Meet the AgPark Farmers
The Sunol AgPark sits on 18 acres of rich agricultural land adjacent to Arroyo de la Laguna and Alameda Creek. Six farms, ranging in size from 1.5 to 4 acres, call the Sunol AgPark home. These farms market their produce to diverse Bay Area channels including farmers’ markets, restaurants, wholesale and seed contracts. AgPark farmers grow a wide range of crops including vegetables, herbs, cut flowers and seeds, and rely on organic methods like cover cropping, integrated pest management and compost additions. Learn more about the Sunol AgPark farms and their farmers below.
Jellicles Farm, owned and operated by Lalitha Visveswaran, produces a wide variety of quality products including lavender and edible flowers, as well as medicinal and culinary herbs. To maintain adequate habitat for pollinators and good soil health on her 1.5 acre farm, Lalitha implements practices such as crop rotation, low or no till and cover cropping. Jellicles Farm uses minimal inputs and attempts to grow nearly all drought friendly plants. Jellicles Farm can be reached at [email protected].
Feral Heart started in the Sunol AgPark in 2014. The farm’s owners, Aaron Dinwoodie and Mica O’Herlihy, manage Feral Heart with sustainability and social justice at the forefront of their operation. Both bring years of knowledge and skills to Feral Heart.
Aaron has been farming for 14 years since his start on a ranch just south of Half Moon Bay where he raised dairy goats and hens, propagated fruit trees, cultivated a wide variety of vegetables and herbs and learned how to make nutrient rich compost. Over time, he became passionate about seed saving, as he believes it is important to a farm’s sustainability.
Mica grew up in California, and worked as a filmmaker, visual artist and professor, before transitioning to agriculture full time. Their first farm, Long Arm Farm, in SW Wisconsin, included a goat dairy, 14 acres of woody perennials, culinary and medicinal mushroom beds, and 4 acres of row crops. Mica and their kids moved back to California in 2017 and began a partnership with Aaron to run Feral Heart.
Feral Heart sells fresh produce, herbs and flowers to restaurants all over the bay, and at Oakland’s Grand Lake Market. To learn more about Feral Heart, visit their website at http://www.feralheartfarm.com/.
The Sunol Community Gardeners are a group of local retired women who aspire to learn more about farming by maintaining a garden plot at the Sunol AgPark. Some crops grown in their garden are asparagus, artichoke, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peas and berries. They grow crops for themselves and to share with family and friends.