I Heart Farms

A Month of Sundays: Where I've Been

Pictured here: squashes and pumpkins at Love Apple Farm, where I've been visiting lately. There are many reasons I've not been writing—all of October, even. Foremost, I've got some steady part-time work, and second to that, we've had more visitors and socializing in the last three weeks than in the past ten years. Some other projects and interests have popped up—not the least of which has been the birth of a baby boy in the house next door, and I've been (self-)appointed Court Photographer. I'm behind in e-mails and in other areas of life.

I only have time today for three brief announcements of some events very soon, and maybe you can avail yourselves of them. And then I hope to get back in the saddle with blogging. Much is happening on the local farm scene, and most all of it is wonderful.

How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parson: Get This Book

I took my copy of How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table to the farmers market this morning, and probably sold twenty copies of it for Mr. Russ Parsons, its author. I think this is the best book I've read in a long time on any subject: that it is also a cookbook is just icing on the carrot cake. (No, there is no recipe for carrot cake in the book. That's fine: I prefer chocolate.)

You can sense the patience in Russ Parsons (he reminds me a bit of Michael Ruhlman): he carefully and flawlessly entertains and educates. That he reconstructs the timeline of industrialized agriculture in our country is logical and fascinating. At times, he's poetic, like when he contrasts the modern grocer's produce with "a perfect peach."

The agriculture business has gotten very good at keeping food as fresh as possible along the way, but there is no arguing with time.

As growers and marketers try to come up with ways to beat the aging process, one favorite technique is picking fruit earlier. To understand why they do this let's look at one surefire way to pick a perfect peach. All you have to do is go out in your backyard, find the one on the tree that is at the most perfect point of maturity and ripeness, pluck it gently from its branch, cradle it gingerly in your cupped hands and then walk quickly to your kitchen. Don't run—you might jostle it. A peach like this is a treasure, a taste to remember all your life.

The book is useful and beautiful: my favorite combination. The cross-referencing is brilliant. How to Pick a Peach opens with this dedication: "For all the farmers who work so hard so we cooks don't have to." Well, ya gotta love that.

Growing Goodness: I Hope You Heard It Here First

I have been sitting on a delicious secret for a while now, waiting for the right time to reveal something that is truly and utterly wonderful. I've also been experiencing guilt pangs at keeping something like this all to myself, but the timing has not all been mine.

Some weeks ago, I got a comment here saying:

Growing Goodness™ is a community-based broadband TV network for viewers with extremely passionate interests—beyond what cable television can provide.

Our mission is to create more public awareness and active interest in our local farmers markets.

• Explore the U.S. farmers market world
• Generate farmers market awareness and active interest
• Increase understanding of community affairs and events
• Foster lifelong skills for good living
• Spotlight excellence in goodness

Farmers Market Channel™

Hosted by the community members our Farmers Market Channel™ spotlights farmers, locally grown produce and neighborhood farmers markets.

good food. good health. good life.

Enjoy!

Sooooey! (Chop Suey?)

The Chinese have designed a stamp in honor of The Year of the Pig, and this is it. Not only is the front of the stamp "scratch and sniff," but the back, when you lick it, tastes like the sweet and sour pork you will smell.

Can someone please get me some? (Hmmm, my nephew lives in China. Maybe he can score some for me.)

I've been busy, ramping up on two new web designs for new clients, and hope to get out to a farm soon.

That's all for today, and thanks for visiting.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.” —William Butler Yeats

The Year of the Pig: Not So Fast!

Pictured here: these little piglets, the size of puppies, were less than a week old when I photographed them yesterday. There is nothing in the world cuter than a tiny baby pig.

After reading over 400 new posts on blogs this morning, I noticed that some people are jumping the gun on this Year of the Pig thing. Make no mistake: I love the Year of the Pig. I am the Year of the Pig. My previous phone number was HOG-SING (and it was palindromic, too). My favorite radio station: KPIG, (107 OINK 5).

But officially, the Year of the Pig does not commence until February 18, 2007. That is unusually late for a Chinese New Year: most begin in late January. So our Year of the Pig won't last even a full calendar year, alas.

Nevertheless, given that TLC Ranch has nearly 400 mentions on my blog, and Justin Severino, the chef-turned-butcher who processes all TLC Ranch meat, has over 400, I think it is safe to say that pigs and pork will continue to provide lots of fodder, so to speak, for the Year of the Pig, in all its glory.

Patchwork, Miscellany, Mélange, & More

Pictured here, pomegranates at the west side farmers market this morning.

How wonderful is it that an organic farmer in Montana was elected to the United States Senate? It's true. State Senator Jon Tester beat the incumbent, Conrad Burns, in a tight race, but one which is over. Tester even has a blog, to which I just subscribed.

Oddly enough—spooky even—is that just this morning, blogging friend/restaurateur Haddock wrote a moving post called A Farmer's Hands. He wrote that the farmer with whom has a symbiotic relationship (the farmer takes Haddock's restaurant compost and feeds his pigs, and Haddock then buys the pigs) had an accident with a bandsaw, and stands to lose some of the use and feeling of the fingers on his left hand. He has to undergo five hours of surgery. I read the Wikipedia article on Jon Tester: “As an adolescent, Tester lost the middle, index and ring fingers on his left hand in an accident while working with a meat grinder.” (Prayers and good wishes for the best possible outcome, and comfort for, Haddock's farmer friend and his family, please.)

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NaBloPoMo, Joel Salatin, Harold McGee, & Food

Jen over at Life Begins at 30 asked who'd join her in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) and I thought, "Why not?" Except, hello, there is no way I'm putting a picture of Yoda or a gun on this blog. So I made my own: I am a hoarder of Dover woodcut clip art, and this lady''s just been waiting for her chance to climb out of that folder. It's true that I no longer use quill and ink for my correspondence, but I did once, and it's the writerly spirit that's called for here. (Besides, who ever saw Yoda write anything?)

I'm sure I'll find some way to cheat.

Usually I stick blog recommendations at the end of my posts, but today I'm so excited that this one is going right up front. Harold McGee has been blogging since August. HAROLD McGEE! (That's him in the photo with me in the lefthand column). Here is a great little snippet, from an entry on organic vs. conventional agriculture:

"Organic agriculture, with no pesticides or mineral concentrates, usually exposes crops to more stress, and its produce is usually higher in phytochemicals."

I have to wonder though, if human nutrition matters more than sustaining the earth's ability to produce food. Pesticide use producing antioxidants and phytochemicals seems counterproductive: I guess you'll need your antioxidants to combat the cancer that the pesticides could cause. (You'll have to read the whole paragraph: I can't print the whole thing here.) And I imagine Harold will find his way here to let me know what I'm missing.

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Eighty Kinds of Pumpkins & Squash!

I met up with three farmers today out at High Ground Organics farm, next to the ramshackle Redman House in Watsonville. The occasion? Jerry Thomas's nephew, Steven Pedersen, had planted EIGHTY kinds of pumpkins and squashes on a pretty small piece of land—like an acre or less. The vines had gone nuts, some of them twenty feet away from where they'd been planted, and Steven and his assistant, Joanna Johnson, were out there to see if they could make order of chaos.

It was like trying to detangle three hundred garden hoses.

Dirty Early Girls & Oso Velloso Farm

At the end of summer every year, many people are melancholy at having to bid adieu to the perfect tomatoes we adore. I am among them.

I was delighted to see buddy Max Withers give a shout out in the Los Angeles Times to the glorious dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes from Joe Schirmer at Dirty Girl Produce. Max took twenty pounds of the tomatoes, and made his own tomato paste. As he writes: “California farmers have outdone themselves this year: Tomatoes have been more succulent and plentiful than ever. So I armed myself with 20 pounds of my favorite, dry-farmed Early Girls from Dirty Girl Produce, an organic farm in Santa Cruz, and started working on how to preserve their intense, sweet essence through the dark winter ahead.” (Thanks for the scoop, Max, and congratulations on getting into the LA Times!)

Along those lines, another treatment for Early Girls is my recipe for slow-roasted tomatoes, which I call "Godiva Tomatoes." They aren't designed to last into the winter...ours barely last a day around the house.

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Seeing

Bear with me while I get mystical.

I visited a new farm last week, and climbed some steps up a bluff, where a view of the mountains sprawled in front of me. At the edge of a cliff, a large stand of sunflowers drew my attention, and I “took a picture.” (Now that I'm thinking of cameras day and night, “taking a picture” seems like a strange way to phrase the act of creating a photograph.)