(From Abundant Harvest by Sharon Young and Donna Locati)
Provided by OPENAIR-MARKET NET
In a lifetime of farming, Angel has planted hundreds of crops. Asked if there was anything he had not yet managed to grow successfully, Angel replied, "Celery. When something stays out in the field for 120 days, the bugs are bound to get it. But I'm not giving up!" And he isn't abandoning his attempts to grow a one hundred-pound watermelon. He's come very close; one summer he thought sure he'd reached his goal, but his prize melon came up two pounds short.
Angel grew up on a farm. Born in 1933, he attended grammar school and high school in Laton, went to College of the Sequoias in Visalia, and then entered the service. When he left the military, he worked on a farm in the Hanford-Laton area for about seven years before setting out on his own. His opportunity came around 1970 when the county purchased a small piece of property the family owned along the Kings River in Laton. The county got land for a park, and Angel got the money to obtain the eighty-acre ranch he calls home. He leases another eighty acres in three different locations within three miles of his home place. In the beginning he farmed only cotton and feed corn, which are still his major crops. "But I always did like watermelon, so that's what started me in growing vegetables and melons," he explains, "because I wanted to grow watermelon!"
"I really enjoy growing things for the market," Angel says. "We plant something about every other week, constantly, winter and summer." When his workers tell him something has bugs or is no good for some reason, they pull it out and plant something else. Because his ranch adjoins a dairy, Angel has a constant supply of manure water. He ponds it up and uses it every two or three weeks. On the other land, he fertilizes with manure and grass clippings. When he can, he plants cover crops on five acres here and there. They are constantly planting beans and peas, which enrich the soil with nitrogen while producing crops for sale at the farmers market.
Angel employs five people to help him with the fieldwork--and they all take their turn selling at the farmers market. "I want them to come here to see how people react to the quality of the produce," Angel explains. "That way they learn both ends of the business." Angel's wife, Evelia, and his son and two daughters also pitch in both on the farm and at the market.
As one of the market's original growers, Angel remembers the days when farmers sold produce out of their trucks right along Shaw Avenue. "My kids loved carrying our watermelons to customers' cars," he says. Customers Ed and Jo Ann Hansen, who have been shopping at the market "since the first day," comment that the Vineyard Farmers Market is unusual because "it has its own Angel." Owner Richard Erganian agrees. "Angel understands that the key ingredient in making the market a success is committed growers who show up day after day, week after week, even when they don't make money every day."
To ensure a steady supply of fresh produce, Angel plants about four crops of each vegetable. Everything is grown from seed except the early summer tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants he purchases from a local nursery. He sets out a few of these as early as March 1, and plants most of the rest by April 1--when any danger of frost should be safely past. "You have to be careful," Angel explains. "When you buy five thousand of this and five thousand of that at ten to fifteen cents a plant, it adds up."
Asked if there was ever a Saturday when he woke up and wished he didn't have to go to market, Angel replies: "I don't think that has ever happened. In fact, I'm always up way ahead of time. Most of the time I wake up at 2:30 on Saturday mornings--automatically." Angel does admit that mornings when he awakens to the Valley's heavy Tule fog he has second thoughts, but they always come to market anyway. One customer who's glad he does is Mary Anne Anderson, who says she's one of the earliest shoppers every Saturday morning. "I could buy carrots at the supermarket," says Mary Anne, "but they wouldn't have been weighed by Angel's pretty wife!" Al Avedekian, who has been shopping at the market since it opened, comments: "I've been there when it was so foggy that only one or two vendors were there." One of those was undoubtedly Angel Garcia.
"We have never missed a market because of the weather--even one Saturday [in January 1991] when the temperature was about 13 degrees," Angel said. "We put our stuff out on the table and within an hour it was all frozen solid." Speaking of weather, Angel has quite a reputation for accurate forecasting. This particular fall [1994] had been unusually rainy for the Central Valley and California as a whole, so I found myself asking Angel's opinion on the likelihood of precipitation quite frequently. More often than not, he was correct.
Connie Goodner, a customer who expressed special appreciation for Angel, commented: "I feel you make friends at the market after years of doing business with them." Long-time customer Joan Westly agrees: "Most of all I enjoy the friendliness of the vendors." One of the friendliest vendors, Angel says: "We have so many friends up here that we know by name. I wish I could know the names of all the people who have been coming for years," he says. "I recognize the faces, but I don't know their names. Everyone wants to be recognized. I think if I knew everybody's name that comes to our stand, it would make them feel a lot better, feel important."
For more than fifteen years Angel Garcia's fresh fruits and vegetables have been important to Vineyard Farmers Market shoppers. They'll be stopping by his tables for many years to come. Some of them may even join in celebrating Angel's first one hundred-pound watermelon. It will be a day to remember.