Food: Farming like the Mayans in Maryland

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- Eight miles as the crow flies from the Washington Monument, hidden behind the houses of a residential subdivision, lies the farm of Mike Pappas. Only 2 1/2 acres of Eco Farms' 16 acres are cultivated, but they are a potent spread of organic, bio-intensive produce.

If you have eaten at any high-end Washington restaurant, from Frank Ruta's Palena to Restaurant Nora and Café Atlantico, you will almost certainly have eaten his produce. Currently its most popular role is as that curly green or crimson or yellow frizz of tiny little sprouts that decorate the dishes of today's top chefs. Micro-greens are where it's at for the present, says Pappas. It's appropriate for a man who came to farming from another "micro" business -- computers.

He was working with his stepbrother at the family firm Capitol Computer Exchange when his stepbrother decided to explore the possibilities of organically farming his parents' lot in Lanham, Md.; land which had previously supported a variety of animals and fowl, including peacocks.

He took a course in California with bio-intensive farming guru John Jeavons, author of "How to Grow More Vegetables," then returned to hand-dig deep beds with his brothers. They set up a rotation to lend a hand growing and then selling at farm stands and local farmers' markets. Mike found himself more and more pulled in, excited by the feedback he got from his customers, until he ended up leaving the computer business for the farm. He is now the only one of the three brothers working on it full-time.

But farmers' markets weren't cost effective on their own. "You have three days' preparation, digging up the vegetables, cleaning them, packing them, setting up, for a four-hour selling opportunity. You make $1,000 if you're lucky."

So, looking for a niche, he set out on the rounds of local restaurants. He offered chefs the kinds of vegetables Alice Waters pioneered at Chez Panisse: organic baby everything. With mini heads of Romaine, tiny turnips sweet enough to eat raw, white radishes the size of a nut, baby red and green cabbage, baby beets, baby snow pea greens and baby tatsoi, Pappas commits a kind of vegetable infanticide.

In trying to drive the market, not follow it, he noticed a trend in California for micro-greens, those hair-fine shoots familiar to any child growing crops on wet washcloths. And he also investigated what unfamiliar tastes might be available in the world of herbs.

Now Pappas can offer flavorings you probably won't have heard of but that may, like Peruvian black mint seeds popular with the chefs at Café Atlantico and the National Press Club, have been sprinkled on your entrée. Pappas, who's become an adventurous cook himself, wraps his scallops in Mexico's large "hoja santa" leaves that leave your tongue feeling slightly numbed. His Mexican mustard leaves do the exact reverse

Outside his large micro-sprouts greenhouse, there are long, narrow beds of Greek marjoram, Mexican tarragon, German white barn-neck garlic growing for the spring, wild arugula, sage and cilantro, now dying back for winter. He has greenhouse pots of little known, organically grown herbs from South America and Southeast Asia that he discovers through the Internet. Keeping ahead of the curve, he grows lettuce and micro-greens out of season and is looking to plant unusual onions in the future.

The small farm's bio-intensive system is tailor-made, he says, for backyard farmers. It uses 90 percent less water than conventional methods, while sowing the plants close together in uncompacted soil encourages a moist, warm microclimate and discourages weeds. He grows nasturtiums with cilantro to deter the aphids that bother the latter, and tomatoes next to basil so that the flavor of each is enhanced by the proximity of the other. Strawberries coupled with green beans keep bugs at bay.

Now his produce, heirloom and cherry tomatoes and mixed salad leaves boxed with his signature nasturtium flower, are sold through a number of area markets like Yes! Gourmet, SuperFresh and several co-ops.

This is the kind of farming that supported the Mayans, South Americans and Greeks 2,000 years ago. With less energy, human and mechanical, it can produce two to six times more food than conventional methods, while constantly building the content of the soil.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that since its previous study in 1997 of organic farming practices another million acres of certified organic cropland and pasture have been added, raising the 48-state total to 2.34 million acres in 2001. As part of the bigger agribusiness picture, this figure is small. But, Pappas points out, "When you see Giant and Safeway devoting valuable space to organic produce you know something is happening. Fresh produce is the leader in sales in supermarkets."