CLOSE UP : A Farm Grows in Goleta

Most farms are surrounded by hills or plains, rivers or trees. Michael Ableman’s farm has six gas stations, eight banks and 20 fast-food restaurants practically within spitting distance. Which is not all that surprising, considering that it’s right in the heart of downtown Goleta. Twelve years ago, Ableman, a photographer, became a partner of Roger and Cornelia Chapman, who own the 12-acre Fairview farm. But it’s not just a job: It’s a crusade. “I want to bring the country to town so people have a direct relationship with the growing of their own food,” he says.

This year, 75 families subscribed to the farm, paying $600 to $900 for a 37-week-season’s worth of organically grown food--eggs, vegetables, honey and fruit. Ableman and his four farmhands also sell produce at a stall on the acreage, as well as at farmer’s markets in Santa Barbara and Santa Monica.

“We produce a lot,” he says, “because we enrich the earth by growing cyclically.” Ableman learned about crop rotation in his travels to China, Peru, Africa, Sicily and Hopi country in Arizona in search of ancient ways of farming that “industrial, one-crop factory farming” has all but obliterated. “The most important lesson was that you have to literally love the earth,” he says. “Be close to it. Understand its needs, its cycles.”

This is what he tries to teach the many schoolchildren who visit Fairview each year to learn about organic farming. “We are educating a generation that is the first ever to be completely divorced from growing its food,” he says.

Ableman plans to set up other urban farms in the state; he’s now training inner-city apprentices to start up farms in South-Central Los Angeles. “If you can’t bring the people back to the land,” he says, “then bring the land to the people.”