Strawberry Fields Forever : Rodriquez Farm
Nothing beats freshly picked strawberries, those perfect little red hearts bursting with flavor and sweetness. And lucky for us, we live only a few miles from the largest strawberry-producing region in the U.S. But not just any strawberry will do. Strawberry lovers know to look for Rodriquez Farms organic berries, which have reigned as a longtime local favorite, earning one of the founding growers the nickname “The Berry Queen” at the California Farmers’ Markets.
Five miles inland, just outside Castroville, sit the strawberry fields of Rodriguez Farms. Begun on just three acres in 1993, husband-and-wife duo Rosario and Patricia Rodriguez have grown their family-owned strawberry business to 90 acres of organic farmland. Going organic did not happen overnight.
Around 2000, the Rodriquez duo began to hear from the California Strawberry Commission and other farmers that organic farming was becoming important. Around the same time, their customers started telling them they wouldn’t buy produce that wasn’t organic. So they began a four-year process of transitioning the farmland to be certified organic. “Fortunately, our customers stuck by us,” says Patricia. “It was a struggle, but we were 100% CCOF-certified organic by 2004. Our goal has always been to provide the best-tasting produce for our customers.”
Nurturing sweet strawberries takes a lot of hard work. At Rodriguez Farms, they start with baby strawberry plants from the Pacific Northwest, sandy soil and Castroville’s special mix of rain, sun and coastal air. To that recipe they add a soil-enriching stew of seaweed and fish emulsion and then aerate the soil to optimize water and nutrient absorption. Once the delicate white-petaled strawberry flowers begin to appear, it takes three and a half weeks to mature into fully ripe strawberries.
Every week Rodriguez Farms brings luscious red strawberries to local farmers markets all around the Bay Area. For the discerning farmers-market crowd, Rodriguez Farms grows Albion strawberries, 48 million of them this year. Known for their uniformly conical, distinctively picturesque strawberry shape, Albions are consistently much sweeter and deeper flavored than many other strawberry varieties.
To choose a deeply flavorful strawberry, Rodriguez Farms’ General Manager Mike Leon advises, “Look for a strawberry that’s nice and red throughout. Strawberries don’t ripen once they’re picked, so you want to avoid what’s known in the strawberry world as a ‘green shoulder.’” Leon notes that strawberries from a first-year plant are larger, while strawberries from a second-year plant are smaller and sweeter. And winter strawberries are more durable, so during chillier weather freshly picked strawberries will last longer.
Once you’ve lugged those ruby red gems home, here’s how to store your strawberries properly. Refrigerate them unwashed in an airtight container with a paper towel on the bottom and a paper towel on the top. For a more sustainable, reusable moisture absorber, take a new, biodegradable cellulose kitchen sponge, quarter it and place quarters in opposite corners of your container.
Next time you’re at the local farmers market and you notice a long line queuing up, odds are it’s in front of the Rodriguez Farms booth, where strawberry lovers flock to taste the samples and savor the sweetest summer sensations.
