Theme: Judith Redmond

News From the Farm | January 16, 2017

January 16, 2017

At this time of year an unusually large number of people join our CSA program for the first time, and that brings our attention around to the fact that getting used to the CSA box is sometimes challenging for new members. Sometimes people ask why they can’t just get one box as a starter, before they decide to commit for a longer term. But we encourage new members to make a commitment of trying at least 4 boxes when they first start, so that they have more of a chance to build a connection with the farm and to try and develop a greater knowledge of cooking ‘out of the box’.

Because there are so many new members right now, this is a good time of year for us to use this newsletter to answer some questions about how the CSA program works.  Here’s an example of one of the questions that we received recently: 

“I have always thought about getting a box but haven’t done it until now. One of the reasons that I would get a weekly box is to be able to get produce that is fresher than what I can get at the store. Can you give me an idea of the length of time between when your vegetables are picked and when they arrive at the drop-off location? I couldn’t find anything about it on on your website.” [Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 9, 2017

January 9, 2017

A note about our ‘Stop Waste’ boxes

Welcome back to Full Belly veggies!  We hope that you had some wonderful meals during our holiday rest.  We are excited to be your fruit and vegetable farmers for 2017.  We appreciate all of you who are continuing members, as well as all of you who are trying out a Full Belly CSA box for the first time.  We have had a lot of rain and some nice cold weather over the last few weeks, so our fields are muddy, slowing down the process of getting your veggies out of the field, to be washed, and packed.  You may notice that the cold weather brings out the sweetness in our greens and carrots.

One of the chores of our winter break every year, is to collect and count our inventory of ‘Stop Waste’ CSA boxes.  For our members who have been with us for awhile, the hard plastic green boxes that we pack your vegetables in, are old friends.  We call them our Stop Waste boxes, because they are an alternative to the ubiquitous waxed cardboard boxes, usually used to pack produce, that go straight to the landfill after use.  But the hard plastic boxes are expensive — we paid $12.25 for each one when we first purchased them in 2013, so we try to encourage all of our members, including those who get home delivered veggies, to make sure that all of the boxes are returned to the farm. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | November 21, 2016

November 21, 2016

Full Belly Farm started offering veggie boxes in 1992 and from the very start the program has had an influence on the farm that was perhaps bigger than might be expected from the number of boxes we pack each week.  Along with the economic relationship, it has created a source of constant feedback about what is working or not working. We can trace changes in the farm directly to comments and suggestions we received from our members — increases in  the diversity of fruits and vegetables that we grow for example. 

Some of our long-time members have always had a fierce desire to support our farm through thick and thin. We remember some of our first “work days” on the farm when small groups of members would arrive with their work boots and gloves, ready to take on whatever we had in store.  Now, faced with too many legal and liability complexities, we have morphed the work days into farm visits and tours, but the sense that we have of ready support and commitment as well as a two-way relationship with our membership hasn’t gone away.

We still have many members who joined the program when it started all of those 24 years ago. The farm now offers a summer camp to CSA members, and some kids tell us that they were raised on Full Belly fruits and veggies from day one, spent many summers at Camp Full Belly, became camp counsellors, and now take on responsibilities volunteering at the Hoes Down Harvest Festival in October every year. These are the kind of long-term relationships between a farm and its community that go deep and mean a lot to us, your farmers.  

In addition to the members for whom the program “works,” and who continue to be a part of the farm, we have, at any point in time, a majority of new members, trying out the CSA program to see if their busy lives can incorporate the challenge of cooking out of the box, sometimes with products that they might not have chosen to buy at the supermarket.  Hoping to make the CSA more accessible, we created our member portal, so that all of our members can create their own accounts, (and soon be able to add-on special orders through those accounts).  Our recipe archive (accessed through the recipe page of our web site) is built around the fruits and vegetables found in the box. Every day we respond to questions and concerns of members unsure how to use a new vegetable.

Each week, when we choose what we will put into the box, we think about and discuss the diversity, quality and value of the CSA box, knowing that our members are putting their trust in us — allowing us to choose.  The whole thing turns the modern food system topsy turvy — in the supermarket vegetable aisle, products from all over the world are on display! In fact just one bag of salad mix from the store almost surely contains greens grown in several different states, and hamburger meat from the meat department probably contains meat from cows that grew up in several different countries! Asking our members to build their meals around the products from one small farm facing the vagaries of our own local climate and weather, is actually a revolutionary concept, put in the context of the global food system.

It is Thanksgiving week, and we are thankful for many things, including the loyalty, flexibility and open-mindedness of our CSA members, both long-term and new-to-us. In this newsletter we are announcing a modest 5% increase in the price of our CSA boxes for 2017.  The last time we increased our prices was five years ago! We will, in future issues, perhaps talk to you about the significant increases in the cost of labor that lead us to make this change in our prices.  We may describe the challenges we face as we try to grow smallish quantities of such a diverse spectrum of fruits and vegetables in a food system focussed only on narrowly defined “efficiencies.” We may tell you about our commitment to soil-building with compost, cover crops, crop rotations, animal grazing and other experiments that we think will increase the flavor and nutrition of your fruits and vegetables.  For now, we hope that our price increase will not present a hardship to any of our members, and we trust that you understand that it is a necessary change.

We wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving week.

—Judith Redmond

New Prices for 2017

Boxes purchased 4 in advance will be $19 per box or $76 for 4 boxes (was $18/box)

Boxes purchased 12 in advance will be $17.50 per box or $210 for 12 boxes (was $16.50/box)

Boxes purchased annually will be $16.50 per box or $792 for 48 boxes (was $16/box)

Our flower season starts in April.  Flower prices will be $8/bouquet for the entire 26-week season, or $8.50/bouquet if you purchase 4 bouquets in advance. In addition, we will be charging sales tax on flowers.  In the past we have backed sales tax out of the price of the flowers after purchase, but we will be doing it the more standard way (adding it on top of the purchase price) from now on.

These prices will go into effect for any renewals starting from December 12th, 2106 forward.  (Remember that the farm is on winter break from December 12th through January 8th.) The last time that Full Belly raised our CSA prices was in 2012!

Thank you.

News From the Farm | October 17, 2016

October 17, 2016

Seasonality is a characteristic of agriculture.  Some seasons are busy, others less so. Busy times mean more employees — and less busy times – well, seasonality in farming is why it has always been hard for farm workers to find year-round steady work. Most people still think of farm workers as migrants, moving from one part of the country to the next, following the harvest as crops mature. For migrant farm workers from time immemorial, there have always been periods of time when work is scarce. This is unlike almost any other profession.  Sure, teachers have traditionally had time off in the summer.  Landscaping and construction are also kind-of seasonal.  But I think not to the extent that is built into the very nature of farming.  Harvest time is fraught with urgency — the crop must be in the barn and out of the rain, or at the processing plant and out of the field, in a short window of time, or it will be lost. All the effort of keeping the crop safe, growing it from a seed to a grain, or from a bud to a fruit, can be for naught, if the harvest fails for one reason or another.  

[Read more…]

News From the Farm | September 19, 2016

September 19, 2016

My husband and I went to a wedding reception last night to celebrate the marriage of Edgar Jacobo and Martha Carrillo.  Edgar is the eldest son of Bonifacio and Maria Joaquina who are both team leaders at our farm.  Bonifacio has worked at Full Belly since 1988 and Joaquina has been here since 1993.  Bonifacio is the youngest of 10 siblings, born and raised in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico.  Like most of his brothers, Bonifacio started working on farms in Mexico when he was 12 years old, usually 7 days a week, saving money so that he could take the bus to school.

Most of Bonifacio’s siblings have also worked at Full Belly from time-to-time, and several of them are working now.  His elder brother Celso is running our cherry tomato crew.  His brother Sergio drives trucks to the city. Their wives also work at the farm.  Their father, Señor Bonifacio worked here, and still comes back every summer, despite our reluctance to see him working, given his many years of service — it’s time for him to enjoy some rest with his extended family!  And it is a large extended family, with many aunts, uncles, cousins and in-laws, so many that we need to draw a family tree to tease it all out. Probably more than 1/3 of our crew is somehow related to the Jacobo family. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | August 29, 2016

August 29, 2016

Why should people buy from local farms, and who cares if there even are any local farms?  These are questions for the dog days of summer, good questions for Californians and for CSA members.

Knowing where your food comes from, having a farm to visit with your family, knowing how your food is grown, getting your fruits and veggies picked at their peak  — these are a few good reasons that come to mind, for buying local. Many people also think that buying from a farmer that you know is good for the local economy.  To find out more, a group at the University of California, in Davis recently completed a research project and determined that for every dollar of sales, Sacramento region direct marketing farmers are generating twice as much economic activity within the region as compared to producers who are not involved in direct marketing.

The researchers were comparing farms that sell direct to the public, with farms that do not sell direct to the public. Direct marketing includes activities like CSA and farmers markets.  While the direct marketers had fewer overall sales, they purchased 89% of their inputs within the local region compared to 45% for farmers not doing direct sales.  One of the most striking differences was that for every one million dollars of output produced by direct market farmers, 31.8 jobs are generated (hired labor is a very high percentage of expenses on direct marketing farms) compared to 10.5 jobs created for every million dollars of output on farms that don’t do direct marketing in the region. Here’s a link to the just-published study. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | August 22, 2016

August 22, 2016

Recently one of our members wrote to us saying, “I only know the names of Cantaloupe, Honeydew and Watermelon.  We get SO MANY MORE than that. I would really like to know more about them.”

Full Belly doesn’t grow the standard cantaloupe.  We are focussed more on specialty melons. For example, in terms of orange-fleshed melons, some of our varieties are Goddess (a lot like the better-known Ambrosia), Charentais (a French, wonderfully aromatic cantaloupe with smooth skin), Honeyloupe (a cross between Honeydew and Cantaloupe) and San Juan (a bit larger than the others, football-shaped.) Some of these melons are “netted” – with rough skin (Goddess and San Juan) and others are smooth-skinned (Charentais and Honeyloupe). [Read more…]

News From the Farm | August 15, 2016

August 15, 2016

I hope that a few photos of farm activities will give CSA members a sense of being just a little bit closer to where your fruits and veggies are coming from.  These are nothing too fancy, just simple photo-snaps taken with phone cameras by various Full Bellies as we do our work.

crew lunchSeveral times a year, Jenna and Amon and several other farm chefs put together a “crew lunch” so that we can all have a sit-down time together.  The lunch usually features Full Belly-grown products. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | August 8, 2016

August 8, 2016

One of the questions frequently asked by visitors to Full Belly Farm is how the farmers ever chose to go into farming.  The question makes sense because there aren’t a lot of farmers in the U.S. (less than 2% of the population), and the best way to learn to farm is through the experience of growing up on a farm, or working on a farm. In fact, four of the kids that were born and grew up on Full Belly Farm have decided to stay and farm here – carrying on a tradition that goes back in time for many generations on their father’s side.

I didn’t grow up on a farm, but I did grow a lot of vegetables when I was young, and much of the inspiration for my vegetable gardens came from my English grandfather, who grew food for his family in Birmingham England, in the allotments that were conceived as a way for needy families to grow their own food.  The English allotments were a lot like community gardens that some towns here in the U.S. have – or even more like the Victory Gardens that we have had in the U.S. in the past to increase food production in wartime. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | July 11, 2016

July 11, 2016

Hard at work for several years, regulators at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have been writing rules and regulations that some say are the most sweeping reform of our ‘food safety’ laws in 100 years. ‘Food Safety’ in this context refers to prevention of food borne illnesses, and the Produce Rule (finalized in 2015) sets on-farm standards that will apply to all farms growing fruits and vegetables.

Many farm-based organizations like National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and California’s Community Alliance with Family Farmers, mobilized volunteer and community leaders to advocate standards that were realistic on the ground and consistent with principals of sustainability.  These groups argued that there was too much focus on keeping wildlife off of the farm; too great an effort to eliminate the use of animal-based soil fertility (like compost); and unrealistic requirements to document every detail of vegetable production. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | June 27, 2016

June 27, 2016

We know that many of you are wondering where the tomatoes are and why you are “still getting beets and cabbage in your boxes.”  We also note that some of our members are happy to continue getting something green for awhile, like a cabbage…   As one of our members commented, “every single selection is someone’s favorite or someone’s least favorite.”  Even though the CSA boxes sometimes have the same vegetables in them for a few weeks, taken as a whole, the variety of fruits and vegetables in the boxes from season to season results in a remarkably diverse cuisine, providing healthy inspiration to your creativity and ingenuity in the kitchen.

June is always a month when the CSA boxes reflect a transition from cool weather crops to summer crops. You can follow that transition from afar… In June, the summer crops are growing so fast that you can see changes from day to day, but on the other hand, the spring crops are slowing down and starting to be a little peaked. By the end of June, the greens are long gone and the first ripe tomatoes and melons can be found if one goes on a determined search from one end of the row to the other.  By July, the yield of tomatoes is growing exponentially, from one or two cherry tomatoes, to a few boxes that go to farmers markets, to enough that we could literally fill your kitchen with them, multicolored and vibrating with summer heat and energy. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | May 30, 2016

May 30, 2016

What’s happening at Full Belly Farm, as June and the official beginning of Summer approach? A morning’s walk around the farm reveal a patchwork of activities, just like the patchwork of fields — all getting sewn together to form the season’s quilt.  Young tomatoes, corn and melons in clean fields, as yet untouched by the onslaught of daily harvests. A crew pounding stakes into the ground, preparing to trellis the growing tomatoes.  Netted fence that has been put up around the orchards to protect the ripening fruit from hungry deer. Onions in burlap bags sitting in the beds, curing. Trucks, forklifts, backhoes and tractors, all at work on various projects.  We’re expecting some hot weather in the next few weeks, so the pace is likely to kick into even higher gear very soon.

GarlicHarvest

Yesenia Gaxiola Vega, Wendy Arita Paz, and Maria Machado Castro harvesting garlic. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | May 16, 2016

May 16, 2016

We recently had a visit from researchers from Washington State University on a project to understand the effect that farm landscapes have on bird diversity. While we love all the birds that live around Full Belly Farm, we often have to work hard to protect our fruit from them. So we have a bit of a dual relationship with the birds and we are always interested in learning more about them.

We have excerpted below from notes provided by the researchers after a few hours of studying the Full Belly birds:

“The bird surveys were very interesting. We detected 47 unique species after sampling 15 points throughout the farm and stratifying the points by habitat type (orchard, livestock, vegetables, creek, etc.) This is the highest number of unique species on the farms we’ve sampled so far. Your farm had far more landscape heterogeneity than other farms. Landscape heterogeneity is known to be important in attracting some species of birds. You’ve also got great habitat for the birds throughout, with thick vegetation located at different heights (ground level for ground foragers, shrubs for edge associated species, thick groups of tall trees for forest species, the creek for marsh birds).  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | April 4, 2016

April 4, 2016

Last summer it seemed like we were short-handed a lot of days.  There were crops we just never got to picking, fields that we had to abandon for lack of care, and weeds that marched along as if to take over the farm.  That isn’t to say that a whole lot of wonderful fruits and vegetables didn’t get picked and eaten— it just seemed like the farm was running ragged at the edges a lot of the time. A lot of days it seemed as if a triage process was taking place, with a jostle of many tasks requiring attention, and a good number of people demanding priority for the activities that they thought were the most important, overlaid on a reality in which only the most urgent activities got anywhere near done.   

Actually, there’s a time like that every year, when everyone on the farm is moving fast, focussed on an immediate task and timeline. There are around 5 months of the year when we plan for ‘all hands on deck’… These are the months when the harvest dominates every day.  Each member of our crew plays a critical part in the choreography of harvesting, packing, truck loading and dozens of other activities, each of which is critical to the success of the whole endeavor.  We are a business in which no detail is small, the effort of each person has consequence, and we are all striving for a balance and equilibrium when Mother Nature and farm reality will synch up in harmony. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | February 29, 2016

February 29, 2016

“If we want farmers to help us produce clean water and clean air and quality soil and recreational areas that all of us can enjoy, farmers can produce all those things, but we have to create both the market system and the public policies to be serious about those things with farmers and to provide them with the kinds of incentives and compensations that enable them to be able to produce those services.” This thought was expressed by Fred Kirschenmann of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in 2004. But truth be told, developing the public policies that yield results has proved difficult, for example in the case of pollutants in surface and groundwater – things like pesticides and nitrates from fertilizers  – that are used by farmers, flow off of their fields in storms or irrigation runoff, and end up in drinking water. Why have decades of federal and state programs to address this problem never hit the mark?

The state and federal governments have tried various regulatory approaches – one current California version is called the Irrigated Lands Program, with 6 million acres of California farmland and 40,000 growers enrolled. Vast amounts of money (much of it in payments to the program by farmers) have been spent testing water all over the state, with mountains of data piling up over the years to show that chemicals used on agricultural fields are still finding their way into our water supply.  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 25, 2016

January 25, 2016

We know that CSA members have lots of choices when they decide where to get their fruits and vegetables. Not only are there lots of stores that carry organic produce, but there are lots of CSAs and CSA-type services to choose from: Companies that will do your shopping for you; web sites that offer home delivery of tasty local treats; and produce boxes that can be customized in every which way. 

Your Full Belly box is filled with produce that comes from our farm and nowhere else. We used to get winter oranges from a neighbor, but now we have our own orange orchard and for years, we have grown everything that we put in the box. So those of you that get a weekly box for a whole year may really have a special perspective on what it means to “eat local,” you have a sense of how the seasons affect the harvest, and you have a direct, visceral relationship with Full Belly.

[Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 11, 2016

January 11, 2016

The white trunk of our huge fig tree seems almost luminescent in the early morning fog, with all the leaves dropped and the figs a sweet memory.  We harvested a lot of Black Mission Figs and even fig leaves for restaurants from this garden tree. Below near the banks of Cache Creek, a few pigs of various ages are rooting around in the mud while pregnant mom and dad, sleep on straw above.

[Read more…]

News From the Farm | November 2, 2015

November 2, 2015

What is happening at this time of year in Full Belly Farm’s fields? Our CSA boxes give a hint of changes, containing cool weather greens alongside the last of summer’s harvest. Does the change in season bring a change in rhythm to the farm?  We still have a big crew working every day, and one person who can answer these questions and who is very important in organizing the day’s work, is Juan Jacobo Berrelleza, known to us all as Pancho. 

Pancho lives a few miles up the road from the farm with his wife Nina, and two kids Joel (16) and Julia (12). He has worked at Full Belly since 1992 when he was 18, with only a short break for several years when he farmed with relatives. 

I asked Pancho to talk with me about his work so that I could share some of his story with our CSA members. He was a bit reluctant to take time away from a long list of things that he was hoping to get done. This interview wasn’t on the morning’s list. After talking with him, I understood that he carries in his head, knowledge of all of Full Belly’s equipment, the crews, the fields and their condition, and a timeline of what needs to be finished in the window allowed by our climate and cropping plans. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | October 5, 2015

October 5, 2015

Hoes Down Festival Fun!

Our Hoes Down has come and gone — but it left some magical memories.  Adventures and fun filled the day. One of the most memorable moments will go down in the history books. It occurred when the heavens opened up with a downpour that sent a few folks running for cover while the farmers jumped for joy. Our sound man ripped out the electrical connections and moved his crew on-stage to clear off his equipment and get it out of the rain.  The band on stage was The Dixie Giants.  When they lost their sound system, they gazed at the heavens and took a deep breath. Stepping off the stage, they were engulfed by the crowd where they continued their Dixie magic, leading the crowd on a short meander. Finding a tent that they could fit under, they continued to play their amazing music to a crowd of ecstatic, hollering fans.  Within 5 minutes, the rain had stopped and with a diminished sound system the next band was soon able to play, but not before the Dixie Giants finished their set with inspiring acoustic music that set the crowd afire. Lightning had been lighting up the sky for some time, and it continued for hours. In the campsite no one took their eyes off it and everyone lined up in their lawn chairs to enjoy the beautiful light show, something that few native Californians have ever seen before in their home state. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | August 31, 2015

August 31, 2015

My sister recently asked me to participate in a project to get writers, scientists and artists to write letters to their children’s children, telling future members of their own family living at the turn of the century, what it was like to be alive during and after the historically crucial events of the U.N. climate talks in Paris at the end of 2015.  The project is a national effort of alternative weekly newspapers that will connect with millions of readers.

[Read more…]
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