Emily Jane Freed, the assistant production manager at Jacobs Farm/Del Cabo, grew up with an organic lifestyle always in the backbone of her family. A native of Santa Rosa, Calif., Freed remembers, "We always had a garden in our backyard, the milkman delivered the milk, the fish guy came delivering fish."
But it was the year-long stay in Israel on a kibbutz (a collective community based on agriculture) that changed her taste for organic food and farming. After completing a six-month apprenticeship for organic gardening at University of California-Santa Cruz, she began working at Jacobs Farm/Del Cabo, an organic firm that grows its products in Northern California and Mexico's Baja peninsula. Freed, 33, now oversees seven farms.
--Maggie Braine, contributor
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