The Market Will Be Closed on Thanksgiving Day, November 26

Stop by the Tuesday market to pick up your last minute holiday fixins!

Farmers' Market Holiday Cocktail Night ~ December 2

CUESA is teaming up with our local United States Bartenders' Guild (USBG) chapter again for a festive evening filled with seasonal farmers' market cocktails. $30 gets you two full-sized cocktails made with early winter produce and the distinctly American Jim Beam bourbon, along with samples of eight other holiday-inspired drinks featuring an array of specialty spirits. Bartenders from the following restaurants and bars will participate: 15 Romolo, Rickhouse, Bourbon & Branch, Butterfly, Lingba, Sauce, Jardinière, La Mar, Rose Pistola, and Seasons Bar at the Four Seasons San Francisco. Buy tickets >

Righteous Audio

Did you miss our recent panel, In Search of a Righteous Porkchop, featuring author and rancher Nicolette Hahn Niman, Marin Sun Farm's David Evans and eco-chef Aaron French? Don't be sad; you can listen to an audio recording on our Listen and Learn page >

Holiday Cocktail Class With Scott Beattie ~ December 4

Join Scott Beattie, author of Artisanal Cocktails, and Marko Karakasevics of Charbay Distillery for CUESA's next hands-on cocktail class. Beattie will talk about seasonal cocktails and teach the group how to make three drinks from his book highlighting winter citrus: the Meyer Beautiful (My, You’re Beautiful), the Pelo del Perro (Hair of the Dog), and the classic Margarita. Instruction will include side recipes, garnish how-tos, foams, and rim sugars and salts. Drinks will feature Charbay’s small-batch spirits and fresh, seasonal fruit from the market. Scott’s acclaimed book will also be available to purchase. Buy tickets>

Happy Girl Kitchen Harvest Party Benefit ~ November 14

Join the Happy Girl Kitchen crew this Saturday to celebrate the inaugural season of their new endeavor, The Food Preservationists — a bulk home canning community project. The oldest existing barn in Oakland will host 4 bluegrass and Appalachian bands as well as DJ Juggle Geoff. Drinks will be pouring from Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery, Kombucha Botanica, Chai Cola, and Happy Girl's own Todd Champagne (who brewed a special batch of hard cider from hand pressed apples!). Compete in a canning contest, enter a raffle, and chow down on hors d'oeuvres, sweet delectables, and a bottomless pickle platter. Learn more buy tickets here >

Greywater Panel

As the water crisis drags on, greywater has jumped into the fray as California’s most reliable non-potable water source. And thanks to the recent statewide ruling, residential customers can now install single fixture, ‘laundry to landscape’ greywater systems without a permit. But the brouhaha over permitting is still raging. Join a lively discussion -- Greywater for a Parched Planet: Quenching California’s Thirst for Lush Landscapes and Local Food Production -- on model greywater ordinances and the latest thinking in ecological landscapes, including futuristic schemes for vertical farming in high density residential developments. Learn more here >

Saturday, November 14 ~ Market to Table

10:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration and book signing
Laura Werlin, author of Great Grilled Cheese and Cheese Essentials

Tuesday, November 17 ~ 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.

Thursday, November 19 ~ Special Guest

12:00 - 1:00 pm - Lucinda Scala Quinn, host of the PBS show Everyday Food and author of Mad Hungry: Feeding Men and Boys

Saturday, November 21 ~ Market to Table

11:00 am - Holiday cooking demonstration
Chris Borges, Taste Catering

11:45 am - Holiday cooking demonstration
Marc Vogel, chef and author of The Perfect Holiday Meal

This week's article was written by Jessica Goldman

Just as we grow accustomed to the concept of buying local food, it's time to explore a new movement in agricultural sustainability — local bees.

Although Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) no longer makes the kind of headlines it did in 2007, the plight of the honeybee continues. In the initial year CCD was observed, American beekeepers lost an average of 30% of their hives, and they've reported rates of 29% - 35% die-off each year since. While no one can confirm an exact reason for the disappearances, its clear that honeybees may not be a reliable agricultural resource on thier own for much longer.

As Claire Kremen sees it, however, the collapse of the honeybee population may be less of a clear cut “crisis” than it appears. At a recent lecture, the UC Berkeley professor and 2008 MacArthur Foundation fellow outlined the problem, and potential solution, in its much wider context.   

“Will we ever lose all of our pollinators?” Kremen asked her audience. “No.  But scarcity is possible.” Especially if we continue to count solely on honeybees to do the job.     

Over 30% of the United States food production depends on managed colonies of European honeybees, but professor Kremen has her eye on a different set of pollinators. Since 1998, she has studied the habits of wild bees and she believes they can meet our agricultural needs — if we learn to accommodate theirs.

How the honeybee became queen
There are over 20,000 known species of bees in the world, 4,000 of which are native to the United States and 1,500 of which exist in California alone.  So how did we become so reliant on a single species of bee?

The industrialization of agriculture caused a shift from multi-crop farming to a monoculture system — growing a single crop species over many acres.  As a result, harvesting schedules condensed and pollinator demands increased. (California almond farming, for example, now requires the pollination of over 600,000 acres of almond groves over 22 days).  Farmers needed easily controlled pollinators and honeybees were the ideal candidates because, unlike most wild bees which nest underground or in logs, they're social and willing to nest in transportable hives. Today, a million honeybee hives are shipped annually to California almond farms, 50,000 to Maine blueberry farms, and 30,000 to New York apple farms.

In many ways, use of managed honeybee populations has proven efficient for farmers, but this system has also had negative impacts on farm ecosystems. As farmland has lost its diversity it has become less hospitable to wild bees, and crops and pollinators have become more vulnerable to conditional fluctuations (such as CCD). Without other species to pick up the slack, some agriculture could face a pollination gap.

Beyond the Honeybee
Kremen believes that a restoration of diversity will curb the consequences of CCD.

“We will still need honeybees and there's nothing wrong with that,” Kremen says. But, she adds, a pollination system which also draws on wild bee populations will alleviate our dependence on the honeybee and produce an “agricultural insurance policy” for farmers.

In a 2006 study, Kremen, along with a team of UC Berkeley and UC Davis researchers, discovered that managed honeybee populations were five times more effective in pollinating sunflowers when wild bees were present. Wild bees made the honeybees nervous and triggered them to change their flight pattern and cover more ground.  The addition of wild bees increased productivity of the honeybees and in turn reduced the number of hives needed.
  
As a next step, Kremen aims to prove wild bees capable of pollinating crops without the assistance of honeybees.  She calls this the “Field of Dreams Project,” testing the theory that if we build the right environment, wild bees will come and will successfully pollinate.  In regions of California and New Jersey, Kremen found that farms in proximity to natural habitats with adequate nesting sites and food sources attracted enough native bees to pollinate an entire crop on their own.

But for this to work, farmers would need to restore 20% to 30% of California farmland to natural landscapes. While a change of this scale may not be realistic at this point, Kremen still champions the importance of small steps. By simply planting hedgerows and maintaining plots of undisturbed soil for nesting sites, Kremen says farmers can help reverse the effects of CCD, decrease our dependence on the honeybee, and finally welcome our wild bees back home.

Want to attract wild bees to your garden?
Read about what to plant >

Watch a trailer for a new bee documentary
Nicotine Bees >

Jessica Goldman blogs at sodiumgirl.blogspot.com

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, November 14

In: Knoll Farms, Critical Edge Knife Sharpening, Olsen Organics
Final week of the season: The Peach Farm

Tuesday, November 17

In: Snyders Honey

Thursday, November 19

No changes

Returning and plentiful this month (weather willing):
Chicories, rutabagas, hard squash, persimmons, carrots, Meyer lemons, nettles, radishes, collard greens, sunchokes, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, broccoli, rapini, baby lettuces, cardoons, puntarella, radicchio, sweet potatoes, leeks, fennel, cabbage, salsify, mushrooms, walnuts, citrus, potatoes, pastured chicken, braising greens, pomegranates, apples, pears, onions

Winding down/limited supply:
Dungeness crab (hopefully by mid-month), Christmas trees (end of November through mid December), berries, pastured eggs, tomatoes, peppers, grapes

Vendor and value-added items not to be missed:
Olive oil from Bariani, vegetarian mincemeat from June Taylor, celery salt from Allstar Organics

Featured recipes for November

Golden Beet Borscht with Dill Crème Fraîche from Cindy Pawlcyn of Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen, Go Fish, and Mustards Grill and author of Cindy Pawlcyn’s Appetizers

Persimmon, Arugula, Fennel, and Pecorino Salad inspired by Taylor Boetticher, of Fatted Calf

Capunet-Piemontese Cabbage Rolls from Staffan Terje of Perbacco

Croustade with Apples and Prunes in Armagnac from Paula Wolfert, author of The Cooking of Southwest France