Bert: I feel so lucky about doing what I’ve been doing here for the last 20 years because I’ve gotten to meet almost everybody in the Valley and have a really good relationship with people I never would have met in any other way. I think that a lot of people with businesses in town experience the same thing, It gives you a very different perspective on what goes on around here. I feel really, really lucky that I’m able to do this. I don’t know what else I would do if I stopped doing this.
B: Did you plan to do this?
It was the last thing I ever imagined doing! (chuckles) I wanted to be a farmer and have an organic farm in the country. Steve McKay and I bought our property in 1975. Amazingly enough, we bought our property while we were still in school. We didn’t have jobs, we didn’t know what we were going to do! We knew that we wanted to have a farm somewhere in California and were driving all over the state looking at different places. Nothing was exactly what we wanted. Somebody had told us to look in Ukiah. We looked there and thought, “Huh! We don‘t want to live here!” We were going to camp out on the coast and we drove through Anderson Valley in the beginning of April. It was so beautiful, I said, “This is the kind of place I want to live.”
On the way back we stopped at a real estate agent’s office and we told him what we were looking for. He said “I have just the place for you.” And he did! Without looking at anything else, we bought our property. With no money! I think I just borrowed some money from my father for a while.
B: What had the property been before and why was it for sale?
It was whole ranch that was divided up right when we came. The Goodells had just bought property, Betty Campbell was there, three women who were teachers in the city had bought property on the hillside, Clarence and Darlene Furtado bought the bottom part, and we bought all the flat part in the front.
Steve tried to get a teaching job here but he didn’t get it the first year so we came and farmed on the weekends. We both got jobs in the city. He got a teaching job and I got a job at a nursery. I only did that a year and then I moved here. I got a job with the school district in Ukiah and he kept trying to get a job here and eventually, three years later, he got it.
I worked at night and farmed during the day and Steve came up on the weekends and all his holidays and vacations.
B: What did you do with your product back then?
We didn’t have any product! We were building fences, we planted fruit trees, and 25,000 strawberry plants! We had U-pick strawberries. That’s how we started to meet everybody. It was really fun. We just put a little sign on the road. This was probably 1978, ‘79. We did that for three or four years. That was pretty fun.
B: That sounds like a huge operation!
Yeah, but we were pretty young. We were twenty two when we moved here. We both had degrees in agriculture. It was what we wanted to do.
B: So how did the store get started?
Steve’s mother bought the building planning to move up here in six or seven years when she retired. In the meantime it was just vacant and Steve said “Why don’t we just sell our produce there in the summer?” I didn’t want to do it! We both had full time jobs, we both were working on the farm, we’d just built a 30,000 square foot greenhouse,…
B: You had incredible energy!
Seems like it now! (Laughter) I don’t know how we did it. We were growing tomatoes in the green house, and then we built two more greenhouses. So we had a lot of stuff to sell. We had been taking it to the city, selling it to Veritable Vegetable when they were just starting up. It’s an organic women’s collective wholesaler, the biggest in the state now, and it was great because we became friends with them. That’s where we buy our produce for the store now.
We had a booth at the fair and sold things there. Mostly we gave things away. We realized there was no apple-tasting at the Fair. All those apples in the ag room but you couldn’t taste them! So we had a little booth and gave samples of all the apples we were growing and other people’s apples as well. John Dach was growing organic apples then, too, so we had a bunch of organic apples we were letting people sample.
We realized there were a lot of people around here who wanted to buy organic produce. That was why Steve thought we should use his mother’s building to sell our produce in the summer.
B: She bought this building thinking she’d live in it?
No, she was going to open a gift shop as a retirement business.
So we fixed up the building and started selling produce and all of a sudden all these people were saying, “Why don’t you sell this, and why don’t you sell that!” Before we knew it, it was a store! We still had our jobs, we still had the farm, we still had the green houses, and now we had a store! (Laughter) Luckily, we were able to do the store in a way that we didn’t have to worry about it making money, so we really were able to get a lot of these things that people felt weren’t available that they really wanted, things we were willing to sell because they were the kind of things that we ate.
B: What do you mean, you were able to do the business. Are you a non-profit? Did you incorporate in some special way?
No, I just mean we had jobs that supported us already, so we didn’t really need to make any money from the store. Of course it is a problem now. (Laughs) We set up a business that’s very labor-intensive, it has a really low markup generally, in a place where there’s very low volume. These kinds of business really need much larger volume to sustain themselves.
B: Do you have any regrets about having started this business?
The only regret I have is that I don’t get to spend enough time working the soil any more. I did some till about ten years ago and then when Steve moved away, it was just impossible to do it by myself. I still mowed it. I have a lot of farm equipment, tried to prune what I could, tried to keep up the irrigation system as best as I could, which wasn’t very good! (Laughs) Over the ten years, things deteriorated.
Nowadays Bernie, from Pomo Tierra, picks a lot of my apples, he prunes some of my trees, he’s helped me a whole lot. He buys the apples and resells them.
Now I’ve met Jonathan and Nastasia. have They had a small garden on Regina’s property but wanted to do more. I said, “I have all this room and I’m not doing anything; you’re welcome to use it.” So they have a vegetable garden there, they take care of the trees somewhat, if they stay over time they’ll probably repair the whole rest of the orchard.
B: Do you have a good water supply there?
Fairly good. I get 35 gallons a minute. It’s all fenced. I have around a thousand fruit trees still.
B: Do you want to talk about the changes you’ve seen in the Valley in the years you’ve been here?
Well the most incredible thing about this valley for so long was, the people who lived here, lived here because it was beautiful! This is a valley full of people who appreciated a beautiful place and that was where they wanted to be. That was most important to them.
B: I think the newcomers feel that way, too, but the difference is, they have money!
Now there are a lot of people coming thinking that they’re going to make money, that’s what different. When the price of grapes went up, that’s what made the value of property so high; all of a sudden people could make money on it. Whereas before it wasn’t really valuable except as something that was beautiful. Now it’s beautiful and profitable. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I’m just saying that it’s different. Things change. Now there are people who enjoy or expect that there are going to be certain services available to them, because they can afford it and they’re used to it.
B: What services are you referring to?
Boonville is a small community with limited businesses and things that are available to people in all different ways. The idea of urbanizing Boonville, or all of Anderson Valley, that life isn’t good enough without this or that… Everybody has different values. It’s just interesting to watch.
For example, look at this change. Michael Shapiro tried to subdivide some property back here that he owns. He had divided it into four parcels and the County told him it wasn’t enough! When we were trying to get new zoning laws 25 years ago, to slow the process of subdividing, all of a sudden now there’s like a mandate in the county to create more housing here! They want him to subdivide it into more parcels! Instead of making 20 acres into four 5-acre parcels, they want it to be six parcels, smaller parcels with more houses! He says there’s a mandate to create more housing in the Valley. But how can they override the zoning plan we did 20 years ago? This was ag land, so it’s getting an exemption from ag land.
Environmental studies was what I majored in in college, and land use planning was a big part of that. That’s when there were like five people in Environmental Studies. (Laughs)
B: Where did you go to school?
I went to undergraduate school in New York and graduate school in Davis. And then I moved here and became a farmer!
B: When I interviewed Darius and Julie and Marie, Marie made the comment that she was amazed at how you cobbled together a business doing a little bit of everything to make ends meet.
I didn’t do it to make ends meet, I did it because people kept saying, “Why don’t you do this, why don’t you do that?” It just became what it is. I just responded to people’s requests, and most of it was fun.”
B: And is it catering that’s a large part of your business?
We have a wholesale business. We sell our deli food to other natural food stores in the county. This makes it possible to make things in larger quantities, so we can make things for our deli case that we couldn’t afford to offer if we were just making one dish for the ten people that are going to buy it. We can make it for thirty people.
B: And how did that come about? Was it your idea or somebody else’s?
I used to go to the Redwood Health Club when I worked in Ukiah and their food was so awful (laughs). I started talking to them and they said, “Why don’t we buy some of your food?” They were actually our first customer. The same thing happened with somebody who worked at Corners of the Mouth, they used to come in here, so we started selling things to them. The Veritable Vegetable truck would deliver their food to them. Then I started talking to the Coop in Ukiah because I’d been a member of the Coop since it was in a garage! So they were all my friends. That’s how it all started and it just kind of expanded from there. When Bruce Bread started making bread, they had a delivery route and we went along with them.
B: Tell me more about your jobs in Ukiah.
I worked for the Ukiah School District and then for the county, as an ESL teacher at the Buddhist Temple. The Buddhists had a program to take in refugees who could stay there for four months at a time and County Schools provided teachers for them. It was a great job, one of the most fun things I’ve ever done!
B: And you just quit that five years ago?
Probably more like eight or nine years ago.
B: And for these years Boont Berry has been your entire source of support?
Right.
B: What percent of the whole business is the wholesale business?
It changes every year. But probably 25 to 30%. Pretty significant. If we weren’t doing that, we probably wouldn’t be in business at all. Or our business would be really different! (Laughs)
I think it became what it is because we all came at the same time and became friends before we were business partners. We were all trying to help each other stay in business. We were all interested in the same thing. We were growing organic produce when people had no idea what organic meant and laughed at us. So we were reaching out to each other, trying to figure out what to do. Mary Elke just the other day reminded me of a trip she and Steve and I took to Apple Hill in maybe 1980. It’s a place near Placerville where there are a lot of apple orchards and they got together and formed a coop. They had a lot of different events and attracted a lot of tourists but of course they had the whole Bay Area and Sacramento closer to them. We went up there to see how possible it would be to do something like that here. To get all the people who were trying to grow organic apples or whatever kind of organic produce--John Dach had just started growing some organic stuff--and form our own little coop and juice our own apples--it sounded like fun. Nut it didn’t happen. People who moved here were still into doing their own thing. Mary and Steve and I juiced apples together for a while, however, and that was fun. Mary got a press and we pressed all the apples we had between us and sold it as Mary Elke Apple Juice.
B: How many gallons a year are you talking about?
I have no idea; no memory whatsoever! I’d completely forgotten about the whole thing until she reminded me recently! “Oh, yeah, that was really fun!”
When we opened the store, we imagined that all these other people who were growing would want to sell their produce but that never happened.
B: Why not?
I think because the wholesale price of produce is so low, it just doesn’t seem worth it to the grower to sell it at wholesale instead of getting the retail price at a farmer’s market.
B: So all these years you’ve been getting produce wholesale from the women’s coop?
Pretty much. We do buy locally when people want to sell it to us. We sell apples from the Apple Farm. But there isn’t that much organic produce around. Vicki Brock didn’t really have a garden back then. Nowadays we buy squash and some other produce from her. But she can get a lot more money at the farmer’s market. And it’s probably fun for her to be there, just like it’s fun for me to be here.
B: But going to farmer’s markets can lead to burnout!
That’s why we opened the store! Because we were doing the same thing, we were driving to Berkeley to sell our tomatoes…it seemed crazy! When we opened the store, before Veritable Vegetable came up here, we drove to the city twice a week at 1:00 in the morning to buy produce and come back. Then Steve would go to school right afterwards and I would go to work!
B: Is Steve still involved in the business or did you buy him out?
No, he’s not. He gave me his quarter-interest.
B: What about his mother’s owning half the building?
Regina bought out Jim and Jeannie’s share. So now Regina owns half and I own half.
B: I know farmers have to show a profit at least some years to call themselves farmers, does that apply to businesses?
Well I make enough to pay the mortgage! I feel pretty rich! I can’t imagine any other life!
B: That raises a good question, Where do you see the business or yourself being ten or twenty years from now?
Don’t know. I think about it. We’re planning on building a new kitchen, thanks to Regina. The building itself is in really bad shape! It’s a really old building that wasn’t made to have this kind of use. It was a barn, or some kind of agricultural shed! We’re going to build a new addition off the back, a much nicer kitchen, easier to clean, more efficient to use, it’ll be a much nicer working environment because we’re really pretty busy in the kitchen.
B: What’s the total number of customers you have for the wholesale end of the business?
Maybe ten customers. It could be more if we had the facility and a way to deliver. But I don’t know if we want it to be way more. That’s like a whole ‘nother dimension of working. Or we could increase the catering part of the business. Presently catering’s pretty booked. There are some groups we do regularly. And there’s a job we do every summer for a week, that’s pretty fun.
B: You say you wanted to be a farmer, but it sounds like you really like being a chef!
I like food!
B: You’re one of the few caterers I know who isn’t overweight! How come?
I’ve been very conscious of health and nutrition from a really young age.
B: I saw Kevin snacking on a piece of avocado just now, but none of your employees are overweight!
The people who shop at natural food stores tend not to be overweight because they care about their health. The only overweight person who works in the store, one of the cooks, is losing weight. I think she’s becoming more conscious of what she eats, because we talk about the fat content of things when we make it, and we talk about why we do what we do! It’s food! The idea that there’s a “health food” section in a supermarket--is that crazy or what! A little section that’s “health food”! What’s the rest of it!
B: Have you read the statistics that are coming out in the press on obesity and childhood obesity and diabetes?
I’ve spent the last forty years reading stuff like that and I don’t want to know any more! I started reading that stuff when I was really young and then in college I had an organic chemistry teacher who used to work for the FDA. This was in 1970, and he quit because there were all these horrible things going on. He talked about hydrogenated oils, trans-fatty acids, synthetic vitamins, toxins in peanut butter, all these things that nobody talked about until thirty years later! So I stopped eating all that stuff a long time ago.
I grew up with a father who ate wheat germ, rice cakes, and non-fat yogurt for breakfast and as much as I hated that, somehow it sank in. My father exercised all the time. This was in the fifties. It was pretty unusual. I’m sorry that my father’s not alive now. He died not that long ago in a car accident, not of ill health. Now that I’m really conscious of what I’m doing, and comparing it to what he was doing; it would have been nice to be able to talk to him! I kind of talk to him anyhow…
The bottom line is I feel blessed, that I’ve gotten to do what I do, and that I live here and have met all these incredible people! The store is an incredible place to be all the time! I spend all day with my friends having a good time selling the kinds of things that I myself would buy and like to eat and feel good about selling! I get to play in the kitchen whenever I want to…
It’s kind of funny. I’m really happy. I live in this incredibly beautiful place. I eat great food all the time.(Laughs) I might drive the same car I’ve been driving for the last twenty years, but …I’m pretty happy! I’m really happy!
B: Thank you very much, Bert!
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