Several weeks ago we took a little field trip out to Chaffin Family Orchards, a really incredible property in Oroville, CA about an hour from here.  Oroville is below the foothills, and as such has a much warmer climate.  This area is the site of major commercial tree fruit and nut production (think Blue Diamond Almonds, or the three crop planes we saw flying over the fields on our way their), so what is really amazing about Chaffin is their completely unconventional, incredibly sustainable production practices.  The property is over 2000 acres (!! this scale of farming is mindblowing for someone from Massachusetts).  The farm does all of this with just 5 staff (at least one of whom is usually out of the fields at markets).  The vast majority of the land is pasture for grazing beef cattle.  There is also significant acreage in olives, most of which were planted over 100 years ago.  The remaining land is a mix of a variety of different fruits including apricots, peaches, nectarines, cherries, figs, citrus and avocado.  In addition to the cattle, Chaffin raises goats and has both broilers and laying hens.  It’s inspiring to see such a diversified operation, but what is so amazing about the farm is how interdependent each component is.  Chaffin has achieved a state of almost zero external inputs applied to the land. The farm could not successfully grow the fruit it does without having the goats and chickens.  Why is that so?  Because the chickens are the primary source of fertility and pest control and the goats are the primary pruners of the trees.  Chaffin practices intensive rotational grazing of livestock, which is a way to use livestock to strategically manage land to maximize soil fertility and maintain desirable vegetation.  Goats are herded into a small section of the orchard where they spend a short amount of time dramatically influencing the land.  Essentially, they are there to eat and poop.  And goats eat just about anything.  Conveniently, their favorites are blackberries and poison oak, two of the most invasive and destructive plants out here.  The goats are fenced in with portable electric fencing and in a matter of a day or so, will have eaten all of the weeds, mowed the grass between trees and removed all of the new shoots from the trees that need to be pruned.  They are incredibly efficient workers.  Chickens follow the goats through the pasture, scratching up the soil, eating bad bugs and adding more  fertility.

The other reason why this farm is so incredibly labor efficient is not because they have animals doing all the work for them, but because of their innovative marketing strategy.  Chaffin sells the vast majority of its fruit through Community Supported Agriculture programs.  Members receive a weekly share of whatever is in season.  Chaffin staff know exactly how much to pick, and have a guaranteed market.  Fruit is not picked all at once, but picked throughout the week to meet specific orders.  Chaffin has teamed up with other area organic vegetables growers to offer their membership the option of a fruit share add-on.  This model is great because it allows Chaffin to serve a wider geographic area without having to search for all of the customers themselves.

As I’m sure you can tell, I was really inspired by this visit and hope to spend more time at Chaffin this summer.  Chris, the young grower who gave us the tour is full of energy and ideas and is a great spokesperson for this kind of farming.  It often feels to me that the current generation of experienced organic growers are the ones who figured out how to grow and successfully market high quality, organic vegetables from small farms and have helped make this kind of farming viable using farmers markets and CSAs.  But I think it will be my generation, the young farmers just getting started, who figure out how to successfully integrate livestock into these small farms – finally closing the system for an even more sustainable kind of growing.  I hope I can be a part of it.

It has been a long while since I’ve written anything here.  I’ve been thinking a whole lot though and am finally sitting down to try and write a bit.  After a late winter trip to visit farms in Andalucia (more on that over here…) I’m settling in to a new season in a very new place.  After three seasons working at Brookwood Community Farm in Milton, MA I made the long journey West and have started work at Riverhill Farm in Nevada City, CA where I’ll be through then end of October.  Nevada City is an old gold mining town, nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.  This is beautiful country.  Riverhill Farm is just as it sounds–a farm on a hill above the roaring Yuba river, with mountains all around.

I arrived at the beginning of April in the midst of a torrential rain storm.  And it just kept raining.  And sometimes it hailed.  And then it usually rained some more.  It rained so much that the fields became waterlogged-far too wet to take the tractor on to prepare for planting.  So we waited.  We built fences and fixed tools and worked in the greenhouse.  And we waited some more.  At the end of May we dared to put some squash plants in the ground.  And the next night the temperatures dipped to 27 degrees.  Back home in Boston it was topping 90.  The squash plants suffered, but seemed to be rebounding until the the stressed plants were hit by a sudden storm of cucumber beetles.  And finally, one week ago, the rain stopped and summer came.  People keep saying it was the rainiest, longest spring they can remember.  I have nothing to compare it to, but it certainly isn’t what I had imagined of California.

At home the CSA started a few weeks ago, with an early spring share of greens, radishes and lettuce.  The peas are coming in.  The weather has been cooperating.  And I have found myself longing for the familiarity of those Brookwood fields.  As the season gets under way here, and it’s really just now getting under way, as we are several weeks behind, I keep finding myself making comparisons to the farming community back in eastern MA. Nevada City is a small town, but one filled with San Francisco transplants, retirees and young people made rich off the ganja boom of Northern CA.  It’s an odd place.  I had thought of CA as the sustainable agriculture mecca–year round growing, Alice Waters following, locavores galore.  But what I have seen more than anything, is that the farming community back in Eastern MA is even stronger and more vibrant than I realized.

Brookwood has a 150 person CSA and a waitlist almost equally as long.  We would refer people to other area CSAs, but they would sell out as well.  At Riverhill, we hustle to fill the 160 shares and find ourselves competing with several area CSA farms for the very same customers.  Much of this has to do with the far smaller size of the population up here.  And that is to be expected.  But I think that there is also an unexpected side-effect to the perception of CA as an agricultural mecca.  Because the overwhelming majority of US grown fruits and vegetables come from CA anyway, customers can feel that they are “buying local” when buying conventional CA produce and there is little sense of seasonal foods.  Strawberry season isn’t a mere three weeks, but lasts for months and months.  Conversely, the backlash to industrial agriculture has led to an incredible provincialism in which farms located 40 minutes down the road are not considered “local” because they are outside county boundaries.  With such little farmland remaining in the northeast, a farm 40 minutes away would be considered a neighbor.  So rather than fostering a sense of community amongst farmers, I feel a sense of competition.  There is no CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training) in which farmers visit other farms bi-weekly throughout the season to learn from each other, share new ideas and techniques.  There is not the sense of common struggle and common opportunity.  I miss feeling a part of a regional movement–feeling like I had colleagues at neighboring farms–a generation of people growing the good food to feed a city.  Maybe after being here longer I will begin to find this community.  But until then, I am incredibly thankful for the years in which I was able to experience that so effortlessly in eastern Massachusetts, and I think about next season back east…

Photo: Lucas Mulder

I’m drowning in carrots these days.  The farming season is just starting up here at Riverhill, which means the vegetable selection is still somewhat slim.  There are a few tasty greens starting to pop up as well as some things that stored or overwintered beautifully.  Carrots are one of the great vegetables that actually become sweeter after being left in the ground through a frost.  So the carrots we continue to pull from the ground, while a little scraggly up top, are beautifully sweet and crunchy below the soil surface.

This dip is one I’ve made for years.  It’s adapted from a recipe that I think originally appeared in the NY Times, but I scribbled it in an old notebook full of recipes and can’t seem to find the original source.  I know I left out a few of the original ingredients and added one of my favorites, pomegranate molasses, which adds a mysterious sweetness to the dish and goes wonderfully with the cumin and spice that round out the dip.  It’s great on pita chips, but we served it the other day on a kalamata ciabatta and it was delicious.  From time to time I’ve served it sprinkled with feta and olives, but it’s beautiful on its own as well, with just a sprinkle of fresh ground pepper on top.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs carrots
• 1 tbsp pomegranate molasses
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp hot chili sauce (such as sriracha)
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Roughly chop carrots and boil in salted water until very tender.  Strain and puree the carrots until smooth with all of the remaining ingredients in a food processor or with an immersion blender.  Serve with bread or pita chips, plain or topped with kalamata olives and feta cheese.

This past week my family celebrated Passover (a few days early) with a flour-free feast and some great company.  Passover remembers the story of the Jew’s fleeing from slavery in Egypt and many progressive Jews view Passover as an opportunity to reflect on current struggles of oppression and liberation.   There is clearly much organizing and agitating to be done around the issue of the abuses carried out against Palestinians by the state of Israel, a place celebrated in the ongoing refrain “next year in Jerusalem” throughout the Passover Seder .  I believe the meal is also a time to think about other struggles for social justice and food justice issues feel particularly appropriate to me given that the holiday is celebrated through a ceremonial meal.  There was quite a bit of chatter on one of the community food security listserves that I’m on about how to incorporate these issues into Passover.  And while I did not do much to talk about them this year, I do think that just making smart, sustainable purchasing decisions is at least a  place to start.  Maybe next year I’ll get a bit more organized to think about other ways to talk about food justice during Passover.  But this year we purchased seasonally appropriate ingredients and chose to serve fish that is farmed inland, where risk of contamination of wild stocks doesn’t exist. It’s a start.

In many ways, Passover is a celebration of Spring and new beginnings.  I’m starting my own new beginning out in California, where I’ll be working at a new farm this season, Riverhill Farm.  It’s a big and scary transition, but I’m looking forward to getting my hands back in the dirt and starting to grow again.

The Ottolenghi cookbook came through for me again and I made several tasty dishes from it including a coriander and mint spiced lamb, a flourless chocolate tart and pistachio and rosewater meringues.  Meringues are one of those tasty treats that just-so-happen to be kosher for passover.  These ones are incredibly easy to make and have a great texture.  Feel free to up the quantity of rosewater if it’s a flavor you really like.  I could barely taste it in the batch I made.

Pistachio and Rosewater Meringues

Ingredients:

• 600g sugar
• 300g egg whites (about 9)
• 2 tsp rosewater
• 75g pistachios, finely chopped

Directions:

Heat oven to 400.  Spread sugar on a baking tray and bake until it begins to dissolve at the edges.  While the sugar is in the oven, put the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer and begin beating on high speed for a minute or two.  When the whites begin to froth and the sugar is ready, add the sugar to the whites with the mixer on.  Add the rosewater and continue whisking until the meringue is cold, holds its shape and is silky, about 10 minutes.  Turn the oven down to 230 degrees.  Line a baking tray with parchment.  Put the pistachios on a plate.  Scoop large spoons of the meringues onto the pistachio plate and roll to cover one side with nuts.  Transfer to the baking sheet and bake for about 2 hours.  When they are done the outside should be completely firm and the center soft.  Remove from the oven and leave to cool.  Meringues will last several days if kept in a cool, dry place.

I’m packed up, moved out, and semi-moved in for a temporary jaunt at my family’s house in New Haven.  I have rediscovered the books that I left on the shelf here last time I was in New Haven.  One of those is Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries.  It’s a beautifully designed book with a simple premise – a near-daily log of Slater’s home cooking from January 1st to December 31st.  It being January 5th, I’m still thinking New Year’s resolutions, fresh starts, new commitments, and am generally ambitious in that first-week-of-the-year kind of way.  I really like Slater’s idea, as much for it’s simplicity as for it’s sense of ritual.  In some ways writing down almost everything that you cook seems somehow easier than writing only about the standout dishes.  This relieves the pressure, allows for the mundane meal but also highlights the excitement of eating seasonally.  Slater explains, that this is “food of the moment – something eaten at a time when it is most appropriate, when the food, the cook and the time of year are at one with each other.”  Exactly the kind of food I love.

So I’m back to eating soup – it hasn’t crept above freezing in days, the nights are still interminably long, and I’m in need of something warming.  Tonight it will be a Mexican Tortilla Soup to re-purpose the roast chicken I found in my parents’ fridge and to remind me of the flavors I was immersed in at this time last year…