I Heart Farms

"Grow a Farmer" Campaign? Food Bloggers, C'mon Down!

Pictured here: Adrea Tencer, a former apprentice at the UCSC Farm & Garden's six-month residential program for training in all aspects of sustainable agriculture.

So, for six weeks beginning in mid-February, I did not take a day off. I was working on three websites: two directly related to today's BIG WONDERFUL & EXCITING NEWS post. I'm here to introduce the "Grow a Farmer" Campaign, a nationwide project to raise $250K for permanent housing for the apprentices who live on the farm during their residential program.

For forty-plus years, the apprentices have lived in tents on the periphery of the farm. Last year, they were told this is no longer an option, and UCSC began accepting bids for permanent tent cabins. One was accepted, and then costs for labor and materials went up—the result being that the bid rose by $250K. The Friends board worked on finding solutions, and in a frenzy of inspiration, the "Grow a Farmer" Campaign was conceived and born over a two-week span in January.

The response has been amazing. Newman's Own Foundation gave $50K, which is their maximum donation. The Obaboa Foundation and Olivia Boyce-Abel have created a $20K matching grant challenge (read more below).

The campaign is asking farm-loving chefs to support the cause in a couple of ways...either by hosting a benefit dinner, as Chez Panisse is doing on May 6 (among others whose number is growing daily), or by donating $10 a day for the Merry Month of May. That $300 will make a restaurant (or any business) a Partner, to be listed on the website.

Businesses like Earthbound Farm and Johnny's Selected Seeds are donors. Other business opportunities include holding "Community Day" and donating (for example) 5% of the day's sales to the campaign.

Non-profits and other organizations who can't hold events still have opportunities to participate, even by merely spreading the word via a mailing list, or making a donation. These people are Pollinators, and will be linked on the website.

There are other ways for individuals—including, hello? you former apprentices—to have fun Growing a Farmer. You can host a fundraising event—a farm tour, a house or garden party—and we'll have materials for you that will help your event succeed.

And then there are yet other creative ways to help this campaign, the most inspiring of which so far is the incredibly generous offering from Chef David Kinch and Manresa Restaurant. Concerned that a "mere" cash donation wouldn't maximize the potential to help raise the funds, the chef instead is offering up two Chef's Special Tasting dinners, with wine pairings. These dinners will be awarded to the highest donors in the Obaboa Foundation's matching grant challenge.

In the words of one of my personal heroes, Beth Benjamin, who co-founded Camp Joy Gardens, spreading the word to a local publication:

I have been involved in organic gardening, farming and seed production since 1967 due to my life-shaping apprenticeship with Alan Chadwick at the garden at the University of Santa Cruz. I worked at my own farm, Camp Joy, then with Renee Shepherd, and now am on the board of the Organic Seed Alliance. As farmers are the very base of all the fabulous food we cook at home or eat in restaurants, and the flowers that are such an important part of most of our lives, maybe this would make an interesting story, especially since the Garden and Farm is the mothership for so many of our local farmers – past, present and future. We need as many good farmers as we can get, and the training program in Santa Cruz has been training and inspiring folks all over the country and the world for over 40 years.

This is the website that was just launched for nationwide Grow A Farmer month in May – we are fundraising for permanent apprentice housing at the UCSC Farm and Garden. Living on site is an essential part of the program and the University has given us until June to raise the money to start actually building the shovel-ready project. I have been racking my brains for like minded businesses or individuals that might be able to contribute in any way. I’m sure your organization has subscribers who’ve been trained or inspired by the Farm and Garden or its offshoots, so I thought perhaps you might be one of our business contributors, or maybe write something up about our efforts. Please take a minute and look at our website, as it is a great way to explain what we are working on.  If there is someone more appropriate that I could speak to in person, please give me the contact information.

There may be a way you can help by going to a dinner or shopping at one of the participating businesses or restaurants, making a donation, or passing the publicity on to someone else or connecting us with someone who would like to be part of this exciting campaign – please go to the brand new site and see what you think!  Events will be added to the website as they are scheduled. 

So that's it, in one very large, very aromatic nutshell.

Do these apprentices a BIG favor: use Facebook, Yelp, and Twitter it up! Spread the word, spread the energy, and come on board. I'm counting on food bloggers to help here: we will arrange personal farm tours if you want to come visit. And we'll add YOUR blog to our website, both as a Pollinator and as a Blogging Partner.

Use LocalHarvest for Networking Events

If you're looking for a restaurant near you that supports local farms, start with LocalHarvest.org. Plug in your zip code, and see what pops up. Or contact us on the Grow a Farmer site: we might be able to put you in touch with former apprentices in your area who can hook you up.

If your restaurant IS going to participate, please get a free member listing at LocalHarvest and add your event to the mailing list called "Keep Me Posted." LocalHarvest's newsletter goes out every Wednesday morning to over 45,000 people, and they are the premier website in the world for their niche: guiding people to local food and eating well.

And that's the news across the nation.

Sorry to have been missing in action: this is the biggest project of my life, and by far, the best. Yes, we can!

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "Farmers are the only indispensable people on the face of the earth." —Ambassador Li Zhaoxing

Thanks for visiting. Will you be a Cultivator?

Oooh, last treat: Check out the website I designed for my friends at TLC Ranch: they're now the largest pastured egg production operation in the country! (Sun graphic on the site by Monika Wolff.)

Happy springtime, everyone!

Making a Difference

Yet another cool thing to do with your kids and their schools. On October 18, my friends Lori and Jeff Fiorovich will host a Farm to School Day at Crystal Bay Farm in Watsonville.

Read the press release below, and see the faces of your host farmers, when Logan was just two and a half.

Harvest Festival at UCSC Farm: October 4!

Grab your kids: this weekend is the biggest event at the UCSC Farm all year 'round! I took this photo a couple of years ago, when we took Logan for the face painting, pumpkin painting, apple bobbing, and other great activities for kids. And the whole family.

The festival has expanded this year to include workshops and cooking  demonstrations among the already packed schedule of live music, apple tasting, an apple pie bake-off competition, and so much more! There are walking tours of the farm, tractor rides, and so on. And LOTS of good food to eat. $5 and under for admission to one fantastic farm event.

Highly recommended! To see the complete schedule, including the live music, visit the CASFS website here.

That's all until tomorrow. I've been under deadlines with four clients, and hope to catch a break in the action soon.

Here: a joke. "Sarah Palin is a post turtle." (I laughed, even though it's older than John McCain.)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY, from Michael Moore: "The Rich Are Staging a Coup This Morning."

Thanks for visiting, and now get on the phone with your Congresspersons.

Fundraisers & Fun!

Next weekend is a good weekend to be in Santa Cruz: two wonderful fundraising events are taking place for farm lovers and foodies, young and old.

Saturday, September 27, between noon and sunset, Freewheelin' Farm(a little less than six miles outside of Santa Cruz, just off Highway One) is hosting its third annual Farm Art Show. I heard about the previous two from organizaer, Melinda Lundgren, and from plenty of people who attended that this event is a blast.

Freewheelin' Farm is the subject of adoration with locals: they run a CSA with 40 shares, bicycling the six miles into town to deliver their produce. I'd written about it after a stop on the Eco Farm bus tour a couple of years ago.

Amy, Darryl, and Kirstin work the farm together, and they run a great show—figuratively and literally. Check out the details on the flyer: organic brew, wine tasting, wood-fired pizza, kids' table, and more. All for a $5-$10 donation, and there is also art for sale. Great stuff!

The next day, a high-end culinary event is taking place in honor of The Vanilla Queen, my friend, Patricia Rain. Read on for "A Culinary Event Fit for a Queen!" It should be wonderful.

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.

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.

Wordle, and an Awakening to Organic

Pictured here: my visit to "Wordle.net" produced this themed art of my own words about loving farms. Go try it out. You can enter a URL for your weblog, or any text you want. I used custom colors and a friendly font. Experimental play is the key. Make your own.

And now for something harvested after planting the seed, in a hostile climate, many years ago. It gives me hope for my (or your) relatives who think everything we do is crazy, expensive, or "too California."

Some time back, we shared a holiday meal with Some Family Members. While these people are good and funny and fun, they are essentially afraid of real food. My offering one Thanksgiving of an organic turkey with an herb crust and shiitake mushroom stuffing was greeted with skepticism: the turkey skin was discarded (to the dogs) from some plates, and few would even try the suspicious gravy or stuffing with the shiitakes. 

Time's Running Out: Raw Milk ACTION ALERT!

SHORT AND TO THE POINT:

Make 17 phone calls to save raw milk in California, please.

LINK.

These are some of Jean and Bob's cows out in Watsonville at the very beautiful Deep Roots Ranch.

Well, Jennifer Started It!

Pictured here: some of the pigs at TLC Ranch, taken in March. Yes, there is an explanation about its deliberate appearance.

Yes, another two weeks go by, and here I am, bedridden with one of the ghastly colds that is being shared by a broad userbase in Santa Cruz county. So between downing cups of tea and Vitamin C tablets the size of bricks, I have been scanning some blogs. I don't have the energy to catch up on reading all of my favorites—one of which I am currently 47 posts behind on!—because it's just too strenuous. You know, the contests, the solicitation of our thoughts on certain topics, and so on. Things I enjoy when I'm feeling great, but not when half the air is out of the tires in my brain. Too demanding.

There are a handful of blogs that I scope out first, and will always click in if I see a new post has been added. A couple of days ago, I saw that my friend, the beautiful and über-creative Jennifer Jeffrey had added a new post to Jennifer Jeffrey: Writer/Editor. (She's selling herself short: her design skills are fabulous, too.) At the top of the post is a photograph so brimming with life that my mouth dropped open. And true to herself as ever, she finds something to inspire on an otherwise miserably hot day in the city.

You would not think that the statuesque and lovely Ms. Jeffrey and I share a host of addictions, what with her doing yoga and all, but under the skin, we share an insatiable craving for at least four things: cheese, typefaces, the election of Barack Obama in this year's presidential election, and playing around with images. (Read my comment on her post, if you like, to see where we're going here.)

Getting My Ducks in a Row

How much fun was it the other day to hear a clamor outside my front door, and open it to find four white ducks snapping up bugs in our front yard? They've come back every day since—they live across the lane—and Logan and I are loving it.

So yes, long time no post. Life's been large. No real complaints, but there are a lot of moving parts, as a friend puts it. Lots of work, lots of happenings in our family, and lots for me to pay attention to.

One thing I'm excited about, and that I'll be spotlighting here, is the upcoming development of a new project in Santa Cruz that is VERY exciting for anyone involved in [real] food in our region. That is, in part, the Monterey Bay Culinary Arts Institute, as well as some other food-related businesses, in the very large complex on the west side of town, formerly owned by Lipton. It's 38,000 feet, and there is quite a vision being brought along, largely by Cynthia Jordan, an energetic and talented woman who, among her other talents, is a certified Master Gardener. The space will involved chefs, authors, farmers, artisanal producers of all things culinary and potable, as well as host a variety of other food-related businesses.

I will be posting details about city council meetings in which locals can have a voice: it's amazing how little of an awareness most of our local bureaucrats seem to have about culinary tourism in general. From what I've seen, the vision of this center is something that will serve to put Santa Cruz on the map as a culinary destination in much the same way Sonoma and Napa counties are.

Like I said, VERY exciting.

I should have the opportunity to get out to a farm soon, just as soon as I get my most recent project launched. Speaking of that, I finished the website for my landscaper friend, Ben Bording, who made the sweet "Tana in the Sunshine" stone piece for our garden. His site is Cool Earth Gardens.

And lastly: tomorrow's my birthday, Me and Willie Nelson and Kirstin Dunst. None of these things are much like the other.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "April is a promise that May is bound to keep."  —Hal Borland

Thanks for visiting.