A farm? More like a fluke.
Updated: Nov 25, 2023
A year-round heirloom fruit, vegetable & herb farm in National City, California…that all started because of a life changing moment, the size of a pinhead.
Mike & Stepheni purchased the Wallace D. Dickinson homestead in February 2012, as their forever home.
When they bought the property, Stepheni was in the mist of pre-deployment work-up preparing for a 10 month OCONUS deployment – in March she was bit by a tick on San Clemente Island off the coast of South California. Unfortunately, Southern California doctors are not Lyme literate, so she was left sick & untreated for a 10-month deployment.
Almost a year later she returned home very ill & was bounced around from doctor to doctor to find a cure. After 2.5 years of fighting an undiagnosed illness & a year of looking for a Doctor, in July, 2014 she was diagnosed with Lyme disease & related co-inflections.
Right away Stepheni started daily IV treatment & her doctor wanted her to eat as fresh & healthy as possible. Each day after treatment Mike would drive her home & try find fresh organic food to make for dinner.
This is when they noticed fresh produce was hard to come by in National City.
So Stepheni asked her doctor if she could be outside & garden a little… with no real farming experience they planted a few fruits trees & learned how to plant a small garden patch …with that the Farm began.
In the SoCal sunshine, the crops spouted up with ease providing excess in abundance of what they could eat. Mike & Stepheni started giving away the excess to friends, family & even a crop share. Then decided to give the excess to Dreams for Change to help feed those that couldn’t afford to buy their own.
All the while Stepheni sat in the IV chair researching how to make the Farm an official business.
By January 2016, the few trees & garden patch became 16 raised boxes, an orchard, 4 hedgerows of coffee, a hop patch & 20 in ground rows; 1/4 of an acre total. Plans were set & licenses obtained - the little garden patch became a Farm.
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