Jesus Calvillo, the founder of Brothers Ranch, started his business in 1978. Jesus puts in hard labor into his farm, working on it early in the morning, to late at night. Putting his heart and soul into the land, Jesus makes sure the fruit and veggies not only look beautiful but taste great too. At 65 years of age, Jesus still works hard to maintain his farm today.
“I know what chemicals are bad and which ones are okay, I know how to grow food,” Jesus said. “Some people don’t understand organic versus not. I only use nontoxic sprays that are needed, as well as use natural resources such as snails and bugs to feed into the dirt”.
Before owning the ranch, Jesus lived in Mexico working on his parent's farm, where he began work as early as 7 years old. The first crops he ever grew were corn, beans, and pumpkins. This was the beginning of understanding how to grow crops organically and sustainably.
“I work with the farmers and do all the tractor work seven days a week 6 am-11 pm and repeat it,” Jesus said. “I worked 300 acres alone for a while, sometimes I used to work until 2 am. To start farming you need to have a big crew, and a big company, otherwise it’s not easy”.
Farm work is not easy and is quite backbreaking. Conditions for workers are also very intense and go unnoticed by the mass population. Jesus finds this work to be his passion regardless of it all.
Many farms don’t care about ethics and don’t care about the farmers, and Jesus has experienced that in the past. Because of this, he cares a lot about the way he treats his employees.
“Sometimes I pay the workers and I don’t have money for me,” said Jesus. “Some farmers have a hard time paying workers, but I still do”.
I asked Jesus how he began selling at farmers' markets, and growing his farm business. He told me he started selling when he realized how the companies were overpricing their produce.
“If they sell a box of strawberries for 10 dollars, the farmers only get 3 dollars,” Jesus said”.
Now his kids Judy and Jorge have taken over the farmers market portion of the farm business and are taking initiative on the farm overall. Since Jesus is getting older, and labor is getting harder to find, he has slowly been downsizing the farm, as well as passing the torch to the next generation.
