Perched on the side of a gently sloping hill, Birdsong Orchards, a certified organic farm in Watsonville is abuzz with the sound of chirping birds.
“There’s a reason we call it Birdsong Orchards,” laughs Nadine Shaeffer as she leads me across a sprawling field, unheeded by two Nigerian Dwarf goats frolicking nearby in the late afternoon sun.
Founded two years ago by Shaeffer and Jason Wehmhoener after spending 30 years working in software design, the 8-acre farm had gone unused since the 1980s. Seeing an opportunity to do something completely new, the pair purchased the property and renovated it from the ground up.
Their goal? To grow wholesome produce while fostering a connection with the land and restoring biodiversity and ecological balance to the area.
As we pass the kitchen garden, overflowing with tasty produce from golden elderberries to Armenian cucumbers and their quaint ranch-style home framed with every herb imaginable, something from afar glints in the sun and catches my eye.
Leading up the hill on either side are rows of tomato plants, their luscious fruit popping through the sturdy cages used to prop them up.
Shaeffer says they have 75 varieties of organic heirloom tomatoes this year. The bumper crop is composed of an assortment of tomatoes of various sizes, colors and shapes – round, oblong, pointed, orange, red, green, purple-black, lumpy and the straight up bizarre. I am in tomato heaven.
As we begin picking she proudly holds up each one, rattling off their names as they are harvested: Schwartze Sarah, Omar’s Lebanese, Speckled Peach, the pepper-shaped Jersey Devil, Thessaloniki, Michael Pollan, Emerald Evergreen, Mr. Brown and Indigo Rose, which was bred in 2012 at the University of Oregon to contain the same antioxidants as blueberries.
Each year, Shaeffer saves the best of her seeds and uses them to propagate half of her crop the following season. The other half is devoted to experimental varieties. One of her new varieties this year is Orange Strawberry – a heart-shaped, brilliant orange fruit with a robust, complex and tart flavor. The hefty tomato can reach a pound when fully ripe.
Info: Birdsong Orchards, birdsongorchards.com. Photo: Basket of heirloom tomatoes from Birdsong Orchards. Nadine Shaeffer.
