Theme: Eco Farm

News from the Farm | January 27, 2025

January 27, 2025

Winter is the season for leafy greens, brassicas, and root vegetables. It’s also the time of year for farmer conferences, seminars, meetings, and other opportunities to meet and gather for educational and social purposes.

This was on display last week: 

On Tuesday, Andrew attended the annual meeting for the Irrigated Lands Program, a state-wide, locally administered program to control runoff from farms. While not particularly interesting and inspiring, it’s a requirement, and sometimes there are important updates about program details.

Then midday on Tuesday was the second installment of the Organic Agriculture Seminar Series for Growers, administered by our local UC Cooperative Extension specialists. Winter is when UC Extension, and other ag support organizations, hold classes and trainings, usually targeted at specific sectors. So far I’ve been able to watch the two seminars, covering soil macrofauna (like worms) and pest management, and I’ve really enjoyed them (including the “bioturbation” videos, like this one).

Then Wednesday through Saturday, a contingent of folks headed to the EcoFarm conference – Dru, Paul, Judith, and Hannah presented, we had a booth at the expo tent, and we attended sessions and keynotes covering a wide range of subjects, from no-till farming and selling to school districts, to the farm bill and decolonizing agriculture. Plus it was an opportunity to catch up with others in the community, including several recent and not-so-recent Full Belly interns, and to meet new people. It’s inspirational and rejuvenating to hear all the exciting work that so many people are doing, and to ponder the many questions that we’re all thinking over, from the scientific to questions about social justice in the food system and farming community.

These slower, darker, and colder times of the year are important for farms and for their farmers. Just as fruit trees need a certain number of chilling hours to break from dormancy and produce flowers that will bear a crop, we need time to slow down and rest, as we did during our winter break, and to absorb new ideas and get excited. It’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day of farming, so these opportunities to gather and meet are so important. And the season isn’t done yet! CAFF has their Small Farm Conference and regional gatherings coming up in about a month.

We don’t just like gathering with other farmers though, we get energy from being with our wider community too. Winter is a time for the farm to rest from visitors and to get ready for a year filled with farm dinners, pizza nights, and more! We’ll be announcing our schedule for spring, summer, and fall events soon! 

If you’re looking for a chance to enjoy the Capay Valley this winter, we encourage you to visit us at the annual Almond Festival on Sunday, February 23 for a day of good local food, music, a silent auction and farmers market. We’ll be at the northernmost part of the Valley in Rumsey. Come join us! 

You can always see us at our weekly farmers markets in Berkeley (Tuesday), San Rafael (Thursday), and Palo Alto (Saturday). It’s still the only place you can access our full variety of fresh and value added products and special highly-seasonal goodies. Beyond that, our markets serve as important spots to talk with our customers about who we are, what we do, and why. Several sessions at EcoFarm emphasized the need for more communication and education about organic farming methods to customers. We understand this and continue to show up at markets because we believe in the difference that in-person interactions make in our quest to build a sustainable local food system. If you’re close to one of our farmers markets but haven’t been yet, or not in a while, we encourage you to make it a goal to stop by this year!

Elaine Swiedler, CSA Manager

News From the Farm | January 27, 2020

January 27, 2020

A group of us were at the Ecological Farming Conference last week and many were involved in presentations on quite a range of subjects — Hannah and Dru Muller were facilitators of a day-long session on Women/Womxn in Food and Agriculture; Paul Muller participated in a series of workshops exploring reduced and targeted tillage as a way to minimize soil disturbance; Hannah Muller described her use of social media to tell the story of her love of flowers and floral arranging; Jenna Muller talked with attendees about the Environmental Mediation Center; and Judith Redmond moderated a panel on issues in national organic policy. Full Belly’s Harvest Manager, Jan Velilla, presented at a workshop posing the somewhat leading question:  “Biodiversity or Sterility: Which Ensures Safe Food?”  Reflections on the past, present and future of organic farming continued throughout, as well as deep discussions about challenges to the integrity of the organic label. African American, American Indian and a Quecha farmer shared their stories. All the Full Belly kids got to enjoy EcoFarm, as well.  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 29, 2018

January 29, 2018

Last week, farmers from Full Belly as well as from several other Capay Valley farms, left their winter farm work behind and got together for the Ecological Farming Association’s (EFA) 38th annual EcoFarm Conference.  With workshops organized around 12 themes (like ‘Soil, Roots, Water’ or ‘Activist, Policy and Community’), there was an impressive line-up of activities to choose from, not to mention old and new friends to walk with on the beach where the waves were crashing so powerfully that they could be heard all over the sprawling grounds.

The conference, which now attracts well over a thousand people from far and wide, has its roots in a small gathering in 1981 in Winters California, 11 years after the first Earth Day and 8 years after several farmers sitting around a kitchen table formed California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF).  Several years later, EFA was founded and Dru Rivers of Full Belly Farm served as an early Executive Director.  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 30, 2017

January 30, 2017

During the rainy season, in those years when there IS rain, there is a constant conversation about soil conditions at Full Belly as the tractor-driving farmers hope for a window, even if only for a day or two, when the soil has dried out enough to plant spring crops. This week, Monday and Tuesday promise to be those days, although the soil is still quite wet if you check a few inches down.  While we may not be able to cultivate out our weeds and lift new beds, we do have lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, kale and fennel transplants that are well-overdue for planting.  We also have beds that are still covered with plastic mulch.  Our plan is to hand-plant into the plastic mulch.  If we are able to get some light machinery into the fields we may try to deal with the weeds and do some additional planting.

Several of us went to the annual Ecological Farming Conference last week, for both education and inspiration — a wonderful gathering of practitioners from many fields.  Co-Owner Paul and a dedicated crew of shepherds stayed home to keep an eye on our herd of mama sheep giving birth to lambs earlier than expected.  As of today we already have 50 baby lambs. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | Week of January 27, 2014

January 27, 2014

There is a significant amount of sand hiding in the cuff of my pants, or rather there was. It is now a lone little dune on the floor of my yurt after I unfolded the cuff while unpacking my bags from the annual Eco-farm conference held every year in Pacific Grove. I was wearing these pants during a rain dance we did on the beach. At the end of the conference a number of us attendees gathered in front of the ocean to ask for rain. Please. Drought being the great equalizer, we dancers came from all different backgrounds; farmers, scientists, sustainable food advocates, farm educators, random passersby, and many others. Dance with us if you can, or sing, or just clap, but please focus on gentle penetrating rain, on the squishy feeling of mud between your toes, on the smell of wet soil, on jumping in a creek on a hot day, on full rivers that allow salmon to race upstream, on whatever brings to mind the feeling of moisture. Wet, juicy thoughts as we reminded ourselves throughout the dancing. 

The workshops available to the eager minds at this conference ranged in topics from irrigation basics to setting up a local food commons. There were discussions on dry farming, how to handle live stock in ways that keep them happy and stress free, and regenerative farming to encourage healthy salmon runs. It was an inspiring amount of information, but for me the most compelling part was the recognized need to farm from a more holistic approach, an undercurrent reminding us to learn and work with the ecology of the farm environment that we are working in to produce good food, and the often unintentional positive side effects that those healthy farm environments have on the larger community.  [Read more…]