Santa Monica Farmers' Market Farmers: Barbara Spencer

Barbara Spencer is the farmer of your urban dreams. A former studio cellist who left the LA grind in search of a “farmette,” she ended up falling in love with a rancher and buying fifty acres of untouched land just east of Paso Robles. It was a blank canvas, and Barbara says she spent the past two decades not farming, but building a farm. She and her husband, Bill, looked to France and northern Italy for heirloom seedlings of chicories and winter squash. Santa Monica is the only farmers’ market where they peddle their harvest, so customers await her Pink Pearl apples and Cherokee Purple tomatoes like it’s the first drop of the season at Supreme.

From “How to Do the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market (@smfms)” by Gillian Ferguson for Lucky Peach, 2016; Photo by TJ Tambellini

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