I Heart Farms

Some Tidbits from Back East

Just noodling around the internet today, I found a link to Old Shaw Farm in South Peacham, Vermont. (Nice site, and they look like nice folks.) There was a link to a story in the Boston.com news, "Going back to the land: Young people moving in to fill agricultural niches." From the article: "While Peace Corps volunteers of decades past sought to aid African countries facing famine, these young people see a dire state of agriculture in the United States. Many of the young farmers and college students studying for a life in farming said they worry that as family farms are sold to large agribusinesses, food has been corrupted by chemicals and produced with exploited migrant workers. They also say that sales of onetime farmland to housing developers are worsening sprawl and that with small-scale farming they can begin to reverse those trends."

Awesome. Wonderful. Thumbs up.

Blue Hill Stone Barns: May 26, 2005

I've been wanting to return to Blue Hill Stone Barns since I photographed an Outstanding in the Field farm dinner back in October of 2003. I had attended with a new friend, Betsy Merando, whose daughter, Laura, had been our houseguest one summer when she passed through Santa Cruz and met my stepdaughter, Ariel. Laura had assured me on many occasions, "You'd love my mom. She's a foodie, too." Well, "foodie" doesn't quite cover Betsy: she graduated and taught at French Culinary Institute in New York City, also the alma mater of Chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill. I had never met Betsy when I invited her to be my "Plus One" at the farm dinner.

Before we ever made it to the dinner, we had dined together at first Amma (we were guests of Chef Suvir Saran, who had befriended me at a food forum) and then, hours later, Blue Hill in Washington Square. We had a Lucy and Ethel adventure that night in the city, and I have since returned to stay with Betsy and her hilarious husband, Pete, three more times. I'm sitting in their house right now, overlooking a million treetops in Ringwood State Park.

A Vineyard and a Garden in Napa

There I was, smack in the middle of wine country, surrounded by three thousand gajillion rows of grapevines. But I was surrounded by something much bigger than that: I was in a Philosophical Debate about the very nature of farms. Well, "Philosophical Debate" is overstating it. I wish it had been that pleasant.

I posited, in front of God and everybody, in a discussion that I had started (more than once) in a certain oppressive food forum about farms. This particular discussion had started about my abiding love for farms, and so that I could more or less show people little vignettes from the farms, which I hoped would kindle both curiosity and affection for the local farms of any reader. That was my hope.

And so I said, brazenly and comfortably, that I just don't consider vineyards to be farms. Not in my mind, not in my heart, and not for the purposes of writing about farms. Well, sugah, you can't believe the ruckus.

A Little Digression about Farms

On Thursday I remembered that the Capitola farmers market had started up again, in the afternoon. The charm of this market is not its size, which is miniscule. The location is half of it: it's right smack next to the beach in Capitola-by-the-Sea. "By-the-Sea" is an affection I usually omit, but in this case, by golly, there's the sidewalk, there's the wall, there's the sand, and there is the Pacific Ocean. The problem with the location is that Capitola's parking is notoriously poor, and the patrolling parking police are absolutely rabid about writing tickets.

The charm for me is that so many people there I know. Besides the nice woman at New Natives (I don't know her name), Betty was there with fresh cherries and dried Blenheim apricots, Heidi was there with H&H Fresh Fish, Scott was manning the Happy Boy Farms booth, and there was Thom Broz from Live Earth Farm! I hadn't seen Thom since the screening of "The Real Dirt on Farmer John," and what a treat to see him at the market.

"The Real Dirt on Farmer John": Coming to San Francisco on June 4

O frabjous day! I just learned that the film, "The Real Dirt on Farmer John," is coming to San Francisco on Saturday, June 4, as part of the Green Screen U.S. World Environment Day Film Festival from June 1-5.

Details here: it's part of the Slow Food Day co-sponsored by the Slow Food Movement. Former Vice President Al Gore (!) will introduce the film, and tickets are priced at $8 and $10 for the Castro Theater in San Francisco.

Go. Just go. (If you're new to my blog, I wrote about it a week or so ago. Just scroll down to read more.)

Napa: A Lot of Vineyards, Not So Many Farms

I just got back from spending a couple of days up in Napa. I'm sorry I had to come home.

The rain got in the way of visiting two of the farms I was hoping to photograph, but I did get up to Long Meadow Ranch on Monday to meet the lovely Laddie Hall. Laddie had attended last autumn's Terra Madre conference in Italy, where she had been voted in by the Slow Food convivium in Napa. I met her on Monday afternoon. The rain that had been forecast didn't materialize, and I had a beautiful sunny afternoon to shoot photos.

4 Roosters and Then Some

Short but sweet, as I have been slammed with work...good stuff there: I did a photo shoot for a line of beautiful organic cotton clothing. More on that another time.

Meanwhile, Logan and I visited a three-acre poultry farm in Watsonville, owned by Bela and Sandy, from whom I buy my duck eggs at the downtown market on Wednesdays. I will write more, but not today. I've uploaded pictures of four of their roosters in the "New visits to small farms" album.

Now go look at this: you will need Flash Player, a sense of humor, and to have some inkling of the original Star Wars film. But it's topical: it's about the importance of organic agriculture. Well, I laughed.

Seabreeze Organic Farm: 2 divided by 65 = a zillion

By the time Monday rolled around, I could only remember the name of the farm I had asked to visit, and little else. Contacting Seabreeze Organic Farm had been my first cold call to a farm. I had found Seabreeze on the LocalHarvest.org web site, simply by plugging in the zip code of my San Diego hostess. I'd also located a few farmers markets, hoping to persuade Monique (Nikki) to indulge my new obsession.

I'd e-mailed Seabreeze from their web site, introducing myself and explaining why I was going to as many farms as I could. I said I loved farms, and was getting a good reception from the farmers I knew. I soon got a response from Stephenie Caughlin, saying that Monday afternoon would work. I barely gave it a second thought during the week, but had a little nervousness: she had no idea who I was, and I just hoped my blog and photos would speak for me.

"The Real Dirt on Farmer John": Coming Soon to a Theater Near You, If You're Lucky

I had intended to write today about beautiful Seabreeze Organic farm in San Diego, then I realized that tonight was the opening night of the Santa Cruz Film Festival. Two films were scheduled: an 18-minute short called "Freaks Like Me," and an 83-minute documentary about a farmer in Caledonia, Illinois called "The Real Dirt on Farmer John." I had heard about this film only a short time ago (thanks to Squeat Mungry, as he's known at one of the food communities I frequent), and got myself in gear to attend.

I thought I'd see every farmer I knew there, but apparently the SC Film Festival doesn't have enough resources to have tapped into the farming and CSA community here in town. Had I known, I would have been happy to spread the word--the theater was crowded but nowhere near full.

While waiting in line with ticket in hand, I spotted Jerry and Jean Thomas and let them cut into line with me. Hey, farmers to the front, I say. We also saw Thom Broz, from Live Earth Farm, and I am embarrassed that I've been pronouncing his last name wrong all these months. (It rhymes with "rose.") It was nice at the end of the film for farmer John Peterson (the star) to ask who in the audience were CSA farmers, and who in the audience belonged to a CSA.

San Diego: A Farm, a Farmers Market, and Some Food

I have returned from my weekend in San Diego, where I had returned for the first time in ten years or so. I was celebrating my birthday with a beloved friend and amazing photographer, Monique Feil, who treated me like a queen.

After a glorious sunset at Ocean Beach, we spruced up and went to dinner at one of the handfuls of restaurants in town which proudly feature local farms on their menus. This is a growing trend in dining that I can completely support: naming the farms where you get your produce. I know Thomas Keller at Per Se and French Laundry names "Rancho Gordo beans," and I've seen Dirty Girl, Happy Boy, and other farms on menus, as well. It's good because there are just some farmers who are incapable of growing tasteless produce.