Homegrown Good

Zipper peas, arugula, heirloom tomatoes, and more – James Whitaker and his four grown children cultivate fresh veggies and greens for fine-dining restaurants on County Road 30-A one tasty plant at a time.

by Nancy Henderson
photography by Anthony John Coletti

Terraced gardens bulge with native and exotic plants on either side of the trail that slopes to Long Branch on the Whitaker family farm. Multihued zinnias and sunflowers stand tall near an enormous fig tree bulging with sweet, pulpy fruit. Red amaranth shrubs, grown not for their tassel-like flowers but for colorful, slightly bitter salad greens, guard delicate daikon radishes, an Asian variety. A small mottled toad hops through the butternut squash patch near clusters of nearly spent grape tomatoes and Ichiban eggplants with ripe purple fruit hanging heavy from the stalks.

Jim Whitaker, his older sisters, April, Annie, and Jamie, and their dad, James, amble down an oak-lined path in search of this morning’s harvest. Jamie snips celery and okra. Annie pours onion seeds into narrow trenches. Jim inspects the arugula while James checks out the last of the zipper peas, so named because they “zip” when shelled. Scattered throughout the farm are micro-greens—young, intensely flavored sprouts, some of which, later this week, will end up on salad plates in upscale restaurants along County Road 30-A. “I planted this on Friday,” says Jim, age twenty-eight, pointing to a row of tiny leaves. “And it’ll be ready tomorrow or the next day.”

It’s just part of a day’s work at Whitaker Gardens, a family-owned operation that supplies organically grown produce to discriminating 30-A chefs. The Whitakers cultivate around one hundred varieties of vegetables, fruits, and other plant foods—from edible nasturtiums and juicy, indigenous watermelons to ‘Menina Rajada Seca’, a giant Brazilian squash with light green skin. Peak planting season starts in September, and the gardens yield some sort of crops year-round. In particular demand are nearly thirty types of lettuces, salad mixes, and micro-greens ranging from tango, with its crinkled, endive-like leaves, to crunchy Chinese bok choy and mizuna, a delightfully mild Japanese mustard-spinach hybrid. Each week the Whitakers harvest up to eighty pounds of arugula, a spicy staple in Southern coastal salads. “We’re just a backyard garden that does a lot of business,” says James, who in 1994 moved with his children and wife, Brenda, from Baton Rouge to this fourteen-acre tract on the eastern edge of DeFuniak Springs. (Brenda passed away in 1996.)

A laid-back fellow who looks like a cross between Jeremiah Johnson and Santa Claus, fifty-three-year-old James grew up on farms in Mississippi and Louisiana, where his family raised cattle and pecans. He loved “working the land” but hated the DDT and other chemicals his father sprayed in the orchards to ward off pests and disease. “I didn’t know what whole grains or the health movement was,” James admits. “I fairly knew organic because my father had the idea that he would go organic and get twice the price for his pecans. It didn’t work.”

James intended to major in forestry but dropped out of college after one year. Drawn to the healthy, simple lifestyle of the Seventh-Day Adventist community, he switched from his longtime Methodist faith and encouraged Jim, Jamie, Annie, and April to honor the land by tending their own little gardens. “Some of my earliest memories are of rolling up English pea vines,” Jim says. “I always enjoyed gardening, and I can’t really think of a time when I didn’t want to do that.”

Soon after relocating to DeFuniak Springs, they discovered just how arduous Florida farming could be. Back in Louisiana, the dirt was mostly clay. Here it is mostly sand. Relying on the results of a soil test, some agricultural guidelines they unearthed from library books, and the advice of other farmers, they added twenty elements to the soil, including zinc, copper, and iron, plus cobalt and selenium, to ensure their strict vegan diets would provide sufficient nutrients. They cleared longleaf pines and pin oaks to make room for gardens, installed sprinklers, and drew water from a deep well on the property. Then, using a backhoe, they hauled clay by the ton from a pit near the creek and tilled it into the sandy loam; even then, it was so soft that they had to devise a special tiller attachment to pack down the soil and keep it from shifting too much when it rained. They also made a commitment to natural farming, although they’re quick to point out that the business is not certified “organic” by the state. In lieu of potentially hazardous pesticides, they use natural sprays, pluck bugs off tender leaves by hand, and spread iron phosphate around plants to kill slugs.

The first year they sold butterhead lettuce, sugar snap peas, and other produce to a handful of health-food stores between Fort Walton Beach and Panama City. The long drive back and forth was tedious and unprofitable, so when a local chef suggested they call on some of the fledgling 30-A restaurants, the Whitakers shifted gears. Their new epicurean friends taught them about exotic, hard-to-find vegetables from Europe, Asia, and South America; in turn, the Whitakers educated the chefs about seasonal foods that could, and could not, be grown in sultry Northwest Florida. The two groups didn’t always speak the same language. “One chef requested pea tendrils,” James recalls. “I thought he was just making us to be clowns or something. What he really wanted was the branch, like a garnish.”

What they did agree on was taste. “Anybody can tell you that if it ripens on the plant, it tastes better,” says Jamie, age thirty-three, the oldest of the four children. Granted, she says, it takes organic crops a bit longer to mature, but the payoff is worth the wait. “Sometimes it’s sweeter; sometimes it tastes more like what it is, more like carrots or tomatoes, instead of watered-down. Fast is not what you want. You want flavor.”

Philip Krajeck, chef de cuisine at the WaterColor Inn’s award-winning restaurant, Fish Out of Water, is a faithful fan of Whitaker Gardens. “They really care about what they do,” says Krajeck, who places weekly orders based on seasonal availability. “For them I think it’s beyond growing vegetables. It’s a style of life. It’s very challenging to grow things here in our soil, and with the extreme temperatures that we have. Anything like that has to be a labor of love.

“They don’t necessarily understand what we do at the restaurant, but they understand our needs,” Krajeck adds. “And they’re very interested when we talk to them about specific ingredients that we’d like them to grow.” Throughout the year, the restaurant showcases Whitaker-grown goods in some of its best seasonal dishes. Krajeck’s Berkshire pork belly appetizer, for example, is served with agro dolce, a sweet-sour blend of plump Whitaker figs. In one signature dessert, Tupelo honey and cake complement the farm’s strawberries, which Krajeck describes as “perfect—super tender, sweet, but not obnoxiously, cloyingly sweet.” The restaurant’s Colorado lamb loin uses Whitaker eggplants in three ways: grilled, pureed with olive oil, and in a savory ratatouille-stuffed crêpe. And the aptly named Whitaker Gardens arugula salad with grape-based saba and fresh, creamy Georgia chèvre is a local favorite. In winter, Krajeck points out, the farm’s mild-tasting arugula becomes “insanely peppery.”

Ironically, the Whitakers’ specialized diet—whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and no additives or refined sugars—keeps them from eating in the restaurants they service. Inside the farm’s cedar-walled storehouse, pantry shelves reveal an abundance of canned goods for cold months: Tongue of Fire beans (a type of Italian dwarf bean), carrots, strawberries, tomatoes, corn, and rattlesnake pole beans. The family also bakes bread each week, sometimes milling their own flour. Two-thirds of their food comes from the gardens.

By choice, the quiet, unassuming family has shunned most worldly influences. James, the patriarch, is by far the most talkative: “I do tend to dominate the conversation,” he says. They don’t own a television or computer. The air-conditioning in their 1,200-square-foot house stays turned off because, they say, the cool comfort would make it more difficult for them to go outside and work in the heat. There is no Website for Whitaker Gardens; from time to time they mail handwritten, stitch-bound booklets to friends and acquaintances. Each Garden Companion is part spiritual leaflet, part garden diary, part gratitude journal.

When it comes to making a living, the Whitakers insist, less is more. “We don’t really want more business,” Jim asserts. “We’ve turned down quite a few restaurants. There’s demand over [in Destin and other larger cities], but we’ve got plenty where we are.”