LOCAL PROFILES | Provided By Steve Sprinkel

Endangered Species

A local farmer discusses the departure of a beloved associate, Florencio Suarez

This essay was provided by Steve Sprinkel of The Farmer and the Cook, in his newsletter FORAGER. It has been republished with his permission.

Florencio is going home. I’d like to go, too. His daughter will celebrate her 15th birthday, the Mexican Quinceañera, in early July and he has promised to be home in Toluca. He has been always a man of his word.

His leaving is terribly emotional for us. He has been my constant companion on the acres we have built; a trusted cooperator in bringing good food to you for three years. His contribution cannot be overestimated.

I always paid him a salary equivalent to hours worked, but when it rained and he could not work he always made it up. When he first started working with me I once offered him a beer at the end of the day and he said he had committed to not drinking during his time here. He has strayed only infrequently from this vow.

He is proud and capable beyond measure. When I ask him his opinion about a certain farm-related subject he always reminds me that I am The Owner. This has become a source of amusement to us because I always defer, he always counters, and then we do as he has suggested.

Florencio grew up working with his grandfather on a small parcel near Mexico City, growing many of the crops we have planted here: onions, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, chiles, cilantro. The farm has been his home because it is so much like his home in Mexico, filled with all the foods he is familiar with. One crop is much the same to Florencio. Though he has never eaten radicchio, he has cared for it like any other product, important to our success.

By far, Florencio is faster and more thorough than am I. Such elite performance has always been my experience with Mexican professionals. In this case, it is all the more amazing because he blew off two and a half fingers on his right hand in a fireworks accident when he was nine. Prior to transplanting, he merely wraps his fingers in electrical tape so he won’t wear down his nubs; then he does 70% of the work.

The grand implication of his employment is that if we continued to fill the property with plants and they were well managed, he would be guaranteed an income. One of his major complaints is that I do not harvest everything I grow, or that various buyers do not measure up to our expectations. I know that my failure to sell a perfectly good crop is an insult to him so I do my best to move it along. The abundant flowers help take your mind off the limitations.

You now enjoy Papalo because this little summer salad green is useful medicine in our crop rotation. Yerba de Venado (the deer’s wild herb) is something Florencio eats every day at lunchtime. He eats as much as I do, but more formally. I eat salad all morning long as I am harvesting it (like a beast), while he gathers a gourmet bundle at noon to accompany his tacos or burrito brought from home. He is so enamored of onions that we stick decaying scallions from the store in the ground all over the place, sure that within a few weeks they will be green and robust. When they flower, then there is seed.

I knew that peas were his favorite vegetable and had failed in attempting them twice. This year, knowing Florencio would be leaving this summer, I assured an immense stand of sugar snaps. In the winter I planted eighteen rows, 240 feet long, hoping they would germinate in the rain. In the drought that ensued, I set overhead sprinklers on the pea patch to nurse them out of the ground. We had already learned that drip irrigation will not establish peas or beans because they rot from too much water. The patch was rampant. There were peas enough that Florencio grew tired of eating them, as did we all.

His cerebral talents were superior to his physical energy. In the year he came up here he had been managing a warehouse with fifteen workers packing and shipping clothing all over central Mexico. The business failed through no fault of his, and he had to go north to be able to maintain his family and home economy. We worked as equals because I relied on his management skills and intelligence, side by side, as we carved weeds away from the lines of baby lettuce with steak knives. He treated all 12 acres like his backyard.

Here, each week’s pay has been equal to somewhere between, six weeks and two months of earnings, in Mexico. While here, he finished paying for his home and added a second story to it as well. But, the value of his time has been greater because he did not have to scramble to make those hundreds. If we planted 1,200 celery plants and we took care of them and I sold them, there was the new pair of shoes for his youngest son and the payment for the light bill.

We will not see the likes of Florencio Suarez again, soon. These are the soulful farmers who built California organic agriculture with us, planting and harvesting together for decades. Florencio and the other men I have worked with, for the past four decades, bring great joy and enthusiasm to the work. They have inspired me to be resolved and steady in my career. When they leave, they cannot be replaced.

When Florencio leaves, I will be half-blind because I lose my best eyes. I will be alone with my answerless doubt.

I have enjoyed the company of many Mexicans, no doubt more thoroughly because I speak Spanish and I love Mexico. Mexico is like France or Italy, a culture always true to itself with its own literature and cuisine and unsurpassed music.

Florencio says I know Mexico better than he does and if it is true it’s because their culture has been so well worth knowing. Florencio is going home and I don’t really know where I live anymore.