Ryan Roseman farms in Aromas and sells flour to Gabriella Cafe and Companion Bakery. PHoto by Chip Scheuer.
Ryan Roseman is driving his silver 1997 Toyota Rav4 from the Westside to his farm in Aromas. Resting his hands casually on the top of his steering wheel, he talks about Santa Cruz’s market for grains and beans.
“It’s the final frontier of the local foods movement,” Roseman says. “We started with vegetables and fruit. People are moving into dairy and cheese. Grains and beans are the last aspect we have to figure out how to tackle on a regional scale.”
Roseman, a native Santa Cruzan with curly strawberry-blond hair, farms in Aromas on land owned by longtime farmer Dale Coke. He also markets Coke’s flour—milled, locally harvested wheat—and sells it to Gabriella Café and Companion Bakery for an all-local loaf. Coke doubles as a mentor for Roseman, giving him tips on his crops and irrigation, although Roseman says one of the benefits of grains and beans is they don’t take up much water.
Roseman pictures “a more regional economy and one that’s not so dependent on [centralized] governing or manufacturing or farming, one that’s more focused locally. Food is a big part of that.”
He learned about food from a young age. His dad Scott Roseman founded New Leaf grocery stores, although the Harbor High grad doesn’t advertise the connection.
Now, Roseman is carving out a niche by harvesting grains and beans—foods few people in Santa Cruz are supplying. The real thrill for him comes from listening to people tell him he’s crazy, that no one can grow grains and beans on a small scale.
It’s true that large agricultural companies, many in the Midwest, dominate the food landscape for grains. Much of the conventional equipment designed to harvest grain is so heavy and expensive it wouldn’t make sense for a small farmer like Roseman to buy it for his few acres of land. That means adapting and getting creative.
Take for instance, the quinoa Roseman is growing. Post-harvest, the grain is covered in soapy slime called saponin, and big ag companies use big machines to remove it. Roseman is still wondering how he’s going to get saponin off his Shelly Black, golden and red quinoa when it comes time to harvest.
“That’s something I have to figure out when it’s ready,” he says. “I don’t know. Throw it in the wash, and then throw it in the dryer. That’s my plan so far.”
However he manages to remove the bitter taste, quinoa is one of the foods that excites Roseman the most. It’s a complete protein, and the plant, technically a weed, grows very well in Santa Cruz. Much of the nation’s supply of quinoa is currently grown in Bolivia, where the farmers toiling to harvest it can no longer afford to eat the expensive crop due to soaring prices.
Roseman also grows a couple strands of amaranth, two kinds of lentils and several kinds of beans—including Vermont cranberries, which are similar to pinto beans—in one half-acre Aromas plot shielded by a cypress tree wall for a wind-break. They’ll be available soon, in addition to the flour he’s selling.
Paul Cocking, owner of Gabriella Café, is sold on the young farmer and Coke’s tasty, low-gluten, high-protein flour. The customers are, too.
“Good kid. The flour is great,” Cocking says. “We make focaccia here which is typically white flour, but we’re mixing it 50-50 with [Dale and] Ryan’s wheat, and the customers love it.”
At 24 years old, Roseman hasn’t been wasting any time. He went away to college in Oregon, and learned about farming when he studied abroad in Mexico for a year. He interned at the UCSC farm, and worked for Pie Ranch in Pescadero, where he got the nickname “Gopher Face Killer” for his skill in setting gopher traps.
One thing he says he might have to give up is the dream of farming on his own land, but he’s okay with that. It just means sharing space and the fruits of his labor.
“The more I looked at actually, realistically farming in this area, the more I had to come to terms with [the fact that] I will probably never be able to afford a decent amount of land to farm,” he says. “I’ve made peace with that. It can lead to more collaboration because you get to interact with a lot of different farmers, and it can be more of a community project.”
