I Heart Farms

Hottie Farmers: Go, Huffington Post

Apparently, this photo of Michael Irving is the shot seen around the world. After appearing in Edible Portland, Mike was the poster boy (literally) for the "Grow a Farmer" Campaign for the UCSC Farm. There, Mike had been both an apprentice and a Second-Year, selected to help mentor the next class of apprentices).

A couple of weeks ago, I got a note from a young lady named Eve, who works for The Huffington Post, asking me if I would submit some photos of cute or handsome or pretty farmers. I sent her a bunch, and she used a couple in this Huffington Post slideshow in which you can vote for the Hottest/Cutest organic farmer. Mike's currently running in third place, but Michelle Obama has an unfair advantage, I think. 

Other friends who appear in the slideshow are Daniel Paduano (Abounding Harvest Mountain Farm) and Rebecca Thistlethwaite and Jim Dunlop (TLC Ranch). I agree that Annie Novak, currently #2, is quite beautiful, but I don't think rooftop gardening is farming—the scope of the work simply cannot compare. 

The thought that originated "I Heart Farms" was this: I wanted anyone who saw my work to ask themselves, "Where's my pretty little farm? Where's my pretty little farmer?" (You get the point.)

No wonder these young people are my heroes. Anyone who farms with this level of care and commitment is beautiful to me. You?

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "Do you know what a farm is? 'Cause I just found out…and WOW. They're amazing. Turns out that if you put a seed in the ground, and then with some time, water, and a little love, eventually it grows up to be a corndog. Well, our nation's farms need your help. To donate $5, text FARMER to 90999 on your cell phone. If you won't do it for the farmers, do it for our Jolly Ranchers." —Stephen Colbert, for Farm Aid

Thanks for visiting.

To the Picker, Go the Spoils

It may not look like much to you, but there's gold in them-thar spills. The broken vines and browning leaves concealed a wealth of dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes out at Everett Family Farm, where I was invited to "glean" today. With the first major rainstorm predicted to begin tonight, Leon Vehaba called me to let me know that he had a crew of pickers out there, trying to save every last tomato they could. But no one could possibly pick them all, so I got an invitation to scrounge through the plants and see what I could come up with.

 

That's just part of it—I also got a flat of small yellow heirlooms, some butternut squashes, and a couple of pretty little pumpkins for Logan. My friend, Lindsay, brought her toddler, Julian, and remarked, "Look at all this food around us." We were surrounded not only by the waning tomatoes, but by rows of carrots, beets, broccoli, chard, kale, greens, and hundreds of apple trees of many varieties. Alongside us, three young men whom Leon had hired to pick were concluding their day's work by scooping up the errant squashes and apples. "Gleaning," they called it, and of course, it was.

 

"We all used to eat like this," she continued. "And now, full circle." Under the cloudy grey sky, it was easier for me to remember true autumn weather back east, and to feel connected to the seasonality of our food. I regarded the butternut, thinking of Mollie Katzen's recipe for curried butternut squash soup with shiitake mushrooms. 

There is a huge rainstorm bearing down on us, and I'm feeling a little like Ma Wilder on the Big Prairie—Bob's headed out for a couple of days, and I'm left with a paltry store of firewood, and a dubious amount of propane in our kitchen stove. I don't like the thought of being alone without power, but I have the comfort of having Lindsay and the baby and his father next door. (And their woodstove.)

And hopefully, tomorrow, I'll have the comforting scent of tomatoes roasting in the oven, so I can "taste a little of the summer," as Greg Brown says in Canned Goods, when the winter is beating its path through our part of the world. 

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "Let those December winds bellow 'n' blow/I'm as warm as a July tomato." —Greg Brown, Canned Goods

Thanks for visiting.

Real Food or Caloric Entertainment? #FAIL, Duncan Hines!

 

First: apologies for the wacky formatting of this post. Typepad launched a "new and improved" interface that is a colossal failure.

Pictured here: a beautiful artichoke display from Prevedelli Farms at the Food & Wine Farm to Table Harvest in Carmel on September 26. I went with Cynthia Sandberg as her VIP guest, and it was glorious. Because this is what real food looks like. Recognizable as food, not some Frankensteined mix of "ingredients" that have been machinated to lose all resemblance to something that nourishes your body cells and well-being.

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that I don't suffer fools gladly, especially on a day when I'm so grouchy that I could kick something for the pleasure of the pain to my foot. And you know that, on a few occasions, someone pimping promoting some fake-food item to ME has caused my innate cynic to haul out the Whack-a-Mole on them.

Case in point: an email this morning from someone representing that titan of nutritious real food caloric entertainment found inside a package inside a box, Duncan Hines. And this is what it said:

The Scoop Around Here

Pictured here: dried beans at Dirty Girl Produce's booth at the Sunday farmers market in Live Oak. Don't they make you want to run your hands through them?

I have no good reason for not writing in so long, except to say that life has been complicated and more than a little tough. We lost custody of our precious little grandson, Logan, last month, when he was restored to his parents. Fortunately, we will be having a shared custody situation again, with Logan's father, for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, Logan has started kindergarten, and absolutely loves it. He's happy, he sings all the time, and frequently says, "Wherever my Poppy goes, I'm going, TOO." Here he is pictured in our corn patch, sitting on a stepladder.

He helped grow that corn, he'll have you know.

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