Enjoy the final Moveable Feast ~ August 4

Join us at Americano, where chef Paul Arenstam and Incanto's Chris Cosentino will collaborate on the last of our monthly dinners. The meal will take place on Americano's heated patio at the Hotel Vitale and the menu will be be packed with the summer's best fruits and veggies from Dirty Girl Produce.

• Heirloom Tomato Panzanella and Cucumber Salad
• Whole Roasted California Striped Bass with Fennel Salmoriglio
• Spit Roasted Porchetti with Dirty Girl Greens
• Summer Fruit Crisp

Seats are $80, or $100 with wine pairings. Buy tickets here >

 

Where's your market pride?

Okay Ferry Plaza lovers, we know you're out there!! Are you going to stand by and let markets in places like Flint, Michigan and Durham, North Carolina beat us? Vote for Ferry Plaza today. If we pull ahead and win $5k, we'll use the money to create micro-grants for farmers working to make their operations more sustainable. Vote here and show those other markets we mean business! (If you recruit friends to vote you could also win $50 cash.)

Allrecipes.com in the market ~ Tomorrow

The Ferry Plaza is the first stop on the Allrecipes.com cross-country tour of five leading farmers' markets. Tomorrow, they will be here helping shoppers with practical, reliable ideas for preparing the produce you buy at the market -- so you can cook with confidence and serve with pride. Ferry Plaza Farmers Market visitors can also browse online menus and recipes on allrecipes.com that showcase seasonal fruits and vegetables available in the market.

Berry Bash ~ Saturday, July 25

Visit our berry tasting booth from 10 to 1 to sample a variety of berries from the market. The berry curious can also pick up tips about the health and nutritional benefits of berries and take home berry-centric recipes. The CUESA kitchen will host a free berry-focused cooking demonstration taught by Executive Chef Michael Weller from the California Culinary Academy.

Kitchen Table Talk: Food Access and Security in Bayview Hunters Point ~ July 28

The third installment of the Kitchen Table Talks series will be called Community Organizing: Addressing Food Access and Security in Bayview Hunters Point. Guest speakers: Jeffrey Betcher, Bayview Hunters Point resident, community organizer and co-founder of the Quesada Gardens Initiative and Gina Fromer, Executive Director of Bayview YMCA and food security activist. The talk will run 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. at the architecture offices of Sagan-Piechota in San Francisco.

Lisa Hamilton on An Organic Conversation ~ Tomorrow

Lisa Hamilton, the food and agriculture writer, photographer, and author of the new book Deeply Rooted [see our recent Q & A with Lisa] will be featured on Helge Hellberg's new radio show, An Organic Conversation, this Saturday at 10 am on Green 960 am.

 

Saturday, July 18 ~ Market to Table

11:00 am Seasonal Cooking demonstration

Trace Leighton, Nibbler's Eatery

Tuesday, July 21 ~ Food Wise Booth

12:00 - 1:00 pm - CUESA's market chef Sarah Henkin will be giving out recipe cards and samples of a simple meal made with market ingredients.

Saturday, July 26 ~ Berry Bash

11:00 am Seasonal Cooking demonstration
Michael Weller, California Culinary Academy

10 am - 1 pm - Berry tasting and nutrition info booth (in the south driveway).

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

 
Norman Gunsell raises a tiny herd of cows — usually 2 or 3 at a time — on his land in Mountain Ranch, California. Gunsell, of Mountain Ranch Organically Grown, focuses mainly on chickens, but once or twice a year, when it's time to take one of his cows to the big pasture in the sky, he drives seven hours to Eureka to the only processing plant that will “slaughter, cut and wrap” one cow at a time.

“I’m really glad to see people want to support local ranchers,” says Gunsell, but he worries that consumer demand might not be enough to reverse a trend that’s made it very hard for him and other small producers to process their meat for sale. On the other hand, the revival in demand for animals raised the old fashioned way – slowly, on pasture – might have arrived just in the nick of time.
 
Behind almost every aspect of the food system, there are shadow industries. In the case of meat, that shadow is slaughter and processing, an area that Patty Lavera, deputy director of Food and Water Watch and co-author of a new national report called “Where’s the Local Beef?: Rebuilding Small-Scale Meat Processing Infrastructure” believes is in need of some attention.

“A lot of people think meat comes from the back of the store…and the larger meat industry has done a great job of getting us not to think much more about it,” says Lavera. “But I hope that as people start to think more about their meat preferences – whether it’s for grass-fed or whatever else – that they remember there are several steps between the animal eating grass and them eating the meat.”

Why do slaughter and processing facilities matter? According to the Food and Water Watch report, the consolidation and centralization of the meat industry has “hollowed out the infrastructure needed to produce and market meat close to population centers.” In other words, along with a drastic reduction in the number of companies raising livestock in this country, processing facilities have similarly closed and/or consolidated across the country. Since the USDA adopting stricter food safety guidelines in 1998, nearly one fifth of federally inspected plants have closed and when in comes to poultry processing, the report says that by 2007 just two companies — Pilgrim’s Pride and Tyson — slaughtered 47 percent of the nation's birds.

When meat can’t get processed on a local scale, it’s much less likely to be sold and eaten locally. In fact a 2008 study by the University of California Cooperative Extension found that access to slaughter and processing services here in California was among ranchers' largest barriers to entry into alternative niche markets, such as farmers’ markets.  

Where’s the Local Beef? is full of recommendations about ways the USDA, which has tailored many of its regulations to industrial-sized producers and processors, can help support and grow the number of small scale processors.

Patty Lavera sees a potential for ranchers to raise many more animals in small-scale sustainable ways, if they had the opportunity to process them easily and safely. Having a plant within driving distance that is willing take a few cows at a time is crucial to successful meat production, but most industrial processors won’t even consider slaughtering animals at the scale that works for small ranchers.

“We heard from ranchers who said that their relationships with chefs and markets and their abilities to respond to what those markets wanted were frozen until they figured out better processing options,” she says

Marin Sun Farms's David Evans has been fortunate by comparison. It's not easy coordinating slaughter for all his different animals at different plants (the lambs and goats are slaughtered in Dixon, his pigs in Orland, and his chickens in Santa Rosa), but his farm's grass-fed cows (around 22 a week) need only travel to Rancho Meats in nearby Petaluma.

Although the Rancho operation is stable for now, concern about the plant’s future has prompted Evans to do some proactive thinking. “Marin Sun Farms is working at an appropriate pace to potentially purchase [Rancho] in a few years when the current owners retire,” Evans told CUESA in a recent email.

Evans believes that even with a considerable retrofit and the possible addition of several satellite mobile slaughter units that would allow for on-farm slaughter, purchasing a pre-existing plant would still be much more feasible (even at a 4-5 million dollar cost) than starting a new one. It’s a reality that hints at the tremendous barriers – both bureaucratic and financial – to starting from scratch.

As one solution, Food and Water Watch recommends creating a public funding stream “designated for small and very small plants and not used by existing large plants as a subsidy for their operations." This kind of funding, the organization believes, could help create a “food infrastructure bank” similar to dedicated public funding that exists for other national infrastructure, such as highways and airplane landing strips. 

After all, says Patty Lavera, “bringing food to market is part of the infrastructure of our society. We need to start seeing it as that.”

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, July 11

In/returning: Capay Canyon Ranch, Flying Disc Ranch, Juniper Ridge
Out: The Apple Farm, Critical Edge Knife Sharpening, G&S Corn, Knoll Farms
Out for Season: Hunter Orchards, Sierra Cascade
Last Week: Bruins Farm, Elston Family Farm

Tuesday, July 14

Out: Hidden Star Orchards
Out for season: Bruins Farm

Thursday, July 16

No changes

Returning and plentiful this month (weather willing):
Okra, figs, plums, field grown tomatoes, melons, dahlias, new potatoes, peanuts, shelling and romano beans, tomatillos, crabapples, grapes, summer squash, nectarines, peaches, pluots, radishes, basil, sunflowers, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, garlic, onions, lettuces, french and green beans, heirloom roses, corn

Winding down/limited supply:
Blueberries, hot house tomatoes, apricots, cherries, dates (new crop will come in early September), rhubarb

Value Added and Vendor items not to be missed:
Lunch from one of the 6 vendors at the Thursday market, apple wood smoked salt from Allstar Organics, peach preserves from Hunter Orchards

Farms/Vendors that may be returning this month (weather willing):
Woodleaf Farm, Payne Farms

Featured Recipes for June:

Simple and Delicious: Summer Pepper Salad from David Winsberg of Happy Quail Farms

Corn Soup from Roland Passot of La Folie

Pacific Halibut with Farmers' Market Succotash and Yukon Gold Sauce from Anna Davis of Houston’s Restaurant

Cocktail ~ Basil Gimlet from Greg Lindgren of Rye