I Heart Farms

Tomato Bingo! Gary Ibsen's Tomato Fest 2007

BEFORE I BEGIN: I'm wrapping up a project that requires a lot of energy, and things in the family are a little gnarled, and [insert a reason here].

The calendars were held up in customs, but I am told they should be here on Monday, which is tomorrow for me, and today for most of you. Calendars are obviously a source of anthrax, so I can understand the caution of the Port Authority in not hastening them through. Argh.

PICTURED HERE: This is just one tiny section of one giant table that spanned a giant tent, where visitors to Gary Ibsen's Nature Sweet - Sunset - Carmel Tomato Fest were tasting 350 different kinds of heirloom tomatoes, under a benignly overcast sky last Sunday. I was fortunate (blessed, actually) to have attended with a press pass, and to have invited my farmer friend, Linda Butler, of Lindencroft Farm, as my guest. We traveled with Cynthia Sandberg of Love Apple Farm: this event is pretty much Christmas for her every year. And it's where she and I met and hit it off for the first time, three years ago.

The event is astonishing. 52 restaurants—some the best in the region—and 54 wineries and breweries contribute to the event. And on the periphery of the space—it's held at the Carmel Valley Lodge—are dozens of booths of exhibitors with wares, information, and products to share. (My personal favorite in this case had to be Odwalla, giving shooters of so many kinds of juice to those of us who wanted to pace ourselves on the wine. Well, just the once.)

When you walk onto the grounds, you're given a commemorative wineglass and a little plastic dish/tray with a glass holder niche in it. (Why did I not think to photograph one? Because I was trying to take pictures of the food before the masses set in. You can see 27 photos at the Gary Ibsen's Tomato Fest 2007 photo album I set up.)

You wander from giant tent to giant tent, where chefs have prepared dozens of dishes, amuse bouches for the most part: it's like Iron Chef with tomatoes being the secret ingredient. (No secret, though: these chefs think about this all year, and I'll bet that chefs who return are already thinking about next year, and the year after that.)

Calendars Available for Sale Online (Pre-order)!!!!

They're not quite through customs yet, but they should be delivered soon.

Meanwhile, you can pre-order your 2008 California Certified Farmers Market Calendar (the back is shown here) at my store at LocalHarvest.org.

The silly post office doesn't consider calendars to be "media" (as if they are anything else but information!), so I can't send them Media Mail. The Priority Mail is a little less than $5.00, and the envelopes are about a dollar each. I was hoping to have it cheaper, but the post office nixed that possibility.

Your credit card will not be charged until you ship, and all transactions are secure. I have nothing to do with the transaction, just with shipping. (But I will see your address and personal information, of course, and sell it to Viagra and Nigerian spammers. JUST KIDDING!!!)

Tomorrow, if you live in San Francisco, please pick up your free copy of Edible San Francisco at any of these locations. It's the debut of a new feature called "Farmers I Know by Tana Butler," so look at the inside back cover to see something we hope you like. (Ferry Plaza has them, and I know you'll all be there tomorrow, right?)

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Our garden is going nuts now, but winding down on the squash and zucchini. But we're getting about five-ten pounds of tomatoes a day. The big producers I recommend: from Love Apple Farm's seedling sale: Coustralee, a French heirloom (also seen as "Cuostralee," when Googling), which is a gigantor red brandywine style with shoulders like the Hulk, Cherokee Purple, and (not from LAF), our new favorite in flavor, which is Mortgage Lifter. (A cute story behind how it got its name is here.)

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.' " —Ronald Reagan (!)

Y'all have a good weekend.

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.

Hurricane Dean: from Patricia Rain, the Vanilla Queen

First, if anyone tried to e-mail me yesterday and had it bounce, my incoming server was down for about six hours. Please try again. Thanks.

I got an e-mail from my friend, Patricia Rain, aka "The Vanilla Queen," who has guest authored here before. She wrote me to ask if I would be okay posting about the effects of Hurricane Dean on her friends in Central America.

Read on.

Tomato Dinner at Gabriella Café

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