Farming & Cooking in Ojai with Steve Sprinkel

It's been more than 20 years since Steve Sprinkel and wife Olivia Chase opened The Farmer & The Cook in Meiners Oak. The restaurant/grocery/music venue and gathering place has created a vibrant community around it. The fresh, organic produce that Steve grows on his nearby farm forms the basis for the delicious good that Olivia and her crew cooks. Steve grew up in the Pasadena area in a construction-business family, but found himself drawn to farming while staying on an innovative commune near Santa Cruz in his college years. His deep love of soil and the things you can grow it from it began to sprout and flourish there. Some years later, after supplying Whole Foods with fresh produce in Austin, Texas, he returned to Ventura County. He then re-connected with Olivia when she owned an innovative bakery in Ventura, and their partnership took root. We talked about the many challenges of farming in Ojai, the climate crisis as seen through the extended drought, the strong-arm tactics of Big Ag, the experimentation and data-gathering which all farmers are engaged in, Ojai's eccentric characters (present company excluded) and whether our society can rise to this existential challenge. We shared a few stories about the legendary Jonathan Gold and the meaning of food culture to Los Angeles' identity. We did not talk about 19th century baseball players, Yukio Mishima or taimen fishing in Mongolia.