Young farmers yield crops

Galen Weston has several small farms throughout Tuolumne County. Amy Alonzo Rozak/Union Democrat

Many of these budding farmers have pasts filled with prestigious university degrees and environmental causes, but they’ve found that change is more measurable in small patches of foothill dirt.

Alex Meizlish and Lindsay Warshaw, both transplants from Northwestern University in Chicago, have a small farm, or large garden, in Big Oak Flat.

Galen Weston, a Tuolumne County native, returned home after a Stanford University education and has found fulfillment on several farms he tends in the Sonora area.

Sean Kriletich, a Calaveras County native, also returned home after a University of California, Santa Cruz, education and three years of traveling the world to farm land in Paloma and Jackson in nearby Amador County.
   

These young farmers squeak by — selling produce at farmers markets, to local restaurants and through programs where they box up an assortment of seasonal produce for customers.

Instead of pursuing fulfillment through material means, they find purpose in simplifying as the world grows more complicated — seeking sustainability in a society of excess — and uniting communities with food.

“You can really see the effect you’re making,” said Kriletich, who last year recharged the Jackson Farmers Market after almost a decade, when it disappeared. “The smile on someone’s face. The little bit of change in perspective when you talk to people over time. It feels less like banging my head against the wall.”

On Kriletich’s land in Jackson and Paloma, he’s currently growing tomatoes, broccoli, carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, lettuce, basil, strawberries, chard, kale, peppers and eggplant.

And, like the other young farmers, Kriletich grows without the use of pesticides or chemicals.

Meizlish and Warshaw’s farm in Big Oak Flat is growing a similar buffet of fruits and vegetables.

But unlike Kriletich and Weston, Meizlish and Warshaw are not returning home but just arriving in the foothills. They made their way west after growing up in Columbus, Ohio, and New York City, respectively.

They met at Northwestern University and, after years of toiling around the west searching for worthy causes, they met back up in Big Oak Flat to work the land.

“My family thought I was crazy,” Warshaw said. “Now, my parents are totally hip to it.”

Their one-acre farm is still in its infancy, about a year old.

“I love interacting, growing and eating the food,” Warshaw said. “I love to educate people at the markets.”

Meizlish and Warshaw found their way to Big Oak Flat after they saw the land advertised on a flier.

“I thought, ‘what do I really know?’ “ Meizlish said. “I wanted to understand one thing that I feel is so paramount — food.”

For all of the farmers, it’s not only about environmental health but also community health. They say that farmers markets bring communities together and force people to understand where their food comes from.

On a recent day, Weston was working one of his small plots of land off Bald Mountain Road in Sonora.

He was praising the warmth after unseasonable cool early-summer temperatures were preventing his peppers from prospering. A few watermelons were getting plump. Squash and zucchini were ready to pick.

“I’m going to be overwhelmed with melons here in a little while,” he said.

Weston finds fulfillment not only in changing the way people eat and think about their food, but the process of running a small, organic farm.

“It’s pretty creative — which a lot of people don’t associate with it,” he said.

Weston also said it’s intellectually stimulating, listing talents from botany to marketing that are used in the process.

It’s also given Weston a chance, who’s championed environmental causes, “to put my money where my mouth is.”

“I’m not just opposing stuff,” he said. “It’s a local specific solution to a global problem.”