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Our farm offers a wide variety of products that are made using our strawberries, raspberries, peppers, and tomatoes.
Jams and marmalades, cocktail mixes and shrubs, syrups
and hot sauces, oh my! There is something for everyone!
Get your loved ones a taste of the farm this holiday season and help support farmers of all abilities.
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by Heidi Cartan
Executive Director
As another year comes to a close and we have “put our field to bed” with cover crops for the winter, there's time to reflect on our 2021 accomplishments and begin to dream about the 2022 farm season.
Despite the continuing impact of the pandemic, Common Roots was so glad to welcome back many of our volunteers after a very quiet and unsettling season before COVID-19 vaccines were available. It was another busy year, with Farm Manager, Nina, growing her produce, flowers, skills, and team to great result. The farm provided 48 CSA customers with a weekly share of the farm’s seasonal fruits, vegetables, and flowers, for 20 weeks! With customers in both Mountain View and Santa Cruz, our farm is expanding its reach as we provide nutritious food grown with ecological care by farmers with and without disabilities. We are no doubt becoming better farmers and we are excited about all that this means for our customers and supporters.
So, what else have we been up to? Well, as soon as our neighbor, Coastal Haven, put the finishing touches on its new pocket neighborhood, we began work on our new accessible farm path. This became possible thanks to generous funding from Helpers Community. Some “before and after” photos help illustrate the scope of this effort. We installed TRUEGRID, a permeable paving surface made of recycled plastic, as an 8-foot wide path around most of the farm. This material is eco-friendly, wheelchair friendly, and allows all of us to enjoy year round access without getting stuck in the mud!
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Wait, there’s more! Here are some highlights:
- Installed a new shade structure thanks to funding from the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.
- Renovated our Seed to Salad accessible garden where farmers of all abilities can grow crops in raised and roll under garden beds and then harvest, prepare and taste food directly from the farm in the small outdoor kitchen.
- Installed fencing of the new garden thanks to funding from the Palo Alto Medical Group and many hours of labor by Josh, Marc, and Autumn.
- Began remediation of our future orchard by planting cover crop and laying out locations for fruit trees.
- Added six Babydoll sheep and their guardian dog, Blue, to our farm.
- Held our first spring plant sale.
- Engaged students from the Pajaro Valley Unified School District’s post secondary class for regular farm visits.
- Expanded the number of volunteers living with disabilities who participate on the farm.
- Provided employment for a young adult with a disability who works as our groundskeeper.
- Engaged regular groups of volunteers wishing to support the farm through field work days.
- Held our first CSA customer appreciation event.
- Hosted 200 guests for our ribbon cutting event celebrating our new farm path and accessible garden.
- Developed 13 value-added products developed from our farm crops and produced in partnership with Terroir in a Jar.
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I am very grateful to our team, thankful for our Board and donors, and wish you and those you cherish a wonderful, healthy holiday season. We are so glad to have you along with us for this adventure and we look forward to sharing more of our exciting plans with you in the new year!
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A ride around Common Roots Farm
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By Shmuel Thaler, sthaler@santacruzsentinel.com
October 18, 2021 at 3:00 PM
Jake Wilkins exults in the freedom of a ride around Common Roots Farm on Monday now that a nearly quarter-mile TRUEGRID permeable path has been installed around the property’s crop fields and animal enclosures. The farm, located on Golf Club Drive near Pogonip in Santa Cruz, recently laid down the recycled plastic paver and gravel path to provide access and safety for all volunteers and visitors, but especially those in wheelchairs. Common Roots is an urban, organic farm where people with and without disabilities grow healthy food and build community. The farm is considered a production farm rather than a special needs farm and provides fruits, vegetables, and flowers to their CSA members as well as to several local restaurants.
(Reprinted from the Santa Cruz Sentinel)
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Angela finds her niche at the farm
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 We believe the work of growing nutritious food and beautiful flowers in a sustainable way is good for everyone — our customers, our land and our farmers. As a production farm that welcomes people of all abilities, a central challenge for us is how to involve our volunteers in a way that is enjoyable and engaging, while also getting farm tasks done. Helping our aspiring volunteer farmers find their place on our farm is one measure of our success. Angela Jang, who has non-verbal autism, has found her niche making sachets from our lavender crop.
As a pollinator friendly plant, we grow several varieties of lavender and Angela works with her mom to dry and process our harvest and then package the lavender blossoms into sachets. Angela enjoys putting jigsaw puzzles together and together we have discovered she likes the detailed work of processing lavender. We are glad she has chosen to share her talents with us and you can find her sachets for sale on our website.
Lavender sachets can hold their scent for many years. Use them in your clothing drawers for a gentle scent, or in your pillow for sweet dreams, or as an air freshener! Lavender is a lovely scent and is known to raise one’s spirits, so enjoy!
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