I Heart Farms

All Good News!

Pictured here: flowers at the Thomas Family Farm booth at the west side Saturday market in Santa Cruz.

Good, good news, and fun stuff.

1. My trolling for an invitation to the Google cafeteria produced results! I'll let you know more as it develops.

2. Someone truly wonderful and supportive is going to finance the production of a farmers market calendar, and someone else truly wonderful is going to let me sell them at the farmers market(s). And someone else truly wonderful (my ex-husband) is going to distribute some for me, as well, in local bookstores. I'll probably have some available online with Paypal...I'll keep y'all informed.

3. I have accepted a four-month part-time position with a local multimedia company, working on an educational project. I love the people, love the work, love the office (full kitchen, full bathroom, lots of light, great location), and am so happy for the opportunity to contribute to such a cool and worthy project.

4. I'm headed out to milk a sheep. This is a first.

Have a great weekend: I'm trying my best.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: You can't have everything. Where would you put it?" — Steven Wright

Thanks for visiting.

Things to Read

This is the utterly and always beautiful Lindencroft Farm, in Ben Lomond. I visited briefly yesterday with Logan and his mama. What an anxiety-buster.

So today, catching up on my weblog reading, I have two recommendations for you.

First is Sam Breach over at Becks & Posh, who writes about her experiment pricing produce from Safeway versus the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Like many people, Sam was stung by Carlo Petrini's twisted statements about her beloved market, but she put her money, quite literally, where her mouth is. You will enjoy reading about her discoveries.

Secondly, our boy Michael Ruhlman has two brief and biting posts up, "NAIS: Support and Strengthen Factory Farms" and the other about the murdering vegans in Atlanta. Both are worth reading.

That's all for now: I am very busy all day, and that's why I'm still in my pajamas at 1:15, waiting for the laundry to dry! (Nice work if you can get it, huh?)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “When the farmer can sell directly to the consumer, it is a more active process. There's more contact. The consumer can know, who am I buying this from? What's their name? Do they have a face? Is the food they are selling coming out of Mexico with pesticides?” — Jerry Brown

Thanks for visiting!   

Food "Movements"

Pictured here: a mother and her child peer at goats and sheep at a farm next to TLC Ranch, where I spent the afternoon on Wednesday. All photos in this post were taken at TLC Ranch on that tour.

I'd been invited, along with Ms. Christina Waters, whose coverage of food, wine, art, films, and more in Santa Cruz (and far beyond) is one of my more entertaining weekly reads. I hadn't been aware that it was a tour especially for families affiliated with the Weston A. Price Foundation. (If I'd known that, I wouldn't have brought beer to the picnic lunch.) There must have been twenty kids—the oldest of whom was eight, and with several toddlers in the crowd.

We walked over a mile, for three hours, looking at the littler pigs, the chickens, the roosts and boxes where they lay (children gathered eggs), and the whole tour culminated in one lusty, unmistakable display of the prowess of the biggest boar on the ranch, affectionately and accurately called "Assmaster," who took the opportunity to jump on a sow (pictured above, "dead center," so to speak) who hadn't realized just what "piggyback" really meant until that point. Yes, Mr. DeMille, he was ready for his close-up. I'm talking CLOSE UP: ten feet in front of the amazed crowd. "Daddy, what is THAT? What's he DOING?"

Ahem. Onward. (Christina, there were other comments I'm too chicken (ga-hilk) to post here, but I'll fill you in soon.)

For the record, the reddish guy on the right, who is touching a tree on both ends, is the boar in question.

Thinking and Thinking Some More

Pictured here: a spring day at Lindencroft Farm, one of my favorite places to visit.

Very busy here this week, but finally a napping boy and a spate of quiet to myself. I got two very lovely e-mails this week to share with you all.

The first was sent to me by a Tennessee blogger known merely as "Deliberate" (or "moredeliberate", in the e-mail address). In the form of a comment on my blog, I read these words:

Tana,

I just awarded you with a Thinking Blogger Award. You can find out what it means and why I chose your blog on my site. Thanks!

The Menu from the Slow Food Dinner

Photo: not a farm but our front yard on my birthday. This white iris is heavenly to smell, and hasn't bloomed in two years.

I have the menu from the previous entry here, and here you go!

Slow Food, and Plenty of It

Rather than write a long article about the Slow Food USA dinner I attended and photographed on April 1, I'll just post photos with this explanation. The dinner for forty took place at the River Cafe & Cheese Shop. In attendance with a half dozen or so farmers whose hard work had provided the fruit, vegetables, and meat we were served. I have been to forty or so "farm dinners," but never has the abundance been more pronounced than at this meal, which was produced by two of the most talented chefs I know. Heidi Schlecht, owner of the cafe and cheese shop, was an attendee at Terra Madre in Italy in October, as was Jim Dunlop, who raised the pigs that were featured in the meal. (Jim was at the table.) Accompanying Heidi in the kitchen they share in the Sash Mill in Santa Cruz was my friend, Justin Severino, who traded in the potential of a chef's toque and its accompany stress for the gratifying work of being a butcher and chef, selling all his products at farmers markets.

The meal was several courses long, and each course featured one or two or three different selections of wines, including some a fabulous pinot noir that Heidi's husband had made from the grapes grown on their land in the Santa Cruz mountains. The occasion for the meal was the "March of the Chefs," a fundraiser for Slow Food USA—basically they're trying to create a Terra Madre in San Francisco. What you see here was offered for only $85/person (I've seen other "farm dinners" that go for $170, and with far less food than was served here). At the end of the dinner, several of us who lingered, savoring each other's company, were sent home with boxfuls of leftovers, and bottles of leftover wine. The value was extraordinary, and the food—spectacularly well prepared.

Every single person I talked to—farmers, friends, Slow Food members—used the same word to describe the event: ABUNDANT.

Because that's who Heidi and Justin are, and how they do things.

• • • • • • • • • • •

Pictured below: the little girl is Heidi's daughter. The reflection in the window are: Gina (working with the catering staff), Justin, and Carla, who manages the cafe. Beautifully.

The farmers who attended were: Betty Van Dyke, Jim Dunlop, Joe Schirmer, and Mike Irving with Teresa Kurtak.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.” — Wayne Dyer

Yes, I had a very happy birthday yesterday. I got to go into an office with people and work I truly enjoy, and I got to go up to Logan's school, where twenty little children yelled "Happy Birthday, Nana!!!" to me. Later this week, I'll celebrate with family and friends at Gabriella Café.

Thanks for visiting.

And here ya go.

Redwood Hill Farm, The NY Times, & Mariquita Farm

I heard from a woman named Melissa Baldauf last week, who asked me to publish an invitation to a Slow Food event up in Sebastopol later this month. (The photo of the kid is at Redwood Hill Farm. I didn't take it.)

Date: Sunday April 22nd
Time: 10:30 am - 2 pm

Location: Redwood Hill Farm in Sebastopol ( redwoodhill.com). Carpool location from San Francisco (departs precisely at 9 am) is the big Main Post parking lot in the Presidio.

Cost: Members: $10, Non-Members $15
Children under 12 FREE
Potluck lunch: please bring a dish to share
Contact: Lisa Ryers, Eric Cohen ([email protected])

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!

March of the Chefs: April 1

Another chance to sample Justin Severino's cuisine, along with that of Heidi Schlect, of River Cafe & Cheese Shop, who attended last year's Slow Food Terra Madre symposium in Italy. It's a fundraise for SlowFoodUSA. I'll post the menu soon.

Rebecca King: Chef, Cheesemaker

Ask yourself this question: "Am I living my dream?"

Are you? Are you surrounding yourself with people who are pursuing their dreams, who are liberating themselves from paths that they have perhaps outgrown? Maybe "outgrown" is not the right word. A good life evolves, and I think a good life recognizes that evolution contains all our previous selves, like the chambers of a nautilus. If you don't have your dreams, you might as well be dead, as far as I'm concerned.

One person here in Santa Cruz is pursuing her dreams in a bold and beautiful way that, frankly, thrills me. Rebecca King is a lovely young woman who does a great many things admirably well. She's worked on farms, and worked with farms. She is currently the chef at Gabriella Cafe, and part of her work ethic includes shopping weekly at the farmers market. And I don't mean just one: I see Rebecca at every market I attend: Wednesday downtown, Saturday at Cabrillo College, and Sunday on the East Side of Santa Cruz.