Robin and Lucila with some future sauerkraut, cole slaw, and/or taco topping. Seriously, this cabbage is delicious — with both sweetness and heat to it, things you don’t really find in commodity cabbage

If you live in the North Park/South Park area, you’ve probably heard a lot lately about Suzie’s Farm. They’re blowing up, and it’s for really simple reasons: the farmers, Robin and Lucila, live in North Park, they’ve got a big farm in the city of San Diego, and their food is delicious. Plus they’ve been attending more and more farmers markets recently, their CSA drops at Grant’s Marketplace in South Park, and they’ve been reaching out a lot to restaurants recently, including to us. For which we’re grateful since their food is so good.

Michael from the Link talking with Robin

We stumbled upon their farm a few weeks ago when we were riding to Tijuana for lunch, and then we co-sponsored a showing of Food, Inc. with them at Velo Cult, so it was clearly time for a proper visit to see how they work and how we could work together better. I’m really glad we did, because their farm is quite unique for San Diego.

First of all, it’s actually in the city, which is pretty unusual for local farms, many of which are farther out in the county. Suzie’s Farm is only about 15-20 miles from the restaurant, close enough to be an nice, leisurely Saturday bike ride along the bay. We even ran across Santa.

Robin and Lucila have been farming in the Tijuana River Valley (which is in San Diego, south of Imperial Beach) since 1991. They started with sprouts and also moved into microgreens. Here some popcorn sprouts they grow, which are amazingly sweet.

They’re really sprouted popcorn, the seeds look like something you’d put in a pan and pop. The sprouts, however, are like pure sugar.

Anyway, they compost everything and use that as a main source of fertilizer for both their sprouts/microgreen farm, Sun Grown Organics, and also for Suzie’s Farm, which is basically row crops.

I love me some good compost. You can see how they toss any of their products in here, whether it’s because they don’t sell at the farmers market or the food didn’t turn out as good as they want…it can all be re-used.

We love microgreens, but operationally at the Linkery we are more focused on buying produce proper. Our goal is to have all of our ingredients to be farmed by our friends, and while microgreens are delicious additions to dishes, we have to start with fruits and vegetables first! So we were most interested in the full-size produce that Robin and Lucila are growing.

Tomato season is over, but they’ve been experimenting with growing tomatoes in a hot house (no external heat, just plastic to trap the heat of the sun). We verified that the experiment is a delicious success.

These tasted as good as they look

Most of the produce they grow, though, is outdoors. We got a great tour, including tastings, of all their outdoor crops. I don’t think I got pictures of their amazing — really amazing — sugar snap peas, their beautiful peppers, their small sweet cucumbers, their radishes, or their zucchinis and squash blossoms.

Here our friends the Kelleys sampled some haricot verts, as did we. Eating the food from the field, one of things I noticed was that not only did the vegetables tend to have very pronounced (and delicious) sugars, but also a decent amount of spice or heat. I don’t know whether it’s just being close to the source or if it’s a characteristic of produce grown in our climate — the only other time I’ve really noticed it has been eating at Laja, which is kind of the same thing, since their produce is grown on site and often picked that day.

They’ve got some strawberries started which will be ready in early spring.

Their lettuce is completely delicious, and the setting in the river valley is beautiful…even the not planted parts.

It was a joyous and delicious visit. I think we ate a whole salad worth of crops right from the field. One thing that really struck me is that Robin and Lucila have only planted a small portion of their land — if we as a community could support more restaurants that bought food from them, their farm could grow quite a bit without worrying about restrictions on land and water. It’s a huge opportunity for San Diego to develop a strong local food economy, and I hope we can all make it happen. It was great to find that a place like this exists, just waiting for us to bring it to its full capacity. I hope we can do it, and soon.

When it was time to leave, we had our bikes there, and we were only a couple miles from the international border, which meant we could easily ride to one of our favorite local restaurants…

…specifically, Erizo Cebicheria on Calle Sonora, behind the twin towers off of Agua Caliente to the south.

And then we were directed to Garces, with the intent of intercepting Turista Libre 1.3.

And intercept them we did.

Kelly Davis and DJ Claire

Is that Tijuana’s New Poster Boy? Dude, yo quiero ser Miss Tijuana!

After a lot of laughs and great conversation, it was time to ride back to the US. You might think riding on major roads in TJ would be intimidating, but as Sean pointed out, in Mexico as bike riders we could take a lane and drivers would accommodate us. On American suburban streets cars drive very fast and don’t tolerate non-cars in the lanes, but here the road was much more of a shared space.

Big hugs and thanks to Robin and Lucila for hosting us and growing such great food, and helping the Linkery do its job of making real food for our neighborhood.

Thanks also to the Kelleys for riding along with us, and to Maya and Paul for joining us and documenting the day, and to Maya for arranging us to meet today’s iteration of Turista Libre. And mad ups, as always, to Derrik, who apparently was sent from Cincinnati on a mission to bring together our bifurcated city into something that makes more sense.