Holiday market specials

• E-letter readers get 10% off local artisan meats from Marin Sun Farms. Just download this coupon (or pick one up at the info booth) and bring it to the stand on Saturday.
  
  
• Lagier Ranches is offering their organic, pasture-raised geese for $10/lb (see a recipe here). The geese range from 6 to 11 lbs and can be delivered or picked up at the market this Saturday and Tuesday. Lagier Ranches is also offering their new crop of organic raw nonpareil almonds for only $9/lb through the end of the year.
  
  
• Fatted Calf Charcuterie will make a rare appearance in the Tuesday market on December 23 with a special holiday menu.
  
  
• June Taylor is offering her Christmas cake and other holiday treats.
  
  
• Noe Valley Bakery and Downtown Bakery will have special holiday baked goods available.
  
  
• The following farms are just a few that will have pre-packaged gift options: Bella Viva Orchards, Marshall's Farm Natural Honey, G.L. Alfieri Farms, Allstar Organics.

The perfect gift

The picky shopper, the market regular, the timid newbie: our farmers' market gift coins are just the thing for everyone on your list. For $25, you get 25 one-dollar tokens good at any seller's stand at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. They come pre-wrapped with a surprise treat from the market inside. Coins are available on Saturdays and Tuesdays all month at the information booth.

Ferry Plaza Farmers Market tote bags, aprons and cookbooks are also for sale at Bay Crossings, inside the Ferry Building, if you'd like to complete the package. Check out the Holiday Gifts section of our website for more farm fresh present ideas.

Complimentary gift wrapping

Every gift-giving season, we encourage our customers to do their holiday shopping at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. For the next two weeks, we'll be providing an extra motivation―we'll wrap farmers' market gifts for you at no cost! Our gift-wrapping station will be set up across from the information booth from 8:00 am to 12:30 pm.

We're open Christmas week

This year, since none of the major holidays fall on Tuesdays or Saturdays, The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market will remain open through the month. You're invited to enjoy uninterrupted shopping on December 23, 27, and 30.

Ecological Horticulture Training at Alemany Farm ~ register by January 1

Learn about urban food production and gain farming experience through Alemany Farm's training in ecological horticulture. The 12-month program will take participants through the seasons, covering core principles of food production such as soil fertility and composting, propagation and planting, seasonal tree care, water-wise irrigation, plant identification, integrated pest management, and crop planning. The hands-on training will cover several different methods of sustainable horticulture such as French Biointensive farming and Permaculture. The course is only $125. Learn more or register here >

Waste Wise volunteers are needed every Tuesday and Saturday at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. E-mail Sandra Norberg for details.

Educational events return Saturday, February 7th with a Citrus Celebration

“Is that the okay kind of mold?”

This might sound like a strange question, but Jordan Champagne of Happy Girl Kitchen Company says it’s one that comes up a lot when you’re fermenting your own food ― making sauerkraut or kimchi for instance ― for the first time. And learning the difference between good mold and bad or how to spot and encourage beneficial bacteria is the key to this popular revivalist food preservation practice.

Champagne and her husband Todd preserve local food for a living (you may have seen their mason jars of tomatoes and pickles at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market); she's also a skilled fermenter doing her part to usher in a fermentation renaissance. And she’s definitely not alone. Raw kimchis, sauerkrauts and sour pickles are showing up in more and more grocery aisles and farmers markets while kombucha, the fermented sweetened tea, grows in popularity. Now, foodies and locavores everywhere are learning how to ferment at home. Case in point: when Sandor Katz ― the self-proclaimed “fermentation revivalist” ― taught one of his now-famous workshops at this year’s Slow Food Nation in San Francisco, it was one of the first events to sell out. 

Fermentation occurs when raw fruits and vegetables are set aside in anaerobic conditions until their sugars and starches turn into lactic acid. This process naturally inhibites disease-causing forms of bacteria while encouraging beneficial bacteria or “microflora” to grow.  Fermentation not only adds complexity to the flavors of food (think beer, sourdough bread, and cheese), the good bacteria it creates also supports digestion and is said to help our bodies effectively absorb the nutrients available in food. Like canning and dehydration, fermentation also preserves fresh food, allowing for locally grown variety even in the sparsest months of the harvest calendar.

Champagne says she understands why the method has lost popularity in recent decades. “Fermented foods take time to make,” she says, “but I don’t think it was impatience that stopped people from making them; I think it was germophobia. We’ve been taught to believe that all micro-organisms are bad for us. Americans don’t even like to think about their cheeses having molds on them,” she adds.

Meanwhile, elsewhere around the world, fermented foods have continued to play a central role in popular cuisine ― take miso in Japan or injera bread in Ethiopia, for example. And many Americans have family traditions that revolve around some other form of home fermentation, says Champagne. In that sense, the fermentation "craze" may be more of a homecoming. "Fermentation has been tested and true throughout time. Now, I think a lot of people here are just returning to it," she says.

Many beginning fermenters consult books, such as Katz’ Wild Fermentation. For those worried about how to tell the good mold from the bad, however, Happy Girl Kitchen is offering several fermenting workshops this winter that will cover sauerkraut, kimchi and kombucha. Participants will go home with their own starter batches they can tend as they begin to explore the variables of temperature and pressure, exercise patience (sauerkraut takes between one and four weeks to ferment, for instance), and do their own trouble-shooting. But, most importantly, Champagne hopes the workshops will demystify fermenting.

“It’s really just about getting comfortable,” she says, “so you’re free to experiment and make the process your own.”

See Happy Girl Kitchen's schedule of preservation classes here >

Market update

Seasonality synopsis for December