I Heart Farms

Eat Local Challenge wrap-up

Family life outside the blogosphere has been intense this week, and much of what I usually think of as my reality seems right now to be a bunch of gas vapors inside my monitor. I haven't had much time or energy for what isn't in my house or in my family. I did get out to a Slow Food potluck at Everett Family Farm on Saturday, and we took Logan to the Santa Cruz County Fair yesterday, where we spied this gigantic Blue Cochin cockerel, pictured at left. (All but the last photo in this entry were taken at the fair.)

In reflecting on the 2005 Eat Local Challenge, I'm glad I've taken a while to form my thoughts, because it's easier to see now what the long-term effects this experiment will have on me. For one thing, I have come to think that all food is not created equal. In fact, I would go as far as to say that I now think pre-packaged foods are not real food at all. And I am starting to think that the people who buy Shake 'n' Bake and Kraft and Swanson's and all that crap are being assimilated, like the Borg in Star Trek. I am tired of seeing wax fruit in the grocery store: I am weary of being inundated with ads for edible poisons that contribute nothing to our health, aliveness, economy, or environment. If the majority of your food comes out of packages, and is mixed with chemicals and unnatural ingredients, I think you are either a fool or you're insane, and maybe you're immoral, too. How's that for being diplomatic?

Vanessa Bogenholm: Take that, Mimi Sheraton!

The first thing I noticed about farmer Vanessa Bogenholm was that she is strikingly pretty. I'm used to that: Santa Cruz county is home to some of the prettiest farmers I know (Joe Schirmer, I'm looking at you), and some handsome ones, too. (Don't make me list them all. Go look at the "Some Farmers I Know" photo album.) The second thing I noticed about Vanessa was that she has beautiful hands. "Ten pairs of gloves" is her secret: these are not the hands that scream "I've been plowing all day and digging in the dirt." Cool. (I am the sort of person to notice nice hands, though. It's a secret obsession my mother passed on to some of her five daughters.)

Vanessa met me on a hilltop overlooking the Monterey Bay: the location is around 11 acres, up above San Andreas Road in Watsonville (or "La Selva Beach," as the denizens of the beach community that shares the 95076 zip code refer to it). Look south and you see Moss Landing and Monterey. Look north and you can practically see to Davenport. Here grow Diamonte and Aromas strawberries, and they grow profusely.

Here's the view from the hilltop, overlooking about five acres of Diamonte strawberries.

Farms Are the New Black

"We make good milk." That's simple. But if you think it's deceptively simple, it's because you've been deceived into thinking there is some kind of trick or gimmick or marketing involved with what is honestly called "good." In this instance, Claravale Farm milk is one of two raw, organic milk dairies in the state of California.

I spent the day out at Claravale Farm yesterday. Collette Cassidy, the wife of Ron Garthwaite (the dairy farmer and maker of Good Milk) invited us to her birthday party--right on the farm. It's the first time I've been out there since April, and it was a joyous day to be there. I was happiest to see Jim and Rebecca and baby Fiona, from TLC Ranch, because I have just loved getting to know them in the past couple of weeks. But it was great to see some people I haven't seen in years, and some people I know only in print.

Upon arrival, I can honestly tell you that I could smell the bacon a full one hundred feet away from the house...where the kitchen is in the back. And while there is a cow pasture up front, nary an aromatic molecule from the cow kitchen did a cow pie send. If you know what I mean. The breakfast buffet included fruit salad, bagels, lox, Quiche Lorraine, bacon, scrambled eggs with cheese, buttermilk biscuits, apple tarts, berry tarts, fresh squeezed orange juice, and champagne. Everything was top notch, because that's how Ron and Collette do things. Best of all, there was Ron's butter...in my entire life, I have never had butter this good. It was so far beyond any good butter I've had, and so much the essence, the distillation of what butter should be, that I couldn't speak immediately. And when I could, I begged for more.

New Orleans Turned Me into a Foodie

Welcome to all the visitors from New Farm. I promise this is a blog about farms, but I had to write about New Orleans, as it is dear to my heart. Pictured at left, an above-ground cemetery in New Orleans. Because of the water table, all cemeteries are like these, with ornate tombs. It seemed appropriate to use this picture here.

"Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans"
Louis Armstrong

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
And miss it each night and day
I know I'm not wrong... this feeling's gettin' stronger
The longer, I stay away
Miss them moss-covered vines...the tall sugar pines
Where mockin'birds used to sing
And I'd like to see that lazy Mississippi...hurryin' into spring

The moonlight on the bayou.......a Creole tune.... that fills the air
I dream...about magnolias in bloom......and I'm wishin' I was there

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
When that's where you left your heart
And there's one thing more...I miss the one I care for
More than I miss New Orleans

. . . . . . . . . . .

(All photographs of New Orleans were taken by me in 1982.)

I spent ten days in New Orleans for my twenty-third birthday, which always coincides with the Jazz and Heritage Festival. I stayed with my dance partner from college, Gregg, in a hundred-year old house off St. Charles--a house that will almost certainly not survive the flooding from Hurricane Katrina.

Gregg grew up in Metairie, and he was working at Commander's Palace while putting himself through law school. His mother and I ate dinner there (for free), and the chef pulled out all the stops for us. There was crawfish bisque, and oysters, and crab, and crawfish étoufée. There was Bananas Foster, and I was over the moon.