I was extremely jealous this week. I was at Chinaberry Farm, just outside of San Miguel de Allende, chatting to owner Deborah Richards, and I kept thinking “I wish I was doing what she’s doing”.

Deborah Richards is growing vegetables, some of the best vegetables I’ve ever seen, some of the best vegetables I’ve ever eaten.

“It all began in 2019”, Deborah said, “when we purchased the aquaponics building”.

“Aquaponics”, I replied, “like hydroponics?”

“Not quite”, said Deborah, “aquaponics uses fish.”

“Fish?”, I fired back.

“Come on I’ll show you”, said Deborah, “it uses only 5 to 10% of the water compared to growing vegetables in the ground.”

We entered what looks like one of those massive canvas circus tents that used to suddenly appear in my hometown for a week every August and Deborah led me over to these bright blue tanks and a maze of white pipes. Sure enough, there were fish swimming in the tanks.

“Tilapia”, said Deborah.

“Wow”, I said, “So I guess the fish help purify the water?”

“Actually, you’ve got it backwards”, said Deborah, as she gave me one of those looks. “The fish dirty the water with their poop, this provides nutrients for the plants, which in turn purify the water.”

“It’s a natural system. There’s no toxic run-off. No pesticides.”

“Neat”, I said, at a loss for some more intelligent or scientific comment.

Chinaberry’s first customers were local restaurants and the trade still represents a sizeable portion of their business. Bastardo, the innovative restaurant on the road from San Miguel to Dolores Hidalgo and not far from Chinaberry Farm is a great believer in the “buy local” movement and was one of Chinaberry’s very first customers.

Bastardo’s chef/owner Jorge Avendaño told me, “Chinaberry Farm has been an essential part of our creative process by having different and high quality products.”

“Deborah, Floyd and Nancy are devoted to their project and you can taste it in every green you bite.”

“I love the oak leaf, butter lettuce and bok choi but also the heirloom tomatoes and Russet potatoes…we get a lot of those…and the mini eggplants and herbs are amazing.”

In 2020, Chinaberry Farm began offering their produce to consumers and Don Day’s Wife began buying that produce about a year ago. 

They were offering six or seven different items then, some grown by aquaponics, some by traditional hydroponics, and a few grown in the ground. These days, there are often close to 20 on the farm’s weekly availability list. What impressed us most at the beginning and even more today was the lettuce. It was the largest selection, the freshest, and the best tasting we’d ever experienced, anywhere. Yes, anywhere.

There are often more than a dozen varieties available which is a lot more than I’ve ever seen in a supermarket and a few more than I’ve ever seen in a country market. This week there was Red Oak, Green Oak, Red Crisp, Salanova Butter, Incise, Nancy, Romaine, Red Romaine, Italian, Hamilton, Adriana, Flashy Trout, King Kong Frisée and Endive. Some of those I’d never ever heard of until they started showing up in the weekly emails from Deborah Richards. The choice in fact can be so exhausting, so bewildering, that I thought I would share some of our favorites, some of Deborah Richards’ favorites and some of San Miguel’s chefs’ favorites.

Red Oak

When Deborah and I were reminiscing about our childhoods, the days when our choice of lettuce was iceberg or iceberg, she told me that the weight in those green balls was mostly water but I could probably learn something by googling “is red lettuce better than green?” I did and I discovered that red has more antioxidants. 

That’s not why I choose Chinaberry’s red oak over their green oak for a salad with a simple dressing. Perhaps it’s just that green lettuce reminds me of boring iceberg.

Romaine

This was the green that converted me into being a lettuce lover about 50 years ago.

Chinaberry’s Romaine is a little looser than cello-packed, supermarket Romaine. Put aside the Caesar treatment one evening and, instead, shake on a little steak spice, olive oil and lemon juice and pop it under the broiler for a few seconds. You’ll discover one very meaty lettuce.

Nancy

When I asked Nancy Carrasco, the delightful woman who handles sales at Chinaberry and the woman Deborah Richards calls “the daughter of my heart”, Nancy chose her namesake.

Nancy is a Boston type of lettuce. I can almost eat it without a dressing but crumble some blue cheese in sour cream and mmmmmmm!

Hamilton

“This one fills all my wants”, said Deborah. “It’s crunchy, it’s leafy, it’s got lots of flavor, and it’s pretty.” 

Hmmmm, if it’s good enough for the queen of lettuce…

Flashy Trout

This one’s an heirloom variety that dates back to the 18th Century and, yes, its name comes from its similarity to speckled trout. Along with Hamilton, it’s the one that Deborah Richards chose when I said, “What if you could only have two.” 

Flashy trout falls into the romaine category which are considered the most nutritious types of lettuce. My mother always told me lettuce was good for me. It’s very good when it tastes like this.

King Kong Frisée

Frisées are like Seventies afros, the bigger the better, and King Kong is a monster. It’s bitter. It’s peppery. Bring on the honey mustard and bacon bits.

Let me now take you back again to where we started, to the aquaponics building. Another wonderful benefit of Chinaberry Farm lettuce is each head comes with its roots intact.

When we get it home, a couple of inches of water goes into a pot and in goes the lettuce. A week later, it’s as fresh and crispy as the day it arrived. Two weeks later, it’s still hanging in there.

And if you’ve got company coming and don’t want an ugly pot on the counter, tear up the lettuce, put it in a baggie with the air squeezed out and you might get a third week out of it.

Talking so much about Deborah Richard’s lettuce actually makes me feel a little guilty. Because it means I’m neglecting a lot of other vegetables, not to mention several herbs and spices.

Here’s just what’s on this week’s availability list: chard, kale, chives, sweet basil, Thai basil, purple basil, cinnamon basil (no I’ve never tried it either), dill, arugula, watercress, parsley, fennel, li ren choi, purple rosie choi, lady bug choi (all three mysteries to me), Chinese cabbage, English cucumber, Japanese cucumber (definitely worth trying), heirloom tomatoes, russet potatoes, and probably one or two things I missed.

About the only negative thing I can say about Chinaberry Farm is their vegetables aren’t exactly the easiest things to buy. 

Here’s what you need to do: First you get on their email list by emailing chinaberry20@gmail.com. Then, each and every Wednesday, in your in-box will be a list of what’s currently available, the prices (which I find very fair) and some photos that may persuade you to choose more than you really need. You hit reply and place your order and let them know if you’d like to pick it up between 10:30 and 11:30 on Thursday at Magnolia Plaza (where Bananas, Wellington and Lima are) or at the same time on Saturday in Los Frailes at Parque Los Enamorados on Calle Angel.

Or you can, perhaps like me, arrange a day and time with Chinaberry to go pick your own veggies, maybe get to see the fish doing their thing and, like me, enjoy the best selection of lettuce ever in your life.