I Heart Farms

Farmers Market Calendars for Sale at eBay!

Howdy: let's just say that I've been very very busy.

One of the things I've been learning to do is to set up an eBay store: my ex-husband publishes my calendar, along with some beautiful ones of his own, and we've started a store. They're discounted: $10 each with discounted shipping for multiple purchases. (Thank God for Bob, who is otherwise a Luddite: he knows his eBay!)

Anyway, I hope to post more soon, but will be fairly scarce for the month of December, because work has to take a priority right now, and that includes selling the calendars.

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We had one of the best Thanksgivings ever, thanks to all our daughters being with us, and the very special presence in our home of Simon Majumdar, who is traveling all over the world, eating amazing things. Think "British Bourdain" if you will. He's writing about about all his experiences, which have been astonishing to date.

If you want to read a beautiful example of his writing, read "Finally Finland: A Feast from a Princessa." And if you want to read his account of spending Thanksgiving with us, go to his other weblog, Dos Hermanos.

(Pictured above is the 25-pound organic turkey I roasted for our party of thirty-plus. YOWSAH!)

Friday night, Simon came back over and cooked a Bengali feast for ten, and it was nothing short of exquisite. If you can think of anything to add to his remaining tour, contact him (leave a comment on one of his blogs, I'd say). I think he's done in the United States, but has Asia and Africa coming up next. Eight more months!

He is one of the most intelligent, companionable people I've ever met, and I can highly recommend him for his wit, his warmth, and for the breadth and depth of his culinary knowledge.

So that's it for now, and I'm working on getting an eBay widget installed here. I thought I was a good midlevel geek, but this new technology. Sheesh! Hey, you kids! Off my lawn!

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Another announcement, more great news. One of my best friends, Cynthia Sandberg, has a beautiful blog, GrowBetterVeggies.com. Cynthia's fame has spread far beyond Santa Cruz, where she was renowned as The Tomato Lady up in Ben Lomond. Now she's growing for one of the best-known restaurants around, one of only seven four-star rated San Francisco Chronicle restaurants, and with two Michélin stars. She's gone from organic to biodynamic growing, and the process has been fascinating. From no one else do I get phone calls asking me if I know where to find cow poop from a cow who has given birth. We were sitting in the audience waiting to hear Anthony Bourdain last week, and she got a text message from her assistant, "Ask Tana about horse manure."

(Please, none of you follow suit.)

Go subscribe to her blog and you might be the recipient of a pack of special tomato seeds. (But stay for the show: she really really really knows her stuff.) You can read more about Cynthia from the early days of this weblog: The Tomato Curator.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "They say the sun never sets over the British Empire, but it rises every morning. The sky must get awfully crowded." —Steven Wright

Thanks for visiting.

ACTION ALERT: About the Raw Milk Legislation from Claravale Dairy

Folks, this is urgent. Please take a little time out from your day to contact lawmakers, to undo the grave legislation that would decimate the raw milk industry in California. You can do that with information at the first link, and read more about the situation at the second link.

1) OrganicPastures.com
2) TheCompetePatient.com

Here is a letter from Ron Garthwaite, owner of Claravale Farm, which is pictured above. Well, it's his former location that I once visited: last year was rough for Claravale, when their lease was yanked unceremoniously so the owners could get a higher-paying tenant on the land. Relocating to San Benito County after having spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, trying to get the permits necessary from the visionary-impaired bureaucrats in Santa Cruz County, Ron built a new dairy facility that cost about $1M.

From TheCompletePatient.com:

What's made AB 1735 especially shocking to Ronald is that he was submitting plans and having inspections by the California Department of Food and Agriculture during recent months. “Had they informed us of this new regulation we could have made changes to the facilities in order to have a better chance of meeting the new regulation,” he says in an email he just sent to his customers. “Or we may have decided not to build at all.  Or we may have decided to construct it to produce products other than raw milk.

Here is a letter from Ron, which is necessarily long: there is scientific and political information that you need to know. Ron concludes the letter:

If you want to continue to be able to obtain raw milk in California you should fight this law with everything you have. Even if you are not a raw milk drinker but want to be able to get fresh, unadulterated produce or meat or, in fact any fresh food in the future you should be fighting this law. This is only one additional step in the State’s campaign to pasteurize or sterilize everything.

On behalf of the raw milk dairies in California, I thank you.

Freewheelin' Farm's Fall Art Show: Saturday, November 4

Pictured here, some of the lovely sculpture of Cate Shelly, who is the partner of Ronald Donkervoort of Windmill Farms here in Santa Cruz. Cate is part of a group of artists who'll combine their talents at a Fall Art Show tomorrow up at Freewheelin' Farm, just a few miles up the coast from the west side farmers market.

This is Cate: ain't she great?

This little piece is my favorite, but I never had a chance to buy it. It reminds me of Jem and Scout Finch.

So the art show is tomorrow from 1:0-6:00 PM.

From the E-Vite: