The tropical crops of Maria Inés Catalán’s youth don’t grow in Hollister. Instead of winding through the papaya and mango trees of her native Guerrero, Mexico, here, wearing black loafers caked in mud from the past week’s rain, she tramples weeds, carefully stepping over the kale, broccoli and artichoke plants that thrive in the Northern California winter.

Catalán stops mid-field, spotting something hidden in one of the plants.

“Mira!” she says excitedly. “Look!” When she smiles her round sun-chapped cheeks seem to grow, and her already slanted eyes become thin lines on her face. Her brown hair is streaked with a mix of grey and orange-yellow strands.

Brushing the plant leaves aside, she cups an artichoke gently in her hand and holds it proudly for all to see. It is huge, almost the size of her palm, and the green is stained with a light, washed-out purple.

“Qué chulada,” she says, almost to herself. What a beauty.

Catalán Family Farms, which María Inés Catalán owns, lies in a flat stretch of land surrounded by emerald green hills between the Silicon and Central Valleys. Once a farm worker, Catalán became one of the first Latina immigrant organic farmers in the country when she started fifteen years ago.

Today she sells her produce at farmers’ markets throughout the Bay Area, including three in Berkeley and one in the Temascal neighborhood in North Oakland. While the term “organic” often carries with it a highbrow, not to say high price, connotation, Catalán also sells at wholesale price to Farm Fresh Choice, a Berkeley-based food justice project that works to make organic produce accessible to low-income communities of color. Just as her desire to make healthy eating an option for the surrounding Latino community comes from her own experience as an immigrant, so her decision to go organic had more to do with her personal history with the land, than with pure business sense.

***

Standing in her Berkeley Farmer’s Market stall, wearing a black apron decorated with small embroidered vegetables, Catalán rapidly weighs heads of lettuce and bunches of celery, tells the customer the price in a rough but matter-of-fact English, and gives them their change with a gentle “Thank You.”

And she really is grateful. People are buying less than they used to before the economy went sour. “They used to buy two bunches of chard,” she says, “and now they buy only one, because they’re afraid of being left with no money.”

Small mounds of vegetables are spread out in front of her, and behind her hang two papers, both declaring her produce to be certified Organic. She points to them with a shake of the head, recalling how difficult it was to get the certification when she first started. There were so many forms, most in English, and it was dizzying to maneuver through the various agencies and departments in charge of the process.

But what angers her the most, as she tells it, is that once she did get certified and started selling at the markets, other vendors gave her a hard time. These fellow farmers, always white Americans, would come up to her stand and inspect her produce. “They would ask me if I grew it,” she says, “or if it was really organic, like they didn’t believe me.”

A funny question, since Catalán’s background is firmly rooted in the concept of organic farming. “It’s called organic certification here in the US,” she says,  “but for us in Mexico, it’s traditional agriculture. My grandparents grew organic. Simply because of our culture we are organic farmers.” The only difference, she says, is that in the US, “there’s regulations and politics to certify a ranch, to work in what you want to do, like to do, and are used to doing.”

But when Catalán migrated to California, this traditional agriculture was lost to her, and for years she labored in the pesticide-laden broccoli and strawberries fields of Monterrey County. She remembers it as painstaking, dehumanizing work. “They use you like a machine,” she says. “They tell you to fill…one box a minute, or 60 boxes of broccoli per hour. And by paying you a wage, they know how much they are going to produce per day or per hour.”

Catalán partly attributes her current farming to a need for healthier work.  “And as I learned that being an organic farmer was about about taking care of our environment, our air, soil, our water,” she says, “I made the decision to farm organic.”

Recalling childhood moments of running with goats and playing in piles of harvested peanuts on her father’s farm, Catalán says that even as a farm worker she dreamt of someday owning a farm where her grandchildren could grow up as she did.

“A lot of people told me I was crazy. They said, ‘We are in the United States, and being able to own your own farm and be your own boss and do what you like to do because of tradition is impossible.’”

Now, Catalan’s six grandchildren are growing up on a farm as she once dreamt, even if, in the end, they decide they don’t want to be farmers, themselves. “As they grow they are learning to love the land and to produce their own food, which is the most important thing,” she says proudly.

***

“It’s a man’s world, agriculture,” says Catalán, nibbling on a bright yellow mustard flower as she trudges through the muddy rows. “Usually the man is in front, and the woman is behind,” she says, “But here, I’m in front and my husband is behind!” she lets out a hearty laugh and looks back. “What do you think, viejo?” she calls out to her husband Javier, whom she always refers to as her “old man.”  He is following close behind with one of Catalán’s grandsons; he smiles and shrugs, unbothered.

Fifteen years ago, Catalán took part in three-year long Small Farmer Education training offered by the Agricultural and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA), which trains low-income farmers-many of them Spanish-speaking former farm workers-to grow and market organic produce. She was the only woman in the course, and her fellow farmers refused to take her seriously, especially when it came to learning how to operate heavy farm machinery. They would laugh and tell her that she should be at home taking care of her husband.

“They respect her now,” says her son Juan, “because they know that she is helping everyone.” Juan, whom Catalán brought from Mexico with his three siblings when he was seven years old, used to work el fil-the field-with his mother as a young boy. Now, he helps her run the farm. At one point when she is not around, he proudly shows off a leather-bound “Certificate of Appreciation” awarded to his mother by the Department of Agriculture in recognition of her work for Latino farmers. He points to the gold seal with his finger, as though to highlight the official nature of her work.

Catalán is, after all, founder and current president of Pequeños Agricultores de California (Small Farmers of California), an organization of Latino organic farmers mainly concentrated in San Benito County. She is also the organization’s only female member.

On this day, Catalán is in a hurry to get to an 11 o’clock meeting with another organization to discuss the lack of access to financial resources that Latino organic farmers have. The organization works almost as a cooperative, although she doesn’t use those terms. Farmers grow their crops and mutually help each other commercialize their product. Oftentimes, Catalán has given other farmers small interest-free loans, and helps new farmers maneuver through the complicated organic certification process she herself struggled with years ago.

And farming continues to be a struggle. Although the Catalán’s business is staying afloat, this year-during what has been referred to as California’s most severe drought in history-seems particularly daunting.  The farm might not get any irrigation water from the municipal reservoir, because the state’s priority is supplying the cities first. There is even talk that the county may start to charge for using local well water. Many farmers in the north, says Catalán, have decided not to even plant this season.

“But if nothing gets planted and there is no alternative, there won´t be any food,” she says, her voice mixture of anger and despair. “That’s what they don’t see.”

Last week’s rain has helped the crops, but not so much Catalán’s market sales. Fewer people come to farmers’ markets when it rains. And there’s another economic issue: the high cost of labor. Catalán reaches into the middle of the lettuce crop and pulls out a handful of weeds-if this was a “conventional” farm, she says, there wouldn’t be any weeds because of the chemicals used on the plants. But in organic farming, the only way to get rid of the weeds is to pull them out by hand; because of that, she estimates that out of the $30,000 it takes for her to maintain the farm each month, about $20,000 of that goes to the contractor who hires the laborers.

Though happier as a farmer than as a farm worker, Catalán has yet to own the land on which she farms. She leases it, paying $5,100 a month in rent, with the option to buy. Without any outside financing, buying land is a difficult goal to attain, but for Catalán, it’s something she is working towards.

“Imagine if it was like Zapata said,” she says, referring to the Mexican revolutionary who fought for land reform in the early 20th Century, “and the land belonged to those who worked it.”

***

Amidst the early morning garble of chickens and cows and the neighing of horses, Catalán lets out a squeal.

“Está naciendo!” (“It’s being born!”) She gasps and points to a goat standing perfectly still inside a pen, with what looks like a lump of slime drooping from between its legs. “Viejo!”  she calls out to her  husband. “Está naciendo!”

“I always get nervous,” she says, wringing her hands.  “Sometimes the babies get trampled on by the mother and die.” In one quick second the slimy pouch drops onto the hay, red liquid gushing out after it, and the baby goat squirms for a few minutes before attempting to wobble on its still-weak legs.

Catalán sighs in relief. It’s as though she’s never seen a goat being born before, but in the same pen there are eleven other kids, along with eighteen adults.

She hopes to certify them as organically raised, so she can sell the meat to restaurants. She already sells produce to a handful of restaurants in San Francisco and the East Bay, in addition to selling through Community Supported Agriculture programs in Monterrey. These new endeavors, she says, are the only way to keep the farm running in hard times.

Later that day, she returns to the barn area to check in on the newborn goat. It’s standing now, stumbling to find its mother´s teat. The anxiety that the kid will get trampled comes back for a minute; Catalán presses her husband to take the two goats out of the pen, so the baby isn’t in danger. He disappears and comes back with an old towel.

“I´ll do it,” says Catalan, grabbing the towel and briskly walking into the pen. She gently scoops the kid up in the blanket and lays it outside. They tie the mother to a post next to it. She calms down again.

Dame un cigarro, she says bluntly, putting out her palm. “Give me a cigarette.” No “please,” no “Thank you.”  Her husband pulls out a pack of Marlboro reds and hands her one along with a lighter.

Catalán props herself onto a plastic barrel, the blue of her fleece sweater almost blending into the pale blue of the sky, the fields rolling back behind her. She hides the hand holding the cigarette behind the barrel so the smoke doesn’t blow in anyone else’s face. Her legs dangle, crossed at the ankles, and in between deep drags of her cigarette she begins to talk dreams: Of starting a commercial kitchen, as she calls it, where members of the Small Farmers of California would be able to jar or pickle their produce in order to preserve and sell it. Of letting the chickens lay eggs wherever they want so there will be 800 chickens and she can start selling organic eggs. Of inseminating a cow with world-renowned Japanese bull semen so she can sell organic beef. Of expanding her crops to include more Mexican produce – nopal cactus and different varieties of chiles that she can dry. Of homemade salsas she can sell at the farmers’ markets.

The problem, she says, pushing her finger into the air and moving her entire body forward to make the point, is that there are no resources to help already established organic farmers expand in this way. Although there are organizations that help them get started, such as the one that helped her fifteen years ago, there is nothing to help them “take it farther.”  This, she explains, is what her meeting will be about later today.

Which reminds her that she has to get moving.

“I think I was a queen in a past life,” she says with a grin in between smokey breaths, “Just that this time I was born poor.”  She belts out a laugh and turns to her husband.

“Right, viejo?”

Halloween festivities combined with election-day fervor at “Abuzz for Obama” on Friday night. Berkeley resident and artist Stacey Moss celebrates Halloween each year with a candy corn-themed fête. For this, the seventh annual get-together, she transformed candy corn cutouts into honeybees abuzz for presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Wearing an orange and black dress with a campaign slogan on the back, Moss welcomed guests – even John McCain and Sarah Palin. (To emphasize their tongue in cheek attire, McCain wore an Obama t-shirt beneath his bathrobe, and price tags hung from Palin’s suit.)

When Moss said, “I really love Halloween,” she really meant it. She has so many candy corn decorations that they require most of the backyard shed during the rest of the year.

This year the Obama paraphernalia rivaled the candy corn decorations. Slogans adorned buttons, candy and even fans. The centerpiece was the chocolate cake, nearly two feet in diameter, iced as the campaign logo.

Before cutting the cake, guest Elaine Zeiger, as the alien “Amabo” (read it backwards), said a few words and invited anyone to “add their Barackas.”

“Well actually, I think we have a word from Barack,” said Moss, as she put on a cd playing an excerpt of Obama’s ‘A More Perfect Union’ speech on race.

Trick-or-treaters got into the fun, including the Obama cheerleaders, who did a routine and stayed for cake.

Before he left, guest Joseph Lough spoke to host Michael Reich, Moss’ husband who is an economics professor at UC Berkeley. “Next time I see you we’ll be living in a new America.”

On a recent weekday afternoon, one employee, who said he has worked at the store for about a year and a half, proudly displayed a row of stickers affixed to the back of his nametag – one for every thief caught. Once he catches ten, he said, the store gives him a $50 gift card.

“It’s annoying,” he said of the shoplifters. “But kids will be kids.”

Employees at the store requested anonymity because they feared reprisals from their employer. But they said they catch at least one shoplifter every day. The thieves usually swipe small items, they said; the loss is balanced out by customers who purchase more expensive goods.

Retailers all along Telegraph Avenue and Bancroft Way south of the UC Berkeley campus say shoplifters steal from them almost daily. But other than constant vigilance, they said there’s not much they can do to stop the theft.

“It happens once a day, twice a day, sometimes three times,” said Erica Weston, who manages the Urban Outfitters store on Bancroft Way near Telegraph Avenue. “And that’s just the people we catch.”

Urban Outfitters is one of shoplifters’ most frequent targets, according to Berkeley police logs. The logs show the store called about shoplifting six times over the past ten days; on two occasions, the store called twice in one day. Neighboring outlet American Apparel called once in the same time period, as did Royalty Couture on Telegraph.

Representatives from many of the stores in the area declined to be interviewed for this article, citing store policy. But those who would comment said that the thieves are mostly teenagers who take small items. Some, they said, they recognize as repeat offenders.

Weston said her store prosecutes shoplifters aggressively. “That’s why you see us in the log so much,” she said. “We don’t just let people go.”

Employees at other retailers said it isn’t always worth it to call the police.

“It’s a waste of time,” said Sal Rahman, a manager at Royalty Couture. Often, he said, employees can catch the thief in the act and retrieve the stolen goods themselves. Then they ban the thief from the store.

Berkeley Police Department spokesman Andrew Frankel said the commercial area around campus is a hotspot for shoplifting and petty theft, perhaps because of the high concentration of young people. The beat officer for the area always goes to the location and takes a report, and, in some cases, formalizes the shopkeeper’s citizen’s arrest. But as far as deterrence, he said, the police can only give advice.

“The beat officer who’s there will offer input to the store about what they could to do eliminate temptations: maybe put the items that are most pilfer-able under lock and key or the direct observation of somebody working a cash register,” he said. “It’s worth it to install cameras.”

Retailers said their preferred method of deterrence was employee surveillance.

“We can always be more vigilant, offer better customer service and floor coverage,” said Weston.

Rahman agreed. “You’ve got to keep an eye out.”

“They can’t afford to buy,” said Bill Tumath, 62, who sells “cosmic spirals” – metal or copper hanging spirals that spin around brightly colored spheres – from a table near Bancroft Way. “They have the money, but they have other priorities.”

Last week was the worst yet for the US stock market, as values plunged lower than they had since the middle of the Great Depression in 1933. Many banks stopped issuing credit, and people with market-based retirement accounts saw their savings plummet. Nationally, consumer spending levels also remained low.

Around 11 on Monday morning last week, Telegraph’s sidewalks were just coming to life, as art, clothing and jewelry vendors set up their tables and arranged their wares.

Many vendors said the country’s economic crisis has had a noticeable effect on their business.

“Most art is a potential landfill,” said Tumath, who sells his art pieces for anywhere from $25-$100. “It’s not necessary.”

Tumath said the bad economy had recently forced him to apply early for Social Security. The monthly federal check, he said, now keeps him afloat.
“I’m losing business,” he said. “This affects everybody.”

Down the block, a jewelry vendor said that lately she’s seen far fewer vendors selling on Telegraph. The woman, who asked that her name not be used, said she has worked in the area since 1974.

“A lot of vendors are not coming out here,” she said. “I probably wouldn’t even be here today, but I have to pay my bills.”

Street selling is an uncertain business by nature, said many of the vendors. The amount of business they do varies dramatically from week to week, so a sense of economic instability is nothing new.

But even factoring in the unpredictability of the job, they said, they can’t ignore the recent turn for the worse.

Lee Six, 61, says she has sold handcrafted jewelry on Telegraph since 1968.

“I’ve never seen the economy this bad,” she said. “People are scared. They’re still buying, but they’re cautious.”

Her best-selling item right now, she said, is what she calls “affirmation” jewelry – pendants like peace signs that depict positive ideas or thoughts.

Despite the drop in business, several vendors said that selling small, relatively inexpensive items can be an advantage in an economy where bigger luxuries, like a home, are harder to come by.

“It’s a different kind of market,” said a vendor, who identified himself as Twig. Twig said he has worked on Telegraph for 12 years, and has not noticed much of a change in his own business in hemp jewelry.

“People will always buy little trinkets to make themselves feel good. They buy a beer, a bracelet,” he said. “It’s not like buying a car.”

More than a year after announcing plans for redevelopment, the owner of a long-vacant lot in Berkeley’s Southside neighborhood has still not filed official plans with the city. And with the city officials and the owner’s partners growing impatient, the chance to revive what many see as a neglected corner – Telegraph Ave. and Haste St. – could soon fade away.

“A new building would be good for the neighborhood,” said Mario Tejada, 78, who said he has owned

This lot at the corner of Telegraph Ave and Haste St. has been vacant for more than 15 years

Mario’s La Fiesta restaurant, across the street from the site, since 1959.

The corner is one of just a few vacant lots in the Southside neighborhood, and the only one in the Telegraph Ave. business district. Formerly the home of the Berkeley Inn, the site has been vacant since the late 1980’s.

In 1994, the owner of Rasputin Music next door, Ken Sarachan, bought the site, which was abandoned by the previous owner. As part of the purchase, Sarachan inherited hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to the city because Berkeley had been repairing and maintaining the site.

Since then, the city has made offers to forgive at least some of the debt if Sarachan agreed to redevelop the site. The two parties have discussed multiple project proposals, but none have moved forward.

“For various reasons, the economics of it didn’t work out because of the expense of development,” said David Fogarty of Berkeley’s Office of Economic Development.

Things changed in April of 2007, when Sarachan purchased another adjacent site, the historic Woolley House, from the University of California, Berkeley. Sarachan said if he could move the Woolley House off site, he could combine his properties on Telegraph Ave. and build a mixed use project.

Developer John Gordon, who owns the nearby Peet’s Coffee & Tea property on Dwight Way, agreed to receive the Woolley House and incorporate it into a separate residential project behind the coffee shop. Gordon said he is waiting for Sarachan to file an application to move the historic house, a prerequisite for development at both properties.

“We’ve been waiting for [Sarachan] for six months to act,” Gordon said.

Sarachan did not return several calls placed to his office last week and on Monday.

Sarachan’s preliminary drawings for the Telegraph project, submitted to the city last July, call for a five-story building with multi-tired Asian-style towers and a rooftop garden. According to Fogarty, the design is unusual for Berkeley and is partly to blame for delays to the project. The city is awaiting an official application from Sarachan, and is negotiating with him about how much information he will provide in the meantime, Fogarty said.

“The city wants to cooperate with getting it built,” Fogarty said.

For now, the city’s offer to forgive Sarachan’s debt is still on the table but that could change, according to Fogarty.

“There is going to be a deadline for getting all of this done,” Fogarty said.

Meanwhile, local residents and business owners say they are not holding their breath to see when the vacant lot may finally see a new building.

“It’s not a nice-looking spot, butt what can we do?” said Tejada.

When the lot first became vacant, “it was bad for business, it was bad for morale on the street,” said Gene Barone, 60, who said he has worked at Moe’s Books on Telegraph Ave. for 30 years. “For us who have lived in Berkeley for a long time it’s just there, it’s part of the landscape now.”

Colin Hector, a law student at U.C. Berkeley, said he recently moved to an apartment near the site. The lot doesn’t stand out amid the graffiti and vacant storefronts visible elsewhere on Telegraph, he said.

“I haven’t really noticed it,” said Hector, 24, as he commuted past the lot Monday morning. “I haven’t really felt like it’s really detracted from whatever aesthetic Telegraph has.”