Organic farmer Phil McGrath
Photo: Natalie Avakian
Organic farmer Phil McGrath
Photo: Natalie Avakian
“This is the perfect opportunity to kill some weeds,” farmer Phil McGrath shouts over his shoulder as he strides through the mud along a row of legumes. With each step he exuberantly squashes the top of an unwanted invader. The wet goo sloshes up onto his boots and the cuffs of his Levis, but he doesn’t mind; he stomps with the pleasure of a six-year-old splashing in a puddle of rain. If it weren’t for his neatly trimmed beard and head of curly hair—both white, with a sprinkling of dark grey—you’d never know he’s really 52.
There is a kind of uncensored joy in the way McGrath navigates the sprawling acres of his organic McGrath Family Farm. He not only looks over his crops, he stops to pluck things straight out of the ground, popping open a fava bean or an English sweet pea and tasting it right there. “These are great on salads,” he’ll declare, or, “These sell out in an hour.” He is thrilled when he sees “McGrath Family Farms” listed on the menus of his customers (LA restaurants like Water Grill, Real Food Daily or Lucques) or when folks stop by his prominently located farmers’ market booths to thank him for his produce.
But it’s a long way—and many months—from seed to market.
A nature lover who made “back to the land” his life’s work, McGrath is more likely to be riding a surfboard than a tractor in the early morning hours. So it’s 10 a.m. on a warm spring morning when Phil hops out of his dusty, white pick-up to start the work day, accompanied by Billy, a somewhat frenetic, brown and white beagle with a penchant for freshly-picked berries. Farm work is legendary for its dawn to dusk schedule, but fortunately, McGrath explains, “I have great management and I’ve been doing it for 35 years.”
The day is pristine, with only a few streaks of white punctuating the sky in the distance. Nonetheless, in Phil’s three and a half decades of working the land, he’s seen every kind of weather this area of California has to offer. He knows that when you work outside it’s best to be prepared for the worst, so he sports a fleece pullover.
On this particular morning, Phil first checks in with his friend and employee Arturo Reyes. Reyes, who has a wide, full-moon face capped by a military-style flattop, manages the countless organizational details of transporting produce to farmers’ markets. After discussing a few particulars regarding who will man the produce booths at each market that weekend, Phil is just about to hop back into his truck and survey some of his new plantings when a neighboring farmer stops by bearing a small basket of deep-purple black raspberries. Phil pops one after another of the sweet fruits into his mouth while they chat, occasionally sharing a small handful with Billy at his feet.
The McGrath’s have farmed Ventura County since 1867, when Phil’s great grandfather owned 7,000 acres stretching across some of the most fertile ground in the state. As each generation passed, land was split between brothers until Phil’s father was left with 300 acres that lie mainly on the west side of the 101 freeway in Camarillo. The 300 acres are comprised of the Helm Ranch, which was bought by Phil’s great grandfather in 1914, and the Claberg Ranch, bought by his grandfather in 1950.
When he was a kid, Phil liked to climb the eucalyptus trees near his family’s home. Once up among the topmost branches, his hands fragrant with menthol, he would cling tightly to the trees as they swayed back and forth in the wind. From his perch he had a view out across the Oxnard plain straight to the Pacific Ocean; even closer, only a few hundred yards away on the opposite side of the 101 Freeway, he could see nearly every inch of his family’s farm.
In 1992, Phil took over the farmers’ market operations at McGrath Family Farms, switching from conventional farming to organic three years later. “After listening to about 5,000 people a week ask me if my product was organic, I came up with a really good idea and started to grow organically. It only took me three years to figure it out!” he explains, laughing at himself.
Today, 270 of the 300 remaining acres are leased out to Reiter Affiliated Companies, a large, Oxnard-based organic farming company, while Phil cultivates the rest. Everything that is grown on Phil’s 30 acres is certified organic, and everything is directly marketed and sold within a 60-mile radius—either to restaurants or farmers’ markets in Santa Barbara, LA and Ojai, or to the Farm to School Program, a relatively new arm of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) that buys produce directly from local farms and serves it to children in the Ventura Unified School District.
Walking along a narrow dirt road between two separate sections of the farm, Phil examines what has been recently planted, what needs to be harvested and what will be planted next. As he explains, the biggest task in farming is scheduling—scheduling plantings, harvests, irrigation and ground work. The list goes on and on. “You’ve got to be constantly thinking three days ahead,” he emphasizes.
Traffic on the 101 roars behind him as he stops to point out the different crops already growing in his fields, and where he’ll plant more in the coming months: fava beans, lima beans, kabocha, Moroccan squash, estrella squash, artichokes, English sweet peas, strawberries, yellow beans, wax beans, purple beans, green beans, yellow carrots, red carrots, baby orange carrots, juicing carrots, onions, beets, sunflowers (“to bring in the ladybugs,” he explains), tuber roses (for the same reason), kale, endive, big romaine, red leaf and butter lettuce. “I really grow too much, but it’s always fun,” he chuckles, scratching his head in bemusement.
Phil continues to tick off a list of more vegetables, all the while clarifying why diversity of crops is, in many ways, the secret to his success. “Everything I sell has a purpose,” he explains. “I sell flowers because they bring in the beneficial insects. I sell strawberries because they are the number one crop in Ventura County. I sell beans and legumes and vegetables because they help the soil.”
The only time McGrath claims to have any real trouble with his farming is when he feels pressured (by consumer demand) to grow crops out of season—plants like strawberries that are perturbed to find themselves growing in the winter. In a perfect—and perhaps perfectly healthy—world, people would crave the produce that is naturally in season, simultaneously relieving the pressures that force many farmers to turn to harmful pesticides.
Beyond farming merely organically, Phil aspires towards farming sustainably. As he pokes around in the soil checking for recently planted lima beans, he describes the three pillars of sustainable farming—the three E’s: Environmentally sound, Equitable pay for workers and Economically viable. “You can be organic and not be sustainable,” he points out, just before chancing upon a small, curling green growth a few inches under the soil. He pinches it between his fingers and inspects it for a moment. “There’s a new baby here,” he exclaims. “This is a good sign.”
Before heading back to deliberate further with Reyes, he chats in Spanish for a few moments with one of his workers about setting sprinkler pipes, until a patch of artichokes catches his eye and he marches straight into the knee-high growth. Snapping a few of the spiky green pinecone-shaped vegetables off the stalk, Phil enthuses that first-of-the-season artichokes are the most tender. He makes a mental note to have the full crop harvested and to plant a few more rows of squash.
Lunchtime often finds Phil at Noah’s Bagels in Camarillo for one very important reason: Noah’s has a generously large bathroom where, given enough soap and time, Phil can remove most of the morning’s dirt (and black raspberry juice) from his hands.
It’s an average lunch for a not-so-average farmer. Here in Ventura County, selling by way of direct marketing, and selling organic produce, is certainly not the norm. But Phil perceives a growing trend, believing that in the organic world, supply has not yet hit demand. Soon, more local farmers will convert to growing organic, he thinks, especially as consumers become more educated.
Education is what Phil sees as the fourth “E” in sustainable farming, and his desire to share what he knows has seeded many of his future plans for the farm. The most ambitious project on McGrath Family Farm’s horizon is a seven-acre agricultural learning center anchored by a brand new produce stand. Phil has already purchased the building that will house the education center—an original one-room schoolhouse built circa 1932 that he had transported to the site—and is busy planning the farm/garden that will grow behind it.
This truly seems to be the aspect of farming that has stolen the man’s heart—its potential. When Phil talks about farming, it is usually in the future tense. He speaks about what he will be doing next—how he wants to sell fresh, organic produce not only to schools, but to businesses like Patagonia in Ventura and Amgen in Thousand Oaks as well. How he wants to teach children to love the soil, and reintroduce farm animals to the farm—again in the name of sustainability—because it makes sustainable sense: cow manure can be used to compost crops, and chickens will eat small, potentially harmful bugs. How one day he will build a small farm center, complete with worker housing and a bio-refinery (where growing crops produce energy).
When Phil surveys his 30 acres, where most other people see only dirt and mud and the tops of thousands of anonymous plants, he sees endless possibility.
McGrath does most of his own ground work—he claims his tractors are so old and finicky that he doesn’t want to waste time teaching anyone else how to drive them. Of course, like almost all other farm tasks, he also enjoys it. “I like whistling Dixie and driving down the road. It’s good thinking time. I turn my phone off. I can think about what I want to do next. There are definitely mental benefits to driving tractors,” Phil philosophizes, hopping up into a large, open tractor to bed-up five acres near where his future produce stand will live. It’s also the site of his first summer plantings.
The tractor hums and groans as Phil lowers four trowels into the earth. He drives forward, slowly at first, and the ground breaks open—the dusty grey topsoil splitting to expose the deep chocolaty brown earth beneath. The surrounding air immediately smells like rain. The pace is maddeningly slow, but Phil seems in no particular hurry.
“I love that it’s so different every year,” McGrath says, explaining why, after more than half a century of farming life, he still feels so much passion. “There’s no way anybody ever learns everything there is to know about farming in one lifetime. You just can’t do that. Every year is different, every farm is different, every crop is different and that’s what makes it interesting.”
Billy runs alongside the tractor and then in front of it, always keeping a safe distance, guiding the behemoth machine in a straight line. Phil hops out after a few passes to inspect his work, laughing at a couple of patches that are not perfectly straight. After completing his tractor work, McGrath will swing by his office in Camarillo to answer a few phone calls and ignore a few emails—he claims an active dislike of computers—before heading home to what he considers the most important thing in his life: his family.
But for now, the field is all that matters. The farmer climbs back into his tractor and rumbles off into the distance.
Ventura-based Stephanie Kinnear frequently writes about the environment.