Hands-On Cocktail Class with Scott Beattie and Lance Winters ~ May 7

Learn the art of seasonal cocktail making with acclaimed mixologist Scott Beattie and master distiller Lance Winters of St. George Spirits and Hangar One Vodka fame. Class participants will learn the basic anatomy of a cocktail and will be given the opportunity to work in small groups to make their own market-fresh strawberry margaritas, classic Mai Tais, and gimlets with St. George's rum, agave spirit, and Qi orange liqueur. Instructors Scott and Lance will be available to guide everyone through the hands-on part of the class and II Cane Rosso will provide delicious cocktail-friendly appetizers. Learn more.

Vendor Tour: Fatted Calf Extravaganza! ~ May 16

Celebrate all that is Fatted Calfwith an intimate look at their Napa HQ and a visit to Hudson Ranch (pictured on the right, which supplies the pasture-raised, heritage breed, hormone and antibiotic-free pork that helps make Fatted Calf's products taste so good. We'll begin the day with a guided tour of the facility where Taylor Boetticher, Fatted Calf's owner and chef, will show us how they produce their legendary artisanal charcuterie, like pâté, salami, prosciutti, confit and fresh sausage. We'll enjoy a brief stroll through the Oxbow Public Market before we head off to Hudson Ranch with Taylor to visit the chickens, see the pig pasture, and tour the gardens with Ranch Manager Scott Boggs. Then we'll sit down to an outdoor BBQ prepared by our hosts. Meat lovers unite! Tour starts at 9 am and returns to the Ferry Building by 4:30 pm, $25. Learn more or buy tickets.

Spring Farmers Market Cocktail Night ~ May 19

CUESA and the Northern California chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild (USBG) will host an evening of farmers market-inspired cocktails. Attendees at this happy hour gathering will enjoy two full-sized signature drinks and taste 10 others crafted by renowned Bay Area bartenders using seasonal ingredients hand-picked from the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Imbibe, snack, and take home recipes in the name of supporting local, sustainable agriculture and Bay Area cocktail culture. Featuring food and drink from: 15 Romolo, Cantina, Gitane, Bourbon & Branch, Rose Pistola, Wexler's, Hotsy Totsy Club, Sauce, Blackbird, Il Cane Rosso, Bon Appétit Management Company, Absinthe Brasserie and Bar, and The Plant Café Organic. Buy tickets.

Spring Breakfast ~ May 29

Breakfast with your favorite farmer and food artisan at CUESA’s annual fundraiser. Our kitchen will be transformed into a bountiful, beautiful setting for a relaxed meal right in the market.

What's for Breakfast:
• Farm-fresh scrambled eggs with fava beans, green garlic, and peas or wild mushrooms from Hayes Street Grill.
• Roasted potatoes with fresh herbs.
• Market lettuce, shaved radish, and chive blossom salad
• Blueberry pancakes
• Fresh strawberries, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries with crème fraiche, yogurt, and honey
• Warm breakfast pastries and bread
• Artisan cheeses, handmade jams
• Coffee, tea, and juice

Buy tickets here.

Flatland Flower Farm's Open Garden and Plant Sale ~ May 2

Once a year, Sebastopol-based Flatland Flower Farm opens its doors to visitors. This year Zazu Restaurant and Black Pig Meat Co. will be there with their famed BBQ stand. Local band The Easy Leaves will also perform. Email Dan at Flatland for more info.

Work for CUESA Through JOBS NOW!

CUESA is now hiring a part-time Market & Event Assistant and a part-time Administrative Assistant through the special stimulus funding for San Francisco County's Jobs Now! program. To be eligible, you must be a San Francisco resident, have a child under the age of 18, and be unemployed or qualify as low income. Learn about the positions on the CUESA website or visit the JOBS NOW! site to apply.

Saturday, April 17 ~ Goat Festival

10:00 - 11:00 am - The Goat Girls (Jennifer Bice of Redwood Hill Farm and Creamery, Laura Howard of Laloo’s Goat’s Milk Ice Cream, and Mary Keehn of Cypress Grove Chevre), founders of SuperGoat.org, will give a talk about the benefits of goat milk and other goat products. After their talk, the Goat Girls will hold court at an education table with information and samples of goat milk products. CUESA will also feature a guide to goat cheeses found in the market along with samples from Achadinha Cheese Company, Bodega & Yerba Santa Goat Cheese, Andante Dairy, and Redwood Hill Farm. There will also be live baby goats in the South Driveway.

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Mark Dommen, One Market

11:45 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration and book signing
Maggie Foard, Author of Goat Cheese

12:30 pm - Book talk, interview, and signing
Gordon Edgar, author of Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge

Tuesday, April 120 ~ Food Wise Booth

12:30 - 1:30 pm - Sarah Henkin, CUESA's market chef, will give out recipe cards and samples of a simple meal made with market ingredients. She'll also be on hand to offer advice for all your seasonal meal planning.

Saturday, April 24 ~ Market to Table

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Leif Hedendal, local chef

All programs take place in CUESA's Dacor teaching kitchen, in front of the Ferry Building on the north side.

When Redwood Hill Farm’s Jennifer Bice took over her family’s goat dairy and creamery in 1978, she faced a truly uphill battle. “I would do goat cheese demos at stores or farmers markets and people would start backing away or gagging at the sound of it,” she recalls. 

Jennifer and her late husband loved raising goats, however; so they persevered. Today the Sonoma-based Redwood Hill is known for goat milk, artisan goat's milk cheese, yogurt, and kefir. People often flock to an opportunity to sample their products — partly because goat products are much more widely available than they have been in the past. “When you see magazines like Ladies' Home Journal publishing recipes that use goat products, it’s a sign that it’s really trickled down to the masses.”

Jennifer still gets a lot of questions from customers, however. “They want to know if what they’ve heard about the health benefits is true,” she says. “And people looking for an alternative to industrial-scale factory farming want to know how we raise the animals.”

Since the goat industry (if you can call it that) has no trade groups, Jennifer recently joined two other makers of goat's milk products, Laura Howard, of Laloo’s Goat’s Milk Ice Cream and Mary Keehn of Cypress Grove Chevre, to create an educational campaign and website called SuperGoat, to bring more awareness to the “other” dairy.

Because there are no known Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) for goats to date, the products made from their milk tend to be both humane and more ecologically friendly than other dairy. According to the SuperGoat website, “goats don’t decimate the land or pollute the air nearly as much as cows. They are light on their feet and because they are smaller they don’t require as much energy, food or land.” In addition, the kinds of growth hormones that are commonly used on cows have never been developed for dairy goats. Another big environmental plus is the nature of their manure, which is pellet-like and doesn’t require large open-air lagoons like those needed to store cow manure.

Even as the market for goat cheese and other goat products grows, Jennifer says, there’s still little chance that it will ever resemble the cow dairy industry. One reason, she points out, is that it takes 10 goats to produce the milk of one cow, meaning goat products will always require much more labor. Add to that the fact that there are no government subsidies for goat farmers, and the limits to scaling up are clear. On the one hand, this means it’s unlikely the price of goat products will ever get to be as low as cow dairy; on the other hand, the businesses are not likely to become industrial-scale operations.

“Our 200-head milking herd is like a 20-cow dairy, says Jennifer. “In this day and age, even a 400-cow dairy is considered small.” Another factor is the personality of the goats. “They’re very active and interactive, and much more like dogs than cows,” she adds. “So they don’t really lend themselves to mass production and factory farming. They learn how to open gates, they dance around. People who raise cows can’t easily switch to goats.”

After decades of inroads into the market by goat cheese makers, products like goat's milk yogurt and ice cream have also begun to enter the mainstream. According to Laura Howard of Laloo’s, the growing demand has to do with a rising number of people with sensitivities to cow dairy.

For example, the fat molecules in goat’s milk are one-fifth the size of those that make up cow’s milk, and goat's milk does not contain alpha S1 casein protein, the most common allergen in dairy products. Both factors make it much easier to digest for many with allergies and lactose intolerance.

While many dairy-sensitive people turn to plant-based alternatives, Laura points out, those products have also often become increasingly industrialized. “To crush a soybean and ship it from South America in a Tetra Pak carton uses a tremendous amount of petroleum and resources. Those businesses are, like the dairy cow industry, very centralized.”  

When she speaks of the farms the SuperGoat campaign highlights, however, Laura sees a much different landscape. “Our businesses are all based on farms operating on really small margins in order to keep the animals as close to nature as possible.”

Come hear Jennifer and Laura speak (and sample their products) at tomorrow's Goat Festival (see above). Learn more at Supergoat.org

This is the most up-to-date information about which sellers will be attending the market as of Friday. If there are no changes to a seller's status, they will not be listed. You'll find a list of which farmers regularly attend each market here. Please understand that there are often last-minute changes—it's the nature of farming!

Saturday, April 17

Returning: Elston Farm, Happy Quail Farms, Juniper Ridge, Lucero Organic Farms
Out: The Apple Farm, Critical Edge Knife Sharpening, The Peach Farm

Tuesday, April 20

Returning: Everything Under the Sun, McGinnis Ranch
Out: Critical Edge

Thursday, April 22

no changes

Plentiful /returning this month (weather willing): Stockton red onions, flowering arugula, fresh goat cheese, English peas, rhubarb, raspberries, squash blossoms, dandelion greens, fresh bay leaves, miners' lettuce, hot house tomatoes and cucumbers, spinach, asparagus, avocados, pastured goat, green garlic, spring onions, kumquats, nettles, broccoli, rapini greens, artichokes, baby turnips, carrots, strawberries, mizuna, radishes and radish greens, fava beans, pastured eggs, baby beets, Belgian endive

Winding down/limited supply: Brussels sprouts, tulips, many varieties of citrus, lilacs, hyacinth

Farms/Vendors returning this month (weather willing): Happy Quail Farms, Balakian Farms, Lucero Organic Farms, Bodega & Yerba Santa Goat Cheese, White Crane Springs Ranch

Farmer and Vendor items not to be missed:
Queso fresco from Bodega Goat Cheese, whole wheat tortillas from Massa Organics (NEW!), “Super” tulips from Thomas Farm (now on Thursdays and Saturdays)

Featured Recipes for April:

Asparagus Soup with Curry & Crème Fraîche from Mourad Lahlou, Aziza

Tender Spring Green Salad with Almonds, Radishes, Chèvre, and Kumquat from Leif Hedendal, local chef

Roasted Loin of Goat with Spring Vegetables, Herb Butter and Barley from Louis Maldonado, formerly of Café Majestic, now of Aziza (March 28, 2009)

Rhubarb-Almond Bars from Aïda Mollenkamp, former food editor, CHOW (May 3, 2008