Meet Alex Frecker
Alex Frecker has been a great friend to us, and we appreciate him for it hugely. Even though I am absolutely jealous beyond tears that he is the young farmer blessed to farm 3105 Casitas Pass Road, and not me.
So, regularly I remind myself when I go to pick up carrots, strawberries, or little gems from Alex, and get overtaken by a mix of awe, sadness, and appreciation of the land, that we had our chance farming there, and to put it bluntly, we blew it, and now it Alex’s turn.
And Alex is not blowing it. In fact, Alex is crushing it. And I dare say that 3105 Casitas Pass Road looks as good or better than it ever did when Shepherd Farms was there. But, first a little back story on Alex Frecker, for those of you that don’t know him or haven’t heard from us about him before.
Alex is young. Just turned 32, and is a college graduate in Business, with a deep passion for agriculture.
When Alex graduated from College, he scrapped the idea of working in an office, and returned to work for John Givens in his fields and quickly moved his way up through the farm ranks until there was no where else for him to go.
So, he had the conversation with John of what was next, and John sent him on the road with skills and blessing to start his own farm.
And with that blessing, the skills he had gained, and the savings he had squirrelled away, Alex came down to Carpinteria from Goleta 5 years ago with a tractor, a small plot of land leased to him to by a local family, and a frickin’ gnarly work ethic. And he started grinding away.
Those first 3 years as Alex worked his way through his first 5 acres and up into his first 20. Alex worked non-stop. He started off alone in his field, and slowly, meticulously added a loyal, dedicated crew and implemented the tools he needed to produce a lot of food.
And that’s where we find him today, 5 years in. Fully farming 40 acres, running a great crew of guys and gals, having beautiful presence at almost all of the good farmer’s markets from Santa Barbara to Marina Del Rey, and bringing beautiful kales, carrots, strawberries, and lettuces to our farm boxes on a very regular basis.
With that said, this was just a little introduction on Frecker Farms. In the coming months and years we will undoubtedly be diving deeper into the nuts and bolts of his operation, as we are super proud of and inspired by the relationship that we have with him. We look forward to showing you his compost operation and the coming off-season greenhouses that he is deep into building.
Until then, if you are ever in the neighborhood of 3105 Casitas Pass Road, Carpinteria California on a Wednesday between 10-4 p.m., make sure you stop into his farm stand and say hello and let him know that you see him and that you see and eat and appreciate the fruits of all of his hard work.
- Jason Lesh
