my breath. (Sorry, mom.)

[I am reminded of a scene in Young Frankenstein when Dr. Frankenstein and Igor are shoveling the frozen ground and then laboriously dragging a corpse out of a grave in the dead of night. "Could be worse," Igor mutters. "Worse?? How could it POSSIBLY get any worse?" Doctor F hysterically shrieks. (I love Gene Wilder.) "It could be raining," Igor suggests. Cue thunder. And rain.]

I can't help wondering if this might be some kind of karmic payback for ordering codfish tacos last night. For some reason I'd thought cod were in the "good" category of the Seafood Watch guide I'd picked up earlier this week at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Turns out they're in the "avoid" column. I should've gotten the salmon. And more detailed information on campgrounds. I called them "death tacos" once I realized my error, but I ate them. Sending them back would just be wasteful.

On the bright side, at least the tunes on the mental mp3 player were good ones today: a mix of CAKE hits. And I dipped into the emergency goodie reserve tonight to comfort my (stinky and grumpy) self with a dinner of sauteed zucchini and shallots with basil olive oil (thanks Alessandra) and garlic salt (thanks Mark) to go with my macaroni and cheese. (I'd no butter or milk, but I'd picked up a cup of plain organic yoghurt yesterday by chance and I think Brown Cow's "cream top" variety might be my new favorite macaroni addition. Try it. You'll never go back.) What I wouldn't give for a hot bath and a nice glass of Pinot Noir right about now. And, oh look, it's starting to rain. Dammit.

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How can ewe resist?

1 bottle + 10 lambs = hilarity. And there are over 100 little lambies at Becky's....

During my time at Monkeyflower Ranch, there were 5 or 6 lambs being born each day. Plenty of mouths to feed meant I got lots of hands-on experience. I loved it. Honestly, the little guys were so cute, waggling their fluffy tails as they nursed, that I hardly noticed the mud, poop, milk, and straw that permeated my clothes from being around them 3 or 4 times each day for the past few days. (Until I caught a whiff of myself when I was leaving the farm on Monday morning, that is. I may need to fumigate a few clothing items before putting them in the wash....) They're smaller in stature than the calf brood I bottle-fed back in Foxboro last June, but they're just as voracious (and hilarious).

I'd first heard of Becky's sheep operation from my friends Laura and Barry a few weeks ago. The artisan cheese maker had worked at a goat dairy years before, been trained as a professional chef, worked for awhile at the Bay Area's fabulous Cowgirl Creamery (whose dairy wares at the DC location frequently captured a sizable chunk of my paltry teacher's salary back in the day), all the while wanting to be on a farm... running a dairy seemed like a natural next step. The former Gabriella Cafe chef had decided she wanted to get into making raw aged sheep's milk cheese -- a delicacy not readily available in this country, though popular in Europe. So a few visits with cheese makers in France and Spain were in order -- sounds like my kind of research! -- and then it was time to get started.

Like the folks at Uplands Cheese (where I'd stopped overnight on my way through Dodgeville, WI and met the cows behind the stunning Pleasant Ridge Reserve -- one of my all-time favorite cheeses), Becky believes that the quality of her Garden Variety Cheeses comes down in large part to the quality of the milk, which in turn depends on the quality of life of the animals, which ultimately comes down to the quality of the pasture. Yep, good grass. With access to lots of fresh water and an open-air shelter for when the weather turns nasty, Becky's flock of milkers -- around 50 ewes -- spend most of their time out on pasture. Because of the relatively mild climate in Watsonville (or, technically Royal Oaks, but try and find *that* on google maps), it turns out that the best grass is available during the drizzly winter and spring months, so Becky slated the first lambing season to begin in December. This way the sheep have prime grazing spots during milking season.

As Becky and I crumbled and salted a batch of cheese, then pressed the crumbles into molds, I learned quite a bit more. I came to understand that sheep produce less milk than cows or goats -- 2 quarts for an average ewe per day in comparison to about 4 gallons per cow -- and their milking season is shorter, averaging about 6 months. Thus she is only making cheese for 6 months of the year. Is this enough to support the farm? Becky's been working on some creative solutions to that very question. My favorite is her adopt-a-ewe project. This past summer, she advertised as follows:

"Ever thought about quitting your job, cashing in your savings and following your dream of starting a sheep cheese dairy? Want to live vicariously through someone who has? For $500 you can cover the costs to feed and care for an organically raised dairy sheep during the off-season. In return, you will receive $600 worth of farm products from January to June of 2010."

$500 for fresh lamb (or a wool comforter) plus weekly installments of fresh and aged sheep's milk cheeses for 6 months? Psh. I've probably dropped that much on cheese alone. Sign me up! If only I lived nearby.... (Don't worry, mom and dad, I'm not moving, but wouldn't it be rad to have something like this near DC??)

Becky says she hopes to make cheese 4 or 5 times a week during the half-year period when milk is available -- quite an accomplishment when one considers how much work goes into the process. Milking and equipment cleaning seem to take up much of the active time. And then there's the basic animal care. While relatively low-maintenance, having sheep is still work -- mostly in terms of milking, but they also require periodic hoof-trimming, hay to supplement their diet, and regular checkups. (And much more, I'm sure, that I didn't witness firsthand during the few days I was on the farm. Like setting up the fencing for the rotational grazing. A healthy pasture is key, remember.)

As I've been doing some thinking lately on farming in a way that is sustainable in terms of not only fuel and chemicals but also human energy, I found Becky's setup to be pretty reasonable, with tasks and shifts varied between 5 or 6 paid staff over the course of the week. It's a long day -- the first milking and lamb feeding shifts start around 7am and the last shift ends around 10pm -- but it's manageable. There's still time for fun. After Saturday night's dinner party (and final lamb bottle feeding of the night), a few of us watched "Black Sheep" -- not the Chris Farley comedy, but one of the more ridiculous horror films out there, about genetically-modified vampire sheep who take over a farm in New Zealand. At least I think that's how it ends... I fell asleep about an hour in, just past midnight. (I'd been up since I helped out with the 7am lamb feeding session. And to think I used to be a night owl.)

I hope that more folks start up small dairy operations like this. The cheeses are downright delicious -- what, you thought I'd not tried any? -- and the lambs... I mean, HOW CUTE are the lambs? Sure, they're awkward and kind of clueless and try to nurse on your elbows and each other and the backs of your knees, but how can you keep from smiling around these little guys? I sure couldn't.

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Cultivating success

A friend recently forwarded me an article in the Atlantic Monthly that made me really angry. I was all kinds of disgruntled and indignant after reading "Cultivating Failure: How school gardens are cheating our most vulnerable students" -- an attack on Alice Waters and the whole idea of incorporating food and garden experiences into the public education system. (Want to get me all worked up? Just make some snide remark about how reading is more important than weeding. Please. It's not an either/or scenario, people.) This woman must have had a bad experience involving a garden snake or a brussels sprout as a child. (I feel bad for her own kids.) Are hands-on activities that cultivate curious, joyful, well-rounded young people interfering with training them to be good standardized test takers? Goodness me, somebody sound the alarm.

I've continued to think about -- and visit -- food-related education groups quite a bit along the bikeable feast. Life Lab (which, like me, has been around since the late 70s) is the kind of program model I adore. If only I could help to replicate something like this on the east coast. (Yep, I'm still an East Coast Girl, all told, though mom and dad are convinced I'll find somewhere new to call home before I make my way back. The people and food around Santa Cruz are putting in a pretty strong bid. Must...resist...chantrelles....) On the UC Santa Cruz site, there's a demonstration garden, outdoor kitchen, beautiful walkways and signs and plants, and a small staff of knowledgeable, personable educators who clearly love what they do and love to share what they know. The space itself is a dream. Walking through for the first time during a brief sunny spell last Monday afternoon in Santa Cruz, I noted a wide variety of things to observe, taste, smell, and learn about. I found myself giddily counting the number of different fruit tree varieties, prancing over to the human sundial, enumerating the plants in the pizza garden...and daydreaming about working with a similar program back in DC. When I returned to the garden on Wednesday afternoon -- I, um, happened to be there around the same time as a group on a pre-conference field trip for EcoFarm -- I learned more about the fantastic Life Lab and UCSC Agroecology program that houses it from John and Whitney. It turns out that in addition to daily tours (except in the winter, when it drops to 2 tours per week) with school groups, Life Lab's UCSC Garden Classroom program (which works primarily with elementary school kids) and Food What?! (focused on high schoolers -- I wish they'd gotten back to me, I have tons of questions) offer all kinds of workshops and farm/garden/kitchen resources to educators across Santa Cruz county and beyond. They've partnered with local schools to start gardens and develop lessons in line with CA state curricula. I know I've maligned standards-based education on the blog (and to anyone within a 100-foot radius of my person) a few times, but using a garden and/or kitchen to round out the book learning can only be a good thing, it seems to me.

Speaking of farm-and-garden-oriented youth programs, I am just now realizing I neglected to mention another awesome organization I had the good fortune to learn about: Berkeley Youth Alternatives. Well, gardening is just one piece of the nonprofit's work, which also includes after-school tutoring, counseling, and teen job placement. (I was reminded of the program when I bumped into the garden manager, Kim, at an EcoFarm workshop last Thursday. Small world.) The 2 gardens comprise a rather small part of the overall organization, but the opportunity to learn about the natural world, to grow food for themselves and for donation to a local food pantry, to have a peaceful green space in the midst of the chaos that is an adolescent's daily life make the BYA gardens an indispensable part of the counseling and mentoring program. Developing the *whole* person -- what a concept.

Oh, my, look at the time. Speaking of nurturing young ones, I need to get back outside and help Becky feed the baby lambs.... Yep, you read that correctly. More details on adventures in bottle feeding lambs and making sheep's milk cheese to come....

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A berry nice place to work

When one thinks of a farm owner, one generally thinks of a powerful man (or woman) pitted against any individual or group that might lobby for better wages, benefits, and working conditions for those doing the labor. I've taught Steinbeck; I've read a bit about Cesar Chavez. Farm laborers have a long history of powerlessness and disenfranchisement. They have more often than not been treated as replaceable cogs in a larger, profit-driven machine. This is simply not the case at Swanton Berry Farm, the country's first production scale certified organic berry farm. Don't let the name fool you: they don't just grow berries. But then, this is no ordinary berry farm.

Amid sporadic rainstorms on Sunday afternoon, I spied a welcoming "Jam Tasting ->" sign along Highway 1 and ducked into the Swanton Berry farmstand to see about picking up something to go with my jar of peanut butter and 2-day-old bread. I was soon distracted by other, more appealing gustatory options. (I did eventually purchase a jar of olalliberry-strawberry jam for a later sandwich.) I was also fortunate to have an opportunity to learn about the innovative farm from Barrett and Forrest. Over a slice of velvety pumpkin pie and a steaming cup of fair trade java -- I felt a small degree of pressure to have the berry cobbler, it being a berry farm and all, but Swanton grows pumpkins, too, and I stand by my scrumptious, whipped cream laden choice -- Barrett gave me a rundown on the history of the farm and its progressive owner, Jim Cochran.

Started back in the 80s with a modest berry crop, the farm's 2 original managers -- Jim and Mark -- rented a few small farm plots and began to experiment with organic methods. Success was slow but steady as they refined their methods, paying attention not only to their growing market but the land as well. They discovered, for example, that strawberries planted in areas where broccoli (and other brassicas, to a lesser degree) had been grown the cycle before were significantly less vulnerable to the common but pernicious verticillium wilt, the bane of berries in the region. At the time, few folks were interested in organic methods, so no formal research was conducted. Years later, a small group of researchers at UC Santa Cruz heard about the brassica-verticillium theory and did a little research.... Today the broccoli-strawberry crop rotation is fairly well accepted as an organic management practice -- John even mentioned it during one of the activities on yesterday afternoon's tour of the UCSC student farm. (More details on UCSC's Agroecology Center and the amazing Life Lab program to come in a later post.) Swanton's willingness to do things differently extends beyond crop rotations, however.

As we chopped brussels sprouts (and then feasted on creamy brussels sprout soup with Forrest who invited me to stay for a delicious, impromptu lunch), I learned that Swanton Berry was the first farm in the state to *invite* the AFL-CIO to meet with its workers back in the 90s. For over a decade, farm workers have had the option of signing a union contract. Working here, employees enjoy regular pay raises, diversified work tasks, a modest housing option, vacation time, and other benefits virtually unheard of in the farm world. It's also the first agricultural small business that I've ever heard of to offer its employees stock options. (Now, don't get all worked up -- this stock is in addition to regular pay, not in place of it, which is important in an industry more prone than others to extreme fluctuation.) The Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP, for short) allows farm workers to put money toward retirement, kind of like a 401(k). At least that is my very basic understanding of it. (Having worked in an office for more than 3 years with a gaggle of innovative financiers in a former job one would think I'd have a firmer grasp of finance and investment matters, but alas, I don't.)

Swanton Berry Farm has a lot going for it, but the most important difference I sense here is the value placed on the workers. The business strives to make itself a good place to work, where folks want to return each year. It's not perfect, but it's heads and shoulders above most of the competition.

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