Phoenix Food Project
Food Donations Program
We have at times marketed our produce through other vendors to upscale markets in the Bay Area, but a few years ago, during the pandemic, we decided that we wanted to focus on growing the very best organically grown produce for the people who needed food the most. We currently donate 95% of our vegetables and fruit from the farm, which amounts to between 25,000 and 35,000 lbs of diverse high-quality organically grown fruits and vegetables. We partner with the innovative Berkeley Food Network (BFN), which uses a community-centered approach to food sourcing and distribution to provide easy and convenient access to healthy, high-quality free food for people who need it.
We love doing what we do best–growing high-quality, diverse crops from artichokes to tomatoes and everything in between–and giving it away to people who need it. In order to continue to do this long-term, we started the Fall Farm Fest as a way to cover some of the costs, such as seed, compost, equipment, and fuel, as well as to share the most beautiful time of the year on the central coast with others. Today, the profits from the Fall Fest offset the cost of production of diverse high-quality, organically grown vegetables. While the Fall Fest helps us cover many of the costs, growing this much produce takes a lot of work, and for this, we rely almost entirely on a large and tough volunteer labor of family and close friends and a growing group of amazing new volunteers.
Kind Words:
- Run Wild at Rancho Siempre Verde in Pescadero (510families.com)
- Farmer Feature: Rancho Siempre Verde’s Phoenix Food Project (berkeleyfoodnetwork.org)
donate or volunteer
If you like getting dirty, working hard, and growing good things to give away to others, we hope you will consider joining us as a volunteer or as a donor so we can continue to grow and share the rich bounty of this place with others.
Donations to the Farm Fund allow us to grow a diversity of high-quality organic vegetables for food-insecure members of the bay area community. Read about our food donation program above.
THE STORY OF Phoenix Food Project
A few years ago, while hoeing around some fruit trees, I noticed a young mangled tree that look very much like it had been run over by a tractor. When I asked everyone what happened, everyone was silent for a second and then, Oscar, knowing full well that I had inadvertently run over the tree with the tractor, looked down and kicked the dirt and simply said “pinche topos” or roughly translated “Dammed Gofers”. Everybody looked at each other and we all started laughing so hard that we could hardly stand up. Since then whenever anything happens, one of us hoes a hole in the irrigation tape, loses a tool, when the tractor is not running right, or it starts raining while we are working, or anything else goes wrong, we shrug and exclaim “pinche topos”. From these humble and evasive origins, as well as the long term battle we have with the gofers over very tasty produce, Pinche Topo Produce was born (now Phoenix Food Project).
We have at times marketed our produce through other venders to upscale markets in the Bay Area, but a few years ago the family decided that we wanted to focus on growing the very best organic produce for the people who needed food the most. We decided to use some of the income from the tree sales and pumpkins to grow and donate produce. Currently we donate the majority of our produce off our small 7-8 acre garden to the Berkeley Food Network which serves those who most need quality organic vegetables grown with love.
We have a small volunteer group of people who helps pick and process produce and of course chase off gofers.