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Equipped with only a shovel and his encyclopedic knowledge of farming, Phil Foster led about 25 agricultural enthusiasts on an hour-and-a-half tour of his Pinnacle Farms in San Juan Bautista on Sept. 19.
It was more than a discussion of subjects such as closed-loop composting, cover crops and hedgerows, integrated pest management, biodegradable mulch, and water stewardship—critical issues in keeping the 295 acres he farms certified organic.
It was also a celebration of Foster and his wife Katherine’s 2019 decision to place all 51 acres of farmland they own into a permanent conservation easement with the San Benito Agricultural Land Trust.
Land Trust Board President Mike Reeves said he feels incredibly fortunate that the Fosters asked them to help preserve the farm for future generations.
“They made the far-sighted decision to protect their land from being taken out of farming,” Reeves said. “It’s a choice, not a requirement, to do something like that. It wasn’t an easy decision—it never is. And it’s not an easy process. It takes a long time and a lot of focus.”
Foster first got a taste for farming in high school, working alongside his older cousin, Bob Swanson, on family land. After graduation, he earned an agriculture degree at UC Davis, then spent nine years managing large-scale operations for a corporate farm in Bakersfield.
“It was a nice experience,” Foster said, “but then I had to extract myself from it. I came back here, and we slowly rented a little property and got the ranch up and running on Santa Ana Valley Road. We bought here in San Juan in the early 1990s, and that kind of started us off.”
His main early crop was cannery tomatoes, grown for a local processor. He soon realized that “trading dollars” on low-margin crops was financially unsustainable.
“It kind of opened our eyes,” Foster said. “I didn’t have a lot of experience in vegetable production, but we decided to move in that direction. I saw the advantages of organic production, like the soil-building practices. Those two things got us to focus on organic production.”
Foster started with five acres of organic vegetables and marketed through Ocean Organic Produce. The company was interested in his San Benito County-based crops because, being more inland, he could offer product that grew more successfully than the company’s coastal suppliers.
“We started transitioning whatever acreage we acquired into organic production,” Foster said. “We made a lot of mistakes, but the market was pretty forgiving. Not many people were growing organic vegetables, so there was demand. We grew our business doing that.”
According to Foster, the move meant managing the farmland using organic practices under specific USDA standards for three years.
“You plant cover crop, compost and start building up the soil microbial life,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that all the pesticide residues are completely eliminated. But if you manage it for three years, you can go into organic certification.”
His 200-240 acres of cover crops planted yearly include vetch, oats, phacelia, flax, buckwheat and legumes. The farm also manufactures 2,200-2,500 tons of compost on-site annually, using vegetable culls, duck manure with bedding, horse manure, and urban green waste.
“The compost is used only for our two farm locations,” Foster said. “Because of the amount that we make, we’re able to put on anywhere from six to 10 tons of compost for each of our crop fields. That adds a lot to our soil vitality.”
The results were obvious on the tour when Foster used the aforementioned shovel to turn over a patch of soil so rich in organic matter that it crumbled with minimal pressure. Later, when he dug up a shovelful of red potatoes, they separated cleanly and easily, rolling out from the soil.
The red potatoes aren’t primarily grown for the on-site farmstand—almost the opposite, Foster said, since they rarely sell for enough to be profitable unless the crop is especially large. Instead, they help suppress pests, in this case the centipede-like arthropod known as a symphylan.
“They’re very small,” Foster said, “and they’re hard on transplants. There has been evidence that planting potatoes reduces the symphylan population, so we’re moving potatoes across the fields to get maybe a four- or five-year reduction in the pest.”
Foster plants hedgerows to act as blockades to flying pests and encourages beneficial insects that hold down the more damaging ones through abundant companion plantings.
“We’ll put insectary crops in with our crops,” he said. “Alyssum is the main one we use, but we also plant quick-flowering cilantro. We also plant white dill, in the umbelliferae family—a big flower that really attracts beneficial insects.”
Strict adherence to organic standards has made Pinnacle Farms a mainstay, not just for local home cooks but for chefs at many notable restaurants and food trucks in the area. Foster said 75% of the farm’s produce is sold within 100 miles through more than 25 retail grocers and regional farmers’ markets, as well as the on-farm Saturday stand.
Foster employs 45 full-time employees year-round, and with the land secured against any development, Foster’s next goal is to transition the business to his long-time employees.
“The value for us was to see our property stay in permanent agriculture,” he said. “Now I would like to pass it on to them, so they can take the ball and run with it. I would like to think it would stay an organic operation, but that’s up to the next farmer and how they decide to do it.”
Asked whether he considers what he has achieved with the farm in terms of preservation and management, Foster said he does not think much about his legacy.
“I just know that at some point other people will farm it,” he said. “We work hard at improving the land that we farm and try to get good utilization out of it for the things we’re growing. And then we hope we’re setting it up well for the next generation or future generations of farmers.”
The Pinnacle Farmstand
400 Duncan Ave., San Juan Bautista
Hours: Saturdays year-round, 8 a.m. – 1 p.m.
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