I Heart Farms

A Brief Update on the Calendars, Tasty Bunny, and Edible San Francisco

I apologize for the paucity of posts lately: real life circumstances are walloping our family, and my spare energy and time are low right now. (It's the usual mixed bag of some really good stuff, and improvements of previously horrible situations, with some other developments less pleasant.)

The 2008 Certified Farmers Market Calendars have FINALLY arrived, and I've sold my first boxful! Tomorrow I will ship one to Guam, of all places: I'd never expected to do that!

But I had the disappointing news that the Santa Cruz farmers market drew a line in the sand, and that nothing that is not edible, e.g., anything they consider "arts & crafts," is to be sold at any of the markets. I was crushed with disappointment, and so were a lot of my friends, including one who sits on that board of directors, but who missed the meeting. Since they consider the calendar not a promotional item, but arts and crafts, I cannot sell them there. Ouch.

You can still buy them at LocalHarvest...and if you're referring a friend, tell them to go to www.farmcalendars.com—that automatically goes to my LocalHarvest store, and it's easier to remember. Note that I raised the price $1 at LocalHarvest, to compensate for the service charge, and to cover the $1 donation per calendar that I will make to the UCSC Farm & Garden program.

And if you're local, you can buy them on October 13 at the Monterey Bay Certified Farmers Market at Cabrillo College in Aptos—someone will be selling them at a booth there, probably on the top of the parking garage. Following that Sunday, they will be available at the Thursday market in Monterey. That's October 18 in Monterey. (Thanks to Catherine Barr, market manager, for going to bat for me with her board of directors!)

You can also get them at the Capitola Book Cafe on 41st Avenue, which is  a WONDERFUL place to go, regardless.

Feedback on the calendars is really good: they're beautiful, I promise.

A Hill of Beans: Lots of Shout-Outs to Good Things

These beautiful beans were at the weekend farmstand just north of Año Nuevo on Highway One: grown at either Pie Ranch or Blue House Farm—both partnered at the farmstand we visited last Sunday. I intend a longer piece on each, but cannot do them justice this evening.

You traveling SF Bay area foodies: if you are going as far as Swanton Berry Farm, then you need to make room on your schedule for the rustic and beautiful farmstand, called the Roadside Barn, at 2080 Cabrillo Hwy, Pescadero CA 94060. If you hit Año Nuevo, going south, you've gone too far. Mind you, they don't open until noon on the weekends, so plan accordingly. And get there early: the pies are a dream.

• • • • • • • • • • •

The lovely Kirsten Roehler, who was farming with Jasmine Roohani at Everett Family Farm a couple of years ago when I met them, has moved on, but is still quite active in the work of promoting sustainable agriculture. And sustainable, additionally, in terms of human life.

She recently sent me a link to an article by Matthew McCue, at Farms Not Arms. McCue is an Iraq war vet who is now teaching farming in Niger, Africa. Kirsten interviewed him for his position in the Peace Corps—a very moving piece. He writes:

I would still go to sleep afraid of mortars but the joy of the present and anticipation of the next harvest made the past seem to loosen its grip on my life. I learned more from six months on a college farm in Santa Cruz than four years in the Military. I escaped the army without a scratch -- but before learning to care for life I was caught in a slow death with nothing to watch but my own mortality and the horrifying news.

I feel like the luckiest person alive because as I work in my field in west Africa my body becomes stronger and I am no longer an observer of the quiet beauty, I am a caretaker. Having been very effectively conditioned to kill and accept death, taking care of plants has had a kind of opposite effect on my mind, heart, and soul.

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It's National Farmers Market Week

In honor of the occasion, nothing here today but some pictures of my local farmers markets. What's showing up at yours?

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it." — Russell Baker

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I Heart Synchronicity

Pictured here: some of the exquisite bouquets from Blue Heron Farm, yesterday at the downtown Santa Cruz farmers market.

A few days ago, I took my laptop to the Saturday west side farmers market, to show some friends photos that will be in the calendar. I noticed Todd Smith, who usually works the Frog Hollow Farm prepared foods booth, surrounded by a whole lot of shiny new stainless steel, in the form of a gleaming new coffee cart.

Lady Farmers Rock

We arrived late in the afternoon at Everett Family Farm yesterday, only to find the farmstand closed. I had two little boys and Logan's mother with me, and we wanted to get some eggs. So we went down to the fields below, and found Teresa Kurtak walking towards her car with a 5-gallon bucket of larkspur balanced on her head, looking for all the world like a young woman going to wash her family's clothes in the river. We moved into the shade so I could photograph her, but before she had time to pose, I took a few practice shots for the light. This is a "practice" shot.

It's my new favorite photo. Isn't she beautiful?

WOO HOO!!!! Farmers Market Calendars!

I am very excited with a project that is coming to fruition. Thanks to the support of some amazing people, my photographs of some beautiful farmers markets are going to be in a calendar. It's going to press this week, and will begin distribution in a month or so.

I've got local distribution (farmers markets and bookstores), and I'll have a spot on the publisher's website where you can purchase them with Paypal.

That's all for now, but I'm so excited I had to share it.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "I've been on a calendar, but I've never been on time.” —Marilyn Monroe

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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.

Russ Parsons Is a Big Ol' Copycat!

Take that, Farmgirl Fare! Think you're the only one with access to adorable lambkins? Huh? I think not! (This little one belongs to Rebecca King: I visited the ranch yesterday with a friend.)

I have been luxuriating in several days off from my part-time job as a web consultant....and I had two perfect days in a row this week.

On Monday, writer Russ Parsons came to town, promoting the book I've been shoving into everyone's hands at the farmers market. I've enjoyed our small correspondence over the years, since I first met him at eGullet. Before they kicked me off, that is. (Hi, Jason Furlough! I owe it all to you!)

The Capitola Book Café contacted me several weeks ago, asking if I'd like to help promote some of the upcoming readings they were sponsoring, and I jumped at the chance to work with Russ's book, just because of the esteem in which I hold him. Knowing his own fondness for farms, I wrote to invite him on a tour of some of the farms I love. He accepted, and that's what we did on Monday.

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

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"Surfing Farmer" to Carlo Petrini: "Whatevah!"

THIS POST IS AN EDITED VERSION OF ONE THAT APPEARED PREVIOUSLY.

Steve Sando, known as "Rancho Gordo" to his legion fans, wrote in more detail about the flap centering around Carlo Petrini, "President for Life" as Sando referred to him, of Slow Food International. Petrini fictionalized, in an unflattering and rather dishonest fashion, some farmers up at the Ferry Plaza market in his new book, Slow Food Nation (no Amazon link: I ain't pimpin' for Petrini). Over at his weblog, Rancho Gordo, Sando published the excerpt referring to a farmer who surfs: Petrini implied that it is the farmer's usurious pricing that allows him to work two weekends a month and surf the rest of the time. (What he was trying to accomplish with this fiction is really beyond me.)

Petrini wrote: "The former [of two farmers], with long hair and a plaid flannel shirt, held his lovely little blond-haired daughter in his arms and told me, in a conspiratorial tone, that he had to drive two hundred miles to come and sell in that market: he charged incredibly high prices for his squash, it was “a cinch,” in just two monthly visits he could earn more than enough to maintain his family and spend hours surfing on the beach."

UPDATE: May 17. I talked to "Surfing Farmer," who had left a comment in response to this statement by Petrini. Surfarmer was, at the time, able to laugh but was still a little bugged by it, because he's sort of well-known as being the surfing farmer up at the market in San Francisco. As he told someone on the phone, "Even if it's not me, people think it's me." But in hindsight, he asked that I remove the comments, which I admit I made worse with my own attempts at thumbing my nose to the person who would write such things about my friends who farm.

So I removed it, because as he further revealed to me, Surfarmer is about to announce his candidacy for President of the United States, and wants all evidence of his goofball sense of humor eradicated. Oh, if only Google would comply.

About Petrini's fiction, as I think of it: I could not understand how he who in his own words never finished college, could call farmers "dropouts." I left a comment on the Rancho Gordo blog:

The remark I found most offensive was about the "young dropouts-turned-farmers." Most of the farmers I know have college educations: many have graduate degrees. I would be willing to bet that Bay Area farmers are among the most educated in the world, if only because the University of Santa Cruz's farm apprentice program has been turning out organic farmers for forty years. Many of the graduates, of whom Surfarmer is one, stay close by—because the support is here. We do love our farmers, don't we?

I'm sure the maelstrom will continue when Steve Sando publishes his account of his meeting with Carlo Petrini at CUESA. I'm sure he will keep an eye on the situation.

And that is all for today.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “I prefer fact to fiction.” — Richard Attenborough

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