Font Resize
Last week, Roosevelt Tarlesson and his daughter, Cynnomih, drove more than two hours from the agricultural Capay Valley to the Mandela Foods Cooperative in West Oakland to deliver the organic bounty of their first-ever harvest: African eggplant, okra, squash, corn and cherry tomatoes.
On Friday, the Liberian immigrants will return to the co-op to participate in a health fair and further cement a bond forged through healthy food and a common purpose of helping their communities become self-sufficient.
"We really want to develop a relationship with the market because they are doing something that is what I'm about: to try and bring products and health and make those things accessible to the disadvantaged and the poor, and make it reasonable and affordable," said Roosevelt Tarlesson, who founded the Tarlesson Farm in Guinda, which is located north of Vacaville. "I'm a big advocate for all these things. We dedicate 2 percent of our sales toward helping the poor, because my family received help "... since we arrived, and we want to share our blessing."
The route from field to market for Tarlesson's produce spans decades and continents. He was a young man when he came alone to the United States from his native Liberia in 1976. Beginning in 1980, the country was ravaged by years of war that drove Tarlesson's family from their homes first to the jungles, then dangerous refugee camps in the Ivory Coast. It took years to bring them to the United
In 2005, 26 members of his large, extended family, including his daughter and now 80-year-old mother, and many young children, arrived in Oakland.
With more than two dozen people to help feed and care for, the Tarlessons instinctively returned to their ancestral roots: the farming techniques of the Chedepo-Grebo people. They experimented on a 5-acre plot in Vacaville, then in 2007 obtained 50 acres in the Capay Valley.
Most of the clearing, planting and harvesting was done by hand using machetes and traditional tools. The backbreaking work was always punctuated by the traditional drumbeats, rhythms and songs of West Africa.
Because they planted crops from seeds brought from Liberia, the vegetables with familiar-sounding names do not always look so familiar.
"All the melons went right away "... the okra went, the eggplant, it's bitter ball eggplant, looks like a white pumpkin and tastes like meat when you cook it," said Dana Harvey, executive director of Mandela Marketplace, the co-op's nonprofit parent company. "His weird squashes we have to market a little differently, but all his red tomatoes are gone."
Harvey heard of Tarlesson's farm through the California FarmLink. She toured their farm and knew it was a good fit — even if the produce required a few signs to describe what it was or how to cook it.
"It could be a hit what he's bringing in here," Harvey said. "There is a strong African community in West Oakland. Swan's Market has peppers and spices, but there are very few places where you can get the vegetables and leafs and things."
Reach Cecily Burt at 510-208-6441. Read her blog at www.ibabuzz.com/westside.
The Network for a Healthy California-Bay Area is sponsoring a health fair from noon to 5 p.m. Friday at the Mandela Foods Cooperative, 1430 Seventh St. Cooking demonstrations, tips for growing gardens, health screenings, and traditional Liberian dance performed by members of the Tarlesson Family Farms will be featured.
