Sunday Supper ~ Libations!

Accompanying all of the delicious food you'll be eating at the Sunday Supper reception is a wonderful assortment of locally produced wines and beers, plus a special farmers' market cocktail from Hangar One Vodka. All beverages are included in the $50 reception price. Learn more and purchase your ticket now! Here's the menu:

Trinitas Cellars 2006 Sauvignon Blanc & 2003 Zinfandel

Benziger Family Winery 2006 Sauvignon Blanc & 2005 Syrah

Domaine Chandon 2001 Étoile Brut

Hess Collection 2005 Chardonnay & 2004 Mount Veeder Cuvee

St Suppéry 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon, 2006 Virtú Meritage &
2003 Élu Meritage

Vinoce 2006 Sauvignon Blanc

Farmers' Market Cocktail ~ Hangar One Mandarin Vodka with a Dash of June Taylor’s Strawberry Rose Geranium Syrup, Freshly-made Apple Juice (from Devoto Gardens and Flatland Flower Farm), and Lime Juice, Garnished with an Ella Bella Farm Blackberry

Bison Brewing Company Organic Beer

Tune into West Coast Live tomorrow, September 22

CUESA's Executive Director, Dave Stockdale, will be on the nationally broadcast radio variety show West Coast Live tomorrow, September 15. West Coast Live will be broadcasting from the Ferry Building from 10 am to 12 pm, and you can be part of the live audience. Learn more at www.wcl.org and tune in by radio to KALW 91.7.

CHOW's Cocktail Square Off

CHOW.com, Om Organics, Square One Vodka, and CUESA have invited mixologists, chefs, and amateurs to submit an original recipe for a pitcher cocktail using Square One Organic Vodka and at least 75% organic ingredients. In the spirit of popular chef competitions, one amateur and one professional will mix their winning cocktail and two additional cocktails using local, seasonal ingredients. The judges’ verdicts on these three drinks will determine the winner. All attendees will enjoy appetizers from Bacar and, of course, cocktails! The event will take place from 5:30 to 7:30 pm in our teaching kitchen in the arcade north of the Ferry Building's clock tower. Tickets are $10 and proceeds benefit Om Organics and CUESA. Click here to buy tickets >

Eat it to save it! Ark of Taste Dinner at Knoll Farms

On Sunday, October 7 from 5:00 to 9:00 pm, join the Delta Diablo convivium of Slow Food for a dinner featuring foods listed in the Ark of Taste. Proceeds from the event will benefit Slow Food Nation. Click here to learn more and purchase tickets >

Saturday, September 22 ~ Market to Table events

10:30 am - Meet the producer
Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Robbie Lewis of Bacar

Saturday, September 29 ~ Market to Table events

10:30 am - Meet the farmer

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Sascha Weiss of Lettus Café Organic

11:45 am - Special program
Kira Pascoe of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers will talk about food safety, leafy greens and family farms in California.

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

It has been said that milk and honey are the only substances in our diet whose sole function in nature is to serve as food. Whether or not this is true, they certainly symbolize abundance of biblical proportions; the phrase “land of milk and honey” comes from a reference to Caanan in the Bible. Last Sunday, a group of 43 food lovers made a journey to our local lands of milk and honey—Spring Hill Jersey Cheese and Marshall’s Farm Natural Honey—on a CUESA-organized farm tour. This week, we bring you a summary and slide show of our trip to the land of milk.

Spring Hill Dairy is set amid Sonoma County’s rolling hillsides, which are tawny gold this time of year. In our Mediterranean climate of dry summers, the Spring Hill cows get to roam the fields and eat green grass from January through July. During our visit, the 400 bovine ladies were clustered in a pen, but they still eat well during the dry months; Larry Peter, owner of Spring Hill Cheese, grows them a special silage blend of fava beans, oats, rye grass, and other crops that is harvested green, chopped up, and fermented under a huge tarp. Larry supplements the silage with a mix of grains, including flax, soybean, barley, and corn.

The Spring Hill cows, identified by numbered yellow tags hanging from their fuzzy ears, came and looked at us with some curiosity. Larry’s affection and concern for them became clear when someone in the group said, “It looked like something was wrong with number 330’s eye,” and Larry responded, “Oh! Number 330, she’s an old cow.” He explained that when she was a calf she was poked in the eye with a thistle and it never healed properly. Though each of the cows may be called only by a number, Larry seems to know and care about them as individuals.

Spring Hill is a relatively small dairy and Larry and his family and staff make great efforts to treat the cows well. He described many ways in which he tries to improve on the conventional practices of the dairy industry. For example, he milks his cows only twice a day instead of three times. He also lets them live to a ripe old age; some cows in his herd get to be 14 or older, whereas the average dairy cow in California only lives four or five years. And in 2004, Larry converted his entire operation to organic practices.

The plant where Spring Hill Cheese is made, adjacent to the milk barn, is not very big; our little group filled up most of the space between the shiny metal machines, vats, and tubs. Larry described the cheese-making process, impressively rattling off procedures, pH measurements, and temperatures that vary depending on which of their many cheeses he’s making.

We also toured Spring Hill’s recently purchased Petaluma Creamery in downtown Petaluma, which opened in 1913 and processed milk from dozens of local dairies for decades until it went under a few years ago. Larry bought the creamery and the milk supply agreement that came with it, with the hope of keeping local dairies in business and Sonoma County hillsides in agriculture, and of having a better place to make his own cheese.

Though the new facility seemed huge, Larry says it’s small by industry standards. It has much of the same equipment his cheese plant has (pasteurizer, vats, etc.), but everything is larger, and there are some additional high-tech gadgets, such as an ultrafiltration machine. Larry is gearing up to begin making cheese at the Petaluma Creamery in the next few months and says he feels “a lot better” about moving production to a plant with nicer equipment, improved quality control, and the ability to process milk more quickly. Meanwhile, he is purchasing milk from local dairies and turning it into cream and powder to help pay the mortgage and the whopping $160,000 monthly PG&E bill!

Larry told our group, “The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market saved my farm.” When he started out in the ranching business, he sold potatoes at the fledgling market to make ends meet. Gradually, he saved up to build the cheese plant on his land, producing fewer and fewer potatoes and more and more cheese. If it weren’t for his farmers’ market customers, who were willing to pay a fair price for his potatoes, he wouldn’t have been able to grow his business, and Spring Hill Cheese wouldn’t be what it is today.

Click here to view a slideshow of our time at Spring Hill >

Thanks to Barry Jan for his wonderful photos!

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, September 22

Out: Blossom Bluff Orchards, Glashoff Farms, Bernard Ranches

Tuesday, September 25

No news!