Sonoma County farmers in NY Times

[Shepherd]

As the global oil, water, and food peaks appear more visibly, it is good to see articles such as the following in tomorrow's Sunday NY Times on our local Sonoma County Farm Trails. Notice words such as "low-tech," "biodiversity," "green MBA," and "agrotourism" in the article. Our small town of Sebastopol even made it into the first paragraph. We can be proud of our local farmers here. As the article indicates, we are more than Wine Country; we remain part of the Redwood Empire and can take leadership when it comes to food farming.

Our local weekly the North Bay Bohemian also has an excellent cover article in its current issue titled "Monocrop Madness--One World, One Crop: A Recipe for Disaster." It is available at www.bohemian.com. That article describes part of the problem, whereas the NY Times article describes part of the solution. Other important articles on food and agriculture can be read at www.energybulletin.net, where I have been writing about agropsychology and agrotherapy.

I am happy to report that here at the small Kokopelli Farm our organic boysenberry crop looks as if it will be the best yet in my sixteen years here. Given the emerging peaks and the human-made chaotic climate changes--including the industrial agriculture that uses around 70% of the Earth's water supply--I do not expect every future year to be so good. So I will relish this year's crop. I hope that your summer goes well.
Buy Local!
Shepherd

June 1, 2008, NY Times
Explorer | Sonoma County, Calif.
On the Trail of a Sustainable Feast in Sonoma
By TAYLOR HOLLIDAY

THE psychedelic, hand-painted, Mushroom Man pickup truck parked at the New Carpati Farm in Sonoma County, Calif., just outside the town of Sebastopol, was the first sign that this vacation was going to be a little out of the ordinary.

After a short tour of the grassy property and a stop to pet the baby chicks in their coop with a view of the verdant valley in the distance, my husband, Craig Havighurst, and I entered a little plastic hut. Inside, a few rows of shelving each held several oak-sawdust “logs.” As our eyes adjusted to the relative dark, bunches of meaty shiitake and gorgeous canary-yellow oyster mushrooms popped out of the logs in invitation, almost like gold in a mine. “See those white hairs on top?” said Steve Schwartz, owner of the New Carpati Farm and our guide on this culinary pilgrimage. “It means it’s super fresh. You would never see that in a grocery.”

A visit to Mr. Schwartz’s low-tech little mushroom hut on his three-acre farm is a revelation in many ways. But it’s one that most Sonoma County visitors never have, since most are only headed for the area’s excellent wineries. “If you just do the wineries,” said Mr. Schwartz, “you’re missing out.”

After a four-day tour of farms — with a few wineries thrown in — I had to agree. We had come to Sonoma County specifically for the food. Inspired by the “locavore” movement, in which Earth-aware consumers go to great lengths to eat only locally grown, sustainable food from within a 100-mile radius of their home, we decided to take a locavore holiday, creating an entire meal from farms we had personally visited and farmers we had personally met.

This was possible because of Sonoma County Farm Trails, an agrotourism and farm-marketing group that supports sustainable agricultural diversity. It has 165 farm members in Sonoma County that invite interaction with the public in some way —from farm stands to farm tours. Having had its 35th anniversary in 2007, it is one of the oldest, largest and most diverse agrotourism organizations in the United States.

The farms of the Sonoma County Farm Trails are dotted throughout the county anywhere wine grapes and creeping development have spared a patch of land. They are mostly working family farms, making time for visitors generally by appointment.

Wanting the full farm experience — and a kitchen to cook in — we were glad to find Full House Farm, also outside Sebastopol, which offers one of the few farm stays in the county. With our oenophile friends, Kelli Back and Gary Pemberton, we settled into the guesthouse, giddy over the view of the horses in the valley below, which we could see from the picture windows or from the Adirondack chairs perched on the hill. Amenities included our own kitchen garden and a bowl of freshly laid eggs. From Full House Farm, our food-sourcing radius would be a mere 20 miles: north to Healdsburg, west to Bodega, south to Petaluma and points between.

“People are divorced from where their food comes from,” said Ana Stayton at our first stop, Golden Nectar Farm on the southwest outskirts of Windsor. A nutrition educator and lay herbalist, Ms. Stayton, along with her husband, John, co-founder and director of the country’s first green M.B.A. program, at Dominican University of California, runs Golden Nectar with the goal of “helping people imagine the possibilities in their own lives of having a connection to the natural world and living more sustainably.”

A tour of their 2.5-acre farm — past a studio made with straw bales, an outdoor cob kitchen, a car that runs on vegetable oil and a hen-mobile that ferries a handsome assortment of chickens to fresh pecking grounds — feels like a stroll through someone’s giant backyard, albeit someone with the audacity to grow 150 varieties of fruit, from kiwis to blackberries, figs to plumcots.

“This farm was designed as an experiment in biodiversity,” said Ms. Stayton, reaching under a blueberry bush to yank a stray asparagus stem out of the ground for us to taste. As an organic farm that uses only natural fertilizers and pesticides, the diversity and rotation of plants helps keep the soil healthy and pests at bay, Ms. Stayton explained while an intern began transplanting some onions near the blueberries to see if they would ward off pesky gophers.

Although it’s on a slightly bigger scale — 17 acres right off U.S. 101 near Santa Rosa — Tierra Vegetables is run with a similar philosophy. “We want people to know where their food comes from,” said Wayne James, who happened to be there, chatting with a repeat customer who was buying up all the strawberries, when we dropped by the bountiful farm stand that fronts his neatly tractored, though wildly diverse cropland. His sister and the farm’s co-owner, Lee James, was running their stall at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, where San Francisco epicures seek out Tierra particularly for its vast array of chilies and chili products.

Tierra encourages visitors — especially children — to roam its fields. “Organic is part of our sustainable practice,” Mr. James said, “but not all. The work we do here is environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. It has to be all three.”

The good news, he continued, is that “a lot more people understand what we’re doing nowadays.”

Proof of that is in the growing numbers of people who frequent farmers’ markets and join community-supported-agriculture programs, like Tierra’s, in which families become subscribers and pay the farmer in advance for a weekly delivery of fresh produce. Shaken into a new awareness by contaminated foods (E. coli spinach, anyone?) that have traveled an average 1,500 fuel-guzzling miles from a farm who-knows-where to your table, more Americans are eager to know their farmers and understand how their food is grown.

Even after visiting Love Farms, however, you may not fully understand the progressive methods of Ron Love. A city farm smack in the middle of Healdsburg (and a favorite of local chefs), its six acres boast 200 different organic crops throughout the year. A talk with Mr. Love quickly veers from his explanation of why his rows of tomatoes are growing up out of plastic-covered ground (the Israeli-desert-style irrigation conserves water and controls weeds and enables him to get his tomatoes on the market before anyone else’s) to a discussion of the heady biodynamics of Rudolf Steiner and his prescriptions for organic farming with a spiritual bent, or what Mr. Love calls “the next level of consciousness.”

“We don’t understand the geometry of the living world,” Mr. Love said. “The ’60s generation are the last people who can farm. We need a framework of valuing becoming a farmer.”

That’s also a concern for the mushroom man Steve Schwartz, who learned to grow mushrooms while teaching women to do so in Thailand in his Peace Corps days and who now works with California FarmLink, which helps preserve family farms by matching up retiring farmers with the next generation of aspiring back-to-the-landers.

There’s no better way to cultivate that next generation than by getting kids out on the farm, which is exactly why many of these farmers take time out of their 80-hour-plus work weeks to give tours. There was a particularly happy assortment of human kids playing with exuberantly friendly goat kids at Redwood Hill Farm, a certified humane farm where all 350 goats have names.

Though it has a small-scale industrial creamery, Sebastopol-based Redwood Hill is still family-run and still makes award-winning goat cheese by hand in small batches, said the understated, gray-haired woman who led our tour of the creamery (it is open to the public a few weekends each year). It was only after we had followed the trail of the various cheeses to the aging racks — seeing how some varieties grow a little moldier and hairier by the week as they age to perfection — and swooned over the taste of creamy-tart crottin and Camembert-like Camellia, that we realized our guide was the owner, Jennifer Bice, a goat-cheese maker since 1978.

If there is one thing you learn from visiting farms, it’s that sustainable farming is an endless challenge. But on a drive toward the Sonoma coast, the environmental payoff is abundantly clear: rolling green hills, freely grazing cows, diversity of terrain.

Head for bohemian Bodega (population 500), and you’ll wind up at Bodega Artisan Cheese. After 22 years as a goat rancher, Patty Karlin is still pushing the envelope at her 60-goat farm and dairy, where she makes cheeses for farmers’ markets and local restaurants. In her 90-minute eco-tour, she shows how she’s moving off the power and water grid — with solar panels and a pond-fed, tiered irrigation system — in an attempt to zero out the ranch’s bills. ”Everything I do has to be a model for the third world,” said Ms. Karlin, who is also a consultant to African farmers.

In the creamery, we saw the experimental Gouda she had made that morning with her young apprentice. And before a cheese tasting, we sampled the exotic microgreens that her apprentice-tenants sell to high-end restaurants under the name Earthworker Farm.

At McEvoy Ranch in Petaluma, the view may be richer and grander, with 18,000 olive trees planted over 80 acres of a 550-acre ranch, but it is still strictly sustainable and organic. Nan McEvoy, a former chairwoman of The San Francisco Chronicle, was the first to bring Tuscan-style olive oil production to Northern California. Her olive ranch and country home on the hills of the border of Sonoma and Marin Counties are as luxurious as her oils. On the frequent and thorough two-hour tour, you’ll visit the olive orchards (each tree will produce roughly a gallon of oil each year) and the milling room (a giant granite stone crushes the olives, pits and all) before tasting the green and grassy extra virgin oil.

After our McEvoy visit, we had done it: We had sourced an entire meal of ingredients fresh from the farms that grew them. So what did we make from our bounty? Our friend Kelli substituted Bodega Artisan ricotta for the cow’s-milk version she normally uses for her ricotta gnocchi — to startlingly light and luscious effect. We made a sauce of New Carpati shiitake and oyster mushrooms; Tierra Vegetables adolescent garlic and fresh fava beans (absolutely worth the double-shucking); Love Farms basil and oregano; and McEvoy Ranch olive oil.

The microgreens salad from Earthworker Farm was a vision with its edible orange nasturtium and blue borage flowers, topped with crumbled Redwood Hill Farm feta and dressed with an olive-oil-lemon vinaigrette from the Meyer lemon tree outside our door.

It was one of the freshest, most satisfying meals we’d ever made, made even better by good friends and local sauvignon blanc.

FROM THE MUSHROOM MAN TO GOATS THAT HAVE NAMES

Sonoma County Farm Trails publishes a free map and guide (707-571-8288; www.farmtrails.org). You can read about California FarmLink’s programs at www.californiafarmlink.org. The following farms welcome visitors for tours by appointment only.

New Carpati Farm, 4241 Bartleson Road, Sebastopol; (707) 829-2978; free tour with purchase of produce or $5 for adults and $1 for children over 12.

Golden Nectar Farm, 6364 Starr Road, Windsor; (707) 838-8189; www.goldennectar.com; $15 per person (minimum two adults), children free.

Tierra Vegetables, 651 Airport Boulevard, Santa Rosa; (707) 837-8366; www.tierravegetables.com; $5.

Love Farms, 15069 Grove Street, Healdsburg; (707) 433-1230; www.lovefarms.com; tour free with purchase.

Redwood Hill Farm, 2064 U.S. 116 north, Sebastopol; (707) 823-8250; www.redwoodhill.com; free farm and creamery tours on selected dates.

Bodega Artisan Cheese, (707) 876-3483; www.bodegaartisancheese.com; $75 for five people or fewer and $15 for each additional person.

McEvoy Ranch, 5935 Red Hill Road, Petaluma; (707) 778-2307; www.mcevoyranch.com; orchard tours on selected dates, $25.

Full House Farm, 1000 Sexton Road, Sebastopol; (707) 829-1561; www.fhfarm.com; rates start at $215 a night plus a $125 cleaning fee for a three-bedroom guesthouse.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[Zeno Swijtink]

As the global oil, water, and food peaks appear more visibly, it is good to see articles such as the following in tomorrow's Sunday NY Times on our local Sonoma County Farm Trails. Notice words such as "low-tech," "biodiversity," "green MBA," and "agrotourism" in the article. Our small town of Sebastopol even made it into the first paragraph. We can be proud of our local farmers here. As the article indicates, we are more than Wine Country; we remain part of the Redwood Empire and can take leadership when it comes to food farming.

Our local weekly the North Bay Bohemian also has an excellent cover article in its current issue titled "Monocrop Madness--One World, One Crop: A Recipe for Disaster." It is available at www.bohemian.com. That article describes part of the problem, whereas the NY Times article describes part of the solution. Other important articles on food and agriculture can be read at www.energybulletin.net, where I have been writing about agropsychology and agrotherapy.

I am happy to report that here at the small Kokopelli Farm our organic boysenberry crop looks as if it will be the best yet in my sixteen years here. Given the emerging peaks and the human-made chaotic climate changes--including the industrial agriculture that uses around 70% of the Earth's water supply--I do not expect every future year to be so good. So I will relish this year's crop. I hope that your summer goes well.
Buy Local!
Shepherd

June 1, 2008, NY Times
Explorer | Sonoma County, Calif.
On the Trail of a Sustainable Feast in Sonoma
By TAYLOR HOLLIDAY

Thanks for posting this, Shepherd. I liked the photo of what they say is a mobile chicken coop at of the Golden Nectar Farm in Windsor.




See also Michele Anna Jordan about CSAs, Community Supported Agriculture from the PD last Wednesday.

****

CSAs: What a healthy, fun way to ‘shop’
Community farms a way to connect
MICHELE ANNA JORDAN

From the moment I first heard of community supported agriculture, or CSA, I have loved the idea: Sign up for a regular delivery of whatever the farm produces that week and get a box of fresh produce.

There’s something festive about receiving a bag or box filled with surprises each week. When my subscription was delivered, the knock at the door always caught me off guard.

“Who can that be?” I’d think as I went to the door. I work at home and am often lost in my writing; out here in the country, there are few unexpected visitors.

“Ahh, look!,” I’d say when I saw who was there.

“Strawberries! Fresh peas! Lettuce!” Every week, it felt like my birthday.

If you pick up your subscription at the farm, you start to recognize other members and soon they become friends. Many farms with CSA programs host seasonal or annual parties for members.

One of the newest programs, the Secret Eating Society Green Party Salad CSA, takes the fun even further, with a backyard party on every pickup day.

This social element echoes the community atmosphere of farmers markets, where seeing friends and hanging out has become nearly as important as the opportunity to buy directly from local farmers.

It’s a great thing, don’t you think? Anything that gets us out of supermarkets and big box stores, where shoppers are so often rushed and grumpy, is a great thing. These days, it is possible to get almost everything you need to stock your refrigerator, freezer and pantry with good, wholesome delicious local foods without ever going to a supermarket. If you join the Sonoma County Meat Buying Club and a CSA that offers fruit, flowers, eggs and cheese you can fill in what you need by shopping at the farmers markets and local specialty stores like Traverso’s, Anstead’s and such.

In 1997, when Seasonal Pantry first explored local CSAs, there were 10 farms that offered subscription programs. By 2002, that number had dwindled to three. Of those three, only two — Laguna Farms and Tierra Vegetables — continue today.

Yet new CSAs have emerged in the past several years and the count is back up to 11 local CSAs. Some operate year round; others are gearing up for a season that begins in early June and continues through late fall.

CSA generally stands for community supported agriculture, though it may be referred to as community shared agriculture or community subscription agriculture. In its purest form, a farmer determines costs for the upcoming year, divides that amount by the number of people the farm can sustain and sells subscriptions at that price.

The weekly harvest is then divided among subscribers. If it’s a bountiful year, members get more for their money than if there are unexpected conditions that damage or destroy crops. In lean years, everyone shares the loss and the farmer survives.

No local CSA operates in exactly this way. Most base their subscription prices on the approximate retail value of the weekly bag or box of produce members receive, with additional charges for home delivery and the options known as add-ons. The most common add-ons are fruit, flowers and eggs, though some also offer bread, cheese, yogurt and farm products such as jams and jellies.

Some CSAs operate as a shopping service, either augmenting their own harvest with purchased produce from the wholesale market in San Francisco or by purchasing organic produce from a wholesale vendor and repackaging it, as a program in Petaluma is doing for low-income families.

Many farms with CSA programs also attend farmers markets and sell their harvest to local restaurants. A few thrive solely on their CSA programs.

Some CSA farms welcome volunteers; a few will offer a discount on the subscription price if you volunteer regularly.

CSAs offer a way to stay a few steps ahead of the forces that try to repackage grassroots ideas and sell them back to us in a form that compromises the original intention. We have seen it happen with “organic” and it is happening again with “sustainable.” As always, the way to beat the game is to actually know your source, and there are few better ways to do this than with a local CSA.

Although the concept of selling subscriptions to farms began to emerge in Japan and western Europe in the 1970s, by the mid-90s it seemed as if it would be the next wave of the food movement. It didn’t quite work out that way but, finally, it seems as if this is a good idea whose time has come.

FRITTATA WITH PASTA, BACON AND CHEESE

When you have great eggs — and that’s one of the benefits of many CSA programs; you have the option of farm eggs — a frittata is absolutely delicious. This is one of my favorites and I love to serve it with whatever seasonal vegetables I happen to have, from roasted asparagus and grilled onions in the spring, roasted peppers or green beans in a vinaigrette in the summer and leeks almost any time.

Makes 6 servings

Kosher salt

8 ounces angel hair pasta

3 to 4 slices of bacon, diced

1 small onion, diced

3 to 4 garlic cloves, minced

8 eggs

Black pepper in a mill

6 ounces Vella Dry Jack cheese, grated

2 tablespoons minced Italian parsley

2 teaspoons butter, optional

Fill a large pot half-full with water, season generously with salt and bring to a boil over high heat. When the water reaches a rolling boil, add the pasta and stir until the water returns to a boil. Cook according to package directions, drain immediately, rinse in cool water and drain thoroughly. Transfer to a large bowl.

Meanwhile, fry the bacon in a medium cast-iron pan or other ovenproof frying pan until it is crisp. Transfer the bacon to absorbent paper to drain and pour off all but about 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat.

Return the pan to medium low heat, add the onions and saute until limp and fragrant, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and saute 2 minutes more. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Break the eggs, one at a time, into a small dish and then transfer to a medium mixing bowl. When all of the eggs have been broken, beat with a whisk until smooth and creamy. Season with salt and pepper and fold in the cheese.

Add the mixture to the pasta, along with the onions, garlic, bacon and parsley and use two forks to mix thoroughly, lifting the pasta over and over again until the mixture is well combined.

Set the frying pan over medium heat. If the surface is not evenly coated with a thin layer of bacon fat, add the butter and swirl until it is melted so that the pan is thoroughly coated. Add the frittata mixture and cook for 5 to 7 minutes. While the frittata cooks, use a thin knife or a heat-tolerant spatula to loosen the eggs from the sides of the pan. After you do this a few times, a crust will begin to form and the eggs will no longer stick to the sides.

After this crust has formed, transfer the frittata to the oven and cook until the eggs are just set and the top is lightly browned, about 10 to 12 minutes.

Remove from the oven and let rest for 10 minutes. To serve, set a flat serving plate on top, invert the plate and pan and jiggle the pan until the frittata drops onto the plate.

Cut in wedges and serve.

Michele Anna Jordan hosts “Mouthful” each Sunday at 7 p.m. on KRCB 91.1 FM. E-mail Jordan at [email protected].

LOCAL CSA PROGRAMS

Canvas Ranch: Nestled in the pretty hills of Two Rock, Canvas Ranch is a working labor of love operated by Deborah Walton.

Subscriptions are $28 a week, with a four-week minimum. There’s a 5 percent discount for a half season (12 weeks) and a 15 percent discount for a full season (24 weeks). Weekly add-ons include eggs ($4 a half dozen, $7 a full dozen), flowers ($6), seasonal fruit ($12) and bread ($6). There’s a monthly option of cheese for $28. Sign up online at https://www.canvasranch.com or call 766-7171.

Earth Worker Farm: George Macros farms in three locations near the town of Bodega to keep his 34 west county members supplied with organic produce. Cost of a basic subscription is $12 a week. Options include Bodega Artisan Cheese for an additional $4.50 and a quart of St. Benoit Yogurt for $6. Currently, membership is full. For information, send an e-mail to [email protected].

First Light Farm: Based in Sebastopol and operated by Nathan Boone, formerly of Oak Hill Farm in Glen Ellen, First Light Farm launches its first CSA season on June 3. It continues through Dec. 30. Weekly boxes are $20 but membership is by the 30-week season, for a total cost of $600, plus a one-time membership fee of $75 and a $60 delivery charge for the season. Add-ons include an additional half-pound of salad greens for $112.50 (that works out to $3.75 a week), a weekly bouquet for $210 ($7 a week) and monthly herbal tea tonics for $35 ($5 a month). For more information, send an e-mail inquiry to [email protected] or visit https://www.firstlightfarm.nexo.com/csa.

Full Circle CSA: Side By Side Organics, located between Santa Rosa and Sebastopol, offers two CSA programs, a conventional produce program and a flower CSA. Membership is by the season, which runs for 22 weeks (20 weeks for flowers), beginning in late June. A small share is $550 for the season; a large share is $750. Add $150 for flowers. The cost of the flower CSA only is $200. Membership will be limited to about 20 people. The program is operated by Hannah Whyte and Riley Morrison, who relocated here after severe flooding at their farm in Washington state. To sign up, e-mail [email protected].

Laguna Farm: One of the original CSA programs in Sonoma County, Laguna Farm in Sebastopol remains the largest. Cost is $17 a week and members must join for a minimum of three months. There is a one-time membership fee of $75. Add-ons include additional salad mix, $3.75 a week; seasonal fruit, $6 a week; and organic bread, $4 a week. Currently, there are no openings for home delivery; they are accepting members for pickup at the farm only. To sign up, visit https://www.lagunafarm.com.

Secret Eating Society Green Party Salad CSA: For $30 a month, members pick up a bag of salad greens, vegetables and flowers on the second and fourth Sundays of each month. As of press time, there were five slots available; they will maintain a waiting list when those slots are filled. To sign up, call Marissa Guggiana at 228-9800 or send an e-mail to [email protected]

Sol Food Farm: Subscriptions are $750 for a 25-week season, with half paid when you join and half due on Aug. 21. The season begins June 3. Members pick up at the farm near Occidental on either Thursday or Friday evenings. A weekly newsletter, with recipes, is posted on the Web site, https://www.solfoodfarm.org. There is a sign-up form on the site, as well.

Sonoma County Meat Buying Club: This innovative CSA, currently in its inaugural year, offers subscriptions for monthly boxes of local beef, lamb, pork and, by request only, goat. Prices vary according to size; 7 pounds is $65 a month; $15 pounds is $115 a month; 25 pounds is $180 a month. You must join for a minimum of three months at a time. The meat comes frozen and can be picked up either in north Santa Rosa or Petaluma. Additional drop-off locations may be added. There are many add-on options, including duck, bacon, veal and several sauces. For more information, send an e-mail to [email protected] or visit the club’s Web site at https://groups.ucanr.org/LocalMeatProd/.

Taylor Maid Farm Collective: This 22-week CSA launches June 1 and offers three pickup locations. It is a collaboration between Occidental’s Taylor Maid Farms, of coffee and tea fame, and Two Crows Farm. For the first month, this new program will provide vegetables to 35 members and plans to increase to 50 by July. Cost is $25 a week. As the season unfolds, there will be many add-on options, including pestos and chutneys, flowers, goat milk, goat cheese, tea blends and larger quantities of produce. For more information and to sign up, send an e-mail to [email protected], with “CSA” in the subject line. Inquiries can also be directed to 217-7065 and (415) 812-3924.

Tierra Vegetables: One of the longest-running CSA programs, Tierra Vegetables offers pickup options in Healdsburg, Santa Rosa and Windsor. Cost is $20 per week for pickup at the farm; there are additional charges for neighborhood drop-off locations and home delivery, both of which are available. There is a 5 percent discount when you join for the full season, which runs from June 3 to Dec. 23. To sign up, visit www.tierravegetables.com or call Evie Truxaw at 837-8366 for more information.

Valley End Farm: This organic farm, run by Sharon Grossi, is nestled against the western flank of Sonoma Mountain at 6300 Petaluma Hill Road, near Sonoma State University. Boxes are either $20 or $25 a week, depending on size, and membership is available quarterly or, for SSU students, by the semester. You can also sign up for a trial month. All members pick up their boxes at the farm. For more information and to sign up, visit https://valleyendfarm.com.

— Michele Anna Jordan