Winter Festival ~ December 16 from 10 am to 12:30 pm

Come welcome winter at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market! Sweet winter greens are here, as well as turnips, rutabagas, cauliflower, and mandarins. Do you know what to do with them? Let us warm your belly with a cup of soup, and learn all about winter produce, winter cooking, winter nutrition, and winter on the farm. The Winter Festival will offer an enticing assortment of cooking demonstrations, farmer talks, nutritional information, and fascinating tidbits about California food and agriculture in the darkest and chilliest part of the year. This is our last day of educational programming until February, but the farmers will continue to bring their bounty every week, so come stock up on tips to carry you through the cold season.

Swanton Berry Farm featured in Orion Magazine

To read a recent Orion Magazine article about Swanton Berry Farm's employee stock ownership program, click here.

Saturday, December 2 ~ Market to Table events

10:00 am - Meet the farmer
Ken Olsen of Olsen Organic Farm - Ken Olsen grows organic citrus on twenty acres in Lindsay at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. When the Olsens purchased their land in l996, it had been farmed using conventional methods. From the beginning, the family took steps to restore the balance of nature and become a certified organic farm... more>

10:30 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Jeffrey Axell of Hyatt Regency San Francisco

11:30 am - Talk and book signing
Join us for a talk and book signing with Sandor Ellix Katz featuring his new book, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America's Underground Food Movements. Sandor will also lead a demonstration on making fermented foods with farmers' market vegetables.

Saturday, December 9 ~ Market to Table events

10:00 am - Meet the farmer

10:30 am - Holiday cookie demonstration and recipe exchange
On December 9 at 10:30 am, learn how to make three different seasonal and sustainable holiday cookies using farmers' market ingredients. CUESA’s Market Chef, Shanti Wilson, and long-time volunteer and baker Keri Keifer will lead this fun and mouthwatering demonstration. Samples will be provided! Bring your favorite cookie recipe that features seasonal ingredients and leave with a new set of recipes for the holiday season.

location: CUESA's Dacor teaching kitchen in the arcades north of the Ferry Building's clocktower

Only the hardiest fruits and vegetables can survive the freezing temperatures that inland California farms experienced several nights this week. Frosts and freezes can spell the end of tomatoes, peppers, berries, some lettuces, and other fragile crops. Lucky for us, one of the most cold-tolerant plant families encompasses more vegetables than any other.

Brassicaceae has made a substantial contribution to humans’ foods choices: the enormous cabbage family includes turnips, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, rapini, romanesco, mustard seed, mustard greens, collards, kale, bok choy, canola, rutabaga, radish, watercress, and arugula, among others. Brassicas are also called cruciferous vegetables (from the Latin crux, which means cross) because they bear flowers with four petals in the shape of a cross. The common ancestor of these plants probably originated in Northern Europe where (headless) cabbages were first cultivated thousands of years ago. Subsequently, the crop spread around Europe and Asia where it malleably transformed into the many cruciferous crops we know today. Vegetables like broccoli, romanesco, and cauliflower were selected for large flowering heads; mustard greens, cabbage, collards, and bok choy for big greens; turnips, radishes, and kohlrabi for bulbous stems and roots. Just a few species comprise most of the brassicas we regularly eat. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, collard greens, and kohlrabi, different as they look, are all cultivar groups of the species Brassica oleracea. Turnip, rapini, bok choy and tatsoi all belong to the species Brassica rapa.

As farmers will attest, humans aren’t the only brassica-loving species. For growers, the vegetables are both a blessing (what else will survive winter frosts?), and a challenge. One of the most virulent brassica pests is the aphid, which quickly reproduces and sucks the fluids out of the crop, stunting growth and sometimes killing plants. Even if the insects don’t do extensive physical damage, they may still render the harvest unmarketable: aphids (as many of us have experienced) nestle within the leaves of a head of cabbage or amid the broccoli florets and are difficult to remove. To deal with aphids, farmers, like many gardeners, use soap sprays and release beneficial predators like ladybugs.

Nigel Walker of Eatwell Farm says that caterpillars are his biggest brassica pest, but the farm has only sprayed the organic insecticide they use to combat the pest once this year. Recently, Eatwell Farm’s pest problems have declined considerably, which Nigel attributes this to the maturity of the farm; it is reaching, he says, a sort of ecological balance. His goal is not to eliminate pest populations completely, but to keep them in check so they don’t do any serious economic damage. If the farm provides habitat for caterpillar predators, like kestrels, and aphid predators, like ladybugs, the farm saves money on expensive insecticides and harvests a hearty crop of crucifers.

Besides having a reputation for being a healthful, cancer-fighting class of vegetables, brassicas are known for the eggy aroma they exude when cooked. These two famous features are actually related: the sulfur-containing compounds called glucosinolates that give the brassicas their pungent smell also give them some of their nutritive qualities. Brassicas contain lots of vitamin A and C, too.

Come to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market this weekend to learn how to make one of the most famous cruciferous condiments. Sandor Ellix Katz, author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution will not be Microwaved, will demonstrate his recipe for sauerkraut.

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 sellers' status, they will not be listed! To find out which farmers regularly attend each market, click here. Please understand that there are always last minute changes--it's the nature of farming!

Saturday, December 2

In/Returning: Knoll Farms, Mariquita Farm, Brokaw Nursery, Bernard Ranches, Happy Quail Farm, McGinnis Ranch, Achadinha Cheese Company, Everything Under the Sun, Lagier Ranches, Niman Ranch, Hog Island Oyster Company, The Apple Farm, Hoffman Game Birds, Hodo Soy Company, Pt. Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company, Fatted Calf, The Pasta Shop

Tuesday, December 5

In: Spring Hill Cheese, Fatted Calf (both will be regularly attending the market), Alive Restaurant
Out: McGinnis Ranch