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 >

Have a Sustainable Thanksgiving! ~ November 24

Recology, previously known as Norcal Waste Systems, will be in the market this Tuesday with tips on how to have a sustainable Thanksgiving. Join Mike Sangiacomo, President & CEO of Recology, and Jared Blumenfeld, Director of San Francisco's Department of the Environment, as they discuss the importance of giving thanks by composting. Visitors will also be invited to browse a mock Thanksgiving table covered with tips on how to have an environmentally friendly Thanksgiving holiday.
 

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 winter citrus drinks from his book: 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 >

Climate Change Action Groups ~ Wednesdays, November 30 - December 21

During four weekly sessions, join with a small group of Bay Area residents to calculate your carbon footprint, create a measurable personal action plan to reduce that footprint, and discuss ways to be a climate change leader in your community. The sessions take place at the Ecology Center in Berkeley. Learn more >

Saturday, November 21 ~ Thanksgiving Dinner Inspiration

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

Tuesday, November 23 ~ 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, November 28 ~ Market to Table

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Sarah Henkin, CUESA's market chef

This week's article was written by Jessica Goldman

On Wednesday evening, a group of agriculture enthusiasts gathered at San Francisco’s Women's Building for an evening with Novella Carpenter sponsored by Garden for the Environment and 18 Reasons. Part academic lecture, part slide show, and part stand-up comedy routine, the author of the popular memoir Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer gave the audience an intimate view of city farming -- in her back yard and across the country.

“I’m not going to kill anything tonight,” she began. “I’m just going to talk about the farm.” Carpenter is the Paula Deen of urban farming. She’s scrappy, real, and hilarious — equal parts dirty hands and dirty mouth — only she champions the benefits of self-reliance and sustainability, not butter. 

“How many of you grow your own lettuce?” she asked.  A third of the audience raised their hands.  “And chickens?”  Not a single hand went up.  “No chickens?”  she exclaimed. “Shocking.  I thought chickens were the biggest craze.” 

For Carpenter, purchasing chickens was an easy move to make after buying her first box of bees, which she calls “the urban gateway animal.”  Her journey began six years ago when she and her boyfriend Bill transformed an abandoned West Oakland lot into a successful urban farm. Seeing city land sitting open, they tore out weeds and cement, tested the soil, and started to garden. They scavenged the streets for materials and fashioned raised beds out of old wood, a trellis from bamboo, and a duck house from an old car. And they called on the expertise of a Yemeni neighbor to teach them essential livestock-related skills such as milking and slaughtering. 

 “One of the great things about living in a first world country is that there is so much waste you can access.” Carpenter and her boyfriend dumpster dove at Berkeley’s best restaurants for food scraps to feed their animals and they trucked in composted manure from a horse farm in the Berkeley hills.

Farming for the rest of us
On a day-to-day basis, Carpenter spends two hours maintaining her farm, with occasional weekends dedicated to large-scale projects. Farming is a daily ritual for her and requires constant problem solving, innovation, and a sense of adventure that she enjoys. But what about the rest of us? How feasible is it to keep a self-sustaining urban farm? 

With bees, goats, pigs, and a wide array of vegetables, Ghost Town Farm provides around 50% of Novella and Bill’s diet. It’s a percentage Carpenter is proud of, but she’s also aware that she’s an anomaly. It would take a total transformation of our cities and our culture for urban farming alone to support our country’s agricultural needs. Even in Detroit, which Carpenter feels demonstrates a strong model of urban agriculture, only 4% of the food consumed come from city farms. If we were to make urban farming more universally effective, says Carpenter, we would need to move beyond its social contributions and build a viable economic model.

Then there’s the importance of balancing farming with other benefits of city life. A while back — as an experiment — Novella attempted to live solely off of her own farm for an entire month.  Although she lost weight and suffered from caffeine headaches, she was able to comfortably survive on the crops and animals she'd raised. But, she says, the experience cut her off from what she enjoys about living in Oakland, and it heightened her awareness of the contradictions she lives with daily. “I can kill a rabbit and then go out for Chinese food,” she says, pointing to the kind of hybridized life she and other urban homesteaders lead at this unique moment in history.  

Can a New Jersey housewife butcher a rabbit?
During her recent book tour, Carpenter hosted a rabbit butchering workshop in New York, where she noticed a growing interest in urban farming. Before the workshop began, a housewife from New Jersey pulled Carpenter aside and admitted that she wouldn’t be able go through with slaughtering a rabbit. But after watching the demonstration, the participant was eager for her turn. “She turned out to be a great slaughterer and a great butcher,” Carpenter recalled. “She felt empowered.”

As Carpenter sees it, reconnection with agricultural practices is key. “We are so divorced from these nuts-and-bolts realities of farming,” she says. “But it is possible to have a really great relationship with animals that you eat.  You can love them, feed them the best food, and then it’s time to eat!”

Not that raising livestock is necessary to start learning more about farming. Understanding the hard work agriculture requires can also help eaters grasp the real value of the food they buy. And Carpenter finds the simple act of noticing open spaces to be as empowering as utilizing them. It is equally informative, she says, “to begin imagining the city as something we can play with and where we, as a people, can grow our own food and make beautiful spaces.”

Want more? Podcast a recent interview with Novella Carpenter from Penguin Books, read the Ghost Town Farm blog, or watch the Obsessives video from Chow.com.

Read more of Jess Goldberg's writing at her blog Sodium Girl.

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 21

In: Galaxy Granola, Shogun Fish Company
Final week of the season: The Peach Farm

Tuesday, November 24

In: Bella Viva Orchards, Frog Hollow Farms, Hog Island Oyster (special for the holiday week), Lucero Organic Farms
Out: Critical Edge Knife Sharpening

Thursday, November 26

Thanksgiving -- Thursday market closed

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, 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