Is This Veggie The Hero Of Thanksgiving?

There’s a secret MVP on your Thanksgiving table, a quiet hero hiding in plain sight. It’s not the turkey or the potatoes, but the humble ingredient that gives your stuffing its soul and your side dishes their signature crunch.

It's celery, and its journey to your table is one of the most epic, untold stories in modern farming.

The story begins in the sun-baked landscape of Southern California’s Coachella Valley. Here, every farmer is also an honorary meteorologist, reading the sky and the calendar.

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They play a strategic game against an unpredictable opponent: the weather. Coaxing a crisp vegetable from the desert grounds requires out-thinking the forecast, orchestrating night-time harvests to dodge the heat and racing the clock to protect the crop from a sudden frost. Every move is a calculated risk to ensure our unsung hero is ready to take the field … fresh from the field.

(MORE: These Cold Weather Veggies Taste Even Better In Winter)

So how does this quiet champion earn its MVP title year after year?

To get the inside scoop, I talked to Jeff Percy, the VP of Production for the Desert at Ocean Mist Farms. He takes us inside the hidden world of the celery harvest — a place of passion, precision and awe-inspiring scale that will make you look at the most overlooked item on your grocery list with a whole new sense of gratitude:

Jeff, thank you for the inside look at this year’s Thanksgiving celery harvest. I grew up in the Coachella Valley, and while most people picture golf courses and festival grounds, I’ve always loved its real spirit — its farms, its growers, all the people behind the scenes putting food on our tables. It’s a special kind of place. When I found out the true MVP of Thanksgiving was your number-one crop, I knew this was a story worth telling, and one most people have never heard.

What is it really like to grow food out there?

It's a huge agricultural area, actually. Over the years, Coachella has grown to about 60,000 acres dedicated to early-season crops like dates, grapes, citrus and a lot of vegetables. The climate here is unique for winter production. We have sandy ground, which means we can plant or harvest right after a heavy rain, and it’s so warm that we seldom experience freezes in the winter.

How does the weather affect your job in ways we might not expect?

We start planting in August, when it can hit 115 degrees during the day and stay at 90 degrees overnight. We do a lot of work at night and irrigate every single day just to cool down the soil. Fast forward to the harvest in December, and we have the opposite problem. We often have to wait in the mornings for the frost to thaw and the ice to clear from the crops before we can even start.

(MORE: How Fall Harvest Influences Your Thanksgiving Favorites)

How many pounds of celery are harvested at this time of year?

For the Thanksgiving pull, we're harvesting about 35,000 boxes of celery a week. With 24 heads in each box, that works out to 1,750,000 pounds per week.

In just a week? Wow! And what about all the vegetables you grow combined? How many pounds does Ocean Mist harvest in the valley each year?

In total, from the valley, we harvest around 18 million boxes of vegetables a year, which is a staggering 540 million pounds.

That's an astonishing amount of food. With so much at stake, what poses the biggest threat to the celery crop in particular: the heat or a sudden freeze?

A freeze is definitely the bigger threat. We grow some of the best celery in the country here, but a sudden freeze can blister the stalks. It looks almost like an epidermal peel, which ruins the product. Interestingly, though, with climate change, we haven't seen much cold in the last seven years. We used to get maybe 30 frost days a winter; now we’re lucky if we see three.

Can you walk me through a time when the weather almost cost you everything?

Many years ago, we had a late freeze hit on Valentine's Day. We were out all night, running helicopters low over the fields and lighting smudge pots to fight the cold. My wife, understandably, didn't get why I was working all night! Even with all that effort, the freeze knocked out 90% of our crop. I remember finally going to bed that morning, but only after I had ordered all the new seeds to replant.

(MORE: Weather Could Be Wrecking Your Pumpkins)

This isn't a one-person job. What is the atmosphere like when everyone is working against the clock during harvest?

Having a great team is the absolute key. Farming knows no holidays; when the crop is ready, you have to harvest. We were just discussing working this Sunday to meet the high Thanksgiving demand, but then next week, volumes will drop by half. We're always adapting. For the last four weeks, the weather has been 15 degrees warmer than normal and completely dry, pushing everything ahead of schedule. Then it rained an inch yesterday, so now the fields are muddy. Normally, one tractor can pull the equipment. Today, we needed five.

What does a work day look like for your field crew?

During the intense planting season in September and October, my managers and I are out there from sunup to sundown. The field crews themselves work a standard eight-hour day, five days a week. When the heat is extreme, we schedule all the work very early in the morning or even at night. We manage the heat stress with smart timing, and of course, by providing plenty of shade and water.

Can you break down the timeline for getting celery from the field to the store?

1. Cultivation - Preparing the soil, planting, and growing the crop: We prepare the soil in the summer and then plant from August all the way through mid-February. Because the valley has three distinct growing seasons –fall, winter, and spring –we are planting something all year round.
2. Harvesting - Physically picking the mature crop from the field: We harvest the crops from October through June, right when they reach peak maturity.
3. Post-Harvest Handling - Sorting, cleaning, cooling, and packing: The crops are packed right in the field, sorted, and sent to our cooler. The goal is always to get them from "cut to cool" in under four hours to lock in freshness.
4. Distribution - Transporting the packed product to market: From there, they go to our cold storage facilities and out through our 20 truck docks, shipping to retail markets across the country.

That’s incredible! What's the most rewarding part of your job?

It's the people. I work with genuine people, and we all share a real enjoyment for growing crops that feed the country.

What do you wish people knew about the journey their food takes?

Farming is the backbone of America. We follow some of the toughest regulations in the world to be environmentally and socially responsible. Other countries don't have those same challenging policies, so it's important to buy US-grown.

Don't forget, vegetables are good for you — they’re the best healthcare you can buy.