Flora Farm is a ten-acre organic farm in the foothills of the Sierra de la Laguna Mountains in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico.

For over 10 years we have been farming without the use of pesticides or genetically modified seeds. We have an ideal winter growing season that corresponds with the local high season and the need for exported produce. After founding the local farmers market on the farm some 10 years ago, we have dedicated 100% of our production to local consumption. Now Flora Farm grows for Floras Field Kitchen, Floras Grocery and the Culinary Cottage owners.

We work Flora Farm largely by hand, turning the soil minimally or not at all; instead nourishing it from the top down with layers of compost, mulch and decomposing cover crops. We cultivate and weed by hand and over time the need to weed becomes minimal. We plant and harvest by hand- trellising tomatoes and cucumbers on wood stakes and using the shade created to protect light sensitive crops- in all we plant over 100 varieties of vegetables and herbs. Our growing season becomes a succession of abundant harvests as the hot summer yields to a mild fall, a cool winter and a warm spring.

We began ranching to supply the Field Kitchen and Grocery with high quality humanely raised chicken, eggs, pork and beef. Our longtime partner, "Jefe" Guadalupe Espinoza, has been raising animals his whole life in Santa Anita on the 150-acre ranch his father Don Manuel purchased in the 1960s. Jefe Lupe has always cared about the conditions his animals were raised in and we have worked together to set up a sustainable ranching operation. We irrigate areas to provide vegetation for shade and foraging, and as they grow all animals are provided open area to scratch, roll and dig. Our feeds are all vegetable with no hormones or antibiotics and they are milled fresh every 2 weeks.

We are working to realize efficiencies between the farm, ranch, restaurant and market. In just one example, we send old flowers out to the chickens who love to peck at the drying seed heads, vegetable trimmings go to the pigs and chickens, and chicken manure comes back to heat up our compost piles.