With a Little Help From Strangers (Now Friends)
By Gwen Ashley Walters
Photos by Gwen AshleyWalters

Carl Seacat grew up in rural Indiana, smack dab in the middle of farm country. His parents had a big backyard garden, which he detested working in. In fact, the only thing he loathed more was tagging along with his dad who worked for a couple of farmers on the weekend. He really hated the backbreaking, hot, sticky, grueling work.

“Soybeans and corn, that’s what the farmers grew,” he says.  “It doesn’t necessarily send a thrill up the spine, if you know what I mean. When I left Indiana, I said, ‘If I never see another cornfield, it’ll be too soon,’ and now, it’s kind of ironic.” Ironic on a couple of fronts: First, Seacat is scratching a living out of a small patch of desert about 30 miles west of Phoenix (although with nary a corn plant in sight), and second, he’s educating a group of homeschooled children—and their moms—about the virtues of growing vegetables, under backbreaking, hot, sticky, grueling conditions.

Coming full circle

Don’t call Seacat a farmer. He bristles at the term. “I’m a grower, not a farmer,” he emphatically states.

To him, farming implies mechanization: tractors to plow the field, to seed and even to harvest. In Seacat’s world, there is no such luxury.

He started Seacat Gardens with one backyard-grown product: Genovese basil (better tasting than common sweet basil) at the Phoenix Public Market in 2005. Now he leases a one-acre “throw-away” plot, as he refers to the odd-shaped piece of land at the entrance of Blue Sky Farm in Litchfield Park. He’s also planting in Camp Verde, Arizona, 100 miles to the north, to extend his growing season.

When Seacat arrived at the scrappy patch of dirt in Litchfield Park in 2007, he had his work cut out for him.With the plot covered in weeds and with no irrigation, his first task was to dig a 385-foot ditch to lay pipe, bringing potable well water from two 10,000-gallon tanks nearby. The first year he managed to get weeds cleared, rows plowed and a drip irrigation system in place.

Instead of corn and soybeans, Seacat’s crops include wild Italian arugula; “big, fat, badass” okra; unusual squashes; heirloom tomatoes—some of which are unique to his plot of land—and melons such as the only true cantaloupe, the French Charentais. As the season changes, so do Seacat’s offerings, and he meets with chefs to find out what varieties of vegetables they’d like to see him grow in upcoming seasons.

He gets by with a little help from his friends

Arriving at Seacat Gardens, the White Tank Mountains are hazy in the distance, and the sky seems to goes on forever in this part of the valley. To say it’s a hard life is to vastly understate the harsh realities of gardening this piece of land with the hands of one man. There are no trees, no shelter, and the summers are brutal, with winds whipping up to 35 to 40 miles an hour some days, wreaking havoc with the plants and the meager shade hoops Seacat has installed.

But Seacat isn’t totally alone in this endeavor. His passion for gardening the old-fashioned way—germinating seeds, organic composting and rotating crops to replenish the soil— has attracted a small cadre of people who have gravitated to the one-man-army that is Seacat Gardens. Over the years, these individuals have willingly and graciously volunteered their time to help him work his plot because they admire Seacat, and respect what he’s doing. There’s a certain underdog aura at play.

There are people like Tim Lenz, a software consultant, who noticed when Seacat disappeared from Phoenix Public Market in early 2007, and tracked him down. Lenz, for no other reason than he believed in Seacat, offered to work alongside the grower in the field. He also put in time behind the stall at the farmers’ market when Seacat returned to the market after his acre started producing a few heirloom tomatoes. Lenz injured his back working in the garden last summer, resulting in a bulging disc, but instead of giving up, he built Seacat a website and now accompanies him on restaurant sales calls.

Mike Todd, a social scientist who splits his time between Phoenix and Berkeley, California, saw the same things in Seacat that Lenz did: passion and enthusiasm. He too jumped in to help, giving Seacat another set of strong arms, and a strong back for a year for free—and for a few vegetables and, in the end, for a wealth of knowledge.

“I started working with Carl because he needed the help and because I figured that along the way, I would learn something about growing food,” Todd says. “Indeed I learned much about growing healthy plants, but I also learned about the challenges small-scale growers face in trying to connect with consumers.”

Gary Bevirt, another Seacat believer and friend, works the Phoenix PublicMarket and the Flagstaff market for Seacat, and spends a couple days a week at the garden, hoeing or harvesting or fixing water leaks, whatever needs to be done.

Teaching the next generation

Seacat’s newest little helpers are, well, little, or more accurately, they’re young.

Back in April, Seacat noticed some women power walking in the distance near his garden, and waved his hoe at them. For several weeks, the women would cruise by early in the morning, and Seacat would wave. Eventually, he shouted to them that they could get a better workout working in the garden.

Curious, the women approached Seacat and starting quizzing him on the garden and the vegetables he was growing. Like others, they too saw his passion, but what impressed them the most was his knowledge of organic, sustainable gardening. It turned out the women were homeschooling their children, and they decided why not build a class curriculum around vegetable gardening?

So every Thursday, the women—sisters Wendy Haak and Tabitha Warnica—arrive at Seacat Gardens early in the morning with their five children in tow: Wendy’s boys Cody (16) and Hunter (14), and Warnica’s girls Hailey (13), Monica (12) and Natalie (9).

The children and their moms do everything from weeding, to pruning, to repairing sunshade, to harvesting and packing restaurant orders.

Ask the kids their least favorite part of toiling in the garden and they’ll quickly pipe up, “weeding.” Weeding, which is tedious, is the most important job in the garden, and the kids get that, thanks to Seacat’s teachings. They know the weeds attract pests, and because Seacat farms organically, they know that each week, job one is to attack the weeds.

Seacat’s taught them about the importance of bees for pollinating the squashes and melons. He’s taught them how to prop up the thin-skinned Charentais melons on a tiny cup to prevent them from getting white patches from too much contact with the ground. He’s shown them how to determine when the okra is ready for cutting, and how to harvest the squash blossoms, favoring male blossoms over female ones, ensuring continued production.

“I don’t want my boys to take food for granted. I want them to know where it comes from,” Haak says. “It’s hard work but it’s also an opportunity to learn, and I want Cody and Hunter to be young men who want to help others and give back to the community.”

Warnica says her girls are enjoying the experience, but it can be tough, especially in the unrelenting summer heat. And if you ask them, next to weeding, the girls say working in the heat is their least favorite aspect.

“I want my girls to learn patience and perseverance,” Warnica says. “There are so many lessons to learn about life in general from gardening. This is an art, and Carl teaches us to be good stewards of the land.”

One friend stands out

Seacat says he’s grateful to all the friends who’ve helped him over the years, but he always mentions one very special friend and his number one fan: his mom. Earnestine Seacat, 81, grew up on a farm in Arkansas. She’s happy her son ended up back on the land, and she’s provided both moral and financial support. Seacat says that even though his mom is recovering from cancer, she can “still kick your butt.”

How proud she must be that her son is figuring out a way to kick the desert’s butt, growing organic fruits and vegetables in a small patch of dirt on the edge of suburbia, and teaching others how to do the same.

Gwen Ashley Walters is a restaurant critic, food writer, cookbook author and regular contributor to Edible Phoenix. For fun, she dishes about food, wine and travel on her blog, penandfork.com.