I Heart Farms

I Heart Farms

Welcome to a new look for my work with farms and ranches. I can't call it a blog any more: it's more than a blog. This not a hobby, this is my life's work. I've never been comfortable calling myself a blogger—I'm a writer. Besides, the word sounds like you're puking, to begin with, and I'd like to administer a bare-bottom spanking to whoever insisted on popularizing it. (Unless that person is MegNut, who is allowing one of my heroes, Michael Ruhlman, to gueststar on her website.)

Onward to the stories.

• • • • • • • • • • •

Yesterday found me (along with Bob and Logan) at a farm dinner in a beautiful spot up near Waddell Creek (south of Pescadero, north of Davenport), located near Rancho Del Oso nature preserve. Farmer Jeff Larkey hosted his seventh farm dinner—an unrivaled stretch of hospitality in farm dinner history.

The farm looked quite different than it had a few weeks earlier on my birthday. Then everything was just drying mud. Now the crops are in: among them, fennel, red and golden beets, Deer's Tongue lettuce, favas, and all kinds of greens. All these things found their way to the dinner table, along with some pork from TLC Ranch and some California sea bass from H & H Fresh Fish.

Connections

Despite some difficult circumstances in our family right now, I am very aware of the blessings. The word that comes to mind is "connections." Pictured at left, George (1/2 of "George and Weezy," a pair of Jersey cow twins that came to TLC Ranch from Ron Garthwaite at Claravale Dairy) bestows a bovine benediction on Bob Thorson, of Deep Roots Ranch.

Logan and I were at TLC Ranch yesterday, bringing with us another young chef, this time Ben Howard from Gabriella Cafe. Inspired by Michael Ruhlman's book, The Making of a Chef, Ben went to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, and had worked on a CSA in Poughkeepsie whenever he could.

Jim's wife, Becky, gave us a peek at of the brand-new (two-day-old) baby chicks that had escaped their confines, and were scattering like two-inch tumbleweeds among the larger poultry (which includes 35 Bourbon Red poults, and hundreds of other pastured chickens). They are speedy, but their legs are tiny, and it was easy and fun to scoop each of the little powderpuffs up without hurting them.

An Italian Family: Sierra Valley Farms

First of all, warmest welcome to readers of Megnut, and many kind thanks to Michael Ruhlman for the kind words on his introductory guest blog piece over there. I felt compelled to get a new post up here, though I am slammed with work for a restaurant. Which leads me to Reno, where I traveled last week.

I was visiting 4th Street Bistro, with chef Natalie Sellers and her front-of-the-house partner, Carol Wilson. Natalie was amazing, and (God bless her forever and ever) took me to two farms, one of which grows exclusively for her. The other, about 45 minutes to the west, was located near Beckwourth, in the heart of the highest alpine valley (once a lakebed) in the Northern hemisphere. This is Sierra Valley Farms, owned by the Romano family since 1936.

I'd met farmer Gary Romano in January at the Eco-Farm Conference. His operation fascinated me: he is clearly the New Farmer whose job description far outstrips last century's farmer's. No longer are brute strength, frugality, and good organization enough to succeed in farming. No, now you have to be a networker and more. Gary and his wife, Kim, have a diverse and visionary operation, which began back in 1989, when he bought the 65 acres that remained from his grandparents' original 900-acre ranch.

Since it's nearly 5000 feet in elevation, the farm is limited in what it can reliably produce: a mere sixty frost-free days a year put quite a damper on your hopes for tomatoes and peppers and other heat-loving crops. On the other hand, the custom mixed greens that Gary grows enchant both the eye and the tongue, and it's no wonder that a chef would drive almost an hour to get them, fresh-picked that day, for her customers. (And no wonder, with that kind of dedication to her ingredients, Sellers' restaurant celebrated its sixth anniversary earlier this month, with a steadily growing business and enviable customer loyalty.)

Yo, Anonymous "Passerby"

Pictured here: the giant garlic grown by Bill Mehwaldt in Nevada. He's been selecting for thirty years.

To answer the chickenhead anonymous commenter at Earthlink (usually I don't address people who are too cowardly to speak for themselves), who said:

"I don't get why you're calling Whole Foods 'thieves' (because of their tomato prices) on June 9 after you wrote that nice post on John Mackey's blog on the Whole Foods website on May 30? I don't work for them and don't even shop there often - I belong to a CSA - but this seems hypcritical to me. Were you just trying to promote your own site?"

It isn't hypocritical to praise the good and damn the bad. To have usurious prices on, in this case, heirloom tomatoes, which go for $2.00 a pound at our local farmers markets, is obscene.

Should I merely be a sycophant? I hope not.

While I do appreciate his response, which WAS thoughtful (and no doubt composed with a great deal of guidance from an equally thoughtful marketing department), it is not an indicator that everything is done with some kind of compassion and desire to help people. You are talking about a CEO of a multi-jillion dollar corporation.

I went to Whole Foods shortly after I commented on John Mackey's blog. I didn't do it to "check out the enemy," but I do find it disconcerting that EVERYONE calls it "Whole Paycheck," when I know that, here in Santa Cruz, some of our farmers markets take food stamps.

What was it like at Whole Foods (in Monterey)? I spent only $30, and part of that on medicine. My overall impression is that people are dazzled by all the choices—six artisanal bakeries with offerings up to your eyeballs!—but I don't need all the choices. My local natural foods stores (New Leaf Community Markets and Staff of Life) have ample variety in every regard, and what they don't have (a vast wine selection, e.g.), I can easily augment elsewhere. I wouldn't buy produce at Whole Foods, when it's so much cheaper at the farmers market, but if that's what people want to do, and are willing to do, and need to do, bully for them. For myself, I didn't have a single pang of envy or the feeling that I was missing something in never having been inside a Whole Foods,  nor do I have any desire to return. I saw what all the fuss was about, and I don't need the fuss. Santa Cruz is covered. 

Meanwhile, I'll tell it like it is: $6.00 a pound for heirloom tomatoes that are available from good farmers I know for $2.00 is just ridiculous. Absurd. This isn't rocket science.

There, are you happy, O Great Masked Commenter?

• • • • • • • • • • •

And on a happier note: I visited two farms while I was in Reno, and won $450 on the slot machine in a fifty-cent bet in the airport. I never play slots, and was just killing five minutes before our plane boarded. Whee!

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “As an essayist I don't believe in the fiction of an anonymous observer. Rather than the sham of objectivity, I think you should put you perspective up front. That's only fair to the reader.” — Ralph Wiley

Thanks for visiting.

Deep Roots Ranch: "We're Grass Farmers, Not Ranchers"

The serendipity and synchronicity are undeniable: I'm being led on a quest. When Cynthia Sandberg at Love Apple Farm was looking for a baby goat, she called me to see if I could help. "Because you know everyone, girlfriend!" (I could probably get some testimonials to this effect, but they would be limited in their usefulness.)

Of course I called Jim Dunlop, networker extraordinaire, at TLC Ranch, because he's a rancher. "Call Jean Harrah out at Deep Roots Ranch. Here's her number." I called Jean, and got some information for Cynthia, and then asked a little more about her own operation, explaining that I write about farms. "We're raising heritage breeds of animals for meat and eggs, animals which take longer to mature." What kind of animals? Cows, chickens, turkeys, sheep, and most recently, some Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs.

While she talked, I Googled, and found a link to the breed. "The oldest spotted pedigree breed in the world" ... "Placid and easily managed - the most laidback pig"..."Producers of some of the best tasting pork and bacon." I don't know about you,  but when I see words like "best tasting pork and bacon," I perk right up.

And so it came to pass that I arranged a visit to the ranch—and honestly,  isn't "Deep Roots Ranch" such a beautiful name?—the following week. When she gave directions, Jean said, in her very melodious voice, "You'll know you're here because of all the chickens."  

Say Good-Bye to This

It was the second time Cynthia Sandberg's spidey senses started to tingle, last September at the Ben Lomond Art and Wine Festival. Which, she laughs, is attended by "about twenty people. No one goes to that thing!" In three hours, selling tomatoes at a table there, she made $300. Never in the history of her farmstand, located at Love Apple Farm in Ben Lomond, had she made $300 in an entire day. An entire day with a literal ton of tomatoes for sale at $2.00 per pound, sold on the Honor System. Was someone ripping her off? Perish the thought. At least, that's what Cynthia did for the time being.

She had told me on more than one occasion that she was losing money growing tomatoes, a fact that galled her ex-husband, who hated the tomatoes to begin with. The money Cynthia put into amending and building the soil, which is what puts the flavor into the tomatoes in the first place, and her hired labor, was something like $5/pound. Yet she could only sell them for $2/pound, which was the market rate in the county. How could she charge more than Happy Boy Farms was getting at the farmers market?

La Milpa Organica: Circle of Life

The first thing I noticed about beautiful La Milpa Organica, farmed by Barry Logan in Escondido (north of San Diego) is the patchwork quilt of greens that grows in the center of the farm. I arrived when Barry was jogging back and forth from a cooler, filling the back of his van with boxes he would be delivering to the chefs who prize his crops, but Barry took time to give me a tour of his farm. (Pictured at left, Santiago is Barry's ace harvester, filling a box to order.)

We stood surrounded by twenty-some kinds of salad fixings, ranging in color from spring green and chartreuse to deep reds and purples. Barry said wistfully, "I'd make more money if I only sold those," sweeping his hand toward some tiny green plants. "But I'd lose all this beauty, and I just can't bring myself to do it." I could understand, completely, and his yearning for beauty is certainly one of the keys to the soul of this farmer, who left the corporate world to live his dream of farming just three years ago.