female announcer: "A Growing Passion" is made possible by... Leichtag Commons, a nexus of sustainable agriculture, social enterprise, environmental education, and community engagement, all in the heart of scenic Encinitas.

♪♪♪ announcer: Your neighborhood Gelson's Market, Edible San Diego, Joe and Julie Walker.

♪♪♪ Jim and Judy Farley.

♪♪♪ And with the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪♪ Nan Sterman: Farmers are some of the most resilient people I know.

On a typical day, they manage their crops, their labor, water, fertilizer.

They have to find markets for their products, not to mention navigate a complex regulatory environment.

And a pandemic on top of that, we're in uncharted territory.

Nan: When the COVID-19 quarantine began in March of 2020, restaurants and schools, food processors, producers, and farmers markets all shut down.

Supply chains were disrupted, leaving farmers with crops in the fields, crops in their warehouses, and no way to sell them.

Consumers felt it too.

With the uncertainty of food supplies, they started vegetable gardens to feed their families and to escape the stress of quarantine.

The demand for seeds, seedlings, and nursery plants, skyrocketed.

All this forced dramatic shifts in the world of horticulture and agriculture.

Familiar business models went out the window.

Innovative farmers brainstormed new ways to reach customers while the community responded by searching out local and dependable food sources.

Nan: Farming has always been a tough business, never more so than during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We're checking in with San Diego's ag community to see how farmers and food producers are adapting, surviving, even thriving today on "A Growing Passion."

♪♪♪ Nan: San Diego County is home to one of the most diverse farming communities in the country.

Of the 5,000 farms spread across our county, 70% are smaller than nine acres.

Most grow specialty crops: strawberries, wine grapes, citrus, ornamentals, and the like.

They employ more than 12,000 workers and contribute $1.7 billion to the local economy.

Farmers are innovative and adaptive.

They're accustomed to toughing out the uncertainties of markets, of product trends, even the weather, but nothing could've prepared them for COVID-19.

Hannah Gbeh: So when the shelter-in-place order was issued, it threw the agricultural community into chaos.

Our markets collapsed.

Our small producers didn't have a place to sell.

Over probably a four-day period, many of our farmers lost up to 90% of their sales because it was scary there for a bit of time when they went to the grocery stores and the shelves were empty, and they were empty not because there was no food.

It was because there was a change in the supply lines.

We couldn't get the distribution going because of all these constraints.

Nan: Some growers did a fast pivot to find new ways to connect with customers.

Hannah: Our most successful farmers were able to do direct online sales, were able to modify their market stands to be more of a consumer-supported agricultural model, and seen our consumers wanna connect more directly to our local farmers, and that's been really positive.

♪♪♪ Nan: On the bright side, there was an increased interest in agritourism.

Yvette Duran: We just wanted to make sure the kids get out for a little bit, and what a great way to get 'em out in the field, picking.

He's been wanting to pick some strawberries, so he had some fun with his brother and dad.

♪♪♪ Nan: Jimmy Ukegawa owns the Carlsbad Strawberry Company, in Carlsbad, California.

His family has grown tomatoes and strawberries on this land since the 1950s.

During the pandemic, Ukegawa's U-pick Strawberry fields became a huge draw for families in search of fun and safe outdoor places to take their children.

Jimmy Ukegawa: For our business, the pandemic was a boon.

We were able to pivot, allow more people into our agritourism business at least quadruple on the strawberry U-pick.

♪♪♪ Nan: Visitors to the strawberry fields quadrupled as they came to pick and buy strawberries, yet as things were booming at the U-pick, just a few miles away at Jimmy's produce warehouse, local growers sat on perishable produce that was intended for local restaurants and schools, now all closed.

That sparked an idea for how he could help his fellow farmers while meeting the needs of the larger community.

Jimmy: We had some elderly friends in town we thought could use some mixed produce boxes, so we just gifted some boxes, and all of a sudden, they wanted to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, so we started delivering them.

Nan: Soon, Jimmy was operating a community-supported agriculture program.

He was delivering boxes of fresh produce free to area seniors, to the Boys & Girls Clubs, and to a local food bank.

Within a year, he'd given away more than 16,000 boxes of produce.

Jimmy began selling his boxes too.

He offered home delivery and curbside pickup, and that led to selling at the warehouse.

He now operates an outdoor farmers market seven days a week, selling produce grown by local farmers.

Local Food makers, whose supply chains also collapsed, sell their products here as well.

The enterprising ways of just this one farmer connected local producers to consumers and looks to benefit the entire community for the long term.

Jimmy: Well, we're very grateful for the community's support we've received.

We like to say we think that we've been cutting-edge on keeping our customers safe, providing education, as well as something healthy and entertaining for that family to do.

People have asked us how permanent will it be.

They've loved it.

They've really asked that we continue it.

We'll continue it as long as the demand is there.

♪♪♪ Nan: Since the pandemic started, most of us have been pretty much at home.

What's there to do when you're stuck at home?

Garden, of course.

Plant trees, plant flowers, plant vegetables, in fact, home gardening has exploded, and along with it the demand for gardening supplies, seedlings, and seeds.

♪♪♪ Nan: Brijette Pena owns San Diego Seed Company.

In 2010, she started her company to produce and sell organic, regionally adapted seeds to gardeners, farmers, and market growers.

Brijette's idea was simple: Find the varieties of fruits and vegetables best suited to producing regionally.

Grow those varieties for seed, and sell them.

♪♪♪ Nan: We last visited Brijette in 2016, shortly after she and her husband moved to this one-acre property to start their urban farm.

Her company was still in the fledgling stages.

♪♪♪ Four years later and practically overnight, the 2020 pandemic launched the San Diego Seed Company onto the national seed scene.

Brijette: One day we woke up, went to the computer--about had a heart attack.

We went from doing about four orders a day to hundreds of orders a day, overnight.

We were able to handle the demand because we're small and nimble and because my husband helped me a lot with sending off those orders.

♪♪♪ Nan: The pandemic demand may have been unexpected, but Brijette was ready to meet the moment.

She'd just redesigned all of her seed packets and had a big back stock of seeds.

Brijette: We were prepared.

We had the supplies.

We thought we had enough for two years, but we ran through our supply in one spring.

Nan: Seed companies across the country faced an unprecedented demand as people rushed to plant pandemic gardens.

For the public, seeds were hard to come by, not from a lack of supply, but because, in just a few months, the Seed Company sold through all the seeds they'd packaged to last the year.

With an online presence and plenty of packaged seeds, San Diego Seed Company sales soared.

More than 75% of their customers were new, new to San Diego Seed Company and many of them new to gardening.

Brijette: We actually had to hire somebody on just to respond to e-mails because people would be asking us, you know, "When do we plant this?"

"How do we care for this?"

"When do we harvest this?"

So it was just as much about getting the packets out the door as it was hand-holding a lot of the new gardeners who, you know, for the first time ever were gonna start their garden during the pandemic.

Nan: That commitment to customer service and their readiness when the demand exploded made San Diego Seed Company a pandemic success.

Brijette: It's been an emotional roller-coaster.

You know, we basically had overnight success.

I started the Seed Company almost ten years ago and never thought in a million years we would be where we are today, and it gives me great pride to know that we're helping people across the United States grow their gardens because, for me, growing a garden is the most incredible feeling.

It's empowering.

It--you know, spiritual.

It's so incredible, and to be a part of other people doing that, it makes me very happy.

Ah, oh, sorry.

It's a hard question to answer.

It's just been a crazy year, ah.

Nan: Now eight employees manage the workflow, and that frees Brijette to do what she loves the most.

Brijette: This garden has evolved quite a bit, so we do seed production here, but during the short, cool seasons, we primarily do research and development.

So we're trialing, we are doing breeding projects, and we're basically just figuring out what's gonna go on our catalog.

We gotta grow it first to know that it does well here before we include it in our collection.

Nan: It can take years to evaluate a single variety to see how it performs in the garden, to evaluate its disease resistance, its pest resistance, its production and its flavor.

That's the core of Brijette's research as she looks for vegetables best suited to the region.

Nan: I've been eyeing this.

That is the most spectacular cauliflower I've ever seen.

What variety is this?

Brijette: That is graffiti.

Nan: Is this from organic seed?

Brijette: That is from organic seed, yes.

Nan: You're organic certified now, right?

Brijette: Yes, we are a certified organic urban farm.

Nan: That is one impressive pile of big ole eggplants.

What are you doing?

Brijette: This is all eggplant for seed, so we'll take the seed out of that and dry it and put in the packets.

Nan: So this is next year's eggplants?

Brijette: This is next year's eggplants, yup.

Nan: What variety?

Brijette: Black beauty.

Nan: Brijette sells seeds for vegetables, herbs, and flowers, online and in nurseries.

Brijette: In January of last year, we were in about 15 stores.

Now we're in over 30.

That is huge.

Online presence is big, of course, but being able to be in a store, have somebody walk in and see your seeds, see our brand, get our educational booklets and material is--you know, makes a really big difference for us as a small business.

Nan: Brijette also donates seeds to schools and nonprofits.

It's her way of supporting the regional food supply and the community.

She's an overnight success story, ten years in the making, with a business grounded in her passion and position for success well beyond the pandemic.

Brijette: I think that those of us who got into gardening during the pandemic because, you know, there wasn't a lot of other things to do, I hope that it opens up a door for them and we see some big cultural changes and people just enjoy spending more time in their garden and being close to the dirt.

You know, if you have your hands in your dirt, you're more likely to care about the dirt.

I just think so many positive changes can happen from something as simple as starting your own garden.

♪♪♪ Nan: California's famous wine industry has also been grappling with the COVID-19 crisis.

It's taken a big hit with the closure of restaurants, bars, hotels, and tasting rooms.

San Diego's small wineries and the grape growers who support them have been especially hard hit.

We first met up with Alysha Stehly and Chris Broomell in 2014.

These young vintners proudly showed off their harvest, their winery Vesper Vineyards, and their tasting room in Escondido, California.

Vesper has an unconventional business model.

Grapes come from the local growers.

They're picked, then pressed in small batches, so each wine comes from a single vineyard.

Chris ferments the wines using only the natural yeast that arrives on the grapes from the field.

They wholesale these distinctive wines to restaurants and bars and sell them by the bottle to customers at their Sans V Tasting Room alongside Alysha's parents, Al and Lisa Stehly, who bottle their own wines under the Stehleon label.

By early 2020, the winery was hitting its stride.

Sales were picking up in their tasting room.

More restaurants were picking up their brands.

They'd signed grape contracts with new vineyards.

Across the board, business was booming until COVID changed everything.

Alysha Stehly: So we knew--you know, we had been watching the county news conferences, you know, that things were starting to happen, and then it was a Sunday afternoon, and my parents were workin'.

It was their weekend to work the tasting room, and Governor Newsom came on, and I was like, "Um, we just got shut down."

So many layers that's hit our business.

I mean, as soon as the shutdown started, restaurants, along with wineries and bars were the first ones to be shut down entirely.

And so, when restaurants got shut down, then there went all our wholesale sales, and then our tasting room, the first month or two, it was like, "We're closed.

We'll let you know when we reopen," and now it's just become, "Well, we'll let you know when we can reopen--maybe this summer."

Nan: The loss of sales wasn't their only problem.

Their warehouse space is limited, so when product didn't move, it caused a backup in their inventory too.

Alysha: These are all kegs for restaurants, so those should be out in restaurants.

People should be dining out and ordering wine by the glass, but haven't moved any kegs since March.

And then up here, you know, most of this wine probably, in a normal year, would be gone by now, but because we're not sellin' very much, it's still sitting here so-- Nan: But it's wine, it tastes--it stays fine, right?

Alysha: It stays fine, but we still have wines that we need to bottle and release, so we gotta find the time at some point to move a bunch of wine.

Nan: Their harvest waits in tanks and barrels.

So while aging can improve wine, this aging comes at a price.

Chris Broomell: Well, aging longer creates more costs.

I mean, it's another year of inventory and taxes associated with that, plus space associated with that.

Like, you don't have enough space to work or do more.

Alysha: By the time, you know, harvest came around in the fall, most of us had already kind of signed grape contracts back in April or May for what we were harvesting in the fall, so these grapes were coming whether we had space or not.

Nan: The space shortage, coupled with a backlog of inventory forced co-op partner Stehleon to make a difficult decision.

There was only room for them to process a small harvest, so they left three tons of grapes unpicked on the vine.

Other San Diego winemakers had to do the same.

Chris: This was the first year for Vesper that I did not bring on any new vineyards.

That was kind of a bummer for me.

I just--I always look and try to source something new to get some inspiration or explore.

Nan: Across California, winemakers see 2020 as a mixed blessing.

The growing season was ideal, and the fruit quality was high, which promised great wines coming down the pipeline.

The crop was smaller than average, a welcome situation considering large grape harvests in recent years had created an excess supply, but the pandemic put a damper on the traditional harvest celebrations.

Winemakers, their staffs, families, and customers always look forward to these annual gatherings.

Chris: You know, this was a quiet harvest between winemakers because we weren't able to get together as much, and everybody was just kind of hunkered down in their own cellars.

I know there are more vines still going in the ground, and there's a lot of optimism, and I think there's a little energy missing from it just because of the attitudes.

There were a couple natural disasters and whatnot that kind of put a detriment to what people see out of California.

I'll say it's always changed the game, and working with Mother Nature is the first thing, and then second thing is rules and laws and so-- Chris: How I love Grenache.

Alysha: Especially with something as social as wine, where our customers like to come here and come sit in our tasting room and meet friends and try our new wines, it's not the same, just sending an e-mail and boxing it up and giving somebody a new wine versus having the traditional release parties and all the fun and food pairings that go with it, so it's been rough.

Nan: The wine industry has survived earthquakes and wildfires, poor harvests, and destructive pests, and while the sustained challenge of the pandemic is different, veteran farmers like Alysha and Chris are riding it out.

They know there's a pent-up demand for future celebrations that pair perfectly with their wines.

Alysha: You know, more people now, because of the pandemic, are opening a nicer bottle of wine on a Tuesday night or a Friday night because they're not going out to eat at a restaurant, so I hope people continue that.

People have very much tried to support as much local as they can through the pandemic, and I think, because of all the pivots all of us have made, I hope some of those continue so that makes shopping local easier, long-term for everybody.

♪♪♪ Nan: The COVID quarantine caused job losses in every community.

People accustomed to supporting their families suddenly had trouble meeting basic needs like paying rent and keeping food on the table.

Hunger-relief agencies kicked into overdrive as did other nonprofits that work in the field of food insecurity.

For years, I've supported hunger-relief agencies, but now I felt a great urgency to do more.

Sometimes the answer to "What can I do?"

comes in unexpected ways.

My friend Mim Michelove has long been involved in food and hunger issues too.

Mim Michelove: Food is not just for physical health.

It is also for mental health.

So healthy food matters.

It is a passion of mine to help people know where their food comes from, grow their own food, or at least have the knowledge of how to grow their own food, and to make sure that everybody has equal access to that healthy food.

Nan: We talk a lot about food deserts, "food deserts," being places where you can't really find anywhere to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, especially.

It occurred to me that food deserts are nursery deserts.

There is no--there are no nurseries in those communities either.

We both garden, and we both know how important gardening is, and what if we could get gardens to those people so, even if they can't go to the market to buy food, they can start to grow their own?

Mim: It was just born from a simple conversation, sitting in our living rooms, chatting and, you know, having a deep desire to do some good in the world at that very moment.

Nan: The idea behind Grab & Grow Gardens is to provide starter gardens to help people grow their gardening skills and grow their own food.

Each bag holds two vegetable seedlings ready to plant along with simple growing instructions in Spanish and English.

Mim: Grab & Grow Gardens grew quickly because we were able to launch with no budget and no real plan.

Nan: Done.

Wouldn't you like to get that in your bag?

Mim: We learned that we had a very generous and compassionate horticulture and agriculture community here in San Diego, who donated everything that we needed to launch the program.

Nan: Seeds, seedlings, potting soil, pots, et cetera.

So that meant we could make a bag with seedlings in it.

How are we gonna get it to the people in need?

Mim: Nan and I just started to show up and do the work in my living room in the beginning, and we had early mornings and late nights.

Nan: And we potted and packaged, and we did a hundred bags, and we took them down to the agency and dropped them off.

I've got my phone, and I'm waiting for a text to tell me, you know, what happened, and so the text came through, and the text said, "All the gardens were given away.

We'd like 120 for Wednesday."

And we thought, "Oh, okay."

That kicked off this whole process.

Nan: We quickly realized we needed help, and help in lots of ways, so we reached out to TERI, a nonprofit that serves children and adults with special needs.

They have three large urban farms to help feed their residents, to offer hands-on learning, and to produce micrograins they sell as an income stream to support their programs.

Unfortunately, many of those programs were idled by the pandemic.

Emily Field: At the time, we had actually just had to shut down the majority of our micrograin program due to restaurant closures and no buyers, so we had all this space just waiting for some purpose.

What we do for them is we start seeds that meet the needs of their program, based on the time of year and what food can easily be grown by their participants in containers at their own homes.

We start the seeds.

We nurture them.

We tend to them, and then we hand them off for up-potting and distribution.

Emily: Yeah, ours too, handing them off.

Mim: These are gorgeous.

Emily: Thank you.

Mim: Yeah.

Nan: Mim's backyard is Grab & Grow central.

Here, seedlings are potted up, cared for, and when ready, packaged for distribution.

Mim: Every week, we prepare and donate two to three hundred Grab & Grow gardens.

Volunteers arrive, and they put their heads down, and they work hard, and they get a lot done.

Nan: Very soon, we developed, I like to call, a small and mighty army of volunteers.

Mim: You're a good partner, Jenna.

Jenna: Yeah.

Nan: Having the opportunity to volunteer gave this group of people an opportunity to interact with each other, and that's been so welcome, so it's really helped combat the isolation.

It isn't just the two of us doing this little project.

It is a community of people who are trying to help those who really need it.

♪♪♪ Nan: Grab & Grow Gardens took off with the support of local hunger-relief agencies who were open to innovative ways of helping their clients become more resilient.

Sasha Escue: So we're trying to give lots of fresh foods, lots of vegetables, and then we are also giving them the opportunity to create sustainability by giving them somethin' that they can grow themselves.

So, overall, the response has been very welcomed.

It wasn't expected, and we're so proud to be partnering with Healthy Day Partners to give out these gardens, and our clients are just very, very thankful for it all.

female: Good morning.

How are ya?

Well, would you like in the front or the back?

Backseat?

All right.

One in the back, please.

Mim: We have gotten over 16,000 plants out there of better, nourishing, fresh, seasonally appropriate, culturally appropriate, and healthy for people who really need our support and who deserve to be nourished as much as any of us do.

female: Stay safe and healthy.

Nan: It's really a privilege and honor to be able to serve the community in this way, so this is gonna continue.

female: This is great.

Nan: Connect with us at A Growing Passion for garden tips, behind the scenes updates, and to see what's growing in California.

Watch all of our shows online anytime at AGrowingPassion.com.

♪♪♪ Nan: The pandemic has shined a bright light on how critical locally grown food is for our region's health and stability.

Farmers and producers have led the way with ingenuity, resilience, and a genuine concern for the wider community, helping us all ride out the storm and hopefully come out stronger in the end.

I'm Nan Sterman, thanks for watching.

♪♪♪ announcer: Support for this program comes from the KPBS Explore Local Content Fund, supporting new ideas and programs for San Diego.