Farmer of the Month: Javier Zamora of JSM Organics

Stepping out of the car and onto the soil of JSM Organics in Royal Oaks, California, felt like setting foot in an orderly kind of paradise. Spring sunshine swept over the strawberry fields and highlighted workers harvesting berries in bright red and yellow shirts. Everywhere I looked, my eyes met green plants or vibrantly blue sky. 

I arrived at JSM Organics that day along with twenty-two other employees from The FruitGuys to meet California fruit farmer Javier Zamora. We hoped to hear his story and taste his strawberries, which were destined for our California fruit boxes. 

A minute after we touched down, Javier—a big man with laugh lines around his eyes and a “Support Organic Farmers” baseball cap—met us with handshakes and smiles. Speaking both English and Spanish, he told us that we were in luck: That very day, March 27, was the first day of the farm’s organic strawberry harvest, and we would have the chance to pick berries ourselves. 

Our mouths watering, we shouldered our backpacks, slid on our sunglasses, and followed Javier deeper into his farm. 

Javier’s ‘Why’

As we walked, Javier began to tell us his story. He’s a second-generation farmer who grew his first carrots and radishes at just seven years old. When he turned twenty, he moved from his hometown in Mexico to Redondo Beach, California, where he worked in restaurants and a famous nightclub called The Strand.

It was the late 1980s, and Redondo Beach felt like a distillation of American culture. Javier told us that he learned a lot there—including the fact that many Americans are disconnected from our food system. That’s part of what inspired him to return to farming. 

“I wanted to educate the community,” he said. “Because the community lives in la la land. … People don’t really have a sense of how things grow. They just don’t have the education, because we’re blessed with all sorts of grocery stores where anything you want you can pretty much get, [even out of season].” 

Growing Organic as a California Fruit Farmer

In 2012, Javier partnered with the Elkhorn Slough Foundation to purchase 200 acres of land in Monterey County for JSM Organics. On eighty of those acres, Javier and his team of twenty-two to forty-five workers (depending on the season) grow organic berries, vegetables, and flowers. The other 120 acres are part of a conservation easement.

The arrangement is a good fit for an organic California fruit farmer who prides himself on “letting Mother Nature do her thing” on the farm. As we walked the property, Javier explained his organic farming practices. Rather than using herbicides and pesticides, he weeds his fields by hand; and instead of poisoning gophers, he traps them. He also plants fava beans and other cover crops to prevent erosion, feed the soil through nitrogen fixation, and increase biodiversity on the farm. 

As we passed the fava beans, Javier yanked a plant out of the ground and explained the nitrogen fixation process. Then, he plucked a handful of leaves and handed them out for our group to eat. Mine was crunchy, nutty, and fresh, like a pea shoot with a faint beany aftertaste. 

The farm’s sustainability efforts don’t stop there. When it rains, a ditch system directs the sandy runoff into a reservoir. At the end of the season, Javier and his team dig the sand out of the reservoir and haul it back to where it came from. 

“There are lots of opportunities for us to do really good things with Mother Nature,” Javier told me and the rest of the FruitGuys team, pointing out a ditch nearby. “… I want to keep [the land] in really good shape and make it better for future generations.” 

Not only does Javier’s care keep the farmland fertile, but it also helps him grow strawberries so sweet and juicy you can’t help but close your eyes as you eat them. 

Strawberry Paradise  

JSM Organics grows at least a half-dozen varieties of organic strawberries, including Chandler, Mara Des Bois, Sweet Ann, Gaviota, and Monterey. The first stop on our farm tour was a field of Sweet Anns—a semi-firm berry with shiny red skin. 

Our group was jittery with excitement, and Javier happily let us loose in the field to pick as many strawberries as we could carry. 

I stepped carefully over and between the plants, scanning for glimpses of red. When I found my first berry, I popped it off its stem and straight into my mouth. It was sweet, juicy, and still warm from the sun—like summer in a bite.  

Berries in hand, I waded back to where Javier was chatting with a few other members of The FruitGuys team. He looked out over the field of Sweet Ann’s with a big grin on his face.

“I’m the luckiest man alive,” he said. “I face a lot of challenges, but I see a lot of beautiful things—and this is one of them.” 

Taste Testing

From there, Javier led us on an hour-long tasting adventure. In addition to trying the fava bean leaves, we picked more Sweet Ann and Chandler strawberries and taste-tested a strawberry variety still too new to have a name. We also foraged for blackberries in one of Javier’s hoop houses and munched on rainbow carrots pulled straight from the dirt with their tops hanging off like tassels. 

The Chandler strawberries were by far my favorite. Javier explained that their irregular, knobby shapes make them difficult to pack, so they rarely if ever make it to grocery stores. Instead, he said, large corporations often turn them into strawberry jam. Biting into my first berry, I could see why—it was melt-in-your-mouth soft and incredibly sweet. 

Javier bucks the norm by growing Chandlers and selling them fresh. He told us that offering rare berry varieties is one of the ways he sets his farm apart. 

“In order to compete with the big boys, I had to be unique,” he said, noting that JSM Organics is one of only a few independently owned growers selling under its own label. 

“Only my wife has told me what to do for the last thirty-five years,” the California fruit farmer said with a grin.

A Moment of Gratitude

After the farm tour, Javier’s team cooked us one of the best lunches I’ve ever eaten. They served up ribs and sausage from an open-air grill and set out a spread of quesadillas, rice, salad, asparagus, guacamole, strawberries, and more.

We settled at a long outdoor table in one of the hoop houses and passed around glass bottles of imported soda. Listening to Javier talk about his family while I put away two full plates of food, gratitude settled over me like a warm blanket. 

Javier and his team are doing beautiful work for their community, the planet, and The FruitGuys’ customers at JSM Organics. We first connected with the farm in 2019 when The FruitGuys Community Fund awarded Javier a grant to complete a sustainability project. Now, we’re honored to include his organic strawberries, corn, zucchini, greens, squashes, and broccoli in our fruit and fruit and veggies boxes. 

Javier is following through on his goal to educate the community about their food. On top of hosting our team for a farm tour, he’s also active on numerous farm-related boards and committees. He provides resources to other small- and medium-sized growers across the Salinas Valley and advocates for his California fruit farmer peers whenever he can. 

As FruitGuys’ fruit buyer Rebecca North, who works closely with Javier, puts it: “Javier is more than a grower: He is a change maker.”

If you’re a FruitGuys customer in California, you might be lucky enough to receive Javier’s produce in your boxes this spring and summer. I hope you get the chance to taste it!