Put on your overalls and come visit the Alvarez Farm in Mabton, Washington. The Alvarez family's organic-farm transcends time and space (It could be anyplace in the centuries since organized agriculture began).
There is a little of everything on the Alvarez farm, variety is the specialit. You never know what is around each corner.
Spring has turned to summer and the farm is fecund. The sandy fields are bright green, laden with basil, lettuce, asparagus, squashes, peas, onions, garlic, peanuts, egg plant, exotic zucchinis and - their speciality - tomatoes and all the peppers.
"I take care of the farm and the workers," said patron Larry "Hilario" Alvarez, peering out playfully from under his woven, wide-brimmed hat and giving his signature wink. "And the boys take care of the selling. Here on the farm there is so much to do, we have so many kinds of everything, so much variety, I have about 85 kinds of peppers growing, right now and more than 20 varieties of tomatoes. Each year we have more. Maybe next year we will have 100 kinds of peppers. Our peppers are wonderful."
Quick hands weave chosen peppers together into wreaths and hanging clusters - Alvarez Farm's recognizable, and frequently photographed, "Rings & Strings." Alvarez jokingly says the idea arose from people buying just two or three peppers, now they buy bouquets. These eye-catching clusters of multi-colored peppers, and sometimes garlic and other accouterments, are functional arrangements, to be used for cooking or dry as decoration. Even untreated they last several years.
It is a Market mystery who was the first to introduced "Rings & Strings" here, but they are definitely popular.
Alvarez employed a variety of clever sales techniques over the years. He recalls, in Tacoma, betting customers that they couldn't eat one of his chili-peppers. They would pompously take his bet, and confidently pop the peppers. Next thing they would be running to the toilet. Alvarez said very few went double or nothing.
Farming itself is a lifetime endeavor. "It is more than just throwing seeds around." Farming is careful planning: choosing what and when to grow what where, rotating to keep the soil vital and, with the current drought, irrigation is a huge micro-management issue.
He told the story of a guy he knew who wanted to get into farming. Alvarez gave the rookie all the advice he could, later the man came back, distraught. He'd done everything Alvarez said, then doused his crops in Round-Up - an herbicide - instead of weeding, to save time. Alvarez just shook his head.
Mindfully glancing around the farm's neatly manicured rows - each long line of green seedlings represents one of Alvarez's many offerings - he surveys and admires his extensive fields.
"We had 50 acres, then added 25 more last year, but now, that's enough. I think. We'll see," he pragmatically adds. "We'll see."
Everyone on the Alvarez farm says 'we'. It is a mantra. They are one big family running their own 'small' farm together. Each generation is represented. Each doing its part, performing its duty and taking quick breaks when the heat gets to be too much. Everyone busily bustles about, in seeming harmony, frequently joking. There is never a dull moment on the farm, and the family brings that feeling to market.
In 1976, Alvarez moved his family from California to the fertile and picturesque Lower Yakima River Valley with Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood visible.
Eddie, who helps oversee the farm, is one of Larry and Marie Alvarez's nine children. He and Rosa have a few of their own (little Saul runs the farm in his own way). Besides Eddie Alvarez, several Alvarezes live and work on the farm, and sell in the various markets.
Since the summer of 1982, Alvarez Farm has been selling farm-fresh produce in the Pike Place Market. Over the years Alvarez Farm worked to earn organic certification and now is one of the two biggest organic farms in Eastern Washington. Alvarez is a contributor to the Market's Community Supported Agriculture (C.S.A.) Program. Through his successful farming Alvarez expanded to sell produce at 14 farmer's markets between the Tri-Cities and Seattle, including Renton, Columbia City, Kirkland, Madison, Lake City, Magnolia, Kent, Federal Way, Broadway Lake Forrest Park, Puyallup, Yakima and Pike Place.
"We are a one stop shop," said Alvarez. "People tell me they shop all the markets but always come back for my stuff because we have the best and the most."
During the planting season everyone helps to begin the season: clearing new fields (organically, with fire), preparing and planting, planning crop alternations, sowing and harvesting.
As the first crops are ready for market, the trucks (and vans) load and head out to the various markets, first with just a few onions, asparagus, etc., adding variety as the crops are harvested. Some head over the Snoqualmie pass to Pike Place and Seattle-area markets and others stay back "home" on the farm. Momma Maria and a couple others stay back for a Eastern Washington markets.
As the season gets going, a sort of rhythm emerges: Wednesdays at about 3 a.m. loaded trucks head west to the Market (s). Organic Wednesdays are big at Pike Place, sometimes selling several truck loads of fresh produce. Then back again for the big Thursday pack-up to prepare for the busy weekends. Trucks constantly make the trip over the pass, freshening and replenishing supplies.
Sunday nights the empty trucks head back, leaving a token selling crew. Mondays the trucks are cleaned for the Tuesday pick-and-pack and off to market again.
"Now that I've tried farming, I don't want to do anything else," said Ray Bermudez, an honorary Alvarez, involved in all aspects of the farm and a familiar face in many Seattle-area farmer's markets. "There is always something happening."
The farm is set up to get it in and get it out with sorting and packing areas, cold storage facilities and the farmhouse compound. The farmhouse compound includes the peanut room, the staging and loading area and lunge areas. The entire hacienda is inviting in a big-family sort of way, the perfect place for kids to grow up.
All the decorations in the farmhouse are farming related, including a hand-painted Sarah Clementson watercolor painting of their stand at the Pike Place Market in all it's summer glory. Clementson said Larry Alvarez commissioned her to paint the peppers several years ago and she's been painting them ever since. The picturesque peppers are prominently featured on the cover of her new 2006 calendar.
For a Seattleite, the Alvarez Farm feels like another country in another time. Seeing the seeds, watching freshly picked crops wheeled in, it is overwhelming. Everything tastes better here, fresher, seeing what you will be eating growing, then pulled from the earth. It is the ultimate way to, as the Market slogan says, "meet the producer."
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