From the Fields - Javier Zamora

By Javier Zamora, Santa Cruz County berry, vegetable and flower farmer 

JSM Organics grows strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, a little bit of blueberries, some vegetables and lots of flowers. It’s all certified organic. We’re having mixed emotions about the storms. We’re going to end up really well because we got a lot of water. We didn’t have these rains for a long time, so we’re happy about that.

On the other hand, maybe a third of my farm got flooded. It’s been a little challenging. Twenty-six acres flooded—strawberries and raspberries we had recently planted for this season. There was so much water at once, the creek was just overwhelmed. The current of water we saw coming into the fields created a lot of erosion and washed the plants away.

It also came with some other issues, like my crew not being able to work for close to a month right after Christmas. We just started getting them back this week. That was probably the most painful thing because they’re struggling with not having the income. This is a slow time of the year when the farm doesn’t have much to sell, so therefore we’re limited in how much we can do for them. We started a GoFundMe for them, which is on our Instagram page at jsmorganics. Our crew is 46 people, but around this time of year, I normally have about 18 of them working. I got nine of them back this week.

I’m hoping there is some sort of relief funding that can help us bring the entire crew back and we can continue with planting things for the season and do the cleanup that is necessary. There’s a lot of debris—branches and trees that the creek brought down with the water. Lots of irrigation pipes were dragged by the current—drip tape, hoses. So we have to clean up and then work the land again and hopefully replant some of the crops that we lost.