During 20 years in the luxury travel business, Jodi Swank sometimes daydreamed about living in one of the exotic spots she visited.
Would she choose Greece or Russia? France or Turkey?
Today, she lives in a place far more foreign to her.
"Lemme tell ya. I'm a Jewish girl from Brooklyn. How did I end up on a farm in Loxahatchee?," she says. "And who'd have thought I'd love it?"
Then the former city girl goes back to telling rapt customers at the West Palm Beach Greenmarket how to turn over a new leaf.
To cook broccoli rabe, "saute in some olive oil, with garlic. h, tremendous," Jodi tells one woman.
Squash blossoms? "Stuff them with goat cheese. Heaven!"
She offers a taste of a fern-like green called minutina.
"It's an Italian salad green that's sweet, not bitter. Isn't that amazing?"
An eight-ball zucchini, a brightly colored purple cabbage and Darrin Swank washes off a cluster of freshly picked finger leeks. (Libby Volgyes/The Palm Beach Post)
Marcia and Alan Docter of Palm Beach are restocking their refrigerator following an Alaska dogsled tour, where they ate Swank produce carried on board their private plane.
"It has no chemicals. It's what you always wanted to eat but could never get your hands on," said Marcia.
Ten years after starting Swank Specialty Produce, Jodi and her husband, Darrin, have become leaders in the area's farm-to-table movement, the values reset that is reshaping American food culture and more recently found a foothold in South Florida.
They're on the advisory board of the Glades to Coast chapter of the Slow Food movement, which champions small farms and locally grown food. Top chefs now clamor for the couple's artisan-grown, farm-fresh vegetables.
"We believe people should know where their food is coming from," said Jodi, who handles sales and marketing while Darrin nurtures the plants. "That's what they get when they support small farms."
Diane Campion, the local Slow Food chapter's president, says the Swanks are "trailblazers. They're at the forefront of an exciting new movement."
The mega-farms that make Palm Beach County the state's top agriculture producer typically grow less than a dozen varieties – mainly beans, peppers, celery, tomatoes, sugar cane and corn – on thousands of acres and ship most of it out of the area. It might be weeks before it lands in shoppers' grocery carts.
Darrin Swank tending to his tomato plants in in Loxahathcee. (Libby Volgyes/The Palm Beach Post)
In contrast, the Swanks produce more than 200 types of vegetables on their 20-acre hydroponic farm and sell all of it locally, usually one to two days after it was picked.
"That's incredibly unusual," said Arthur Kirstein, an economist with the Palm Beach County agriculture extension service, which gave the Swanks a $10,000 grant nine years ago.
Their first crop in 2002 coincided with the initial wave of area greenmarkets and the rise of South Florida's locavore movement.
"They've always been very good farmers, but what's improved is the market," Kirstein said.
On the dirt road to Swank Farm, dry season dust unfurls behind vehicles like a boat wake.
South Florida's heat makes life grand for weeds and whiteflies but hellish for those trying to grow plants in soil without a roster of chemicals. The Swanks dodge the problem by not using soil.
Inside the 70,000-square-foot screened shade house, Darrin is fussing with the waist-high hydroponic tables that deliver nutrient-rich water to plants tucked in 2-inch diameter holes. From lines of black grow bags, 12-foot long tomato vines clamber up strings dangling from the roof. Eggplant sprout star-like blue flowers.
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