BY SARAH BURGE
THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE

Tina Torres lives on a mountain east of Temecula with two pit bulls, her shotgun and about 1,700 hydroponic basil plants. For 16 years, Torres has operated Lichen-Z-Farm, supplying markets in Riverside and San Diego counties with high-quality, pesticide-free, freshly cut herbs. "People can't believe it," said her son, Hank Torres. "It's a one-woman show. She's a very hard worker." "I'm a farmer," said Tina Torres, 61. "Why do we do it? Because we love it. " "I wake up every day looking at this," she said, gesturing toward the sweeping view from her home, which ranges from the Palomar Observatory to Vail Lake to Mount Baldy. "And I just go, 'Thank you.' " A narrow, rutted dirt road leads to the farm in the rural community of Aguanga. The five-acre property is peppered with greenhouses and outbuildings. Gravel paths wind around enormous boulders. Soft jazz lilts from one of the greenhouses, but Torres is out of earshot. The music is for the basil.		"My plants always listen to the Temecula jazz station," Torres explained. Basil is her biggest crop, but she also grows chives, mint, rosemary, spring lettuce and heirloom tomatoes. Outside, she grows lavender. Twice a week, Torres loads up her van and delivers fresh herbs -- from Barron's in Temecula to Whole Foods stores around San Diego. Although Torres single-handedly runs the farm, her son Hank was the "instigator," Torres said. Hank Torres, 41, a general contractor living in Rancho Mirage, built most of the greenhouses and designed and installed the hydroponics system. Hydroponics is a gardening technique in which plants are grown in nutrient-enriched water instead of soil. Hank suggested hydroponics when his mother, recently divorced, was looking to start a home business to supplement her income as a manicurist. In high school, Hank had done a science project on hydroponics and in his 20s tinkered with a hydroponic backyard vegetable garden.
Hydroponics was a good solution for his mother, he said, because once a system is up and running it can withstand variations in weather and is easier to maintain than a conventional garden - no weeding or tilling, fewer pests. Tina Torres shows one of her purple basil plants. "My plants always listen to the Temecula jazz station," she said. Torres' plants grow in a medium of volcanic rock and nutrient-filled water from a single reservoir that pumps through the greenhouses. Hydroponic gardens grow many times faster than conventional methods, Torres said, and yield a more flavorful product with a longer shelf life. One of the drawbacks is that any nutrient imbalance affects the entire crop. Likewise, the cost of nutrients has quadrupled in recent years, Torres said, due to increased demand from China. "This is my oasis," Torres said, standing in a greenhouse filled with lush, green basil plants. "When it's hot out, I come in here and give 'the kids' a sprinkle - and myself," she said, turning on the overhead misting system. Hank Torres said his mother has become a hydroponics guru. She barely has to use meters to check the nutrient content of the water, he said. She just looks at the plants. Along with her fresh herb business, Torres makes crafts and gift baskets that she sells on the farm's Web site: www.lichenzfarm.com. Among her specialties are homemade potpourri made from her own lavender and luminarias of hand-made paper with pressed flowers. She also collects the bright-green lichen that grows naturally on trees around her property and sells it to the Carlsbad flower market. Torres said she is not kidding about the gun. "I'm an excellent shot," Torres said, explaining that her eldest son, an Orange County sheriff's deputy, taught her to shoot. Given Torres' frequent wild animal encounters in her two decades on the mountain, it seemed like a good idea. Bobcats, coyotes and foxes are a common sight. Early one morning, preparing to leave for a craft show, Torres said, "I heard this woman screaming -- I thought it was a woman." It turned out to be a mountain lion. "My knees buckled," she said, and she ran to get her gun. She actually opened fire the time she found a rattlesnake in front of her greenhouse. And another rattler inside, curled up on the floor. "I didn't harvest that day," she said. "I was pretty much done." Torres hardly seemed destined for a rugged lifestyle. She grew up "an ocean girl" on the beaches of Orange County. "I was Gidget," Torres joked. Before she and her former husband bought the Aguanga property 21 years ago, they lived in Dana Point overlooking the harbor. Now, she said, she relishes rural life even though she is just scraping by -- herb farming is hardly a lucrative business. "I'm an optimist," Torres said. "You have to be to be a farmer. Or insane." [ See full article with photos and video at PE.com ]