San Pasqual Academy is a high school for foster kids built on a farm. Okay, I'm simplifying a little, but I'll share some more details later. I grew up skateboarding, so the first thing I noticed when I arrive might not be what other people see first. In fact, they probably wouldn't notice it at all.

I passed by the ramps a few times while I was there and each time all I could think was "I've been gentle on my knees lately... I wonder how they would hold up to a session at the skatepark?" After prying my attention away from the skate ramps, I met up with Scott Murray to learn more about him and the San Pasqual Academy. While I was talking to him, I kept wondering how a foster care boarding school and an organic farm ended up getting married.

The previous week, I was at a small house on a farm just 10 miles from here talking with people who were just making a modest living. Today I was on a beautiful, multi-million dollar campus in one of the most picturesque places I've every seen with a guy who was working on building a several hundred acre organic farm and farming research facility. And he had no clients and couldn't really sell me much food at the moment. Was I in the Twilight Zone? No, this was reality. So how did it happen?

Back in 1898, a small elementary school was run on the property. Later, in the 1940s, the property was given to the Seventh Day Adventist Church by its owner and member of the church, Irvin Georgeson. At that time, he made a verbal agreement with the church that the property would always be used for Christian education. The church managed the land as an almost self sufficient operation with its own water source, farming, animals, and other necessities of life. A book bindery, an egg ranch, and Spackers Packaging and Assembly Industries (assembly and distribution company) also operated on the site. The church ran a boarding school on the property until 1997 when declining enrollment led to the closure of the school and the church putting the property on the market.

In the 90's, the county was facing challenges with overcrowding in juvenile facilities and foster kids leaving care without earning a high school diploma. In 1998, the ACLU was threatening to sue the county over some of these issues. The ACLU had won a similar lawsuit against the county in 1990. The county thought that the site would be a wonderful location for a juvenile facility. In 1999, following negotiations with various parties and opposition by religions groups about not keeping the site as a religious facility, as well as opposition by groups wanting to spend more money on family oriented foster care instead of group living facilities, the county purchased the land and started planning the San Pasqual Academy.

Millions of dollars of donations from businesses along with public funding paid for renovations and construction on the property to accommodate the students and farm. During that time a team consulted with hundreds of experts, community members, and foster kids. They wanted to do something exceptional that could serve as a model for the best of what foster care could be. The first students started the program in October 2001 and its graduates have almost all continued on promising paths. With around 135 students currently, more construction is in progress to host up to 250 students.

So how did Scott Murray come in to the picture? Scott got involved in gardening when he was in college at UC Santa Cruz. His gardening went well and he sold some of his harvest to restaurants. Later he leased land in San Diego, and then expanded into Mexico, growing organic specialty produce to sell to restaurants. When his wife was pregnant, they decided to scale back the farming operations so that he could spend more time at home.

The San Pasqual Academy needed someone who was skilled in teaching, farming, and politics. The match was perfect. Plus Scott wanted to get out of the sun for awhile and thought this job might do that for him. But as Scott grew the farming part of the academy, which is Scott's biggest passion, they decided to hire someone to take the teaching side. So maybe he didn't get out of the sun. Big hats and long sleeves should do the trick. They currently have a one acre garden, but he plans on expanding it to 17 acres and supplying San Diego area restaurants, as well as running a farm stand on State Route 78. More immediately, he will be converting one of the buildings in to a processing area for produce so that it can be prepared and delivered to area restaurants and markets.

More than just farming to grow food for sale, the a farm is a research center for agriculture. Without the pressure of profitability in the same way that small family farms might have, he can experiment with different growing techniques and varieties of plants, and use what he knows and learns to educate the farming community. During my visit, he was working with two farmers from Peru who were there on internships learning about American style organic agriculture. But the other side was that he was also learning farming techniques from them. He also has plans for an aquaculture area for raising fish, an entomology lab for studying and raising insects to feed the fish, an earthworm farm to help with composting (already operating), an area on a south facing hill to grow tropical plants like bananas, and an animal program with chickens, turkeys, and (more) pigs. Most aspects of the farm also provide educational and work opportunities for the students.

Now for a short lesson. See the tree below? It's hard to tell in the photo, but it used to be an orange tree. The price of oranges went down and ruby red grapefruit became a higher dollar crop. The grower who leases this land from the academy (the land will return to the academy in the next 12 years) decided to switch to grapefruit. To do so, he rafted a grapefruit tree on to the branches of the orange tree. This is done by taking a bud from the grapefruit tree and carefully attaching it to a cut branch on the orange tree. The place where the graft is made is weaker than the rest of the tree. With the weight of the grapefruit on the tree in this photo, the branch broke at the graft point. Even more amazing than the graft of the branches is that about 6 inches up from the root, this tree was long ago grafted from another kind of tree. Who knows what the tree was originally. I find it fascinating that all this is possible and would love someday to see the grafting process up close and learn more about it.

So back to my question about how a unique farm like this happens to exist. Here's my answer: take a historical site focused on self-sufficient living and education, add one social problem in need of a solution, sprinkle on a tablespoon of good timing with the sale of the property, mix in a talented farmer who just also happens to be good with teaching and politics, and bake with lots of love-money contributed by government, business, and private sources. Delicious!

The San Pasqual Academy is located at 17701 San Pasqual Valley Road, Escondido, CA 92027 (33 miles from me). Scott Murray can be contacted at 760-805-1380 or by email at scottamurray@sbcglobal.net.