Winnetka farms is a (Sub)Urban Farmstead located in the west San Fernando valley of Los Angeles.

It started like any other typical suburban ranch house property on a very dull 1/2 acre. We could see the potential of returning the soil back in to what it had been, productive farm land. However, we had all the usual elements of urban sprawl to deal with, an expanse of unhealthy weedy lawn and a mismatched collection of dead or dying trees and shrubs. It's been some work but we're seeing the payoff now. First things first, clear out all useless and unproductive plants and trees, we removed two dying apricot trees, a peach tree that had died but had sprouted from the root stock, one enormous Jacaranda tree and various junk.

Having cleared everything and leaving only one orange tree a pineapple guava and a mulberry tree, we could begin on building up. First we started with improving the soil with a free source of composted horse manure, we had 50 cubic yards delivered, to this we added gypsum to aid drainage, "bio-start" to add bio-activity and then we tilled. We considered the no-till method but the soil was very compacted from 50 years of lawn so we decided to till to speed the process. Well on the way to better, more productive soil we could move on to of growing. We grow food, primarily Italian heirloom vegetables from the seed we import from Italy. We also started work on the other aspects of farm life, our worm bins, we have 6 and they consume many of the garden left overs, which in turn go back to the soil and stay out of the landfill. Then we installed the avocado, citrus and pomegranate trees, began the Barnevelder chicken flock  added a greenhouse for growing vegetable seedlings we sell and next the stone fruit orchard.