I Heart Farms

Slow Food Dinner at TLC Ranch

Yesterday was tough to be a farm-loving foodie in Santa Cruz county. There were two farm dinners to choose from, and I hated to miss the dinner at Ella Bella Farm...but friendship called. Jim and Becky at TLC Ranch have been selected to go to Terra Madre in Italy this autumn, and Slow Food Monterey Bay helped put together a fundraiser, featuring the fabulous food of chef Justin Severino.

The really miraculous thing is that everything we ate, except the cottage cheese pictured here, was grown or raised on TLC Ranch. The sausages (three kinds) came from TLC pigs. The chicken, obviously, from TLC. The vegetables and fruit, and even the honey, were all produced by Jim and Becky.

Will Blog for NoDoz

Photo here: taken a year ago today, of Jasmine's chickens at Everett Family Farm. Alas, alas, alas, all these chickens were killed by a dog recently. It doesn't seem possible. Yes, we cried. Yes, Jasmine cried. The turkhen, closest to the camera, was Ave (as in "Ave Maria"), and she liked Logan. They all did. Because what toddler speaks fluent Chicken? He does.

So here I'm taking a detour off my usual topic to ask you, my readers, to visit this website: Becks & Posh. The writer, Sam Breach (aka "Samantha"), is an English woman living in San Francisco with her beloved Fred, who is French. She's one of the pillars of the food blogging community, and I can honestly say that I have found her to be one of the most generous, helpful, kind food bloggers—no, people—on earth. Despite that we've never met. Hey, I'm not stupid, and if you read someone's words long enough, you can detect if they're in the game to serve, or if they're in the game to self-serve.

Sam's one of the tent poles who holds the whole circus tent up. No, I'm not kidding. I think she's the tallest pole of them all. (Googling references for "world's tallest Polish person" produced no results. I did so want to link to "tallest Pole.")

Udderly Wonderful

Have I got treats for you! Well, besides this photograph of the ducks at Free Wheelin' Farm yesterday. These are Campbell Khakis, and I think they're darling. So does the farmer, Amy Courtney, who tells me they're three months old and aren't laying yet. Ducks are so funny.

Last time I was out at Deep Roots Ranch, Jean and Bob showed me a wonderful book of all these people with their farm animals...I'm talking the biggest bulls and horses you've ever seen. Stunning work by a photographer named Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Today I stumbled across a site with all the photos online: here is the section on cattle, pigs, donkeys, goats, and sheep. Speaking of pigs, do you think people really resemble their pets? Maybe not. Maybe so. And here are the horses. I just love his work.

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Another cool link: The Vertical Farm Project.

July on the Central Coast

Pictured here, farmer Amy Courtney reaches for the fattest, sweetest blackberries I've ever tasted. Yowsah. It's been six hours, and my fingers are still stained. I'm not complaining.

Earlier today, I visited Free Wheelin' Farm, curious about Amy's experience on Sunday with the Tour d'Organics business, and will post more about that soon. (I need to get there for photos when the sun is lower in the sky.) This was a great visit: Amy is inspirational in every regard, and I want to tell you a lot about her.

Short story: less than one acre, located up the coast from Santa Cruz about six miles. Amy bikes her CSA deliveries to twenty families in Santa Cruz twice a week. I thought, as such, that she would be the darlin' of the Tour d'O, but no-ho-ho-ho-ho. "Are you kidding? Commuter bikers are just the biggest losers in the world to the Lycra Bikahs!"

Oui. Flashbacks of "Breaking Away" come to mind. ("Ahem. We are not bikers, we are cyclists!" was a remark directed Amy's way on Sunday. I'm sure that, in the stifling heat, the chill was refreshing!)

Anyway, more about Amy soon, but for now, the short story is: I was wrong in my previous post about needing proteins on a major bicycle ride. Carbohydrates and electrolytes are the big deal, so good to know that the food served up at Love Apple Farm was adequate. ("Vegan" is quite another thing, and I think the riders should be informed ahead of time. Maybe they were. I don't know why I'm grumpy about the whole thing, but I'm sure I'll get over it.)

Free Wheelin' Farm is an oasis and a treasure, and Amy is blessed in so many ways.

More soon!

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." — H. G. Wells

Thanks for visiting.

Ella Bella Farm & Tour d'Organics Report

Meet Brandon and Michelle Ross, of Ella Bella Farm in Corralitos, California. Brandon started farming organically in 1996 in the Capay Valley, when he founded Cache Creek Organics, a 300-acre farm abundant with diversity. In 1999, he moved his operations to Santa Cruz county, co-founding Ella Bella Farm with farming partners J. P. McDaniel and Jane Freedman (she was one of the co-founders of Dirty Girl Produce, now "manned" by Joe Schirmer). Their little daughter, Bella, contributed one-half of the farm's name. ("Ella" is Michelle's daughter, now seventeen.)

When I first visited Ella Bella Farm, it was located across the street from the present location, out on Corralitos Boulevard near the Corralitos Market. The first time I laid eyes on the farm was when I was riding around scouting out places for a farm dinner back in 2002. Brandon was loading strawberries on a truck, and he took time to usher us around the property, on a hillside next to a creek. I was impressed then with the diversity: strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, potatoes, a zillion kinds of tomatoes, peppers, you name it. That diversity has increased: I can't even name all the crops I saw during a brief visit today.

12,000 Words: Green Gulch Farm

I've passed it more than a dozen times, peering into the valley below from the perilous coastal Highway One heading down into Stinson Beach. It beckoned like a beautiful quilt. This is Green Gulch Farm at the San Francisco Zen Center in Muir Beach. I will write more about it soon, but right now, words fail me. (Click to enlarge: I am making the thumbnails very big deliberately.)

The Butterfly Effect, Part II: A Person

The presence of this blissful pig at Deep Roots Ranch is in no way relevant to the person I am about to describe. If anything, it is more descriptive about my own emotional state today: the weather is perfect, Logan is napping in the Big Pink Bed, and I went to two farmers markets this morning. We got to visit with Betty, Jasmine, Kirsten, and Justin Severino, who was working the booth for TLC Ranch. (Scroll to the end of this post for some great news on Justin and TLC Ranch.)

I had to Google the Butterfly Effect: I didn't know what it meant. Wikipedia says: "The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear (or, for that matter, prevent a tornado from appearing). The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale phenomena. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different."

There is an applet at this site that makes it more understandable. (You need Java in your browser.) So this themed writing is about how one small thing (or person, or event) made a huge difference in your life.

If I look at my life as though through a telescope turned backwards, and see myself now, and see myself far, far away (and very small, as things seen that way are): I am nineteen years old, living in a little cottage in San Diego. Connecting me to the young woman I was then is one thread that is continuous, and that thread is the golden presence of a friend, Maria Nation. She was my next-door neighbor, who lived with her husband, Jacques.

We lived side by side in little cottages in Pacific Beach, on Archer Street.

The Butterfly Effect, Part I: An Ingredient

Pictured here, garlic hanging on the patio fireplace wall at 4th Street Bistro in Reno, Nevada. It was grown by Bill Mewalt, who has been selecting it for thirty years.

Over on one of my favorite blogs, Ideas in Food, Aki has posted her responses to being tagged for a meme called "The ButterFly Effect."

Dan over at SaltShaker came up with this meme:

My thought in this meme is food items or events that changed your foodie life. Not some “oh, it’s the first time I didn’t put jelly on a peanut butter sandwich and used bananas instead” sort of change, unless you truly feel that affected you profoundly. That’s the key - it affected you profoundly, in some manner. A moment you can look back at and say “that was a defining moment”. The questions are simple, the answers might be harder - an item, person, event, or place that had that effect on you, and why. They don’t have to be big splashy things - sometimes it’s something very small and simple that changes the way we view the world - the famed “butterfly effect” (and I’m not talking about the Aston Kutcher movie). So, to those who want to participate, copy this and pass it on (and, if you’re so inclined, do a trackback to the originating post). Here are your categories:

1. An ingredient
2. A dish, a recipe
3. A meal (in a restaurant, a home, or elsewhere)
4. A cookbook or other written work
5. A food “personality” (chef, writer, etc.)
6. Another person in your life

Because these require a lot of thought, I am going to break them up into a few parts. My first installment, about an ingredient, should be no mystery.

Places and Faces

A mish-mosh of a post, with lots of information about some happenings.

First of all, if you are fortunate enough to love farms, love bicycling, and live near Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, or Sebastopol, then you might be interested in the Tour d'Organics (their site is currently down, but I'm sure it will be up soon) taking place over the next three months. The Santa Cruz county event will take place on July 23: read this article in the Sentinel about the day. Riders can choose 35-mile, 65-mile, or 100-mile options, touring the county and visiting small farms. (The farms are the rest stops.)

All routes begin at Cabrillo College. I've mapped out all the locations over at Platial: 2006 Tour d'Organics Farms: Santa Cruz.

To Die For: Outstanding Dinner with a Terrific Pig

The coincidences mount. Yesterday I attended another Outstanding in the Field farm dinner—my thirtieth! We had the pleasure of going out to Live Earth Farm, surely one of the most beautiful farms on the planet, to meet up with old friends and new, all gathered to tour the farm and enjoy the food of chef Justin Severino. By the end of the meal, everyone I talked to who had attended multiple farm dinners agreed: this was by far the best farm dinner any of us had ever had. I say that somewhat reluctantly, since prior to this, there were only six that I would consider absolutely perfect in every regard. And reluctance because it's not a competition, and I don't want to take away anything from the chefs whose food has been so spectacular in the past.

What made it so special, you wonder? First of all, Justin had taken one of the pigs that Jim Dunlop is raising out at TLC Ranch. So you're starting with the cleanest, healthiest pork you can get. Secondly, it was Justin's desire to use every inch of that pig, to honor it fully, in a menu so comprehensive and inventive, that manifested in course after course of delicious food. I knew it would be great, but had no idea how great. It would be impossible to improve upon the food or the company, or the feeling at the dinner.