Planting seeds

For the past two years, Natalie Carter has served as office manager for the Chico Certified Farmers’ Market. Perhaps not coincidently, two years ago she and her mother, Cheri Wolf, started a produce farm in southwest Chico, growing crops including popcorn, arava melons, edamame, multicolored bell peppers and fingerling potatoes.

The crops are grown on three-quarters of an acre of land located along a private drive off Marian Avenue. The land is owned by a friend who allows them access to tend to the farm.

On a recent Saturday, Carter, Wolf and Carter’s 7-month-old daughter, Aria, gathered on the farm for a tour. At this point in the year, they’ve laid down large sections of cardboard to help control weeds during the upcoming winter. They still have some melons and a few unpicked cobs of red popcorn on the yellowing stalks. Gathered on the south side of the farm was a small flock of silky bantam chickens and a couple of roosters huddled in their coop.

“We let them wander around out here to pick up slugs and leave fertilizer,” Carter said, nodding toward and speaking over a light din of squawks.

Aria accompanies her mother and grandmother when they tend to the farm every morning and some evenings during the growing season, averaging four to six hours per day. So, including Aria, the farm is operated by three generations of women, each breaking the stereotype of the farmer as predominantly male.

“What had happened is I was working at an unpleasant job that involved a lot of travel all over the nation, though it paid pretty well. It was a big risk leaving that job,” she said, “but I quit to come home and have this. What I really wanted to do was become a farmer.”

She said she shared the idea with her husband, Eric Carter, who suggested she talk to his grandfather, Gerald Bonds, one of the founding members of the CCFM.

“So I spent that next growing season with Jerry, helping him plant and maintain his crops and till his soil,” Carter said. “I got to drive a tractor for the first time and began selling his produce at the farmers’ market.”

Up to that point, Carter said, she had only gardened “recreationally.” She also learned from Bonds about the CCFM’s office manager position, for which she applied and was promptly hired.

Bonds’ history as a farmer somewhat echoes Carter’s. When he helped found the CCFM, where he sold his crops, his full-time job was with Pacific Bell. After 34 years with the company, he turned down an opportunity to transfer to Sacramento, deciding instead to take an early retirement and focus on his crops, which he continues to do to this day at the age of 84.

“So I worked with Jerry that season, wanting to explore farming in a way that was unique to me, and Jerry encouraged that,” Carter said. “I started talking with my mother, who had participated a little bit out at Jerry’s, and we decided that we were going to give it a go—try to grow our own food. It wasn’t a case of, ‘We’re going to make money off this.’ It was, ‘Let’s feed ourselves and our families and grow local food.’”

She also consulted with an Oroville farmer named Carl Rosato, who started his 26-acre Woodleaf Farm in 1980 and became certified organic two years later.

“He gave us pointers on soil sampling and such,” Carter said. “So we spread gypsum and a lot of compost and rented a tiller, tilled it all up and planted all sorts of cover crop like crimson clover.”

This season they started growing vegetable crops.

“There were some successes and some horrendous failures,” she said. “The gophers got more of the fingerling potatoes than anyone else.”

She said the process is a learning curve and they are looking forward to next season.

“My mother is not an agriculturalist by trade,” she said. “Her degree is in information technology and she is a computer programmer by trade. And she is my partner as well as my mother.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” she added. “We’ve done garlic and that’s been a big one for us. We haven’t been selling a lot of it, but we have definitely increased the amount we are growing. And we’re growing red popcorn, which has been a lot of fun.”

They’ve been able to sell their produce at the Wednesday CCFM, located at the North Valley Plaza, and there were a few Saturdays over the winter when they sold their foods at the downtown market, too.

She said farming has been an interesting experience for Carter, her mother, and, she assumes, Aria, and they are very much looking forward to tilling the soil next year.