On Thursday I remembered that the Capitola farmers market had started up again, in the afternoon. The charm of this market is not its size, which is miniscule. The location is half of it: it's right smack next to the beach in Capitola-by-the-Sea. "By-the-Sea" is an affection I usually omit, but in this case, by golly, there's the sidewalk, there's the wall, there's the sand, and there is the Pacific Ocean. The problem with the location is that Capitola's parking is notoriously poor, and the patrolling parking police are absolutely rabid about writing tickets.
The charm for me is that so many people there I know. Besides the nice woman at New Natives (I don't know her name), Betty was there with fresh cherries and dried Blenheim apricots, Heidi was there with H&H Fresh Fish, Scott was manning the Happy Boy Farms booth, and there was Thom Broz from Live Earth Farm! I hadn't seen Thom since the screening of "The Real Dirt on Farmer John," and what a treat to see him at the market.
Dawn, who was working (and whom I know) from Gayle's Bakery, had already given Logan a snickerdoodle (a cinnamon-sugar cookie), but Thom replaced it with a fat strawberry, then gave us the entire basket, saying, "It's the last one." He threw in some beautiful golden chard, some baby lettuces, and some good conversation. There were two young men at his booth who mentioned having worked for a year up at Green Gulch Farm. They were on their way back East (home to them), and I said I'd be in New York City next week.
One of them told me, "The problem there is that only the most expensive restaurants get decent produce, and not that many at all can produce the California cuisine we've gotten used to." Tell me about it, brother.
I had been completely cheesed off last year when the NY Times Sunday Magazine produced a story on spectacular California produce, featuring David Kinch, the chef at Manresa. (Note: I was the photographer and web geisha for Manresa, and I accepted the work because it's one of the best restaurants in the world. If that makes me biased, you can make a skirt out of me.)
When he traveled to New York to cook for the press luncheon assembled by Eric Ripert at Le Bernardin, the idea was to showcase Kinch's considerable talents. To that end, as I'd suspected, he had brought all his own produce from his favorite vendors in the area. But the photograph used to illustrate this story, which also featured Joe Schirmer and Becky Courchesne, from Frog Hollow Farm (Alice Waters' favorite peaches) was a dessicated ear of corn that looked like something Squanto would have turned down at the first Thanksgiving, alongside a single red tomato, on a hard grey countertop. It screamed "bachelor photographer!" and I was truly offended at the sheer ugliness of the shot.
I wrote a letter to NYT, naturally, but no one took responsibility for such an insulting photograph, and the matter died. (Except I get to exhume it! I'm blogging!) I volunteered to take any photographer they'd care to send to Santa Cruz around to a dozen farms, to show them what a perfect head of lettuce looks like, or the strawberries you can't get in New York--according to Mimi Sheraton, that is, as she blames California for not shipping better fruit to her store in Manhattan. (Mimi? It can't be done. Decent berries don't ship. Find a NEW YORK FARMER, doll.)
I know that there are great farms in New York, because I lived in Woodstock, Phoenicia, and Lake Hill, all in the Catskills. There is a little farmstand in Mount Tremper that had the sweet corn was just the best I've ever had in my life. I lived in a community that had an organic garden, and the gardener there, Elora Gabriel, was like some transplant from Findhorn. Her lettuces were shimmering with health. So was everything grown in the organic garden at the Omega Institute for Holistic Living, where I'd spent the summer of 1985 and some of 1986. Omega was in many ways a watershed place for me: I don't recall every being aware of organic produce before that (not in San Diego, not in Los Angeles, not in Nashville, all of which preceded my move North).
That was twenty years ago next month, when I moved to Omega. I've come a long way, baby...5000 miles, via a large U-shaped path through the Deep South (my childhood home) and Boulder, Colorado, where we lived for less than a year. I travel a lot better than a perfect strawberry, though I'm no longer green, not especially hard (to people who are good to me, that is), or preserved with chemicals. But enough about the Eighties!
NOTE: The photograph above is a single perfect peach, served at a farm dinner at Frog Hollow Farm. Amanda Hesser could have used something like that in the article about California's glorious fruits and vegetables.
Links:
Capitola-by-the-Sea
Findhorn Foundation
Frog Hollow Farm
Gayle's Bakery
Green Gulch Farm
Live Earth Farm
Manresa restaurant
Omega Institute for Holistic Studies
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