Flatland Flower Farm Tour
On September 6, 2013, CUESA visited Flatland Flower Farm, the first stop on “Flowers and Apples: A Sebastopol Farm Tour.” Photos by CUESA and Barry Jan.
Flatland Flower Farm is a 22-acre farm in Sebastopol, run by Dan Lehrer and Joanne Krueger. Though the farm once sold flowers, it's now known for its vegetable starts and heirloom apples.
A former journalist and magazine editor, respectively, Dan and Joanne fell into farming in 1995, when they started selling flowers and plant starts grown in their in Berkeley backyard at local farmers markets. A couple years later, they decided to become full-time farmers.
They bought a house and heirloom apple orchard in Sebastopol. The trees had been planted in 1973, when there was a thriving apple processing industry in the area, and the apples from the orchard were dried for apple snacks. Today most large processors now get their apples from China, which has all but killed commercial apple farming in Sebastopol.
Dan and Joanne sell some apples in the late summer and fall, but their main business is growing organic plant starts for small nurseries and farmers markets. In 2008, they switched from selling primarily perennial flower starts to selling vegetable and herb starts. When the economy took a downturn around the same time and home vegetable gardening took off, they found their niche.
The couple built the three greenhouses on their property, where all their starts are grown. The plants are irrigated by handwatering and sprinkler lines.
Besides Joanne and Dan, the small farm employs four workers, including Kari, who is shown tagging plant starts for the Saturday farmers market.
English pea flats, ready for tagging.
Joanne led our tour group in a seed planting tutorial, and our tour members each took home a flat of vegetable seedlings.
Flatland has a small flower garden, which they designed in 2004 by planting flowers that they found in dumpsters when doing delivery runs to nurseries or that didn’t sell well at the market, Dan jokes.
The couple also has a vegetable garden, where they grow crops like Portuguese kale and tree collards. Perennial tree collards are propagated from cuttings, rather than grown from seed.
The primary apple varieties grown at Flatland are Red Rome Beauty (shown here) and Golden Delicious. Dan has also grafted a number of other heirloom varieties.
Water is scarce in Western Sonoma County, so all of Flatland's apple trees are dry-farmed, meaning that they rely on the groundwater from winter rains, without any surface irrigation. Dry-farming makes for small but flavorful apples, as does allowing the fruit to grow closely without any thinning. "Tarter apples are tarter, sweeter apples are sweeter," explains Dan.
Dan showed us how to make apple cider using their small, motorized press.
We all took turns helping crank the press.
Golden Delicious apples are especially well suited for cider making.
Commercial apple presses usually produce about 1 gallon of juice for every 7 pounds of apples, while Dan's press requires about 40 pounds (roughly a bushel) per gallon. While the small press may be less efficient, the juice is especially flavorful because it doesn't incorporate the bitter apple dregs.
All the waste from the apple press is composted in the orchards.
Dan and Joanne use the apple cider to make vinegar, which they sell at the farmers market. After the cider ferments in these five-gallon carboys, it is siphoned into repurposed white wine barrels and left to age until the following year.
Our group enjoyed freshly pressed apple cider.
Thank you, Dan and Joanne!
