Theme: Judith Redmond

News From the Farm | September 3, 2018

September 3, 2018

The Weekend-That-Would-Have-Been

Right about this time in past years, our readers would probably have been rolling their eyes at yet another message from Full Belly Farm about our Hoes Down Harvest Festival. This year, not a peep, right?

There have been 30 Hoes Down Harvest Festivals at Full Belly Farm over the years, but there will not be one this year. They are usually held on the first weekend in October, so we’re calling October 6th and 7th the “would-have-been” weekend.

There are multiple reasons why we are taking a break, all summed up in the collective commitment of the distinguished Hoes Down Steering Committee to re-envision this wonderful event. To quite a number of our friends who have told us that the Hoes Down is their favorite day of the year, and that their kids are going on hunger strikes, we answer that we are excited to bring back an even more magical, educational and meaningful Festival in future, but we must warn you that it may be different! [Read more…]

News From the Farm | August 27, 2018

August 27, 2018

Paul and Ben found a Praying Mantis — see how it is preparing to pray?

Hedgerows –

About 30 years ago, we planted our first line of native shrubs and trees along the boundary of one of the southernmost fields at Full Belly Farm. For awhile, we planted a new hedgerow every couple of years, and maintained them during the year, making sure that the young plants had gotten established and that when something died, we filled in the gaps. Now we do very little to maintain the hedgerows and we haven’t planted a new one in years. There are some gaps along the hedges, and some non-native plants have made their way in, but the oaks and elderberry trees in some of the oldest hedgerows are 50-feet tall and the manzanitas and redbuds have filled out nicely. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | August 20, 2018

August 20, 2018

Photo by Diane Rothery Photography.

We recently received a certified letter from the Central Valley Water Board, an agency striving “To preserve, enhance, and restore the quality of California’s water resources…” The Letter states that Full Belly Farm is in violation of the Confined Animals Regulatory Program! Since Full Belly has no confined animals, we had to do some investigation and in a hurry too, because the letter was full of legal Directives and allusions to fines. “Please read this letter carefully” is the first thing it said, and we did!

Our Full Belly Farm egg-laying-hen program is actually something to brag about. We have 3 to 4 groups of hens at any one time, with about 200 layers in each group. They stay in paddocks that are about 25,600 square feet in size. The hens have a movable structure to roost in at night, and every 4 or 5 days, when they’ve eaten the bugs and seeds in their paddock they get to move to a completely new site. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | August 6, 2018

August 6, 2018

Wildlife:

Last Friday, someone found a young barn owl dead on the ground in the walnut orchard. Maybe it was one of the young owls that we had been watching in their first flights from the upstairs porch at Amon and Jenna’s house. These baby owls hatched out last spring in a cubby above the porch and the family made it their home, creating a litter on the floor of their droppings, to such an extent that it was difficult to walk out and watch them without stepping on their pellets. Standing on the porch, we would look up at them, and they would line up and look down at us. We know that most barn owls die young – 70% in their first year – so the babies and their parents have been a source of great delight as we watched and worried over them. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | July 23, 2018

July 23, 2018

The consistently triple digit temperatures for the last two weeks have been stressful for our crews who know that every day counts in terms of getting fruit out of the field in good shape. If we miss a day of picking, the quality can go downhill, but a lot of these afternoons are just too hot to pick in. Some of the fields are not only hot, but also very humid because the lines of plants are close together and the plants are transpiring continuously.

This is our full-on harvest season, with each day a “big” day, so that almost first thing in the morning, planned and necessary projects are triaged in order to get the orders filled. Tremendous quantities of beautiful fruits and vegetables are picked every day from very hot fields. Then they are brought into our packing shed, cooled down and boxed up for stores, restaurants, wholesale distributors and of course our CSA members. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | July 16, 2018

July 16, 2018

Years ago I had the opportunity to learn something about farming in California’s Central Valley, specifically, a little bit about water politics and policy. I was poking around in Water Districts and County government offices of Kern, Fresno and Kings counties, looking at documents that allowed me to map farm land ownership, and overlay that with data about who was actually farming the land. Many times the farmer is not the owner of the farm land and a number of large “operating” companies manage large tracts of land in the Central Valley.

The location of farms in California is described in many official documents, using townships (a 6-mile square) and sections (1-square mile or 640-acres), a logical surveying system created in 1785 when the US government was dividing up and selling off land where tribes of American Indians had lived for centuries. Most of California’s Mexican Land Grants weren’t easily described by the rectangular system, but it’s use continues today. This system of surveying land was supposedly first proposed by Thomas Jefferson and associated with his philosophy of the ‘family farmer’ as the rightful settler of the young country. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | July 9, 2018

July 9, 2018

“We have seen unprecedented rates of spread and unusually erratic and dangerous behavior in fires over the last 5 years,” said Section Chief Brenton, a 31-year Cal Fire veteran, at a community meeting in Guinda last week.

As I write this, Cal Fire is still working to contain the northern edge of the fire (west of Full Belly Farm). The farm is in no danger, as we are across the highway from the fire, but we continue to see flames and smoke, mostly from a planned back-burn that was started last night. The amazing water-tanker-helicopters are still at work, roaring low right over the farm to hover over Cache Creek while sucking up water. We watch as they circle back to the fire and we can sometimes see a sheet of water falling from the belly of the helicopter. In one 14-hour period, 20 helicopters dropped 640,000 gallons of water on the fire, but it kept burning. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | July 2, 2018

July 2, 2018

The County fire started just a little bit after 2:00pm on Saturday afternoon just down the highway from Full Belly Farm, and within 30 hours had spread to more than 44 thousand acres. It was mesmerizing to watch the flames and the dramatic drops of water and fire suppressants as the fire moved erratically, following the wind.

Planes and helicopters circled around the smoke, looking very tiny next to the massive, billowing clouds and black plumes that jumped from one hot spot to another. From the highway we watched many dozens of busloads full of fire-fighters from neighboring counties, on their way to make fire breaks by hand in the incredibly hot, smoky, hilly terrain. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | June 25, 2018

June 25, 2018

The new Full Belly ‘solar-powered’ 12.5 acre orchard of almonds, persimmons and pomegranates was mentioned in an earlier newsletter and we’re still just as excited about it as we were 6-months ago when we first turned it on. This week, power and electricity are on our minds because we went without power for 10-hours on Sunday/Monday after a car hit an electric pole, and we are preparing for a “planned” power outage on Tuesday while PG&E does some maintenance work. The unplanned power outages happen fairly regularly. Our power comes in one line up the Valley and when a car hits an electric pole, the entire Valley goes without power until it can be fixed. If the power poles were underground, the long-term maintenance savings would be significant. The “planned” power outages also happen fairly regularly, often during the hottest weather. All of the outages are very inconvenient because our water pumps are mostly electrical, so we have no water, no internet and no power to keep our vegetables cold. Full Belly has invested in several generators that are used for some of our remote pumps, but which we move into emergency service during power outages. It is at times like these that we think about getting solar power that is not tied into the grid. We first became interested in solar because of the environmental benefits and long-term cost savings, but more and more we wish that we could invest in systems like the one in our almond orchard. Our friends at Sustainable Technologies, who designed and built the system, recently wrote the following description, providing additional details: [Read more…]

News From the Farm | June 18, 2018

June 18, 2018

Water that is safe to drink, straight from the kitchen tap is more of a luxury than we realize — There are many places around the world where access to safe drinking water is either non-existent, or only available for a high price. When Californians visit Mexico, we all grab the bottled water and if we stay with friends or go to restaurants, we hesitate before eating fresh vegetables in case they might have been washed with dirty water.

But wait! Did you know that 6 million of your fellow Californians are also forced to drink out of plastic bottles? Not because they prefer the taste, but because the water in their communities is in violation of health standards. Most of the problem water is in the Central Valley and Central Coast regions, where the State Water Resources Control Board says that contaminated water is “ubiquitous”. These are highly productive agricultural regions and also happen to be the home of 80% of California’s 1.8 million adult cows… [Read more…]

News From the Farm | June 11, 2018

June 11, 2018

We are on the cusp of an explosion — but you, our CSA members, might never know it from the boxes. The only hints are the summer squash and the arrival of basil. Every year, right around this time, there is a sense of expectation as the tomatoes flower and start to set fruit, the onion and garlic crops are harvested, and we check the progress of the first melons starting to swell and sweeten on their vines. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | May 28, 2018

May 28, 2018

Full Belly Farm employs a year-round, stable crew of around 60 people. They work in the field, in the packing shed, in the office and some people work a little bit of everywhere. It has long been our goal to keep as many of our crew members as possible working all year round, even though the amount of work required to keep the farm ship-shape varies tremendously from season to season.

In order to keep people employed year round, we dry flowers in the spring and summer, and the flower crew makes wreaths in the winter. We grow crops year-round and our CSA members sign up for veggie boxes, helping us to keep our harvest crews working in the winter. We work on all kinds of construction and clean-up projects during the winter and even shorten the work-days and the work week, which makes it lean but workable for our core crew members. But this core crew that works year round is never able to keep up with all of the work it takes during the busy summer and fall. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | May 21, 2018

May 21, 2018

Sometimes we know that our members get way too many emails, and our weekly newsletter is just one more added to the pile. This week News From the Farm takes the form of photographs that we hope bring you closer to the food we grow for you and the community that keeps the farm healthy and sustainable. Andrew snapped these photos all around the Farm during his busy week.

One of the photos is of Full Belly owner Dru and our Harvest Manager Jan planting flowers. Dru is on the tractor, which spaces the seeds both linearly in three rows along the bed, and at a specified depth under the soil. Jan is checking the depth and will make fine-tune adjustments as needed. [Read more…]

A Week of Meals From the CSA Box

May 14, 2018

I get my box on Wednesday. It travels on Antonio’s truck to the East Bay and then arrives back at the Full Belly office for me to take home at the end of the day. We call it a “quality control” box.

When my husband and I are home, we usually build a meal around the vegetables that we get in the box. I often remember Farmers Market conversations with people figuring out the challenge of pulling together a quick meal from their CSA box at the end of working days. Here are the meals that we built around vegetables from last week’s box in our kitchen.

Wednesday: Bok choi, and green garlic sautéed with a little bit of sesame oil, served over pasta with toasted Full Belly sesame seeds.

Thursday morning: strawberry smoothie (see veggie tips)

Friday: Slowly sautéed chard over pasta, using both the stems and the leaves. I started with 3 slices of our Full Belly bacon, removing them from the pan when they were done. Next a diced fresh onion and a stem of minced garlic went into the bacon fat. Next the chopped-up chard stems and finally a bit of pasta water to make the sauce.

Saturday: Potato Latkes

Mothers’ Day brunch: Salad using the lettuce and Fennel Slaw

The only things left were a bit of lettuce for our tacos, and the beet leaves!

News From the Farm | April 30, 2018

April 30, 2018

Spring is a wonderful time in the Capay Valley… if you have time to enjoy it. Energy rises — from all the orchards with baby fruit hinting of future sweetness… to the baby chicks protected in their nursery… to the flowers in bloom at every turn. Mild weather, blue sky with puffy white clouds, and a farm full of plans, projects and expectations.

We have been transplanting seedlings into the ground on an almost daily basis — crops that our CSA members may see later in their boxes. We have been mowing and cleaning up edges to try and tame the grasses that have already gone to seed everywhere. We have removed protective covers from several plantings of tomatoes and been astonished at how much the plants have jumped since we put them in the ground and covered them up to protect them from cold. We have said goodbye to the 2018 crop of asparagus and hello to our new potatoes. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | April 23, 2018

April 23, 2018

Many of you may have heard about the outbreak of disease related to romaine lettuce that has been traced to processing plants in Arizona. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning people not to eat any form of romaine lettuce grown in the Yuma, Arizona area. Since the origin of greens, especially those that are pre-washed and bagged, is not easily identified, the CDC adds helpfully that you should throw out any romaine lettuce you might have if you don’t know where it came from. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | March 5, 2018

March 5, 2018

Open Farm Day Saturday March 24

Full Belly Farm Open Farm Day is coming up soon on Saturday March 24th. It is likely to be a beautiful Spring day, perfect for an outing to the country. It is your opportunity to enjoy the lovely flowers growing in our farm fields, visit our lambs, take a tour of the farm, and picnic on pizza from our wood-fired oven.

A visit to your local family farm is a way to get back in touch with where your food is coming from. Maybe you will figure out something more about the people who are growing the cabbage, potatoes and collards that you get every week in your CSA box. Or maybe you will enjoy the opportunity to smell a handful of the soil at Full Belly — soil that has been managed organically since 1985. Maybe you will just want to bring a friend and picnic on the green lawn in the Spring sun, a time to get away from city sounds. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | February 19, 2018

February 19, 2018

What was most notable about the farm this last week was how a series of gently warm afternoons created just sufficient enough enticement to inspire many plants and crops into an explosion of blooms and young leaves. The nights and mornings were cold, which meant cold fingers in the packing shed when the first of the day’s harvested crops arrived to be rinsed and packed. But by early afternoon the days were warm, and the blessings of life were impossible to ignore in this beautiful Valley.

At this time of year many of our fields are growing cover crops. These are crops that we grow to feed the soil — we don’t harvest them for sale. Cover crop roots harvest deep nutrients and bring them to the surface for future crops. Cover crop leaves harvest nitrogen from the air. When turned back to the soil these crops build organic matter and feed microbial life, and those microbes in turn play a miraculous part in feeding the crop roots that follow in our fields.

[Read more…]

News From the Farm | February 5, 2018

February 5, 2018

What did the CSA member have to eat for dinner?

No, this is not the first line of a joke — “What did the CSA member have to eat for dinner… I don’t know, what? Cabbage, Squash and Arugula of course…” No, this is our annual report on how we fed our members last year, and it shows that members had a healthy dose of variety and nutrition!

Here are the top ten items that were in the 2017 Full Belly CSA Box:

Greens (Chard, Kale, Asian Greens, Collards, Arugula)

Fruit (Oranges, Grapes, Pomegranates, Peaches, Pears, Plums, Apricots, Figs and Strawberries)

Carrots

Potatoes

Winter Squash (Butternut, Delicata, Kabocha, Red Kuri, Acorn, Honeynut, Spahghetti, Sweet Dumpling)

Salad Mix and Lettuce

Melons

Beets

Tomatoes and Cherry Tomatoes

Cabbage (green, Napa, red and Savoy) [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…]

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