Family of farmers tries to preserve a way of life

Originally published Saturday, November 13, 1999

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Rob Cerqui and his mom and dad, Louie and Lucy, are taking an unusual 9 a.m. weekday coffee break around the kitchen table in what used to be Grandpa Angelo's house on Valley Avenue East.

This old farmhouse used to be outside Fife, but progress has straightened the river and creeks, extended the city limits as well as the nearby port and railroad holdings, and turned Cerqui (pronounced "CHAIR-kwee") Farms into an oxymoron: an urban farming business.

They are barely breaking even, growing vegetables on 110 acres in a half-dozen different locations between I-5 and the Puyallup River.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense these days to be busting your hump growing beautiful big heads of lettuce for the same price you got back in the 1970s, but to 61-year-old Louie, "it was because my heart was always in farming."For 26-year-old Rob, the roots seem to run even deeper. "When he was about 5, his grandpa let him plant and tend his own rows of cukes and beans in grandpa's garden," said mom Lucy. "When other kids had Kool-Aid stands, Rob had his own little farm stand. I remember Louie had to wire wood 'cheater' blocks on the pedals so Rob could drive the old (Ferguson) '30' tractor."

Part of the improbable explanation of this oxymoron is tenacity, forged not only from the Italian root stock but the Scandinavian determination of Ballard-born Lucy. She's been president of the King-Pierce County Farm Bureau for seven years, a board member even longer, and an outspoken proponent for agricultural interests.

"I was driving our truck back from dropping off a load of lettuce one day and I heard on the radio about the state Farm Bureau convention being held in Fife. I wondered what the heck was that? So I drove over and walked in.

"A guy there told me what a great organization it was for farming families, that I should get my husband to join and he could then bring me along to meetings. And I told this guy that I would join, and bring my husband along to the meetings!" Most of the predominantly Italian families that truck-farmed in this rich bottom land are gone now, and concrete commercial buildings and split-level homes are the big money crop. Rob, with a U-Dub business degree and a two-year agriculture and forestry program under his belt, sees development as the biggest threat to the Cerqui farming business.

And rising costs. "When I was a boy, everything was packed in wood boxes we could use again. Now we have to pay $1.60 for one cardboard lettuce box. We're competing against the really big farms that buy 100 tons of fertilizer at a time."

As we walk the rich, loamy fields of autumn, Louie points to another problem: "See there, you can see where the geese had breakfast this morning. I can't scare them away with a shotgun 'cuz we're in the city, but they can hide in the celery and then come out when we're gone!"

Louie followed his parents' advice, initially, and became a produce manager for the old Tradewell stores. And Lucy first met Louie when she was on a state park outing with other Fife High School seniors. "Louie was there with his family, and the old man was walking around with a spoon in a coffee cup, because he loved his wine but you weren't supposed to drink in a public park!" Lucy recalled.

Lucy's own work experience ran the gamut from part-time work as a candy clerk at the downtown Seattle Woolworth's 5&10, to pickle-packer for Nalley's to pea-picker for a local packer, finally settling into 13 years with the Bon Marche before "retiring" to become a full-time farm wife.

When the Tradewell stores closed in the 1980s, the timing and circumstances were ripe for Louie to return to vegetable farming. "Rob was in junior high at the time, and racing home every day, if you can believe that, to work in the fields," Lucy said. "So, we doubled our acreage and doubled it again, and here we are today, working our buns off!"

Louie and his father and uncle combined to farm 30 kinds of vegetables and, with field help, pick, pack and market most of the crops themselves. These days, they concentrate on lettuces -- iceberg, and red and green leaf and romaine -- and celery, sweet corn, rhubarb, pumpkins and squash. Some crops, such as the rhubarb, are marketed through farmer co-ops; some, such as the lettuce, move through major local wholesalers, competing against the dominant California crops.

But this ain't your father's farming. Grandpa Angelo farmed with horses and stoop labor. Louie saw tractors and other technology move into the growing, harvesting and marketing areas. "And Rob is in the scientific area," the proud father says. In addition to his postgraduate agricultural studies, Rob has devised ways to seed lettuce for greenhouse growing and transplanting into the fields.

Besides the dangers of weather, geese, rising costs and looming development, there's outright damage and theft by passers-by. "Lotta times they're dumping off dogs they don't want," Louie said. And Rob and Lucy both smiled knowingly. Louie befriends those rejected and sometimes abused pets, sometimes coaxing them with food taken into the fields for weeks and months on end, until they accept him.

"He's already taken in and given away nine dogs, and we've got five at home right now!" Lucy said in mock exasperation.

The Cerqui family wealth is not measured in how much the celery will bring on the Thanksgiving wholesale market, or what lettuce boxes cost per 1,000, or in how many heads of 25-cent lettuce they can raise from February through November. Their worth is in their love of one another, their love of the land, and the creatures.

"I even love the geese ... most of the time!" Louie said.