Dan Macon, left, and Jim Leap.
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The 2009 Pedro Ilic Awards will honor Dan Macon, a Placer County farmer and community organizer, and Jim Leap, a farm educator with UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS). Both honorees combine innovative farm work with outstanding community education, and Leap credits a major life decision to a partnership with Pedro Ilic, the awards’ namesake.
The awards will be presented by the UC Small Farm Program, 7 p.m. March 2, at the California Small Farm Conference in Sacramento.
The Pedro Ilic Award for Outstanding Farmer will be presented to Dan Macon, owner of Flying Mule Farm in the foothills of Placer County. He and his family grow vegetables on 3.5 acres with power supplied by a mule named Frisbee. The family leases an additional 600 acres to raise grass-fed lamb. They sell their products primarily to farmers markets, but also to local restaurants, retail stores and the newly formed Sierra Foothills Meat Buying Club.
One of Macon’s nominators for the award was Roger Ingram, director of UC Cooperative Extension in Placer and Nevada counties.
“Dan is not only a successful producer, but an active and contributing member of the agricultural community,” Ingram wrote. “He has been the creative force behind the development of many successful programs that serve agriculture in Placer County.”
Macon’s agricultural leadership has helped foster Small Farm Progress field days, the Placer Ag Futures Project to examine the future of local agriculture, and Placer County Farm and Barn Tour an annual county-wide agritourism event. He was also instrumental in development of the county’s mobile poultry processing unit and serves as a member of the Placer County Agricultural Commission, Foothills Farmers Markets board, and Gold Country Sheep Producers Association. Macon also consults on agricultural land conservation issues, and fosters working landscapes with managed grazing and timber harvests.
Honored with the Pedro Ilic Award for Outstanding Educator is Jim Leap, manager of the UC Santa Cruz Farm, part of CASFS. His role over the last 19 years — besides managing the university farm — has included teaching in its six-month apprenticeship program, overseeing the farm’s research trials, cooperating with outside researchers, contributing to training publications, and sharing information with visitors, students and farmers.
Leap was nominated by Martha Brown of CASFS, who called him a “gifted educator” in the apprenticeship program.
“His classes on starting a farm give apprentices the ‘reality check’ they need as they plan their futures in agriculture,” she wrote. “He is able to offer students the type of practical knowledge born of countless hours spent on the seat of a tractor, fretting over the weather, walking the fields, nurturing and harvesting produce, and marketing what he grows.”
Former apprentices and current farmers Nancy Vail and Jered Lawson, of Pie Ranch near Pescadero, also nominated Leap for the award.
“We, along with many other past UCSC apprentices who are now small-scale farmers, owe so much to Jim Leap,” Vail wrote.
Before working for the University of California, Leap spent 15 years farming in Fresno where he worked closely with farm advisor Pedro Ilic. Leap credits Ilic for encouraging him to pursue a career in agricultural education.
“Almost single handedly, he is the one who convinced me to get a degree in agricultural science,” Leap said. “The most gratifying part of this award for me is that I’m being recognized for a lot of the same traits that Pedro had—the same traits that I was drawn to in Pedro.”
The awards are named for the Fresno County small-scale farm advisor whose untimely death in 1994 prompted the UC Small Farm Program to annually honor those who carry out his legacy of personal commitment to small-scale and family farming. Ilic was one of the original advisors of the Small Farm Program, when it was established in 1979.
