Spring Starts

Greetings from Avenue 33 Farm, where spring is here and summer is in view! If you don’t believe us, just ask our tomato starts. Since early last month, they’ve been growing cozily indoors on our farm while we monitor moisture, airflow, and temperature. They started in 72-cell trays before we up-potted each of them to their own four-inch pots.

And, in just a few weeks, likely on April 19, we’ll have those little pots for sale at one of our Saturday farmstands. You can take home a plant or two to try your hand at tomato farming. We only grow tomato varieties we have seen are suited to this region, so these will give you a good chance at tomatoes of your own. Feel free to ask us questions about maintenance, too.

This is our attempt at an artsy photo of these tomato starts!

We’re growing 11 varieties. In the slicer category, there are Marsalato, Darkstar, Buffalosteak, Big Beef Plus, Strawberry Fields, Marmalade Skies, Cherokee Carbon, and Estiva. And, among cherry tomatoes, we’re growing Sakura, Citrine, and Black Cherry.

In other news, our four new spring interns, all high-school students at Los Angeles Leadership Academy, have been acclimating to farm life, learning all our practices. As you’ll start seeing them behind the tables at our farmstand, we wanted to introduce you to two of them today and two in next month’s newsletter.

First up is senior Victor Suy, who wants to one day have his own home garden. Victor also ran his second L.A. Marathon earlier this month.

Ave 33 Farm intern Victor Suy.

“Mile 18 was when I first started getting tired,” Victor said. “Towards Mile 20, that loop really exhausted me. I remembered it from last year, but I forgot how hard it was.”

Victor proudly set a new personal record in the event. Asked how the experience compared to the hardest days on the farm, Victor grinned.

“It kinda reminded me,” he said, “of a Saturday when we’re out here in the sun.”

Victor, a senior, came to us as an abnormally organized and prepared teen. But he has already upped that further, putting into practice lessons learned from workshops with farm programming manager Andrea Oloughlin, including concepts borrowed from French kitchens. He said improved organizational skills and dietary alterations are two changes he has noticed since he started with us.

“I’ve learned to mise en place a lot in my own life,” Victor said. “I’m always using it in school or anywhere at home. And since I started being an intern, I realized I’ve been eating a lot of fruits and vegetables now. I did it before, but I do it a lot more now.”

Next is junior Aillen Liao, a junior and shooting guard for LALA’s basketball team.

Ave 33 Farm intern Aillen Liao.

Aillen applied because he wanted to obtain job skills. His family has a garden at home, too, so he already had some familiarity with plants. But the amount of patience and dedication required to successfully cultivate crops still surprised him.

“Everyone thinks you just put a hole in the ground, put a seed in, and water it, but, no, there’s a lot more stuff like composting, fertilizer,” he said. “There’s a lot more to it. Plants just don’t grow in one day. You have to nurture them every single day for them to grow to their full potential.”

Aillen started handling his first customers last Saturday, and he did wonderfully. His goal is to continue to develop his customer-service skills over the next several weeks. He believes that getting more comfortable in that setting will help him going forward.

“At the farmstand, knowing how to talk to people, knowing how to take their order and get their produce — learning how to deal with customers, that’s one of the biggest parts in any field,” he said.

Other farm happenings include interviewing collegiate candidates for summer internships that start before we know it, hosting first graders on farm field trips, and taking the interns on a field trip to the South Pasadena Farmers Market, where we tasked them with researching other farmers’ pricing.

And, as always, we’re preparing boxes for our weekend farmstand. In this week’s boxes are salad mix, apples, avocados, Cara Cara oranges, Yukon Gold potatoes, broccoli, kale, brussels sprouts, and a dozen eggs. Everything is grown by us or our local farm friends Don Beto Farms, Mixteco Farms, Burkdoll Farms, and Cuyama Orchards.

We’ll be open Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 234 E. Ave 33 in Lincoln Heights.

All the interns with Andrea, our programming manager. You'll meet Ashley and Jayden next time.