I Heart Farms

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.

Berries and Babies and the Dirty Girl Family

This is the world's quickest post, since I'm overdue with one…things are busier than ever, and the housing crisis for the apprentices at the UCSC Farm is eating up some of my unfree time, so to speak.

But I did get out on Monday to visit one of my friend's new farms. Joe Schirmer, a graduate of UCSC and of the CASFS (UCSC Farm & Garden) program, has had the good fortune to find two new farms to add onto his existing acreage. The farm I visited on Monday is the same spot I visited a few years ago, when it was covered in Vanessa Bogenholm's strawberries. Happily, Joe's still growing those—three kinds, including the wondrous Albions that are my favorite, ever—but he's diversified so much that I was bowled over.

Hazon Is Hebrew for "Vision"

A fellow member of the Board of Directors for the Friends of the UCSC Farm & Garden gave me this postcard at our monthly meeting this week, and I promised her I would put it on my weblog.

Emily Freed writes:

Come be a part of the New Jewish Food Movement!

You are invited to join us at the 2008 Hazon Food Conference which will take place December 25 - 28, 2008 at the Asilomar Conference and Retreat Center, on the Monterey Peninsula, CA. The conference experience will cover the spectrum of food interests, from health and sustainability to food justice and Jewish tradition. Join hundreds of others from all over North America, Israel, and beyond as this group of young, not so young, singles, couples, families, rabbis, farmers, educators, chefs, writers, students and enthusiasts gathers to celebrate Chanukah, Shabbat, and the New Jewish Food Movement. To register or find out more about the Hazon Food Conference, visit: www.hazon.org/foodconference

If you have questions about the Food Conference or want to find out more information about Hazon, feel free to contact Emily Jane Freed at emilyfreed2000@yahoo.com.

• • • • • • • • • • •

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, and this you will become." — James Lane Allen

Thanks for visiting.

High Ground Farm's Open Space Alliance Farm Dinner

Set atop the rolling hills near a slough in Watsonville, beautiful High Ground Organics farm is a vision within a vision. I'm having trouble finding words to describe it, so here are some photos from a visit a couple of years ago.

High Ground Organics partners with Mariquita Farm in a robust CSA, and one of the charming things High Ground brings to the table (so to speak) are all the varieties of flowers they grow, which make the farm itself exceptionally beautiful.

On August 17, you can have the chance to dine on the farm: Open Space Alliance is hosting a farm dinner with Chef Jozseph Schultz (formerly of India Joze). About Jozseph's food: he catered the sit-down dinner at my best friend's wedding a couple of weeks ago for 150 people. The food, with all its Pan-Asian influences, was fantastic. See his menu below, and read the press release from Open Space Alliance: one of my favorite groups and causes in the county.

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.)