Photographer Mark Tuschman connects with berry farmer – and hopes other locals will do so, too

Emails Menlo Park resident Kathy Switky: “I think you know photographer Mark Tuschman. During his recent project to photograph immigrants, he got to know Javier Zamora, the owner of JSM Organics in Monterey County. The market for his strawberries has disappeared.

“Mark is helping to fix that by arranging to buy dozens of flats of strawberries every Friday, and reselling them to neighbors. When I went to pick up mine this morning, he and his wife Jana were sitting on their front patio with 36 flats of strawberries awaiting their pickup. They wear masks, of course, and manage the flow of strawberry buyers so that we each wait on the driveway until the patio is cleared by the previous neighbor-customer. Mark is putting lots of time into this, and is not marking these up, so all the funds go to the farmer. (And the strawberries are DIVINE.)

Mark clarified his involvement: “I am not doing an open market. People who want berries have to call me and order what they want. All proceeds go to Javier of course. They are $40 per flat- 12 one pint boxes.