Jul/Aug 2015
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YIMBY
With Sonoma Compost’s imminent closure, clamoring for waste in our backyards. Feedlots, otherwise known as Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), are agricultural systems defined not simply by how many animals are crammed into one place, but by how energy and nutrients flow only inone direction. Unlike the pasture-based family farms that we in the North…
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Double the Money
New farm market economics. It may not be fishes and loaves, but the amount of food a CalFresh recipient can purchase at many farmers’ markets has just doubled nicely. Farmers’ Market L.I.F.E., a program from Petaluma Bounty using Market Match funds just won from a federal grant, is matching up to $20 in CalFresh monies…
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World on a Plate
The ‘OAEC Cookbook’ encourages us to eat widely and well. There are perhaps some things that the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC) folks can do that you can’t. Live peacefully in a commune for 21 years, for example. Own 80 acres in a pristine West County landscape. Form a nonprofit with the members of…
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Yes, There Is Such a Thing
Free lunches for students in Sonoma County. The Redwood Empire Food Bank (REFB) is committed to helping to feed the estimated 82,000 of your neighbors who go hungry each month—even in the summer. Because many low-income students who are accustomed to receiving lunch and even breakfast at school during the academic year are at risk…
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Gentleman/Farmer
Jorge Saldana farms to make better food for his tables. There is a right way to cook beans and it’s probably not the way that you do it. “This philosophy of beans is very important,” says restaurateur Jorge Saldana, settling into a chair on the wide veranda of a house on his Guerneville property. Dried…
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Coming Into Bloom
The slow flower movement takes seed in the North Bay. As the founder of California Sister Floral Design Co., Nichole Skalski knows flowers. Still, it wasn’t until she was struck with a thought driving between her home in Camp Meeker to the San Francisco Flower Mart that her sourcing practices became decidedly more local. “I…
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True Blue
Indigo crop colors hopes for local soil-to-skin clothing. On a balmy June morning off Westside Road in Healdsburg, I get my first look at the bright green pointy-leafed shrub that’s creating a stir in the northern California Fibershed community. Polygonum tintorium— otherwise known as Japanese indigo—grows in clumps at the entrance to the fiber and…
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Beyond the Hop
Brian Hunt and the thirst for something different. Grain-based beer has been brewed for thousands of years, while hops have been in use only for several centuries. So, for brewer Brian Hunt, our culture’s fixation on the aromatic European flower Humulus lupulus ranges from amusing to annoying. The owner and operator of Moonlight Brewing Company,…
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Letter from the Editor – July/August 2015
A Letter from the Editor. In the two months since we introduced readers to the beneficial work of Sonoma Compost, that story took a shocking downward turn as the efforts of the neighbors to close the facility actually bore fruition. This issue updates you on the reasons why entities like Sonoma Compost are a necessary county…
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Folks You Should Know – Miriam Volat
Miriam Volat, director and designer of Farm School. Miriam Volat is the director and designer of Farm School at the Permaculture Skills Center, which is committed to supporting new farmers in to be successful in their regional food economies. For over 20 years, Miriam has worked directly to ensure access to healthful food for all…