Just north of the San Diego border in Chula Vista lies Ranchito Milkyway, a thriving quarter-acre farm owned and operated by Christian and Alyssa. Ranchito has been a beacon of sustainable agriculture in San Diego for the past three years and shows no signs of slowing down.
An Unexpected Journey
Christian, a San Diego native, didn’t envision himself as a farmer. He originally expected to join the Marines, a path he had to forgo due to health issues. Christian spent time working in the restaurant industry after high school and later considered nursing, inspired by his mother’s battle with breast cancer. His growing interest in horticulture, particularly plants’ natural healing abilities, led him to a gardening job at Sea World and a stint on the Pest Prevention team with the Department of Food and Agriculture.
I got an internship in business process management and it was horrible
Like Christian, Alyssa never pictured herself farming despite growing up around agriculture in Illinois. She studied business in college and planned to run a bakery with her sister. But she didn’t last long on the business track. “I got an internship in business process management and it was horrible,” she said. Alyssa fell in love with growing food while WWOOFing on an organic dairy farm in France and switched her major to Food Science, working at the college dairy farm during her junior and senior year. After graduating she landed a job as a dairy farm specialist in Bangladesh, followed up by time spent in the Peace Corps working with rice farmers in Madagascar. Eventually she returned home and got a desk job at UCSD, but quickly realized she’d rather be outside growing food.
Breaking Free & Breaking Ground
Christian and Alyssa first crossed paths working at California Farm and Garden, an edible landscaping company in San Diego. They began managing a small plot at the Sweetwater Community Garden and started selling excess produce to friends and neighbors on weekends. They dubbed their garden “Uranus”, and never tired of telling customers where their produce was grown.
After awhile the two itched for a bigger challenge and finally decided to quit their jobs and farm full time after the sudden loss of Alyssa’s father. After a long search for a piece of land to lease they heard about a 1/4 acre plot in Chula Vista and jumped at the opportunity.
The land was in pretty bad shape — hard and compacted, with little fertility. A classic urban lot. So Christian and Alyssa began by broadforking the entire thing to break it up while causing minimal soil disturbance. These days they take a less dogmatic view on tilling, still using the broadfork as their first choice for aerating the soil but utilizing heavier machinery to form new beds on compacted ground when necessary.
The good and the bad are one
They’ve also been experimenting with Korean Natural Farming (KNF), creating homemade organic pesticide soap and fermented fertilizers, and ultimately trying to encourage the ideal balance of microbial life in the soil using both aerobic and anaerobic pathways. While anaerobic processes tend get a bad rap in the composting world, Alyssa mentioned that according to KNF, “the good and the bad are one”.
Expanding Horizons
Ranchito Milkyway’s success today is evident in its well-subscribed CSA service and popular Sunday farm stand, where they offer their own produce as well as other value-added products like salad dressings that they make themselves or locally caught fish which they source from organizations like FoodShed1.
Recently they’ve started hosting events and cooking classes onsite, ranging from how to make sourdough and tortillas to fermentation 101 2. They hope these events help their customers cultivate a deeper relationship with their food and where it comes from. In addition, its a nice income boost — they estimate that events this year should account for around a quarter of their revenue.
Looking ahead, Christian and Alyssa have leased an additional quarter acre of land, with plans to scale it to a full acre over the next five years. They want to ensure that their current operations aren’t too heavily distracted by the needs of the new plot, so Christian is toying with exclusively growing garlic, as it requires less maintenance and has a long maturity date but also commands a fairly high price at markets.
A Village of Support
Christian and Alyssa emphasized the importance of community in growing food and shared how some of their close farm friends have become mentors, specifically Ian Schimmelfennig — who worked with them at California Farm and Garden and who was the former head farmer at Farm Lab — and Ayzsha Smith who runs Kind Folk Farms.
To change the system you have to be a termite
They also credit Sarah Boltwala-Mesina from Food2Soil 3 as helping them develop their business skills, specifically validating a new idea prior to scaling-up its investment, a practice they said has saved them countless hours of wasted time, energy and money.
Sarah also instilled the idea that “to change the system you have to be a termite” — that the biggest change often comes from people who are deeply integrated in the existing system — a lesson that still drives them today.
Last they credit FoodShed in providing help with grant funding efforts, distribution and creating a supportive local farming community which has been extremely helpful for general farming advice and support.