::::::

Collins and business partner Roberto Garcia own Serendipity Farm, an organic concern operating on two parcels in Carmel Valley. On eight acres just around the bend from Château Julien, they grow tomatoes in 15 varieties, sunflowers, chard, herbs, kale and incendiary Oaxacan peppers. An acre and a half just down the road are the hot-weather plants: corn, bell beppers, eggplant and squash.  

On a late September day, the main part of the farm, where the U-Pick stand is, brings to mind every cliché in the book about bucolic serenity. Boxes of Orange Oxheart and Black from Tula tomatoes are stacked on a table, ready for the farmers market. Five of the farm’s eight full-time workers relax in the shade during lunchtime, being entertained by their colleague’s impossibly tiny Chihuahua puppy. Bees buzz. Birds sing. Collins’ blue heeler, Amity, lies panting beneath the open tailgate of her truck. It’s an idyllic scene.

But four years ago Collins was working three jobs to support what she jokingly calls her “farming hobby.” There was the full-time desk job at Earthbound Farms headquarters, which left her itching to make use of her crop science degree from Cal Poly. There was the part-time job as regional service rep for California Certified Organic Farmers. And there was a third gig doing inspections for CCOF, something she still does on occasion. In evenings and on weekends she would head up to Moss Landing to do the work she really loved, cultivating beets, carrots, kale and sunflowers on two acres of certified organic land which she had found, well, serendipitously, in the classified pages of the Weekly.

So the name was decided.

People came out of the woodwork to help her in the early days, Collins says. Friends and co-workers sometimes even came up on their only days off. Soon Garcia, who was a foreman at Earthbound, joined Collins full time, bringing the wisdom gleaned from decades of tending crops and a comforting presence. “He’s like a father to me,” she says. “He’s taught me so much. He’s so kind of Zen, I guess.”

The first couple of years were touch and go. Collins was paying people out of her own salaries, and there were times when checks arrived barely in time to keep the house of cards from tumbling down. She learned how to barter, trading fresh vegetables for abalone, dog food, and massages. In the beginning she sold her produce at the Monterey Farmers Market (she’s still there each week, in front of Rosine’s) and her sunflowers to Whole Foods, as she still does. In 2002, she started selling to A & A Organic Marketing. By the end of that year, she was able to quit her job and farm full time.

By 2003, she realized she needed to start growing higher-priced foods, like peppers and tomatoes. So Serendipity came to hot, sunny Carmel Valley. Collins cultivated a list of 15 restaurants that would buy the farm’s produce, including The Covey at Quail Lodge, Montrio, Adrian’s Gourmet Kitchen, the Wild Goose, Garden Bistro and Tehama Golf Club.