Tiny urban farm in Lomita, California yields bounty fit for iconic restaurant

Ginger Rivera and Ryan Roelen have turned their large Lomita back yard into an organic farm that now supplies local chefs. The two grow everything from tomatoes, citrus, avocados, pumpkins and a variety of chilis. (Steve McCrank/Daily Breeze/SCNG)

Rivera intends to get what’s known as a state cottage food license so she can sell beet bread, habanero mustard, marmalade chile, zucchini bread and other creations she makes and bakes from the products they grow.

By Nick Green
Daily Breeze
Sept 24, 2016

Excerpt:

Ryan Roelen had grown corn since the age of 4, progressed from there to growing chiles on his balcony apartment and, finally, bought three-quarters of an acre in Nicaragua where he planted citrus trees and other native plants when he wasn’t surfing.

But even that was a largely foreign concept to his girlfriend, Ginger Rivera, whom he had first met in the second grade before the two graduated in 1991 from South High School in Torrance.

She spent the next dozen years teaching at a local elementary school, while the pair discovered they lived in the same neighborhood and belatedly began a relationship.

After a dispiriting search looking at $1 million fixer-uppers in Torrance with little of the yard space Roelen sought, they bought the Lomita property in May 2015.

Read the complete article here.