Marin Bee Company

I get excited about the funniest things these days; a couple of weeks ago it was finding the first asparagus at the farmers' market, last week it was eating it picked from a friends backyard. This week? This week I happened upon a truck load of bees.

The cute guy was putting gas in the car. I was staring off towards the vacant building next door. There were a few people in the parking lot walking with arms outstretched, stepping carefully; gingerly describes it best, each carrying a wooden box. It was strange. They watched the box in their hands as they walked, from the back of a truck towards a car across the lot, as if the box might spill and then they deposited their box in the trunk.

And I knew. They. Had. Bees.

I held back from running but I was at the truck before a dollars worth of gas clicked off on the pump. It was stacked end to end with boxes of bees. "I brought sixty boxes this time," the man in charge answered a woman at the back of the truck.

She had an English accent and saw my hesitation as I got close. "They're quite gentle," she offered. She stepped forward, put her finger on top of a box until a couple loose bees crawled on her. We both watched them, smiling. I thanked her and got closer.

One car left, bees secured in its trunk, another arrived and the English woman smoothed a blanket in her van. Her box was held outward across the parking lot too, all of us watching until it was deposited as gingerly as the others.

The next man in line looked like a casual Friday banker. "I have three daughters," he told me. "We never get stung and the bees pollinate the garden." He took away a box for each girl.

Then there was a man with an empty box beneath his arm. He traded it for a full one, held with two hands, arms outstretched. "I raise pastured chickens in Sebastopol," he told the cute guy who had by now joined me. He invited us to the farm, "the next time you're up that way," he said. He deposited his box of bees on the floor of the front seat of his Honda, his dog watching from the back. We all shook hands and left too.

And another car pulled into the lot.

Next year, I promised. New year I'll be ready for some bees too.

Indian Valley Campus Organic Farm

So many years ago, more than I want to tell you, I took a class on an organic farm, at the Santa Rosa Jr. College. Bob Cannard was the teacher. I ran into him again last year at Bioneers, he was talking about farming, the same common sense, use what you have philosophy of the last time I'd seen him. Except everything he said was new again, as exciting as the first time I'd heard him. He talks a lot about dirt, taking care of the dirt, where the dirt comes from, how important the dirt is. He's teaching again, or maybe still, I haven't followed him closely. He teaches interns at Green String Farm in Petaluma; a wide expanse of a farm with rolling hills of vineyards as a back drop, a real old wood barn, chickens and a farm stand open year round. It's worth seeking out.

Last week I found myself at another organic school farm, this one younger, on the campus of College of Marin at Indian Valley. The student tended rows of turnips, lettuces, beets, and kale reached from the open space land that cradles the entire campus to a soccer field that caters to joggers, bike riders and dog walkers, not a person with a ball to be seen. And the first thing the farmer did when he walked through the gate, you already know, he picked up a handful of dirt and brought it to his nose. He seemed to relax then, the feel of dirt on his hands, the difference between the classroom and the garden. He reached for a calendula, handed it to the first person beside him, another and another, I had one too. Orange and yellow calendulas, no two the same and I never knew they could grow in such variety.

He with the dirt on his hands was Steve Quirt, the planner and teacher on the farm, our tour guide for the visit. He's another farmer, like Bob Cannard, who knows the importance of dirt. And Wendy Johnson, also a teacher at the farm, we didn't have her pleasure but it's impossible to know about the farm and not know about Wendy. She was there in the impossibly silver artichoke plants and the fava beans, magenta blossoms. Deep, saturated magenta. She's the same Wendy Johnson of Green Gulch Farm, and the author of Gardening at the Dragon's Gate, a big green book I've entered through a hundred different gates or often while beating back the weeds looking for a damn gate.

The farm at Indian Valley has a farm stand of sorts too but the hours appear random. It's either open or it's closed. A shaded roof and plywood tables. If there's class I suppose, and vegetables to be picked, enough to actually sell, it seems they sell them. How perfectly wonderful for the neighborhoods nearby, the communities of people on foot, what a bit of magic to bring home a bag of peas or a pair of artichokes from so close to home. From school. It's their secret garden. (Don't tell anyone you read it here.)

And while they're there, neighbors meeting again or for the first time, at the cyclone gate near the metal sink with a hose running in it, I hope someone invites them to pick up a handful of the dirt, bring it to their nose and, yes, take a smell of it. Maybe you will too, if you find yourself the next time at a farm, letting the dirt fall slowly, in dusty drifts through the text books of your hands, appreciating it for everything we eat.

Joel Salatin in Petaluma

I had dinner last week with Joel Salatin, the farmer highlighted in Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dillemma and featured in Food, Inc. Joel was two tables away and there were at least 100 other people also having dinner with him but if I leaned forward I could see the two chickens on his tie.

The event was a benefit for the CSA members of Tara Firma Farm of which I'm only an occasional, but excited, customer. The dinner of chicken, pork, butternut squash, beets, chard, salad greens, was entirely from the farms' harvest.

After the meal Joel talked about farming and being the lunatic farmer. He told a story about Gandhi's four steps for a revolution. "First they ignore you," he said. "Then they say you're crazy." He paused and looked around the room. I squeezed my husband's hand and we shared a look. I often feel like the odd person at the table.

"After that they fight you, and then you win." He made it sound easy.

"Right now, big ag, Monsanto, they are pushing back," he said and continued to talk about Michelle Obama's organic garden on the White House lawn. He'd had dinner with the White House chef, Sam Kass, and the story the chef told was that the organicness of the first garden was the cause of many upset calls throughout Washington. Joel threw his arms in the air pantomiming chaos. "Organic?"

He went on to talk about his farm and his neighbors farms. He told another story about a drought year and the fact that his farm stayed green. "Joel gets more rain," his next door neighbor told a friend. Joel shrugged his shoulders and reiterated a point he'd made earlier; "We see when we're ready to see."

"He doesn't get more rain, does he?" I whispered to my husband.

He shook his head no.

The talk ended with questions that could have gone on for hours. "If grass fed cows sequester carbon, why isn't that happening on a large scale?" "Is organic better than non-organic?" "What can we do to make a difference in our school lunch programs?"

He answered each question as if it were the first time he'd done so and ended the evening with this, "May your children call you blessed." I looked at my husband with wet eyes. He winked.

And then I came home and wrote a thank you note to the White House for the organic garden on the front lawn. Thanks to Joel Salatin and Tara Firms Farms I appreciate its crazy message of hope more than ever.

Tara Firma Farm

Saturday was one of those perfect fall days to romanticize the life of a farmer. The hills were commercial green, totem like hawks were perched at two mile intervals, black and white cows posed, chewing in fields. The oak trees hardly looked real and the rutted country roads would have cost extra anywhere else. The weather was warm, a Hollywood set. Unreal. We were heading north to visit Tara Firma Farm.

The cute guy's son and I barely had the car doors open when a nine year old popped out of a shed and asked if we wanted to see the baby chicks. As quick as he appeared he left, something about finding the ducks. "Close the door when you're done," he instructed, "so the chicks stay warm." I picked one up to my cheek making the mandatory cooing noises the scene required.

Outside again we walked through a hay scented barn, a hoop house of tomatoes beyond it, tubs of green fruit inside. We passed walls of uncarved pumpkins, scattered green watermelon. And not far away we came to the hogs; hogs trained to run toward us and ask if we brought them more pumpkins. They snorted and stretched in the warm mud at our empty hands. Starlets, every one of them.

Across from the hogs were turkeys; also trained to appear effortlessly happy. They modeled their fat breasts, stood on one leg, pecked at each other caringly. Neither of us breathed a word about Thanksgiving.

We met a father and son on the way back, film extras I was sure, walking back to their car from the pond, fishing poles in hand. "The casting was good," the father said.

I bought a dozen white eggs in the farm store as if I'd never seen white eggs before. "They're white," I exclaimed. "They're white." I was embarrassed even then but what can I say? They were white!

On the way out, and neither of us wanted to leave, I gazed longingly at the sloping blue farm house, the square paned windows, the white washed porch. I wanted to stay forever. Until I realized I'd tracked a bunch of mud into the car. Then I was ready to go home.

The romance hasn't ended though. The white eggs - almost as bright and good as Dad's. What a find.

Gravenstein Apples

I love the city. I really do. But when I take a few days off I want to hit the country. Which is how the cute guy and I spent a long weekend. We headed north. To apple country.

We drove through Sebastopol to Graton, up to Cloverdale and over to Booneville. And each time we passed apple farms, there were two near our camp, I remembered picking apples with Mom.

I remembered her pulling on to the side of the road, two wheels in the field. It was before there were fences, orchards as far as Christmas. "Come on," she'd say. "Let's get apples." And I'd pick as many from the ground as I could carry. "They're Gravensteins," she'd sing, which meant nothing to me except Gravensteins made her happy.

Yesterday Gravenstein apples were the main headline in the Sunday paper. I recognized the farmer in the front page picture. We've laughed together. I've taken more than one slice of apple from his hand.

The article explained that the apple growers aren't picking the fallen apples traditionally used for juice. There's no where to take them. The US apple juice market is sustained by China. It's cheaper.

I didn't read further but I did come home with cotton bags of apples. Picked from a growers wooden boxes at the farm. A farm with a black dog carrying a yellow ball. A farm with a big rabbit and three red hens.

I read the names of the apples; Northern Spy, Sierra Beauty. There were more varieties than there are holidays. I could see them in the field, on the trees and the ground. I could happily smell them but couldn't help wondering, will the apple fields be there the next time? Or will we need to go to China to buy them off the farm?

Haiku Friday

Smiling, she says,
"So hot, we picked past midnight."
Lucky moon, I think.

Haiku Friday

Did Grandma know the
Bodega Red Potato?
I wish I could ask.

Haiku Friday

Sleeping until nine
the neighbors dog wakes me up.
Sunshine in my eyes.

Harvest Exchange

I've been spending my extra time at the community garden. Not that I have a plot or am helping anyone with theirs; I just like being there; in the garden. It's alive. And full of owls, at least one bat and a parade of happy dogs.

I keep taking pictures. Of the borage, the bees in the borage, the yellow lupine that appeared one day when the day before I know it wasn't there. The gnarly quince tree holds a special fascination as do the volunteer plants on the steep side of a fallen tree.

I wish I could take a picture of the way the trumpet lillies smell, warm and heavy but the fence gets in the way.

Last night we ate green beans growing beneath a persimmon tree on the public side of the fence. The sun was setting and we leaned on a warm brick wall. I marveled at a handsome plant of zucchini, Findhorn sized cabbages and a row of tomato plants. Then I picked a couple more beans.

There was a harvest exchange at the garden on Saturday. The first. I missed it. I don't have anything to exchange. Well, maybe some mint, one serrano pepper. I could prune the rose geranium. But it doesn't matter. I'm so excited a harvest exchange is happening. And they're happening all over Marin.

Just knowing makes me happy. Like being in the garden.

Farm City: The Education Of An Urban Farmer

I finished the perfect summer read, Farm City, by Novella Carpenter. The trouble is I finished it on the first day of summer. Now what do I do? I don't think anything is going to beat this book.

Farm City is a memoir but it's also bits and parts of how to, or how not to make a garden in the ghetto; on squatted land with an eventual farm yard of animals. The story reads like a novel. The characters are naturally characters; I fell in love with everyone. Except the prostitute looking butcher - there has to be someone not to like.

Novella is quirky, smart, driven and she has a seriously good heart. She made me laugh a lot and look at my neighborhood with new eyes. There's a deserted house nearby with a sunny front yard that would be a perfect urban garden. The idea had never crossed my mind before. That's what this book does. Novella finds possibility and assistance in places generally looked away from. All is not pretty on the urban farm. Even when I was laughing.

To start with she's farming in Oakland, not Mayberry. A homeless man watches over the garden and offers constant advice. She hauls in free horse manure, forages from local dumpsters to feed the animals. She meets the neighborhood in the garden, invited and not. Even with the weeds and fish heads, I have to admit though, it sounded like fun.

The cute guy is nearly done with Farm City. He laughs out loud too. Stays up too late reading. "Where are you now?" I hungrily ask him. He tells me and we talk about it. It's almost like getting to read the book again.

Which is what I'm going to do - read the book again. That is unless I find an empty lot I can garden.

Dr. Earth

The first gift the cute guy gave me was a small box of four rocks he'd collected on a road trip. He wrapped the box with a remnant of ribbon and I carried the rocks in various pockets for years. Twig nests, a worm bin and garden stones have followed but in the last few weeks he's outdone himself.

First he cut and surprised with me an armload of green cattails, five feet tall, that are curling and turning, drying their flat green leaves in a fat glass vase. They are the perfect back drop for the new library book of poetry, Red Bird by Mary Oliver, her voice familiar and strong. And I love that as much as I love the weathering weeds in the corner of the room.

Then the cute guy uncovered an abandoned wasps nest made of tissuey layers of mud in forty shades of gray. It didn't make it home in one piece but he gifted me with what remained of the hidden hive. The cone shaped walls are still in the center of the kitchen table.

The last gift is the one I can't stop talking about. He bought dirt for the pots on the back deck. Not just nursery dirt on sale either. He bought Dr. Earth potting soil. I'd never heard of it and thought he might have gotten take for a ride when he told me the price. But now, now I'm a recruit. Dr. Earth is the best potting soil I've ever had. I mixed it 60/40 with the old dirt, planted tomatillos, peppers and a black cherry tomato. And every day the plants grow an inch. In every direction.

And every day I tell the cute guy what an amazing find he made. "I don't know how you'll ever top this," I tell him tucking chubby stems of leaves into their growing cages.

But I know he will.

Edible City

Maybe it's because it's late that I cried watching the trailer for Edible City. Or maybe it's because Van Jones is part of the trailer and he always makes me cry with great hope.

Maybe it's because I don't live on a farm or have a back yard for the garden of my dreams. Or maybe it was the kids in the community gardens with sunflower smiles, the dirt on everyone's hands, the purple blossom of an artichoke flower shot sharp against the blurred background of the freeway.

I don't know. But it was wonderful.

Hand Shelled Walnuts

Swanton Berry Farm organic artichoke.
Yesterday I bought shelled walnuts from a man with Einstein eyebrows.

"We crack them ourselves at the beginning of the season. It gives the year a rhythm." He smiled.

"But then I have them shelled for thirty cents a pound by machine. I pay the workers two dollars when they do it. To make it worth their while." He straightened a bag. "But the machine nicks them."

I couldn't see nicks. I was calculating how many walnuts I might shell in an hour; five pounds, six, eight? I doubted it.

It was a short conversation but had me wondering how much food is handled by machine and how much is managed by hand.

I heard a young farmer, a woman in her 20's, speak this weekend. She talked about the people that sweat and labor over the food we consume. She spoke of eating as a communion, creating the connection we have with the farms and the people in the fields as an intimate one.

She made me cry.

And appreciate the difference between hand and machine shelled walnuts all the more.

Plum Petals

I've been watching the white petals of the tree next door scatter on the walkway to our home. They make me think of weddings, naturally of spring but mostly of the plums I picked last summer. I wonder what the harvest will bring this year.

Will l be able to taste the petals in the fruit or this misty rain weekend? I wonder if the fence between neighbors will define a taste, the way it's warped, crooked in places, or if the plums will only taste of the sun, the bees that picnic in our yards and the black cat that makes a play ground of fences, trees and arbors.

Did the February storms tattoo the pits we'll find inside or have the flock of dark breasted brown birds picked away everything from the trees that ever hoped of becoming a fruit?

All I can do for now though, is wonder.

Haiku Friday

Guest Haiku by the Cute Guy

January rain;
drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip,
off the kumquat tree.

Chicken Harvest

I was born with chicken farming in my blood. My Great Grandparents were chicken farmers on one side, mixed farmers on the other. And my Grandfathers were both poultry farmers, one chickens, the other turkeys. All relationships with poultry ended there though. KFC is the chicken I remember.

But this weekend my ancestral roots grew arms. The cute guy's son, Jeremy, taught me how to harvest chickens. He seems to have been born with an innate knowledge of animals and he did the parts his wife, sister-in-law, and I didn't have the muscle for.

I arrived in my Vote With Your Fork t-shirt, a generation removed from the land but with good information from El at Fast Grow the Weeds. She recently wrote her process of harvesting chickens that gave me not only front row information but confidence too.

It sounds odd to say we had fun but we did. The women, yes, me too, got a little choked up at first. Then we got to work in a rhythm accented by the sounds of scattering chickens, the spray of the hose and the smell of wet feathers. There was respect for each new bird, we harvested a dozen, but it was equally matched with the laughter of working together.

The little kids were in and out too; curious but non-plussed by the operation. They pulled a feather here and there, touched the pimply skin, asked a few questions then ran off half way through the answer.

Jeremy dissected a stomach for his son to see what the chicken had recently eaten. To every one's surprise there was a free range screw.

We had the luxury of working in the barn kitchen for the final step of cleaning the chickens for the freezer. Everyone but Jeremy exclaimed that running water made the job easier. We were able to harvest the necks, livers, hearts and most of the gizzards for stocks or dressings.

It's safe to say I won't take eating chicken for granted again. Something different happened being intimately involved in the process of taking the animals life. My appreciation for the chicken multiplied. Not just for a meaty breast or juicy thigh, but for every part of the bird. Also for the workers that harvest chicken for a living. It's a smelly business.

Have you every hunted, raised and harvested or prepared an animal for food? Was it a good experience? Would you do it again?

Beyond Tomato Cages

I've wanted to save the world since I was in third grade. Save it from what has always been hard to pinpoint; until I discovered the eat local movement. Then I wanted to save the world from manufactured food and the unnecessary use of fossil fuels. I still do.

I read an article today that broadened my perspective though. It was a moment of ah-ha. The article argued that even if everyone in the U.S. tore out their lawns to plant gardens it wouldn't make a significant difference to world hunger. The people rioting for food don't want cucumbers, they want rice; wheat; commodity crops grown in monocultures. The article went on in that vein repeatedly making the point that we can't get sedated in our gardens but must press for policy change in the world beyond tomato cages and bean poles.

I'm not in a position to debate world hunger but I do believe that tearing out our lawns or planting a backyard garden makes more of a difference than the author gives voice to. And he does give voice to it. He tore out his own lawn several years ago.

It's my experience that something bigger happens when we begin paying attention to our food, where it comes from, how it's grown. Read any of the bloggers in my sidebar. They garden, eat local food, but they do not have their heads stuck in a gopher hole. They're writing letters to Washington. They're canning, reading books to learn more. They're questioning where their water is going, biking, building community, connecting their kids to the natural world, teaching themselves and others how to live with a lighter step. They are talking about how to make a difference.

Saving the world or not I was going to have my local dinners and call it good. I had no idea. Now I want to save the oceans and save the world from Monsanto. I want to ban plastic bags, plastic water bottles, halt mountaintop removal for the mining of coal. I worry about water and the people in Haiti, the farmers in India, tomato pickers in Florida. And I continue to make changes at home to be more respectful of the world around me, to learn beyond sound bytes what the hell is going on in the world. I'm not alone.

All of which began with a meal grown within 100 miles of home. From there bigger change can and does happen.

Hopefully change big enough to sustain and feed the world.

San Anselmo Community Garden

"It will be years."

I knew that was going to be the answer, but I told him how long I'd lived here anyway and that I was married on the property. I gave him dates. He added me to the waiting list for a space.

I tour the community garden once a week and the fence lines are bursting at the seams with blue borage. The borage volunteers indiscriminately and appears to be happy in any amount of sun. I stop and eat a few flowers. Aside from being fuzzy on my tongue their taste resembles cucumbers. Very cool. And on a bed of salad greens - instant art.

I've wanted to plant borage in the backyard but I'm wedded to the vision of white perennial beds. Once I allow color, and I'm tempted constantly, the project would be over.

On Sunday though, the ladies with the plant starts from Sebastopol brought in two pots of white borage. The gospel singing women that ride around on my shoulders broke into song. This was the farmers' market find of the year.

White borage. Food and art rolled into one. And I don't have to wait. That alone is worth singing about.