Full Circle Farm

From where I live in Mountain View, there may be no food that is more local (other than home-grown) than the food grown at Full Circle Farm, an 11 acre non-profit farm located adjacent to Peterson Middle School off of Wolfe Road near El Camino Real. You can buy directly through their farmstand or through their CSA. Right now, they have typical California winter crops such as broccoli, cabbage, chard, carrots, collard greens, kale, leeks, sunchokes, and winter squash.

On top of that, it's a great place to take the kids to walk along the vegetable rows, see seedlings in the greenhouse, stroll through the fruit trees in the orchard, or play with Mister Andy the rooster and the chickens in the hen house. Our family has "adopted" two trees at Full Circle Farm, a satsuma orange tree and a white nectarine tree, to help us feel more connected to the farm. We hope to take our daughter Kaiya and son Austin to visit these trees often.

Full of Life Farm: New Sustainable Meat Vendor @ MV Farmers' Market

Ever since TLC Ranch closed down shop a couple months ago, I have been lamenting the lack of a sustainable, pastured pork vendor at the Mountain View farmers' market. Other than the sporadic sustainable meat sales from Hidden Villa, I have not found a convenient, local option of pork (which happens to be the most consumed protein in our family) - with Whole Foods serving as an okay option, but where I often feel little or no connection to the farm or ranch that grows our food.

But recently a new pastured pork and grass fed beef vendor, Full of Life Farm joined the Mountain View farmers' market. The proprietor, Bernard Smith, has an interesting story - growing up on a family farm in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, before moving to San Francisco for work, only to eventually take over the family farm, and sell sustainable meat in Oregon and in SF Bay Area markets. Although I'm not crazy about the meat actually being raised in Oregon, I am excited about this new potential connection to healthy, delicious, sustainable food.

Sweet Dumpling Squash

I have a new favorite food: roasted sweet dumpling squash.

Butternut squash has long been my favorite winter squash - roasted with olive oil, pureed in soups or featured in risotto. The sweet creamy flavor and its utility as a hearty featured ingredient for fall and winter meals has endeared this vegetable to me. But I recently picked up a couple sweet dumpling squashes from Happy Boy Farms at the farmers' market, roasted them with salt and olive oil, and was in culinary heaven. Rich, deep flavor scooped straight out of the shell that surpassed even my long cultivated affinity to butternut squash. Yum.

What's In Season [Winter 2010]

I love shopping at the farmers' market in the fall and winter. It's not quite as sexy as the kaleidoscope of colors and deliciously sweet flavors that you get with all the heirloom tomatoes, stone fruit and berries in the summer. But I love the selection of vegetables that make for hearty soups and stews, and the fruits that come into season that have that crisp flavor that makes me think of fall.

For those of you not familiar with the broad selection of produce that our farmers' market vendors brave the cold (and sometimes rain) to bring to us every week, here are some of my favorites (including vendors at the Mountain View and downtown Palo Alto farmers' markets that I frequent the most):

• Winter squash, such as butternut, acorn, kabocha, delicata, and carnival: They are all great roasted and pureed in soups, or as the main highlight of a risotto, or just roasted with olive oil and scooped right out of their shells. You can typically find them at several vendors in any farmers' market with some of my favorite vendors being Happy Boy Farms and High Ground Organics, both out of Watsonville, at the Mountain View farmers' market on Sunday, and Full Belly Farm out of Capay Valley at the Saturday downtown Palo Alto farmers' market.
• Apples, including honey crisp, gala, fuji, gravenstein, cameo and many more: I grew up shopping at grocery stores where there were just apples, always shiny and red. Sometimes, there were green apples in the store, but those always seemed odd to me and they were called "green apples", whereas the red ones were always just "apples". Having been introduced to perhaps a dozen variety of apples over the last few years (out of the 2,500 varieties grown in the US), I have come to appreciate more breadth and depth of this wonderful family of fruit. There are a number of vendors with a decent variety of apples. But for a real education, you can head to Prevedelli Farms at the Mountain View market or Hale's Apple Farm at the downtown Palo Alto market. In the fall and winter, they both have a constant rotation of at least half a dozen apple varieties in season, and in particular Prevedelli has a helpful staff, good signage and plentiful samples.
• Citrus, and in particular satsuma oranges: The disappearance of peaches, nectarines, plums and other stone fruit at the end of the summer is a sad time in our household, where my wife, daughter and I devour these fruits all summer long. We can hang on for a while on the longer seasons that strawberries sometimes offer, but we don't get really excited again until winter when citrus, and in particular satsumas, come back to the market. These seedless, easy to peel, tangy fruits are mistaken for candy in our household where I need to buy a few dozen to make it through the week. All through the winter, I buy big bags full of satsumas from Paul at Super Sweet at the Mountain View market with Sunny Cal at both the Mountain View and downtown Palo Alto markets coming through in a pinch when needed.

If you are not already taking advantage of the fact that we have some very high quality farmers' markets in the area, here's to hoping you can explore what we have to offer.

Local, Organic Popcorn?!?!

Understanding where the food I eat comes from has taken me down paths that I never really thought of... like popping my own local, organic popcorn. My wife loves to eat buttered popcorn and we often have a package of Orville Redenbacher or Jiffy Pop in the house. I have never been interested in buying this kind of popcorn - it's not that I don't like it, I just don't love it and have never been that interested. However, when I saw at the downtown Palo Alto farmers' market that Full Belly Farm had 1 1lb packages of corn kernels grown on their farm in Capay Valley, I was intrigued by buying local, organic corn kernels from someone that I knew and trusted.

As it turns out, popcorn is very simple to pop - heat oil in a saucepan, throw in the kernels, cover and wait for them to pop, and season as desired (who chose salt, butter and grated parmesan). And I can tell you that I have never felt so good eating popcorn. To be honest, it all tasted the same to me. Popcorn tastes like popcorn - salty, buttery and delicious. BUT instead of buying an anonymous package with contents that conjured up images of stomach-ache-inducing movie theater popcorn, I bought my popcorn from Dru Rivers from Full Belly Farm, who I see on a regular basis at the farmers' market and whose farm I plan to visit next year. And that connection made all the difference in enjoying this tasty snack.

Farmers' Market Chatter

I was at two of my favorite farmers' markets this weekend - the downtown Palo Alto Saturday morning market and the Mountain View Sunday morning market - and a couple comments that I heard from vendors at the market made me really glad that I shop at farmers' markets, take the time to talk to the people that are selling and growing the food that I eat, and feel compelled to shop even when it's cold, wet and/or when the selection of produce is not the same as the rainbow bounty of the summer.

Heard at the market from a variety of vendors:

• [In the middle of a steady drizzle on a cold Saturday morning] "It will be slow day today, but our regulars will make it out. I have faith in them."
• "Thanks for braving the market the weekend after Thanksgiving. It's always cold and usually one of the slowest days of the year at the market."
• [After asking a vendor if they carry sell something particular] "I have them but I don't bring them to this market. Do you think I should bring them to this market?" [To which I emphatically replied yes]

Thankful for a local Thanksgiving

I am very thankful to be able to have a local Thanksgiving, with most of the ingredients coming from local, sustainable farmers that I patron at the Mountain View farmers' market. It was the first time that Wendy and I have ever cooked and hosted Thanksgiving dinner and it turned out great!

Dishes with ingredient list:

• Local, heritage turkey grown in Sunol by Jim Frei at Pampero Ranch
• Blue lake beans from Iacopi Farms
• Mashed potatoes with russet potatoes from Zuckerman's Farm
• Mushroom gravy with mushrooms from Far West Fungi
• Deviled eggs with pasture-raised eggs from Lucy at the Mountain View farmers' market
• Corn niblets from Trader Joe's (my wife couldn't pass them up)

Picking Up My Local, Pasture-Raised Heritage Turkey

When we decided to host Thanksgiving dinner for the first time this year, I was excited for a lot of reasons - the opportunity to host loved ones at our house, the first Thanksgiving dinner our daughter Kaiya would have at our house, the fun and challenge of preparing all the delicious food, and the chance to buy mostly local ingredients for our Thanksgiving meal at the Mountain View farmers' market.

Obviously the biggest purchase to make was the turkey. There are plenty of other people more knowledgeable and articulate about why buying a local, pasture-raised heritage turkey that have written articles like this and that. I was happy to find out that Jim from Pampero Ranch in Sunol was raising pasture-raised heritage turkeys for Thanksgiving. On Sundays at the Mountain View farmers' market, I buy a lot of the grass-fed beef we consume from Jim and I have been hoping to check out his ranch in Sunol (I have an open invitation from Jim but just haven't found the time). So it was great to know that I could buy a local, pasture-raised turkey from someone that I know and trust. I was a little late to the game in ordering my turkey in early October but I was lucky that Jim had been raising a bunch of turkeys and I could still place an order.

Other than having food that would be good to think as well as good to eat, it was not that transcendent of an experience. At the same time, there were little things about the experience that I appreciated that were different from just purchasing a bird from Safeway, or even Whole Foods.

• Every week at the farmers' market, I could ask Jim about how things were going with the birds. He could tell me about the trials and tribulations of raising birds (along with their longhorns, buffalo and egg-laying hens).
• Jim hosted an event at his ranch where buyers could take part in the "harvesting" of the birds if they wanted to have that connection with their food. I was not able to make it, but it was interesting to have that option.
• I had originally wanted a smaller 12-15 lb turkey, but Jim mentioned in early November that the birds were growing bigger and faster than he thought. So Jim told us that if we wanted a smaller bird, we would have to take it in early November (since he didn't have room in his freezer to store it). I ended up opting to pick up later so I wouldn't have to store the bird our freezer for as long, so the birds grew larger and we ended up getting a 18 lb turkey.

All in all, it was an interesting experience that I look forward to repeating next year.

Eating Local This (Short) Week

We don't always make time or plan ahead appropriately to shop at the farmers' market over the weekend to make meals that from 100% local, sustainable food. But when we do make that effort, I always appreciate it.

Meals that we made from local, sustainable ingredients purchased at the Mountain View farmers' market this short week:

Cream of tomato soup with end-of-the-season heirloom tomatoes from Happy Boy Farms, blue lake beans from Iacopi Farms, roasted delicata squash from Happy Boy Farms, salsa with roma tomatoes and onions from Swank Farms (not pictured)

Mushroom ravioli from Santa Cruz Pasta Factory (which sources ingredients locally when possible), with a variety of mushroom toppings from Far West Fungi, snap peas from Happy Boy Farms

Satsumas are back in season!

The end of summer is always sad - no more sweet white corn, succulent heirloom tomatoes, juicy stone fruit or tangy berries. But as we move through fall and into winter, crisp apples and pears and juicy citrus are now coming into season. When I went to the Mountain View farmers' market on Sunday, Paul from Super Sweet (one of my favorite fruit stands at the market) was hawking satsumas for the first time this season. Super easy to peel and seedless, my daughter Kaiya eats satsumas like candy. I bought a couple pounds but we've finished them off already - and it's only Tuesday! I'll need to get more next weekend.

Warren Pears @ Prevedelli Farms

I discovered warren pears last year at the Prevedelli Farms stand at the Mountain View farmers' market. Once I had them, I knew I had found a new favorite fruit. I've had other pears before like bosc, barletts and anjou pears, but these were like no other pear I've had before - delicious, sweet and tasting like fall. Alas, the season only lasts a few short weeks in the fall.

When the folks at Prevedelli Farms told me in late October that warren pears would be back in season soon, I was excited. When I hit to the market a few weeks ago in anticipation of finally biting into a warren pear again, I came home disappointed - by the time I got to the market, they were all sold out. And then I went again the next week, and sold out again (!). After seeing my disappointment (and knowing that I'd been asking about the warren pears for a couple weeks), Sylvia from Prevedelli kindly offered to save me a couple pounds of warren pears for me the next week. She had to ask me if I would really be back to pick them up if she saved them for me - and I finally got my pears this week. =)

Fall Meat Sale @ Hidden Villa: Sustainable Pork & Lamb

Hidden Villa's annual fall meat sale is Saturday, Nov 13, 10:30-11:30am!

In the SF Bay Area, we are not only blessed with hundreds of local family farms that produce a year-round bounty of fresh, local, and sustainable produce - we also have a number of non-profits that run sustainable farms and provide education to children and families about where our food comes from. Located in the Los Altos foothills just past Foothill College, Hidden Villa is one of these non-profits that, among many other cool things such as running a hostel, has a working farm with a wide variety of vegetables along with organically fed pigs and grass-fed lamb; operates a CSA; sells at the seasonal Los Altos farmers' market; offers weekly farm tours; and provides intern/apprentice opportunities in sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry.

This Saturday, Hidden Villa is hosting one of their not-very-often sustainable meat sales. It's first come first serve so get their early.

Below is a description straight from their newsletter:

The lambs were all born on the farm this past February and March. Lambs at Hidden Villa are left with their mothers to graze on lush pasture from early-February until mid-June. At that time, the mothers are moved to lower quality summer pasture (their nutritional requirements are quite low while they are neither lactating nor gestating) while the lambs stay on our richest irrigated pasture during the summer and fall. The lambs grow rapidly without any grain supplementation, and are ready for harvest in late fall. There are several breeds represented in our flock- the lambs available at this sale are a mix of pure-bred Katahdin, and Tunis x Jacob crossbreeds. All three of these breeds are heritage rare-breeds. None of these lambs ever received any type of growth hormone or antibiotic treatment.

The pigs featured at this sale were born at Deer Hollow and were purchased as six week- old piglets. These pigs are the cross-bred combination of a Chester White boar and a Poland China sow. Both of these breeds are well-regarded for their meat quality, and our feeding program lends an extra hand to full flavor. These pigs were raised in the group pens at the barn, where they were fed a diet of 100% organic grain, milk from our cows and goats, and vegetable culls from our CSA. We kept these pigs for nearly 8 months, allowing them to grow quite big- which ensures that they will feature a good amount of intramuscular fat and marbling for full flavor and tenderness.

The cuts of lamb that we will feature include loin chops, rib chops, leg of lamb, ground lamb, sirloin steaks, shanks, shoulder steaks, ribs, and boneless shoulder roasts.

Pork cuts will include rib chops, loin chops, sirloin chops, standing rib roast, butt roasts, boneless leg roasts, tenderloins, country ribs, spare ribs, boneless cutlets, ground pork, several varieties of sausage, and bacon!

The Last of Our Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes

My daughter Kaiya and I planted tomatoes in our community garden this year. Our friend gave us a bunch of heirloom tomato starts: Cherokee Purples, Black Krimms, and others. By far the biggest hit were the Sun Gold cherry tomatoes that Kaiya could pluck off the vine and pop in her mouth. We were lucky that our sun gold plant lasted all the way through October. Alas, they're finally gone. 'Til next year!

Last Chance for Harvest Festivals

Summer is long gone, fall is in full swing, and winter is coming soon. Berries, corn and other summer season staples are already pretty much gone from farmers' markets. The last of the tomatoes will soon be gone. Farm harvest festivals started in late September and early October, and there are are a handful left. These farm-hosted events are great family-friendly events and provide opportunities to meet the people that grow our food, see the land where our food is grown, and celebrate the bountiful summer and fall.

Here are a few last harvest festivals that I know about:

• Sat, 10/30, 12-4pm, City Slicker Farms in Oakland (non-profit that helps grow and get affordable fresh produce to West Oakland)
• Sun, 10/31, 3-6pm, Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale (non-profit co-located with a middle school in Sunnyvale that provides education and produce to the local community)
• Sat, 11/6, noon-3pm, Green Oaks Creek Farm in Pescadero (local family farm, education and retreat center)
• Sun, 11/7, noon-sunset, Freewheelin' Farm in Santa Cruz (cool local family farm that delivers their CSA shares by bicycle!)
• Sun, 11/14, Potrero Nuevo Farm in Half Moon Bay (local family farm hosting a fall festival to showcase the farm and provide information about their CSA)

Community | Garden | Salsa

I very much enjoy cooking, but I'm not great at it. And I make salsa regularly now, but it's not something super practiced (I hadn't even had salsa until I was 21 and introduced to homemade salsa by my friend Ernesto's family friend Madeleine). But none of this stopped me from entering the SF Food Wars "Salsa Champion-Chip" on 9/12. My schtick... "community garden salsa" - a heirloom tomato, white corn salsa with tomatoes all grown with at our community garden in Mountain View.

It was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon at the Ferry Plaza in San Francisco, and the competition was stiff. I did not have high expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised by the positive feedback on my salsa and the reaction to the idea of actually knowing where the food came from. Tomatoes, garlic and cilantro from our community garden. White corn from G&S Farms in Brentwood. Red onions from Full Belly Farm in Guinda. Jalapenos from Happy Quail Farm in East Palo Alto.

People were attracted to the personal connection with the food. They visibly perked up when I said that I and my daughter grew the tomatoes - that they were actually talking to the person who grew what they were eating. They took an interest in what a community garden is - and seemed somewhat surprised that people like you and me could growth their own food. They asked about the other farms that I bought the other ingredients from - and I happily told them about how I regularly see the folks from Fully Belly and Happy Quail at the Palo Alto farmers' market, and about the first time I was offered a sample raw white corn from G&S and how it tasted like candy, just like they said it would. Hooray for the opportunity to connect people to their food!

Connecting Friends With The Food We Eat

In my own personal exploration of connecting with the food that I eat, sharing that connection with my friends and family has been an equally interesting and inspiring experience. At my daughter Kaiya's 3rd birthday party, I laid out a spread of local farm sourced sandwiches, snacks and fruit, and provided labels so people would know what they were eating and where the food was coming from.

Plenty of my friends and family commented on how good the food tasted, and I often replied that it all came from farmers' market vendors I had come to know and trust. Others noted how pleasant it was to know where the food was coming from. And when a friend jokingly said he wouldn't eat anything unless I grew it in my community garden, I shot back that I may not have grown it in my garden, but I do know and have shaken the hands of the farmers that grew the tomatoes, potatoes, apples and pears, etc. that we were eating. It felt good to spark discussions and to engage people just by spending a few minutes writing down names of a few fruits, vegetables and farms.

Here was the lineup of the food:

• Tortilla espanola bocadillos, with russet and purple potatoes from Specialty Produce and onions from Phil Foster Ranches / Pinnacle Organic, both in San Juan Bautista (along with baguettes from Panorama Bakery that sells at the Downtown Palo Alto farmers' market)
• Chorizo bocadillos with chorizo from G Service who sells at the Downtown SJ farmers' market
• Cherry tomatoes from Veggielution in East San Jose and Full Belly Farm in Guinda
• Chips and salsa, with heirloom tomatoes from Veggielution in East San Jose and white corn from Specialty Produce
  
• Crackers and cheese, including a goat cheese chevre log from Laura Chenel in Sonoma and garlic quark from Spring Hill Cheese in Petaluma
• Gala and fuji apples from Mellow's Nursery & Farm in Morgan Hill
• Warren pears from Phil Foster Ranches in San Juan Bautista

A Sad and Inspiring Day

For the last few years, I have loyally bought pasture-raised pork from TLC Ranch. It started as a social/political/lifestyle choice - I wanted to shop at my local farmers' market in Mountain View; I wanted to buy meat raised in an environmentally sustainable manner; I wanted to support a local farmer. The choices became easier after I discovered how damn good the pork chops were. It became fun when Loren, their "farmers' market dude", started recognizing me and gave me advice on how to best roast that shoulder or prepare that pork belly. It felt great when I took my daughter then 2 yr old daughter, Kaiya, to a TLC Ranch "farm day" where she ran with the piglets, played in the chicken coop, and met Rebecca the farmer. It felt inspiring when I read Rebecca's article titled "Do you have the balls to really change the food system?"

And now I'm sad. TLC Ranch is closing. As Rebecca explains it, making a living at sustainable farming is hard. So I'm sad. I will miss having a convenient purveyor of sustainable pork at my local farmers' market. I will miss the early Sunday morning rush to see what Loren brought that particular week (pork belly? bacon? soup bones?) or if there any free-range eggs left (they sold out fast!). I will miss taking Kaiya to "Rebecca's farm", as she called it. And I will miss those delicious pork chops, that in the words of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss via Michael Pollan, were good to eat and good to think.

Yet I'm inspired. Connecting with the food I eat has a greater purpose. I think I do have the balls to really change the food system. I know I have the power to make choices as a consumer of what I eat and who I buy it from. And I can make choices (and do my part in compelling others to make similar choices) that enable small family farms like TLC Ranch to be viable, thriving parts of our communities and everyday lives. I'm sad that it's too late for TLC Ranch, and inspired about what I can do about it today and going forward.