I Heart Farms

Santa Cruz: A New Year-Round Market

Pictured here: six of the farmers who are alumni of the former Friday West Side Santa Cruz farmers market, which used to take place in front of Kelly's Bakery on Swift Street. Missing: Kirsten Roehler, who farmed with Jasmine Roohani (in the blue scarf, knitted by Betty Van Dyke in the red vest). Left to right: Jeff Caspary (Crystal Creek Farm), Betty Van Dyke (Van Dyke Orchards), Brandon Faria (Faria Family Farm), Jasmine Roohani (most recently of Everett Family Farm, Jasmine is going to work for the Ecological Farming Conference), Geoff Palla (formerly of Meder Street Farm, Geoff has moved up to be the head gardener at Copia Center for Wine & Food in Napa), and Kurt Christiansen (Oso Velloso Farm). Only Betty and Geoff are not alumni of the UCSC Farm & Garden apprentice program, which will celebrate its 40th anniversary in the upcoming summer.   

Today was a beautiful day in Santa Cruz, the kind you long for when you enter the winter months. And the kind of day you count, and ask each other, "How many more of these will we have before the rains come?"

Cole Canyon Farm: Briefly

A confession: I visited Cole Canyon Farm in May. As is often the case, when I am photographing, my attention is through my eyes, and I can't keep all the verbal information straight. (I could take notes if I put the camera down, but it's a clumsy juggling act. So I go for photos first, thinking that I can get my information later.) But I never wrote about the visit, as work was plentiful (too busy!) and I just let it slip through the cracks. I owe a follow-up visit for vital information to the farm, and hopefully to photograph some of the rooms inside their house, as the colors were just striking and beautiful. Art—pure farmhouse art. I was gobsmacked.

So while this post will be sparse in farming details, hopefully you will get the gist of the farm, and visit them at the Aptos Farmers Market on Saturday morning, or the downtown Santa Cruz farmers market on Wednesdays, where they bring their seedlings and eggs from the dozens and dozens of chickens Cole Canyon Farm raise.

Thanksgiving: It Takes a Village to Raise a Child

Pictured here: brilliant red zinnias at Thomas Family Farm booth.

It occurred to me to re-introduce myself for anyone who hasn't been able to cobble together who I am or some of the circumstances surrounding me. If you see mention of “Logan” on this blog, and wonder who I am talking about, Logan is the two-year-old son of my older stepdaughter. When he was just a few months old, he began to spend time here—overnight visits that increased in frequency so that when he was barely over a year old, he lived here most of the time. The conditions under which that took place are a cliché in modern America: grandparents raising children whose parents cannot. For all the reasons you don't want to hear.

The short story is that I am Logan's Nana. I spend more time with him than anyone else on earth, and even though we have no immediate genetics, one of the ongoing delights of my life is that people constantly think I am his mother and say we look alike. Our eyes are a lot alike: the only two green-eyed people in our entire extended family. And who wouldn't want to look like family to this sweet boy?

(Most of these photos are from his earliest farm visits in 2005, which you, clever reader that you are, will be able to separate from the recent ones.)

Happily, Logan’s sunny company made doing this job easy, and we have adapted to whatever it has taken to incorporating his life into ours. When I started this blog, it dovetailed beautifully with all the extra daycare I was suddenly, and without any kind of recompense, having to provide. Solution? Take the boy to the farms with me. (He's getting a goat kiss good-bye at Claravale Farm in this photo, above.)

A Little More about Lindencroft Farm

The other little thing I wanted to touch on about Lindencroft Farm is how Linda has a lot of plants that are not edible, but which serve as “habitat” for the beneficial living creatures on her farm. For the hummingbirds and the bees and the rest of the zoological world.

I inquired about a row of cages that were planted in empty holes in the ground, and she told me that a hedgerow was going in there, for habitat. They are pictured above.

There are herbs and flowers and all manner of plants, some useful in a culinary sense (rosemary, for example) and others not (such as dahlias and daffodils). Many were absolutely teeming with bees, and a handful of hummingbirds were duking it out over the Mexican sage. (What would one call a flock of hummingbirds? Good question! Answer: a “charm” is most commonly cited, but I also found these upon Googling: a troubling—that hardly seems fair!, a hover, a chattering, a shimmer, and a drum.)

Patchwork, Miscellany, Mélange, & More

Pictured here, pomegranates at the west side farmers market this morning.

How wonderful is it that an organic farmer in Montana was elected to the United States Senate? It's true. State Senator Jon Tester beat the incumbent, Conrad Burns, in a tight race, but one which is over. Tester even has a blog, to which I just subscribed.

Oddly enough—spooky even—is that just this morning, blogging friend/restaurateur Haddock wrote a moving post called A Farmer's Hands. He wrote that the farmer with whom has a symbiotic relationship (the farmer takes Haddock's restaurant compost and feeds his pigs, and Haddock then buys the pigs) had an accident with a bandsaw, and stands to lose some of the use and feeling of the fingers on his left hand. He has to undergo five hours of surgery. I read the Wikipedia article on Jon Tester: “As an adolescent, Tester lost the middle, index and ring fingers on his left hand in an accident while working with a meat grinder.” (Prayers and good wishes for the best possible outcome, and comfort for, Haddock's farmer friend and his family, please.)

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Where do I start?

This is meat. These packages are made from the pigs at TLC (Tastes Like Chicken) Ranch.

There is also sauerkraut. Made by Justin Severino...all of this meat comes from the pigs, but Justin does his magic with them. (He wears the silliest pointy hat.)

Sweet Italian sausage, breakfast sausage with maple and ginger and molasses, lamb chorizo, beer sausage, and a little of the salami that he's been aging for the past six months.

It's all going to Michael Ruhlman in Napa. He can give it to whomever he likes, and I hope that includes Thomas Keller.

And here are some of the newest members of the pig clan out at the ranch. They look like "Babe: A Pig in the City" if Cyndi Lauper was the make-up artist.

And now to get packed: road trip to the north! I'm going to a farm dinner with Olde English Babydoll Southdown sheep, cashmere goats, Araucana chickens, and Maremma dogs—the kind they have at TLC Ranch.

NaBloPoMo, Joel Salatin, Harold McGee, & Food

Jen over at Life Begins at 30 asked who'd join her in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) and I thought, "Why not?" Except, hello, there is no way I'm putting a picture of Yoda or a gun on this blog. So I made my own: I am a hoarder of Dover woodcut clip art, and this lady''s just been waiting for her chance to climb out of that folder. It's true that I no longer use quill and ink for my correspondence, but I did once, and it's the writerly spirit that's called for here. (Besides, who ever saw Yoda write anything?)

I'm sure I'll find some way to cheat.

Usually I stick blog recommendations at the end of my posts, but today I'm so excited that this one is going right up front. Harold McGee has been blogging since August. HAROLD McGEE! (That's him in the photo with me in the lefthand column). Here is a great little snippet, from an entry on organic vs. conventional agriculture:

"Organic agriculture, with no pesticides or mineral concentrates, usually exposes crops to more stress, and its produce is usually higher in phytochemicals."

I have to wonder though, if human nutrition matters more than sustaining the earth's ability to produce food. Pesticide use producing antioxidants and phytochemicals seems counterproductive: I guess you'll need your antioxidants to combat the cancer that the pesticides could cause. (You'll have to read the whole paragraph: I can't print the whole thing here.) And I imagine Harold will find his way here to let me know what I'm missing.

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Eighty Kinds of Pumpkins & Squash!

I met up with three farmers today out at High Ground Organics farm, next to the ramshackle Redman House in Watsonville. The occasion? Jerry Thomas's nephew, Steven Pedersen, had planted EIGHTY kinds of pumpkins and squashes on a pretty small piece of land—like an acre or less. The vines had gone nuts, some of them twenty feet away from where they'd been planted, and Steven and his assistant, Joanna Johnson, were out there to see if they could make order of chaos.

It was like trying to detangle three hundred garden hoses.

The Artistic Farmer

The first time I met farmer Barry Koral of Koral's Tropical Fruit Farm was in May, 2005, when I visited the Sunday farmers market in the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego. (My old stomping grounds!) Not only did he have beautiful fruit, but his signs caught my eye as being both artistic and heartful.

I was in San Diego again at the beginning of the month, attending an Outstanding in the Field farm dinner at another farmer Barry's place: La Milpa Organica Farm, belonging to Barry Logan. My companions, Nikki and Koray, the newlyweds, took me to the farmers market again. I admit to being disappointed that the hand-lettered signs were not adorning Koral's booth, but that was the only blue note (and a minor one, at that).

I inquired about the absence of the signs, and met for the first time Barry's beautiful companion, Beate, who told me she'd being designing new signs (with a wealth of information) on her Macintosh. Barry told me that long before he was a farmer, he was (and is) an artist—he'd attended the Art Institute of Chicago, and had eight years of formal education. That intrigued me—being a calligrapher and artist myself—and I asked if I might visit.

Dirty Early Girls & Oso Velloso Farm

At the end of summer every year, many people are melancholy at having to bid adieu to the perfect tomatoes we adore. I am among them.

I was delighted to see buddy Max Withers give a shout out in the Los Angeles Times to the glorious dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes from Joe Schirmer at Dirty Girl Produce. Max took twenty pounds of the tomatoes, and made his own tomato paste. As he writes: “California farmers have outdone themselves this year: Tomatoes have been more succulent and plentiful than ever. So I armed myself with 20 pounds of my favorite, dry-farmed Early Girls from Dirty Girl Produce, an organic farm in Santa Cruz, and started working on how to preserve their intense, sweet essence through the dark winter ahead.” (Thanks for the scoop, Max, and congratulations on getting into the LA Times!)

Along those lines, another treatment for Early Girls is my recipe for slow-roasted tomatoes, which I call "Godiva Tomatoes." They aren't designed to last into the winter...ours barely last a day around the house.

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