They’re a Pair With Passion for Passing the Word About Chemical-Free Farming

Years back in Sri Lanka, Lawrence A. Goldberg, 28, learned how to farm without using chemical fertilizers or sprays that he believes poison the environment.

At the Thursday farmers’ market at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa and on Wednesdays in Fullerton, he not only spreads the word of his fears but also sells chemical-free organic herbs, vegetables and medicinal plants alongside farmers who use chemicals to grow what they sell.

“I probably wouldn’t be able to eat much if I didn’t buy some food that was sprayed with chemicals,” Goldberg said. “But organic farming is becoming bigger. There now are 320 of us who belong to the California Certified Organic Farmers Assn. Our number doubled in two years.”

Although he sometimes buys food farmed with chemicals, “I always ask how it was grown,” he said.

A Buddhist by philosophy, Goldberg and his partner, Linda Armstrong, who grow their organic food on a Pomona spread, try to pass the word that herbs can replace the need for vitamin supplements. And they believe that the medicinal botanicals they farm can offset the harmful effects of some medicines doctors prescribe.

“Traditional medicine kills diseases, but it also attacks noninfected organs in the body,” he said, adding that herbal medicines used in yesteryear treatment might be better alternatives. “They may take longer to help and cure, but they work better.”

More important, said Armstrong, who also grows greenhouse herbs, “people have to understand that chemicals are poisoning the land. It has to stop.” The cure, she believes, lies in organic farming.

“It costs more and takes longer to grow,” she said. “But it’s a small price to pay to keep us from dying.”

She also said that crops grown organically not only command higher prices but have higher protein levels and more vitamins and minerals.

A one-time Cerritos College student, Armstrong learned about organic farming through visits to Sri Lanka, where most of the food grown is a product of organic farming.

Goldberg and Armstrong are both vegetarians and believe that backyard gardeners who grow food organically put more nutrients back into the land than they take out of it.

“Imagine what that would do if big growers improved the land instead of harming it,” said Goldberg, a University of Washington graduate.

“We certainly believe in what we are doing,” Goldberg said. “Organic agriculture is better for everyone.”

Sometimes donations come in strange forms, such as the bright yellow 1914 Ford Speedster donated to the Pilgrimage Family Therapy Center in Orange by Louise M. Ballas of Newport Beach.

Bought in 1980, the car had been stored in her garage, Ballas said. “I needed the extra space.”

The center sold the car for $6,500, which will be used to offset costs of treating people who can’t afford it, said Administrator Vici Woods, 32, of Irvine.

Sister Helen Szekely, the center’s executive director, said: “It is truly a one-of-a-kind donation.”

Another vintage car owner, Jerry (Bullet) Bame of Huntington Beach, who showed his 1913 Model T “Tin Lizzie” Ford at the recent Huntington Beach Concours d’Elegance, told people who admired his restored automobile that its original purchase price was $400.

Robert H. Meyer, 67, of Orange and a bunch of his World War II glider pilot buddies are scrounging the country looking for parts to reconstruct a combat glider like the ones that carried troops and equipment during the Allied invasion of Europe.

They were often called “flying coffins” because of tragic crashes and deaths during the war. He said that “every landing was a forced landing.”

“We don’t want to be forgotten,” said Meyer, who flew five missions during the war. “We hope to build a duplicate of the ones we flew and fly it in during air shows.”

Edward B. Cogan, a Fullerton book dealer and president of the World War

II Combat Glider Restoration Project, said his group has most of the parts in a warehouse in Fullerton to rebuild a combat glider that originally cost about $20,000. He expects it will cost $250,000 to reconstruct this one.

Cogan said that, except for one glider in a museum in Terrell, Tex., none of the estimated 13,000 gliders built for World War II still exist.

When Davidyne Saxon and William Mayleas of Laguna Niguel married, they shared a common interest. Both were novelists. “But we don’t compete against each,” he said. “It’s the Mayleases against the world not Mayleas against Mayleas.”

In fact, Saxon, whose latest book is “The Woman Who Had Everything,” uses the name Davidyne Saxon Mayleas. He writes under the name of William Saxon.