If the television commercial did its job most of us in the Southwest probably believe that salsa from New York City sounds unpalatable. Well, how about fresh, tasty, organic produce grown just miles from the Big Apple? Sound impossible?

"Some people may think that organic farming is just for the gentleman farmer who wants to play around with the land and have a tractor or do this and that with machinery.” Dale Haubrich, organic gardener

Not so, according to Dale Haubrich and Bette Lucina, two dedicated organic gardeners who have been working the soil just over an hour from the city for the past 17 years. They are part of the farming movement that believes farmers should grow for the local market and people should be eating food those farmers produce for a healthier life. They make there living near Sag Harbor, N.Y., growing and distributing produce to the locals.

Sleepy gardens

But when the temperatures in New York drop and they put their gardens to sleep for the winter Haubrich and Lucina head to the Southern Arizona with seeds in hand. For the past 11 years, they have become the “Johnny Appleseed” of salad greens, winter gardened in the lush Santa Cruz County Valley.

Walk into their cozy, country kitchen just outside of Tubac on any given day and you'll likely find freshly harvested lettuce and spinach in the sink doing the backstroke in a cool water bath. Most of their Tubac produce will go to friend's and neighbor's tables, although some finds it way to the local farmer's market.

Their winter work in Arizona is more a labor of their love of the soil and the need to spread the word that “buying and eating local food is important.”

On a crisp Arizona morning with the temperature just above freezing it's hard to imagine anything growing locally, but life thrives inside of the 14-foot-by-96-foot plastic-covered hothouse constructed in 1998. It's warm inside and tiny droplets of condensation hang from the plastic sheeting stretched tightly across the metal framework.

By mid-February each year the hothouse, just a short walk from the flowing Santa Cruz River, has a carpet of green covering the rich valley soil.

“The greens just taste better here because of all the minerals in the soil,” said Lucina, offering a handful of the tender young shoots from one of the 30 varieties of greens they will grow this winter in Tubac. “For millennium every time it rains the rain puts minerals in the soils from the rocks breaking down. All the minerals are carried to the flood plain right here. You can taste them.”

Lucina remembers the days when she too didn't think much about where the cardboard-tasting tomatoes and bland peaches came from that she ate in the winter. She knows now that while our global market makes it possible to have those out-of-season foods it does not make much sense.

It’s time

“It's time to start thinking about where does my food come from and what does it take �“ how many food calories-- to produce it and get it to us,” said Haubrich. If you buy food that was produced hundreds of miles away on a huge farm using lots of machinery “food calories” in the form of fossil fuels are burned to both grow and transport the food to your table, he said. When those calories are more than the calories we take in eating a food we are depleting the world's natural resource with each bite we take.

Back in Sag Harbor, Haubrich and Lucina keep down “food calories” by relying on a gas-powered tiller, not a tractor, to turn the soil. Their sturdy minivan transports their crops to market and local restaurants that serve their vegetables.

“Most of the time we have a lot of contact with the ground with little hand tools or our hands so we know what is going on in every area of the farm,” said Lucina. “We really take good care of it.”

Their two small farms in New York total just over 2 ½ acres but produce vegetables, fruits, flowers, berries and even fresh eggs. They average 75 to 100 different crops on their land, each rotated to provide optimum production and conserve the “living soil” they so love to dig in. During the growing season from March to November they hand plant between 10.000 and 15,000 tiny seedling in the ground. Those baby plants produce as much as 40 tons of fresh organic produce for the local families each summer, said Haubrich.

Hand work is also daily work at the couple's mini-farm in Tubac. Both the hothouse and adjacent outdoor plot of cultivated land have been planted with cool-weather crops. The salad greens and brazing greens boasting exotic names such as Red Russian Kale, Tat Soi, Freckles and Deer Tongue in the hothouse are ready for harvesting. With the quick flip of a knife Lucina sheers a pinch of baby lettuce with the precision of a surgeon. The harvesting, hand washing, sorting and bagging accounts for about 50 percent of the time it takes to bring their product to the table, they said.

Haubrich and Lucina look the stereotypical part of organic farmers. Built low and sturdy, he is often attired in bib overalls and a straw hat. Her favorite dress is a vintage “farm lady” shift with a frui-and-vegetable pattern on the fabric she purchased 20 years ago. Even in mid-winter their skin glows from the hours spent outdoors tending the soil. Their hands are strong from years of pinching pesky weeds. Their eyes sparkle as they talk about the gardens and their 17 years together farming after meeting in a natural food store. One Halloween they dressed up like the famous American Gothic painting farm couple and looked the part without much trouble, they laughed.

A farm boy who grew up in Carole County, Iowa, Haubrich was raised to love the land and work hard. He went away to college but all of the zoology, biology and ecology classes he took while studying microbiology kept bringing him back to his farming roots, he said.

When he met Lucina, the daughter of an attorney and secretary, he was farming just over an acre in South Hampton. She had property on a major road in Sag Harbor and he had a vision for a farm stand. They have been together since.

At age 61 Haubrich said he is gearing down his career as a farmer and moving into the “mentor phase” of his life, helping others get started in organics and, of course, spreading the word to “buy local.”

Their new apprentice Cliff Marsom took over the marketing side of the operation in Tubac and is the third set of hands for planting and harvesting. Last week he was busy planting an heirloom variety of onion, originally grown by the Pima Indians in the Santa Cruz County Valley, in the hothouse.

Marsom has sells the greens at the Tubac Farmer’s Market each Thursday under the name Sage Farm and said that the locals can't seem to get enough spinach to satisfy their needs. He is also negotiating to sell greens at the Wednesday farmer's market in Green Valley.

Master plan

“My whole plan is to accommodate the local market,” said Marsom. “At market I have a sign that says: 'Harvested today and driven one mile to market'. People love it.”

Although their “greens season” is short in Tubac, Haubrich and Lucina are quick to point out that there are other sources of local produce in the Santa Cruz Valley including Agua Linda Farms and Avalon Organic Gardens, both near Tubac and both offering Community Supported Agriculture programs (CSA) where people put money up front to buy a share of the produce to be harvested on the farms. Tree of Life operates an organic garden in Patagonia and the community garden in Arivaca puts fresh produce on tables in the area.

Indeed, there are more small farms in the United States than ever before focusing on niche areas such as selling to farmer's markets and growing organics, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Their census of agriculture published every five years shows that there were about 18,000 organic farmers in 2007, compared to only 12,000 in 2002. Many American farmers are gearing down to sell locally rather than competing with the world market, according to the census. And that is good news for the local shoppers, agree Haubrich and Lucina.

“Some people may think that organic farming is just for the gentleman farmer who wants to play around with the land and have a tractor or do this and that with machinery,” said Haubrich. “But there are a lot of serious farmers out there who are in the business of producing food for their community.”

Eat locally and you will taste the difference, know what you are eating and support the local economy, according to Haubrich and Lucina. And you will be helping to save the world by reducing the use of fossil fuels.

“I hope to be hoeing a radish when I go or doing something with the soil, with plants, with growing food,” said Haubrich. “It's just part of my life. It's who I am.”