UC pear variety tasting tomorrow

Cast a vote for your favorite pear tomorrow, November 10, at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Beginning at 9:30 am in the arcade north of the Ferry Building's clock tower, volunteer Master Gardeners from Lake County will conduct tastings of pear varieties being developed by the University of California for cultivation in local orchards. 250 people will blindly taste five different pear varieties and then fill out surveys about their preferences. Tasters' feedback will be incorporated into final decisions about which varieties will make it to market.

Tune into West Coast Live or Green Seed radio

Just after 10 am tomorrow, take your pick of food and farming-related radio interviews:

Tim Bates of The Apple Farm will be on the nationally broadcast radio variety show West Coast Live. West Coast Live will be broadcasting from the Ferry Building from 10 am to 12 pm for the next three weeks, and you can be part of the live audience. More information at www.wcl.org. Tune in by radio to KALW 91.7.

At right around the same time, Julie Cummins, CUESA's Director of Education, will be interviewed by host Mo Mellady on KTRB 860 Green Seed Radio, a show about the power of possibility and sustainable lifestyle and enterprise. Tune in at 10:06 am to hear Julie talk about CUESA and the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.

Fungus Festival ~ November 24 and 25

On Saturday, November 24, the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, Ferry Building Marketplace, and Far West Fungi celebrate culinary mushrooms with the second annual Ferry Building Fungus Festival. Festivities begin on Saturday at 10 am with a range of free events, including mushroom cultivation tables, Meet the Mushroom Farmer interview with John Garrone of Far West Fungi, a mushroom cooking demo, music, mushroom displays and more. Merchants inside the Marketplace will be offering special mushroom fare, tastings, and demonstrations both Saturday and Sunday. The event will benefit the Mycological Society of San Francisco.

Saturday, November 10 ~ Market to Table events

10:30 am - Meet the producer
Robert Lower of Flying Disc Ranch interviewed by CUESA staff member Julie Cummins

11 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration and book signing
Elizabeth Falkner, Executive Chef at Citizen Cake and Author of Demolition Desserts

11:45 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Aida Mollenkamp of CHOW.com

Saturday, November 17 ~ Market to Table events

10:30 am - Meet the producer

11 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Jamie Lauren of Absinthe

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

2007 has been a trying year for many California farmers, their fate at the mercy of the elements. This year, fire, ice, and water have caused damage and raised concerns across the state. In January, record-breaking low temperatures and devastated harvests were the subject of countless news stories. Citrus and avocado growers whose subtropical crops do not fare well in sustained freezes were among the hardest hit.

Last month, some of the same farmers found themselves in a strangely opposite yet remarkably similar situation. Ten months after the freeze, fire wreaked havoc in Southern California. The region, which is parched from a dry year, heated up as strong, scorching Santa Ana winds swept through Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, San Bernadino, Riverside and San Diego counties. Ensuing fires charred nearly half a million acres, and farms sustained damage from the wind, the blaze, the lack of electricity, and the inability to access their farms.

No Ferry Plaza Farmers Market farms burned in the fires, but some are feeling effects. Vince and Vicki Bernard of Bernard Ranches in Riverside missed a week at the farmers’ market because they were not allowed to travel the road to their orchard to pick fruit. The fires just narrowly missed one of their properties, burning some of their neighbors’ trees but stopping just short of theirs.

Ironically, Brokaw Nursery, which sells subtropical fruits at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market and also operates a much larger nursery business, has seen an increase in business from the disasters. Farmers looking to replant orchards decimated by both freeze and fire have placed orders for avocado rootstock that far surpass the Brokaws' production capacity this season. The farm is scrambling to keep up. Brokaw Nursery was spared fire damage this year, but they will never forget their own brush with wildfires in 1985, when part of their Santa Paula nursery burned.

Ice and fire leave ruin in their paths, but farmers can’t do without the element of water, and cutbacks are imminent for Southern California farmers due to an August court ruling. A Fresno judge has ordered significant restrictions to the flow of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta water to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The cutbacks are an effort to save the Delta smelt, a species of fish that once thrived in the Delta, but is now listed as an endangered species as a result of development, water pumps, and invasive species, among other factors. During 2008, the water supply to Southern California may be cut by as much as 35 percent. (Click here to read a recent SF Chronicle article about this decision and the state of the Delta >)

“The San Francisco Bay-Delta cannot properly perform its vital function of providing clean water for the people of California, if it is so degraded that it cannot even support the tiny Delta smelt,” said Barry Nelson, of the NRDC, a plaintiff in the case. “After years of increased diversions of fresh water from the Delta, resulting in a sicker and sicker ecosystem, we finally have a judge’s order to give our water supply a break.”

The health of the Delta is important to everyone, but for Southern California farmers who have come to depend on the flows, the news is hard to take. “We’re anticipating losing some trees,” says Vicki Bernard. Farmers are expected to take an estimated 82,000 acres out of cultivation as a result of the new restrictions, and consumers and industry will also need to conserve. Water is life—for people, plants, and fish alike. Adjustments will be difficult, but with perseverance, solutions can surely be found that will allow all three to thrive.

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, November 10

In/Returning: Olsen Organics, Glashoff Farms, Honeycrisp Farms, Bernard Ranches
Coming next week: Shogun Fish Co. (with Dungeness crab!), Double K Christmas Tree Farm

Tuesday, November 13

No news!