Farm, Food & Market Tour: Barcelona & the Basque Country

Join us on September 7-17, 2007, as Executive Director Dave Stockdale leads our first international fundraising tour to Barcelona (the Catalonia region) and the Basque country of northern Spain. Proceeds help support CUESA education programs, including our local farm tours. For the full brochure, click here. For the tour registration form, click here.

Food Fight ~ Get informed about the Farm Bill!

On Tuesday, February 6 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, join CUESA for a an informative and candid talk about the Farm Bill by Daniel Imhoff, author of the soon-to-be-released book Food Fight: The Citizen's Guide to a Food and Farm Bill. Imhoff will explore the history of the bill, outline key issues from conservation to nutrition to energy policy, and describe how we can turn the tables. The Farm Bill "literally shapes our food system, our bodies, and our future ... and most experts assert that we need nothing less than a revolutionary overhaul of our farm policy to set the country on a more sustainable trajectory," says Imhoff.

The lecture is cosponsored by the Ecology Center and the Marin Farmers Market. It will be followed by a reception with light refreshments and an opportunity to talk with nonprofit organizations supporting Farm Bill policies that promote a sustainable food system. Daniel Imhoff will be available to sign copies of Food Fight and his other titles. The event is free and may fill up, so please reserve your spot by emailing julie@cuesa.org or calling (415) 291-3276 x106. The event will take place in the Port Commission Hearing Room on the 2nd Floor of the Ferry Building.

Tune in to West Coast Live tomorrow

Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo will be on the nationally broadcast radio variety show West Coast Live tomorrow, January 20. West Coast Live will be broadcasting from the Ferry Building every Saturday for the next four weeks from 10 am to 12 pm, and you can be part of the live audience and see some of your favorite farmers and other inspiring guests. Tune in by radio to KALW 91.7. More information at www.wcl.org.

Food from the Heart ~ February 9 through 11

The Ferry Building Marketplace will once again celebrate the love of food with the third annual Food from the Heart festival. On Friday, February 9, the festival kicks off with a benefit for Slow Food from 5:00 - 8:00 pm. The public is invited to stroll the candlelit Grand Nave where the merchants and restaurateurs of the Marketplace will offer seasonal hors d'oeuvres and Slow Food will pour wine from several wine bars. Click here to learn more >

On Saturday, the Marketplace and the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market will be brimming with heartfelt foods. Our Market to Table programs will feature a cooking demonstration by the "Dissident Chef," Russel Jackson of SubCulture Dining. John E. Myers of Aquatic Culture will show the audience how to cook with a classic aphrodisiac: oysters. On Sunday, the celebration continues with face painting and valentine craft tables for kids.

Saturday, February 3 ~ Citrus Day

On Saturday, February 3 from 10 am to noon, join us for Citrus Day at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Large and small, sweet and sour, from lemons to mandarins to pomelos, there will still be plenty of citrus at the market. Come find out how the recent freezes have affected our citrus growers and their crops. Enjoy a cooking demonstration, take home an assortment of citrus recipes, and test your citrus knowledge at our citrus variety tasting challenge. All events will take place in our Dacor teaching kitchen in the arcade north of the Ferry Building's clock tower.

California is finally coming out of a cold snap that has wreaked havoc on many of our state’s farms. In the past week, countless news stories have featured record-breaking lows and devastating crop losses. How did this freezing weather affect the citrus growers and other farmers that sell at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market?

Fortunately, our citrus growers were not as hard hit, on the whole, as other California orange, lemon, and grapefruit farmers. Many were able to harvest a good portion of their crop before the first deep freeze. While large farms couldn’t find enough laborers to pick their fruit, most of our farmers have fewer acres and were able to salvage more of their crop because of it. Though some fruits were harvested before reaching their peak ripeness and may not be quite as sweet as usual, they are preferable to no crop at all.

The jury is still out on the fruit that remains on trees. Tory Farms, Hamada Farms, Bernard Ranches, Olsen Organics and Everything Under the Sun Farm all reported that they felt optimistic about the unpicked fruit, but it will be a week before they can determine how much damage was done. Citrus fruits with lower sugar content like lemon, grapefruit, and pomelo are at higher risk than fruit with more sugar, since sugar lowers the freezing point. Yuk Hamada guesses that most of his unharvested lemons will be lost to the freeze.

Luckily, Hamada Farms’ citrus fruits only account for a small portion of their total production. This kind of diversity is exactly what saved many of our farmers from disaster; it provides insurance against contingencies like weather. Diversity is often their only protection, because most small farmers growing for the farmers’ market don’t carry crop insurance and couldn’t get it if they wanted to. Grant Brians of Heirloom Organics, who grows a variety of vegetable crops, says that insurance companies require exact verifiable quantities of each crop grown, and the kind of production that happens on his farm is hard to quantify. For example, instead of planting 20 acres of carrots that are all harvested and packed at the same time, he might do more than 20 plantings of carrots in a year.

If he did quantify his harvest, Grant guesses it would be just a third to half of what is normal for this time of the year. His root crops froze solid in the ground (something he’s never seen before in his many years of farming). Other crops like greens either died or are just not growing, the outcome of which is the same: less produce to bring to market. Temperatures in his area have been in the teens and twenties at night.

Other crops that suffered include flowers, artichokes and avocados. Ken Olsen of Olsen Organics planted more that 100 young avocado trees on his property last spring. After the freezes, he says, “they look burnt, like they were in a fire.” The trees that survive will be set back in their development and will yield their first fruit a year or more later than Ken had hoped.

There are some benefits to the cold snap, too. Stone fruits, like cherries and peaches, need a certain number of “chill hours.” When winters are too warm, stone fruits can develop a number of physiological problems that affect the quantity and quality of the harvest. All of these cold days have left Tory Torosian, who grows a combination of citrus, stone fruits and grapes, optimistic about his stone fruit crop and 2007. Says Tory, “Whatever God gives us, that’s what we’ve got. We’ve got homemade wine [from a great grape harvest]. We’ve got plenty of fruit to eat. We’re fine.”

Our heartfelt condolences go out to all the farms in the state that have suffered losses. Please offer them your support by shopping at the farmers’ market this winter. And don’t forget to bundle up!

This is the most up-to-date information about which sellers will and won't be attending the market as of Friday, when we send this letter. If there are no changes to a seller's status, they will not be listed. To find out which farmers regularly attend each market, click here. Please understand that there are often last minute changes--it's the nature of farming!

Saturday, January 20

In/Returning: Honeycrisp Farms, Happy Girl Kitchens, Andante Dairy, Tierra Vegetables, Bernard Ranches, Ella Bella Farm, Happy Quail Farms
Out: Brooks and Daughters, Knoll Farms, Juniper Ridge, Far West Fungi

Tuesday, January 23

In: McGinnis Ranch, Snyders Honey