How COVID-19 affects this California vegetable farmer
This morning I woke up with the song “New York Minute” by Don Henley in my head.
In a New York minute, everything can change
In a New York minute, things can get really strange
Thanks to the outbreak of the coronavirus, things have definitely gotten really strange, really fast.
Reality bites
Schools are closed. Restaurants hang by their fingernails. The governor has asked that Californians not serving necessary functions “shelter in place.” Fortunately for the families of those who work for Spinaca, including mine, harvesting veggies is still considered essential. For the crops, it’s business as usual. For crew members, they’re wondering what the future might bring. It’s hard when the only answer is “I don’t know.”
This is an unprecedented time. My generation has gone through a lot, but nothing this swift, with global information coming in through every pore of the world. It’s overloading us, for sure—even more than we’re used to being overloaded, which is saying a lot. And it’s shortening our patience.
Mapping fear and food
Watching the way people shop in the grocery store for the last ten days has been like observing a focus group on food consumption. Turns out, when people are nervous, they really want pasta, ground beef, beans, and crunchy and/or sweet stuff. Those shelves are close to empty, while the greens and tender vegetables sit in the wet racks.
We’ve all been there. When you realize how little you can control, you lean into what feels good rather than what’s actually good for us drawing a straight line from our fear to non-perishability. Ironically, one of the only things we can control right now is our health—a particularly important commodity during a pandemic.
Dancing on a liquid floor
So how is Spinaca doing in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis? Right off the bat, our food services for restaurants went down 40%. But the companies we supply bagged salads and steamer kits have gone up 30%. Home meal subscription services we supply, are exploding because people are opting not to go to the grocery store. That’s been great.
In fact, to be honest, we’ve been overrun on our ability to harvest enough to keep up with orders. The demand is definitely there; it’s just shifted into different categories that typically weren’t the frontrunner for volume before and we’re doing everything we can to keep those orders full.
Some items we can adjust quickly. Others, not so much. Some stuff that we planted six months ago for our customer mix, we’re supposed to harvest one month from now. That mix is now thrown out the window, but again, the crops won’t stop growing just because of a pandemic. It’s like we’re trying to fix a plane at 30,000 feet so we don’t crash. With fewer tools and inclement weather, that’s a New-York-minute-by-New-York-minute operation.
You *can* make a purse from a sow’s ear
When I look back, I can remember times when things were worse than this. Much worse. I got through those, and we’ll all get through this. I think of it as recalibrating my benchmark: I’ve achieved a new level of strength, grit and resilience. This is our new personal record; we’ll all come out stronger on the other side, keenly aware of just how much we grew. And we’re learning new skills to prepare for the next time: recession, depression, whatever comes.
Always seek to find the value in everything. As Winston Churchill said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Brush off your ingenuity and put it to good use. One skill I’m flexing right now is the ability to cook a meal from the pantry. With the kids home all day now, I decided to teach them how to make lasagna —I’ve always wanted to do that. And guess what? It got me through last Sunday.
We can still function without everything we’re accustomed to. A crisis like this has a way of exposing the difference between wants and needs, which is very healthy.
Draw on that. Be patient; be kind.
And eat your vegetables.