Her flowers and produce are viral on TikTok. Meet the Latina farmer behind Sweet Girl Farms
This story is part of the Central Valley News Collaborative — a bilingual, community journalism project funded by the Central Valley Community Foundation and with technology and training support from Microsoft Corp. The collaboration includes The Fresno Bee, Valley Public Radio, Vida en el Valle, Radio Bilingüe and the Institute for Media & Public Trust at Fresno State.
Liset Garcia, 32, worked her farmstand as if she had been doing it for decades on a bright Monday morning in Reedley. She giggled and smiled as she moved fluidly between her produce, flowers and food products, like pumpkin seeds and fresh-pressed juice.
The only trace of a past life was the University of Southern California sweatshirt she sported. Garcia, who earned a degree in microbiology from UC Merced and a master’s degree in public health from USC, was involved in a car accident in 2019 that left her physically and mentally injured.
Though she liked her career and life in Los Angeles, being alone after her car accident fragmented that reality. She accepted her family’s invitation to join them in the Central Valley later that year.
Now she’s the mind and power behind Sweet Girl Farms, a local produce shop with goods directly harvested from her family’s 20-acre farm. She also stars on the Sweet Girl Farms TikTok account and YouTube channel, where she shares viral videos of colorful flowers and mouth-watering fruit.
“That’s why I came back to the farm,” she said. “If I hadn’t had that accident, this would never have happened. I wouldn’t have a business, I wouldn’t be growing flowers and have a space to let my creativity flow.”
Sweet Girl Farms was like ‘therapy’ after accident
Garcia’s family moved from the Mexican state of Oaxaca to Los Angeles in the late ‘80s and worked as produce sellers. They bought fruit and vegetables in bulk at wholesale markets to then resell. As their business grew, so did their connections with farmers in the Valley. They also became interested in buying land to establish their own farm.
Today, the Garcia family lives and grows produce — including tomatoes, peaches and oranges — on their Reedley farm. She, her parents and four staff members take care of all planting, harvesting and selling duties.
Garcia said she found solace in gardening in the Valley after her accident.
“The farm was like my therapy,” she said. “That’s why I started to grow a lot of flowers. It was to give me this therapeutic effect of starting over.”
As her physical and mental health improved, she let herself bloom and explore a new possibility: creating and opening Sweet Girl Farms.
“It wasn’t that I chose to be a producer,” she said, “it’s just how things ended up developing.”
When she moved to her parents’ farm, the farmstand didn’t exist. Determined to create her business, Garcia said it took three months to build the structure of her country store.
Unlike many small businesses, Garcia said Sweet Girl Farms flourished during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She began posting on TikTok in 2019 and started her YouTube channel in late March of 2020. She’s posted throughout the pandemic, the extended drought and now excessive rain and floods in the Central Valley. Through her viral videos, local customers learned about her, visited her and recommended their friends buy local vegetables, flowers and fruits at her farmstand.
Given the pandemic, Sweet Girl Farms has never had a “regular” year to approximate how much she should be planting, harvesting, investing and earning, Garcia said. But, she said, this year is the latest they’ve started creating their rows, sowing seeds and harvesting.
“We actually started working three weeks ago, because we had a (long) winter in California, which we are not really used to,” she said.
“And the rains!” Garcia said. “Sometimes it would rain all week, so we had to wait until the fields were less wet to be able to harvest.”
Even with business going well, Garcia knows things for her and her farmstand can change any minute but doesn’t let fear – or the weather – stop her from trying.
Drought, rains impact Central Valley farm
Though Garcia’s farmstand pops up as an idyllic oasis with sweet mandarin and orange juice, she is well aware that success at Sweet Girl Farms is seasonal and weather-dependent.
“During the drought years, we had no water, so I had to see a lot of my flowers just pretty much crisp up,” Garcia said. “That was my first big heartbreak in the agricultural sphere.”
“It makes you feel devastated,” she said. “It was a little difficult to hold my head up because it was really discouraging.”
Garcia carried this heartache into her second year farming, too. She said accepting the effects of the drought was difficult, but she grew personally and mentally. She encouraged herself to keep experimenting with new plants and produce.
She documented herself planting different hibiscus flowers in her garden on TikTok last June. She updated her followers frequently, and all looked well in October. But by Thanksgiving, she uprooted them.
The Valley’s first freeze events last fall dried and burned her crop. However, Garcia saw an opportunity in the branches’ festive red color. She turned her freeze-dried hibiscus plants into Christmas wreaths.
“When the hibiscus froze, I didn’t feel super devastated,” Garcia said. “That one didn’t hurt as much as the first time when I lost an entire field of sunflowers, zinnias and celosia (flowers) and other vegetables.”
This season, Garcia’s concerned about another weather factor she has not dealt with before: excess water.
Latina farmer optimistic about business’ future
Garcia is not so sure how her yearly peach harvest will turn out this summer.
She’s concerned for the dozens of peach trees that are loaded with budding fruit. Stone fruit can be very sensitive to its environment, she said, and she’s worried that any more rain or floods this year could impact the quantity and appearance of her fruit.
“Sometimes the rain leaves brown streaks on the fruit, and that deters the customers from buying,” she said. The fruit itself is okay and good to eat, Garcia said, “but the skin might have a blemish.”
Though some uncertainty looms — and she never planned on pausing her medical career to become a farmer — Garcia remains optimistic.
“It kind of seems odd that it’s doing well, because it was never a plan of mine,” she said. “Everything that we have achieved with the farm has just been flowing with the opportunities that life has presented.”
While monitoring the situation with her peaches, Garcia is also planning a vendor pop-up at her farmstand to thank community members who helped her overcome unexpected challenges as a relatively new producer.
You can find Sweet Girl Farms goods, and products from other local vendors, on May 6 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at her farmstand, located at 8358 S. Alta Ave. in Reedley.
The farmstand is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For more information, visit Sweet Girl Farms on Facebook and Instagram.
This story was originally published April 22, 2023 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Her flowers and produce are viral on TikTok. Meet the Latina farmer behind Sweet Girl Farms."
CORRECTION: This story has been updated with the correct date of the Vendor Pop Up event at Sweet Girl Farms.