WASTE NOT WANT NOT

One Monday morning in April 1910, 3,000 boxes of fresh asparagus were burned.¹ On Tuesday: “Tell them to come down and they can have all the asparagus they can haul away, providing they leave the boxes, which cost money.”² On Wednesday, the remains sat rotting in the sun. Mercifully, on Thursday, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that “the mountainous rows of asparagus boxes that lined the sidewalks for the past few days…” were finally gone.³

California had an asparagus problem.

In 1910, “more farmers engaged in asparagus production…than ever.”⁴ Much of this was happening in the Sacramento Valley, where vintner-turned-rectifier Norman W. Folsom was working at the California Winery. “The market is glutted with the grass,” one reporter wrote, hopefully adding, “the producers and shippers will no doubt find means to broaden their market before another glut can occur.”⁵

By 1915, some 50,000lbs of asparagus were being turned into “asparagus gin”, according to a 1916 State Commission report⁶.

California had found an asparagus