I Heart Farms

Guillermo's Bike-2-Barn Tour 2007

Pictured here: Coleman Family Farm in Carpinteria, California, where farmer Bill Coleman was giving a farm tour.

If you are at all interested in farms and eating local, you undoubtedly know about LocalHarvest.org, the granddaddy of ALL food sites related to sourcing farms, farmers markets, restaurants, CSAs and more. Nobody even comes close: Guillermo Payet, my friend (my personal hero) and the founder/designer of the site, gets about 15,000 visits (90,000 page views) PER DAY!

Local Harvest is the greatest: you just plug in your zip code and you are instantly taken to a screen with a map and a list of names that fit your criteria. I'm a self-confessed map geek, and it's just the best.

If you've been reading my work for a while, you will remember that Guillermo was injured last year, and his recovery has been phenomenal. He is embarking tomorrow on his second "Bike 2 Barn" tour, traveling with his beautiful sweetheart, Amber, on motorcycle, visiting farms en route to San Diego and, ultimately, to Austin, Texas, where Amber is from.

On his first Bike-2-Barn, he visited the Colemans and had a great time—hopefully they will be able to hook up again.

They will be blogging about their trip, so you can stay up to date there.

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?

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!

Checking In: A New Farm, a New Project

This is not my photograph, but it is a place I look forward to visiting—maybe this summer.

A dear friend has become a client, and my newest project is to design a website for Suvir Saran. Some of you already know him as the author of Indian Home Cooking, and some might have had the pleasure of eating at Dévi in New York City, where he and Co-Executive Chef, Hemant Mathur, produce some of the most delicious and amazing Indian food on earth.

Suvir called me up on Sunday, and asked if I could help him design a website that addresses his multi-faceted life—as chef, consultant, author, traveler, and now, gentleman farmer. He and his partner, Charlie, have acquired a beautiful piece of property in upstate New York: on 67 acres, they will be raising goats, sheep, and chickens. The name of the farm is also the name of his cookbook, to be released in October: American Masala.

I'll post when we launch the site: we are extremely pleased with the design and look of it right now.

Chef Duskie Estes at Canvas Ranch

If I had known how friendly and accessible Chef Duskie Estes, of Zazu in Santa Rosa, would be, I wouldn't have avoided taking more pictures of her as she assembled dishes for a recent farm dinner. Located in breathtaking Two Rocks area of Petaluma, Canvas Ranch is perched on a hilltop with views of the biggest farms and ranches I've ever seen. (No, I never visited the Ponderosa.)

Operating on a lack of sleep that I didn't even experience in childbirth, Duskie had just returned from two weeks in Italy, not attending Terra Madre. She and her chef husband, John Stewart, whose interest in salume had taken them to meet the masters...but in their own shops, in their own cities, instead of at the mob scene that Terra Madre is.

La Milpa Organica Farm Dinner: October 1, 2006

I traveled to San Diego last month, and finally have a chance (and the motivation) to write up the Outstanding in the Field farm dinner that I attended with my newlywed friends, Nikky and Koray. The dinner, located at La Milpa Organica Farm in Escondido, held about seventy people.

Farmer Barry Logan had chosen chef Jason Seibert of Cafe Cerise in San Diego to be the guest chef for the meal, and his menu (and diligent staff) was impressive. Links in the menu go to two photos of the course in the Glorious Farm Food album here. Because it was getting dark, getting photos of all the courses was not possible.

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.

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.

Tomatoes Galore

Talk about your good timing. I was up in Ben Lomond yesterday, visiting a farm with one of my stepdaughters (Logan's mother!), and took her to Love Apple Farm.

Right in time for a tomato tasting! I say unto you: woohoo! Cynthia Sandberg (friend and cohort) was just cutting into four kinds of the 100-plus heirloom varieties she's growing. Pictured at left, clockwise from the bottom, are: Green Giant (my new favorite), German Red Strawberry, Chuck's Yellow, and, in the center, Big Zebra. I loved the Big Zebra: it had a naturally salty tomato flavor. The yellow tomato was very sweet, and not that much to my personal liking, and the German Red Strawberry a little on the bland side. (Again, to my personal tastes.) I would definitely grow some of the Big Zebras, because they are both tasty and a pretty fruit.

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.")