Beta

Jul/Aug 2014

Community Supported What?

Canvas Ranch suspends its CSA as the concept devolves. Deborah Walton doesn’t mind admitting that she’s probably cutting off her nose to spite her face, because she is exactly that angry. On May 1, Walton announced to the 130 or so CSA subscribers to the Canvas Ranch farm she runs with husband Tim Schaible that…
It’s On

A Letter from the Editor. It’s on. Soil amended and watered and coaxed through the drought; seeds planted and watered and coaxed through the drought; trees pruned and lightened and coaxed through the drought—it’s all beginning to offer the great pay-off that summertime promises. We’ve been thinking about the fullness of peaches since they were…
Historically Delicious

On the mysterious trail of the Bodega Red potato. This is a story of buried treasure. The tale of a wayward sailor, Luther Burbank, Chilean immigrants, Mexican land grants, an arranged marriage, blight, neglect, racism, a play, a song, a band, and distrust. This, naturally, is the story of a potato. The Bodega Red potato,…
Love’s Labors

‘The Organic Life’ documents a couple’s year on the farm. When Austin Blair met Casey Beck in college, he had just dropped out of an engineering program and she was studying to be a filmmaker. When her The Organic Life documentary about their lives together debuted last fall, they had both graduated college, he was…
Question Authority

Naturalist Peter Bergen helps kids understand the world by asking questions of it. The trick is this: Your Ring of Awareness should be larger than your Ring of Disturbance. We each have both. The Ring of Awareness is the depth at which you’re able to understand, notice, and translate the details of life around you.…
Folks You Should Know – David Goodman

Executive Director of Redwood Empire Food Bank. With this issue, we launch a new page that gives you a quick snapshot of a North Bay resident we think you should know. Our inaugural subject is the energetic David Goodman, ED of the REFB, a nonprofit that serves some 78,000 hungry Sonoma County residents each month.…
Miles of Aisles

Amid an increasingly corporate landscape, local grocer longevity really matters. Our local markets are ablaze with candles, and yet none of them look a day over 29. It is with great cheer that we wish a very happy 50th birthday to Andy’s Produce Market in Sebastopol. Congratulations also to G&G Grocery Store on your 50th…
Eat A Peach

Dry Creek Peach and Produce is the last devoted orchard in Sonoma County. In Korea, the peach is honored among the 10 immortal plants and animals of mythology, and is believed to help chase away unwelcome spirits. In China, its kernels are still used in traditional medicine to move the blood and ease inflammation; in…
Please Don’t Eat That!

A Short Primer On Farmers’ Market Etiquette. It was a mild mid-spring day and Nancy Skall of Middleton Farm had a few baskets of rare French strawberries for sale. Each basket held a precious clutch of maybe 15 of the delicate, tiny things—so fragile that they would need to be consumed that day. “May I…
Full Circle

ELLEN CAVALLI AND SCOTT HEATH OF TILTED SHED CIDERY COME OF AGE Ours is a story of not really knowing what you want to be when you grow up,” Ellen Cavalli says thoughtfully. She is standing in the airy kitchen of her Forestville farmhouse, surrounded by her seven-year-old son Benny’s projects, her husband Scott Heath’s…