I Heart Farms

A Month of Sundays: Where I've Been

Pictured here: squashes and pumpkins at Love Apple Farm, where I've been visiting lately. There are many reasons I've not been writing—all of October, even. Foremost, I've got some steady part-time work, and second to that, we've had more visitors and socializing in the last three weeks than in the past ten years. Some other projects and interests have popped up—not the least of which has been the birth of a baby boy in the house next door, and I've been (self-)appointed Court Photographer. I'm behind in e-mails and in other areas of life.

I only have time today for three brief announcements of some events very soon, and maybe you can avail yourselves of them. And then I hope to get back in the saddle with blogging. Much is happening on the local farm scene, and most all of it is wonderful.

The Heisman Chicken Awards, & Farm Visit with a Baby

Sorry I have not been around as much as I would like: I've had paying work deadlines, and tending to business. And one week without a car.

TLC RANCH VISIT ON LABOR DAY WEEKEND

Yes, I am SO GLAD I did not attend the Slow Food event last weekend. We celebrated slow food without having to pony up to Carlo Petrini. [Edit: please read this post about Slow Food Nation's "Come to the Table." I was crying before I even got to the end.]

Last Sunday was fantastic. Rebecca Thistlethwaite and Jim Dunlop at TLC Ranch had invited some friends out to celebrate a real slow food event, and that included a tour of the ranch with Jim. That's him, hamming it up (so to speak) with a chicken who'd gotten out of the fence.

Since my car was out of commission (more on that in a bit: it brought a blessing), I got a ride with Guillermo and Amber Payet, of LocalHarvest.org. If you read my blog, you know they're dear friends, and I had the utter joy of sitting in the back seat with little baby Joaquin, eleven weeks old. I was in heaven, of course.

Slow Food Notion: I Don't Think So.

Pictured here: a bouquet created by the apprentices up at UCSC's Farm & Garden (aka "CASFS") for a dinner last night. I shopped, chopped (500 cherry tomatoes, eight pounds of yellow wax beans), cooked (the beans), and prepped for eight great hours.

SLOW FOOD NATION 2008

So, unlike tens of thousands of people in San Francisco who are paying $58 and up for the privilege of suffering through traffic and parking and being crammed into buildings like sardines, I am absolutely committed to avoiding all things under the Slow Food umbrella this Sunday. Slow Food Nation: Come to the Table 2008 starts tomorrow.

When I first heard about it, it sounded exciting. But I realized I was Having Thoughts about it, and that most weren't pretty.

Turns out I'm not alone. (I might not be in the majority, but that doesn't matter.) With her usual graciousness and aplomb, Jennifer Jeffrey (who lives in San Francisco) wrote her plus-minus take on the event. She manages to find the possible positives, which honestly would have eluded me.

A Visit to Las Lomas: TLC Ranch and Serrano Organic Farm

I heart strawberries. But most of all, I heart golden raspberries. I found both, and more, at beautiful little Serrano Organic Farm, on a recent visit with Rebecca Thisthlethwaite, my friend who blogs at HonestMeat.com.

I'm trying out a new (to me) technology using PictoBrowser, since I had 24 photos of the visit and not nearly that much verbiage. But to see if it works, I have to publish this first, and then edit afterwards. You can see the photos at my Flickr set here, if it doesn't work.

[Note: it does show up, but the actual photos are cropped: you can see them full size at the Flickr set, if you prefer.)

Honest Meat: Ruminate on this

Pictured here: a new face to the world of weblogs, my friend, Rebecca Thistlethwaite.

She has just launched her new weblog, HonestMeat.com, and I think she is going go be a fabulous addition to the blogosphere—because the blog is basically about the good, the bad, and the ugly of raising livestock. She knows the right questions to ask, and she knows the answers to all your questions about raising meat: both humanely and inhumanely. And she hopes to get lots of comments, but none of the "non-anonymous pinhead" sort.

Rebecca and her husband, Jim Dunlop, run TLC (Tastes Like Chicken) Ranch out in Las Lomas, California, just a little past Watsonville. For several years, she was working with a non-profit, ALBA, for six years. Now she is going to be consulting, as well as taking time to garden with their little girl, Fiona, whose photo is below.

I had the pleasure of spending several days in Rebecca's company: we sat at opposite ends of my big dining table, working on our laptops. I designed her banner (we love it, because it's all about the grass), and helped her with some technical stuff.

Whole Lotta Somethin' Goin' On

 These Orange-Red apricots are delicious, and beautiful, and Farmer Al at Frog Hollow Farm was kind enough to give me a couple to bring home from the Santa Cruz farmers market yesterday. Drippy almost down the chin, they were.

Orange-Red: today's theme, in a certain way. At least the theme of the hot and smoky afternoon in Santa Cruz, where yesterday I ventured from the vast distance of six miles away. Thirteen if you count the trip to the Community on the Hill, as UCSC is known: that is where I went to retrieve my beautiful daughter for a visit to the market.

Well, Jennifer Started It!

Pictured here: some of the pigs at TLC Ranch, taken in March. Yes, there is an explanation about its deliberate appearance.

Yes, another two weeks go by, and here I am, bedridden with one of the ghastly colds that is being shared by a broad userbase in Santa Cruz county. So between downing cups of tea and Vitamin C tablets the size of bricks, I have been scanning some blogs. I don't have the energy to catch up on reading all of my favorites—one of which I am currently 47 posts behind on!—because it's just too strenuous. You know, the contests, the solicitation of our thoughts on certain topics, and so on. Things I enjoy when I'm feeling great, but not when half the air is out of the tires in my brain. Too demanding.

There are a handful of blogs that I scope out first, and will always click in if I see a new post has been added. A couple of days ago, I saw that my friend, the beautiful and über-creative Jennifer Jeffrey had added a new post to Jennifer Jeffrey: Writer/Editor. (She's selling herself short: her design skills are fabulous, too.) At the top of the post is a photograph so brimming with life that my mouth dropped open. And true to herself as ever, she finds something to inspire on an otherwise miserably hot day in the city.

You would not think that the statuesque and lovely Ms. Jeffrey and I share a host of addictions, what with her doing yoga and all, but under the skin, we share an insatiable craving for at least four things: cheese, typefaces, the election of Barack Obama in this year's presidential election, and playing around with images. (Read my comment on her post, if you like, to see where we're going here.)

Love Apple Farm: Seedling Sale & Joy, Joy, Joy; Plus "Your Comments"

Pictured here: hundreds of tomato seedlings at Love Apple Farm.

I used to write about my girlfriend, "The Tomato Curator" (as I think of  her), Cynthia Sandberg, and her beautiful Love Apple Farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. That was before I introduced her to Manresa restaurant (matchmaker!), and she forged a partnership with the chef, David Kinch, turning her once-organic farm into a biodynamic enterprise. And then Cynthia entered the stratosphere of celebrity—if farmers can be celebrities, that is. (I wish more of them were, instead of the lot of  anorexic, plastic headcases that are plastered all over the internet. I keep saying: "Farms Are the New Black." Maybe I should make a bumpersticker.)

Now the people writing about Cynthia's beautiful little Eden are big media and publicists, as the farm provides Manresa with the most exquisite vegetables that human care and love can produce. People all over the world are becoming aware of biodynamic farming, and it helps that Cynthia makes it look so darned pretty, and that Chef David Kinch is so respected. (Is there a stronger word than "respected," when it comes to talent and genius? I dunno.)

But outside of that lofty realm, mere mortals like myself can avail themselves of a touch of Cynthia's magic by attending the wildly popular tomato seedling sales at the farm.

Raw Milk Imperiled: California and New York

Pictured here: one of the sweet Jersey cows at Claravale Farm, one of California's two raw milk dairies.

CALIFORNIA
Others have written eloquent and informed pieces about AB (Agricultural Bill) 1735, a sneaky "Trojan horse" piece of legislation as has ever been passed. Amanda Rose wrote about it back in October at The Ethicurean. She says, "Coliform bacteria are a mixed lot. Some are beneficial, some are pathogenic. This legislation makes no distinction between the two." [Emphasis mine.]

And:

"Raw milk has coliforms. That is simply its nature. That is why it sours in my refrigerator. The beneficial strains of coliforms, the other beneficial bacteria, and the immunoglobulins are why I pay more for raw milk.

"I know that folks at the statehouse think I’m crazy and uninformed. They visit dairies regularly and know that it is increasingly common to find E. coli 0157:H7 in their cows. I am playing “Russian roulette,” they claim.

"But there is something that humans and cows have in common. When we are living on a diet that God intended for us, our intestines are less likely to be a breeding ground for pathogenic bacteria. When our gut is full of beneficial bacteria, it can fight back when we come into contact with pathogenic bacteria."

(I recommend reading the whole piece, which is intelligent and sensible, something you won't likely find inside Governor Schwarzeneger's office walls.)

There is also David Gumpert's piece at TheCompletePatient.com: "The reality, though, is that it is difficult to educate people about the true nature of coliform bacteria at varying levels. It’s also difficult to change legislation immediately after it's been passed. It’s especially difficult if the legislation was put into effect to accomplish a very serious long-term goal—namely, to deprive as many Americans as possible of the opportunity to obtain raw milk."

I have little more to add to the outcry beyond what I have already said here, but would like to direct your attention to something VERY IMPORTANT: Bonnie Powell, aka "Dairy Queen" at The Ethicurean, and deputy editor of Edible San Francisco, got a call from Collette Cassidy at Claravale Farm (one of the only raw dairies in California), alerting everyone to attend a rally on Wednesday in Sacramento. Assemblywoman Nicole Parra will hold a hearing on AB 1735, and your attendance could make a difference. Read Bonnie's talking points, please.

And if you can carpool and get to Sacramento, you might be part of making history. Failure to overturn this bill will effectively kill raw milk in California.

NEW YORK
Michael Ruhlman alerted me to Meadowsweet Farm in Lodi, New York, about an hour and a half southeast of Rochester. Meadowsweet Farm, owned by Steve and Barbara Smith, no longer sells raw milk products to the public, but to members of its LLC, a form of community supported agriculture that allows them to bypass the bureaucracy and mindless, uninformed restrictions that the state of New York would impose on them if they were doing business with the public.

The Smiths write: "Since March 2007, the New York Department of Agriculture and Markets has been trying to pressure us and Meadowsweet Dairy LLC out of business. For example, they have conducted numerous inspections, seized products, ordered the destruction of 260 pounds of raw dairy products, attempted to search our house, issued letters threatening fines and penalties, and have now issued an order requiring us and Meadowsweet Dairy LLC to show cause why the Department of Agriculture and Markets should not shut down the operation and levy fines. That show-cause order is now set for a hearing and a show down looms over whether the State’s police power extends to a group of private citizens who produce and consume their own food of their own choice."

There are two hearings coming up, and the Smiths would love your attendance at those:

January 17, 11 AM
Department of Agriculture and Markets
10B Airline Drive
Albany, NY
(Right next to the airport)

January 22, 1:30 PM
Seneca County Court
48 West Williams Street
Waterloo, NY

Please go to the link above and read what they have to say.

• • • • • • • • • • •

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "Never confuse movement with action." — Ernest Hemingway

I am really really really busy with work, and the weather's been horrid...but it's getting better and I hope to get out to a real farm real soon.

 

Thanks for visiting. Go rattle some bars in a government office: it'll feel good.

Treats

Pictured here, Route One Farm's basket of winter squash, taken yesterday at the bongo-banging market on an otherwise lovely wintry day.

Also, these beautiful painting-like red leaf lettuce, grown by Joe Schirmer of Dirty Girl Produce. (Don't you think it should be "Dirty Girls Produce"? Without the possessive apostrophe, of course: "produce" being a verb.)

It's really good to see Joe back at the market, in a new spot on the first row.