Next farm tour: Visit orchards on August 26

Our first farm tour of the season was a great success! Click here to read what blogger Jen Maiser learned on the Coastal Harvest tour. Our next tour will visit two orchards in the Central Valley. At Lagier Ranches' organic almond orchard in Escalon, if we're lucky, the almond shakers will be operating, harvesting nuts from the trees. We'll also be there at the peak of ripeness for pawpaws, Bronx grapes, and Charentais melons! Participants will tour the packing shed, where almonds are roasted and nut butters are made, and then have lunch in the shade of the cherry orchard. Afterwards, we will visit Hidden Star Orchard in Linden. The Smits will show us their apple trees, which are trellised using a technique called "espalier." Taste an apple fresh off the tree! We'll also see their cider room, where apples are pressed into juice and bottled, and visit the table grape vineyard. Learn about apple varieties, farming, and their process of transitioning some acreage from conventional to organic. The tour is $25 and includes lunch made with farmers' market ingredients. Click here to register >
Please note: Our Milk & Honey tour on September 16 is sold out!

CUESA's Sunday Supper: A two-tiered affair

This year, an exciting change to the format of our annual fundraiser will allow more people to celebrate with us. In addition to the limited seating available for the four-course supper in the Ferry Building's Grand Hall ($175 includes dinner and reception), we are offering a reception-only ticket for $50. In the North Hall on the ground floor of the Ferry Building, 15 Bay Area chefs will prepare bite-sized appetizers. Bison Brewery will pour organic beer, Hangar One Vodka will create a special farmers' market cocktail, and four wineries will offer their local libations. Save the date: the Sunday Supper is only nine weeks away, on September 30. Click here to see the lineup of chefs, and look for more details and online registration next week!

Saturday, July 28 ~ Market to Table events

10:30 am - Meet the Farmer
Ted Loewen of Blossom Bluff Orchards

11 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Anne Gingrass of Essencia Restaurant

Noon - Seasonal cooking demonstration and book signing
Annie Somerville of Greens Restaurant and author of Fields of Greens

Saturday, August 4 ~ Market to Table events

10:30 am - Meet the Farmer
Bella Viva Orchards

11 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration and book signing
Ruta Kahate, Author of Five Spices       

Noon - Seasonal cooking demonstration and book signing
Amy Kaneko, Author of Let's Cook Japanese Food 

Tuesday, August 7 ~ Easy Market Meals

11:45 am, 12:15 pm, 12:45 pm & 1:15 pm - Chef Sarah Henkin will demonstrate a recipe using the seasonal, regional ingredients that can be found at the Tuesday market. Every attendee leaves with a sample, a recipe and a suggested shopping list.

All events take place in our Dacor teaching kitchen in the arcade north of the Ferry Building's clock tower unless otherwise noted.

Since its beginning thousands of years ago, agriculture has seen constant innovation. Technologies for growing, harvesting, transporting and selling crops are continually emerging and evolving. Faced with the countless new techniques, machines, and crop varieties presented to them every year, growers must decide which are best for their farms. Their decisions are based on farm size, crops, capital, their farming philosophy, and their capacity to implement the technologies. Most farmers experiment with at least a few new varieties or techniques every year, and many even develop their own. So which are the most important technologies to growers? CUESA volunteer Jessica Arnett asked a few farmers; here’s her report:

What is the single most important technology on the farm?  It depends on whom you ask.

“The grain combine,” says Greg of Massa Organics.
“Drip irrigation,” says Kirsten of Hunter Orchards.     
“My cell phone,” says Farmer Al of Frog Hollow. 

Greg Massa grows 60 acres of organic whole-grain brown rice and is trying to slowly expand organic production into the rest of the 700-acre family farm. In the fields, Greg says the most important and efficient technology is the grain combine that harvests and cleans his rice. Before this important machine was invented (which “combines” the tasks of harvesting, threshing, and cleaning), grain production required much more time and labor.

The technology Greg most hopes for is an organic, energy-efficient way to deal with weeds, which are his biggest problem. Thinking that nature might provide him a new solution, Greg once tried using ducks to weed his fields. “They’re great because they eat weeds and slugs while staying away from the rice plants,” he says. The problem is that he would need 100 ducks per acre to weed efficiently. That would mean 6000 ducks for his 60 acres. What do you do with 6000 ducks after they eat the weeds?  Greg is still trying to figure this one out.

Kirsten Olson, who runs the 20-acre Hunter Orchards with her husband John Tannaci, says one of the most important technologies on their farm is drip irrigation. This system efficiently delivers water to their garlic, squash, and fruit trees by allowing it to slowly drip into the soil, reducing evaporation. Some of Kirsten's other favorite technologies are also resource-conserving: they use solar power on the farm and biodiesel in their tractors and trucks. The question Kirsten asks herself with regard to technology is this:  “Where does technology take us and is that a place we want to go?” If it is, then it’s worth using.

But Kirsten’s motto is still “dirt first.” “There is an arsenal of new organic materials to choose from,” she says, “and we use them as a last resort.  If you can really provide your plants with healthy soil, then your plants will have a better chance to do well.” Some of the best technologies to promote soil fertility and plant health are those that have proven themselves for hundreds of years to be both effective and sustainable—technologies like cover cropping and adding compost to soils.  

Al Courchesne of Frog Hollow Farm uses minimal technology on his 130 acres of peaches, nectarines, cherries, apricots, pluots, plums, pears, and table grapes. “Everything is done by hand,” says Farmer Al, and that’s how he likes it. There are about 55 workers on the farm at the height of the season. “We’re comfortable with the low level of technology,” he says.  For Farmer Al, the single most important piece of farm technology is the same one that many of us would name as ours: his cell phone. He says his phone is an important management tool and that nearly everyone on his crew uses them to communicate.

With each new technology introduced, farmers are faced with the choice to either embrace or reject it; their choices play a major role in shaping our food system.

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, July 28

In/Returning: The Apple Farm
Out: Brooks & Daughters Sprouts, Lagier Ranches, Sutton's Protea, Bernard Ranches, Knoll Farms

Tuesday, July 31

No news!