URBAN SELF-RELIANCE

IN AN UNLIKELY LOCATION, HYKE FARMS PROVIDES FOOD AND A BUFFER AGAINST CATASTROPHE.

- Christopher Nyerges

By the time you’re 30 minutes east of Los Angeles on the 210 Freeway, you have no sense whatsoever that you’re in farmland. After all, you’re on the freeway, in the heart of urban sprawl. If you exit the freeway and head north into the quaint suburb of Duarte, you still don’t feel like you’re in farmland.

As you drive closer to the towering foothills of the Angeles National Forest and turn down a typical street, you finally approach the Hyke residence … but this one has no front lawn; just lots of native plants. Even so, there’s still no indication you’re entering a little farming operation.

“Welcome to Hyke Farms,” shouted a smiling Daniel Hyke as he welcomed me to a short tour of his backyard farming operations. “Hyke Farms might well be the tiniest farm in America.”

“I don’t call it a ‘garden,’” Hyke explained, “because gardens are for amateurs who want a distraction from their daily routines. What we’ve got going here is serious business. In fact, I’d had this micro-farm going for more than 20 years, mostly growing just tomatoes.”

Then, on a fluke, Hyke decided to plant a winter garden for the first time—something that can be done in Southern California because of its mild winters.

“I planted four varieties of lettuce, spinach, cilantro, radishes, broccoli, turnips, carrots and peas and kept a couple of bushes of cherry tomatoes going,” he said, pointing to the raised beds. “It was a real experiment.”

He started the winter garden in mid-November 2019. Three months later, the worst pandemic in more than 100 years hit.