Theme: Paul Muller

News From the Farm | February 20, 2017

February 20, 2017

Rain in buckets; a raging tumultuous Cache Creek; soggy broccoli that is beginning to crown rot; soaked, matted sheep; croplands that fill, drain and fill again; saturated fields gasping for air; slogging vegetables picked and packed out of long muddy furrows; wiping saturated soil off of every carrot picked; rain this Monday morning with 2-3 inches more predicted this week… We are in the middle of a ‘100 year event’ with repeated atmospheric rivers overhead ending a 7-year drought in California.

Folks have been inquiring about how we are doing here on the farm and for the most part we are doing fine. Cache Creek, our unstable neighbor to the east has been churning with more water trucking by than we’ve seen in recent memory. It is a brown torrent contributing to a deepening inland sea that is swamping the Sacramento River basin. The Yolo Causeway, protecting Sacramento from flooding, is running full with the water and sediment collected from thousands of tributaries that are running brown and swift.  The farmland underneath this sea benefits from much of the silt and clay that is passing our farm in Cache Creek. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 23, 2017

January 23, 2017

The sun has broken through this Sunday afternoon after a powerful storm blasted through the valley at about 3:00 this morning. We have had our world soaked and saturated with rainfall that started around the first of the year and has scarcely let up. Cache Creek, the river that we use for summer irrigation and swimming, will peak today at 14,000 cubic feet per second. The high this year has been 25,000 cubic feet per second—a raging brown torrent.  To date compared to last year, Clear Lake and Indian Valley Reservoir have 175,000 acre-feet of increased water storage. This is water that will be saved and released for summer irrigation. 

The farm is high, yet hardly dry, and looking forward to a few days of sunshine. We have a full crew that has been slogging boxes out of the fields. They work rain or shine—mostly in rain this month. Our stalwart crew has been picking carrots or potatoes in flat-out downpours and need some time to wring out. So far this year we have been Wringing in 2017! [Read more…]

News From the Farm | December 5, 2016

December 5, 2016

About 32 years ago, we started farming the fields that make up Full Belly Farm. In each of those 32 fall seasons, we have taken time to reflect a bit on the year past and think about ways to tweak our program so that we can do better in raising the quality of the food that we are sending to you – our farm supporters.

2016 was indeed an eventful year… There may be too many moments lived where summary doesn’t do them justice – but of course we can try.

We celebrated Rye and Becca’s beautiful wedding under the deep shade of our walnut orchard; introduced some young full bellies into this life – Hazel, Clementine and Waylon; sent Ellis off to the University of Wyoming; purchased land adjoining the farm which we had been farming for years; held farm dinners; made pickles and olives and bouquets; hosted guests from around the globe; became an overnight camp for big-eyed third graders and chaperones; saw our truck driver, Pancho receive a new kidney and return to work 6 months later; planted trees, cover crops, sheep, cow and chicken feeds, new asparagus; and managed to get through it all with but a few bumps and bruises. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | October 31, 2016

October 31, 2016

We have been enjoying rain and the forecast for unsettled weather has created a marked difference to the start of this fall rainy season compared to the past 5 years when there was no fall rainy season. We have surpassed 3 inches here, creating a hue of soft green emerging from the straw-yellow hills. All edges have come alive as warm temperatures double plant growth in a great start to Fall.

Fall work includes tomato fields to clean up, cover crops to plant, hoeing and cultivation of our greens and winter crops, hard squash in the fields to be picked up, pruning, early grasses to till in ahead of November grain planting, and repairs to equipment that is limping toward the year-end finish line.

This rain is a blessing that requires a bit of adjustment on our part. The more that it rains, the more the calculus changes. Little or no rain means that we adjust with pumped water, providing the moisture needed to grow crops. A lot of rain creates muddy fields where the crops that we harvest are carried to the edges. Picking slows down, tractors stop and raingear-clad crews carry 5 lbs of mud on each boot.  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | September 5, 2016

September 5, 2016

It is hard for organic growers to practice sustainable agriculture without advocating better pay for farm workers. The overtime bill (AB1066) currently on the Governor’s desk would mean a pay increase for our workers.  Instead of the current practice of paying overtime after 10 hours, we would pay overtime after 8 hours in the day or 40 hours in the week.

During the busy season, we work 6 days a week and 10-hours a day because things ripen 7 days a week and all day long.  Adding the increased overtime pay to the increase in minimum wage to $15/hour starting in 2017, plus health insurance and its rising bite on our budget, plus labor scarcity – and we see that our model of labor-intensive organic farming is perhaps not sustainable. The added expense of these changes will increase our current labor budget by over 35% annually. Different farmers may react differently. Some will cut hours for their crews, and some will create different 6-hour shifts to fill the days work – which could actually harm fieldworkers, who rely on the long hours of summer when the bulk of their annual income is earned. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | July 25, 2016

July 25, 2016

We will start this Beet article with the cooing of the morning doves that at dawn begin their amorous calls to one another in a repetition of cadence and tone – 3 soft notes repeated 3 or 5 times, and then answered by another and another. A day break song welcoming the promise of another morning – softly, thankfully.

They begin the energy of awakening, as each moment of the change from dark to grey to sunrise is marked by another voice in the chorus.  Finches, sparrows, hawks and mockingbirds all add their calls to the day in a progression that is millenniums in the making and shall be so in the coming ages. A song beyond our time, from before our time – a gift given for the appreciation of the listener.  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | June 13, 2016

June 13, 2016

The weekend has nearly run out on me – 9pm on Sunday evening and a Beet is due by tomorrow morning at 6am. There is simply a lot to report in the short space of a few paragraphs… The farm update: Spring is done and Summer has arrived. Our early peaches, though small, have been pretty tasty. We have run through the first four varieties with another 12 or so to go. The Royal Blenheim apricots are a couple of weeks early so you should see them in your boxes – at least this week. We have Santa Rosa plums, basil, beans, the first sweet corn is ripening, summer squash, goddess and orchid melons – all so early, and, the crème de la crème, the first pick of cherry tomatoes. It is getting too hot for the collards, kale, chards, lettuces, broccoli, cabbage and carrots. Spring has sprung out of here and summer is upon us. 

We have the ongoing tasks of preparing ground for late summer plantings – last tomatoes, summer cover crops, flowers, winter squash, leeks, celery root, and the final melons will go in the ground until the first of July. Planting will then take a break for a month as we focus on harvest. Indeed, we often have so much to do during the summer months that we are challenged to get it all picked, sold, packed and shipped. It is a period when the farm earns about 40% of our annual income as all of the springtime work of planting crops shifts to the harvest. This season it seems that things are a couple of weeks early so we are shifting to a yet higher gear to bring it all in.  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | May 2, 2016

May 2, 2016

We were caught between a high and a low-pressure system that created powerful winds this weekend. The 30 mph winds cracked limbs and sucked the green from hillsides, grasses and young plants. The crew worked half a day on Saturday and headed home, appreciative of a reprieve from the relentless energy of the wind.

Dru and I had headed off early that Saturday morning to market in Palo Alto. The farm has been present there every Saturday for more than 30 years. At 3:30 am we were driving down highway 16, dodging downed limbs and being buffeted by the wind. Dru was on tenterhooks, worried about what the wind would do to her flowers in the week preceding Mothers Day — it seemed best to leave the farm and not feel the pulses of damage, than to hang around and watch it happen. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | March 28, 2016

March 28, 2016

Much of the rich diversity and prosperity of California’s remarkable agricultural landscape came from the efforts of immigrants. Men and women settlers who came, occupied a landscape that was incredibly rich in an abundance of resources—cheap land, deep fertility of remarkable soils, abundant water, a sparsely settled landscape, along with oil, gold, fish, timber and rich grasslands. They undertook a vast harvest of timeless wealth with the energy of new converts to a religion of abundance. Hard work enabled so much harvest.

My father was one such immigrant, as were my mother’s parents, emigrating from Switzerland to California where opportunities seemed limitless. My father immigrated after the war and first worked in the Redwood forests of Northern California, felling what he called ‘beautiful giants’.  He and my mother went on to establish a successful dairy in part of “the Valley of the Hearts Delight” – the Santa Clara Valley – now Silicon Valley. The cows left as the silicon moved in… By 1968 most of the cows were gone and the fabric of the native landscape torn and forgotten.  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | February 15, 2016

February 15, 2016

It may be time for your seasonal check-in here at Full Belly. It is always fun to inform you of the day-to-day processes of farming. As you open your box each week to see what the farm is providing, the produce reflects work done and decisions made 90 to 120 days ago. We are busy this week transplanting and planting for spring boxes. The break from a wet January has us in all of the fields, tilling in weeds and some of our cover crops while we set up our work and harvest schedule for the spring.

This past week we were watering flowers, onions, and our new lettuce and broccoli transplants.  We are starting to water things like our strawberries, carrots, garlic, peas, broccoli, greens and lettuces planted last November. The produce that you are receiving in your boxes was generally planted as seed last November. Growing slowly in the late fall and cold winter it gathers strength as the days lengthen and average temperatures warm up. We do gamble a bit as we plant in the fall. There have been colder years in the past when December temperatures have all but freeze-killed even our hardiest crops and the months of January and February have ended up being pretty bleak. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 18, 2016

January 18, 2016

The gentle rains of the past two weeks soaked deeply and filled the soil of our farm as if it were a 400-acre vessel. The soil itself is probably the most under-appreciated reservoir in the water cycle. We often think of water in terms of ‘blue water’, or stored water – rivers, reservoirs, groundwater or lakes that can be tapped for irrigation and drinking through California’s long dry summers.

The under-appreciated part of the water cycle is sometimes called the ‘green water cycle’ of infiltration, evaporation, transpiration, plant-water efficiency, and the micro cycle of water that is dew or fog capture by growing plants and trees covering the soil surface.

[Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 4, 2016

January 4, 2016

New Year Resolutions

Ahh… January. The time to reflect on the past year and think about what we want to do differently or better next year. Here are some resolutions and reflections for 2016 collected from around Full Belly Farm:

“I resolve to do more pruning – making time to cut out more of my deadwood, looking to trim back diseased branches and snip here and there to stimulate growth and renewal. I also resolve to help all at Full Belly practice the words of collaboration; the spirit of cooperation; the language that reduces tension – while listening more carefully to hear and acknowledge what others are saying. Also to exercise more by playing more – doing it early and often …” 

— Paul Muller, Owner and Best Grandpa [Read more…]

News From the Farm | November 30, 2015

November 30, 2015

This may be the last letter to you, dear CSA patron, for 2015. We hope that you have had a positive experience this year as part of our farm. We have tried hard every week to have product in your boxes that we are proud of – reflecting our hard work and commitment to a healthy farm, while delivering freshness and great flavor. We understand perfection can be elusive. If we have missed the mark, we apologize, and we hope to do better next year.

Many of you have been through the cycles of a CSA season for quite a few years. There are many of you who fed your children our food as they were growing and they now make meals for their children with our farm goods. This is quite a rare thing in today’s economy – a multigenerational relationship with the source of ones diet. We have the same experience with many of our long-term farmers market customers. They have shopped from us for over 30 years and have watched our family grow, while each week we witnessed the same with their children. Many of those children have now grown and have children of their own. They come to the market to buy from our market-going kids! [Read more…]

News From the Farm | November 9, 2015

November 9, 2015

There are many threads of experience over the last few weeks that might be woven into a Beet article this morning.  Last night, the board of the US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance came to the farm for a tour and dinner. Fifty folks, mostly from the midwest, were here as part of their annual board meeting in Sacramento.  We had an afternoon walk down the county road that divides the farm and talked about our approach to farming and the reasons that our farm is designed as it is. Most of the farmers were corn and soybean growers and all were tied deeply to these two crops that dominate the midwestern landscape.

A walk is the best way to talk about the farm and about our approach to soil health, insect ecology, integrating livestock, cropping patterns, diversity, economic viability and creativity.  Our evolving farm design came from the fertile minds of four partners, great employees, and increasingly now, from the contributions of our children. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | October 19, 2015

October 19, 2015

We are eeking our way into fall this week. Temperatures have been quite warm and the relief of chilly nights and cool days hasn’t yet come to us. The year has been noticeably warmer in both the exceptionally warm and dry January and February, and a noticeable multi-year pattern of warm and dry fall weather. 

There have been some interesting repercussions of these patterns. Instead of the year being a gentle push between winter storms, we started the year with a sprint. Dry weather means that the soil is dry enough to plant, cultivate and harvest – and irrigate. When there is little rainfall, we have made the deficit up with irrigation from the wells on the farm and from Cache Creek flowing on the east side of our farm. The pace didn’t slow down this year. As a farmer, one doesn’t know if the window in a dry February will be closed by a cold wet March, or a prolonged wet spring that doesn’t allow one to get into the fields to plant seed and grow spring and summer crops, so one plants when the soil is ready. A dry spring means that the work doesn’t slow down – generally until late fall. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | September 7, 2015

September 7, 2015

Our crew started this morning, Labor Day, at 7:00am.  We had been starting at 6:00 and then 6:30, but as days shorten, the workday changes with the morning light. Like so many mornings over this long summer, our crew of 85 men and women came to work to pick, plant, clean fields, change pipes and pack our harvest for distribution to the many purchasers of our produce. For the more than 30 years of this farm, we have all worked on labor day—perhaps missing the central point of the day, to honor and acknowledge the contribution of those who keep our world moving. 

Most California farms probably were at work today—I know of few who can stop to relax. There is harvest for example—that window when the crop is ready and the market has a place for what you have tended and raised.  To miss or slow for even a day changes the ability to be at the market tomorrow, for example Tuesday’s farmers market would be a bit emptier. Wholesalers, restaurants and stores expect crops to appear and abundant displays to be refilled.  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | July 13, 2015

July 13, 2015

We had a farm dinner this past Saturday night, hosted here on the farm. There were 50 or more attendees – a wide-ranging assemblage – customers from farmers markets and CSA, or browsers who came upon the farm seeking closer connection to field and food. It was a wonderful dinner produced from Full Belly Farm products – tomatoes, melons, salami and ground bloody butcher cornmeal for the tortillas. My son Amon and his partner Jenna were the chefs and created a savory dinner and very enjoyable evening.

I was seated with Terril and Eva Ellis, our neighbors and friends who, in their 80’s, have lived next door for many years and have filled their lives with treasures found in a lifetime of imagination and creativity and efforts to deepen the beauty and diversity of their farm. Our conversation was about the lessons learned through experience: things to pay attention to, or best avoided. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | June 8, 2015

June 8, 2015

Farmers markets have been an important part of the Full Belly economic picture since the farm started way back in 1985. As beginning farmers, Dru and I were informed of a market in Palo Alto that was brand new and looking for growers. In those early days we were looking for access to places that might buy some of the organic crops we were producing. 

We had been selling to a local Nugget Market that was bold enough to give our white  Silver Queen corn a try. This was a corn that many of the local farmers were planting on the side of their ‘feed corn’ fields in order to have some good sweet corn for their tables at home.  The flavor of the corn was far better than anything that was on the market, but white corn was not very common. The reception at the Nugget Store was enthusiastic, not only because George the produce manager, was willing to give the corn a try, but also because flavor and freshness assured us access to crowded supermarkets. We were also selling corn to an organic wholesaler in Los Angeles and to a wildly enthusiastic woman from Berkeley named Alice, who would either drive to the farm herself to pick up the corn and tomatoes we were producing, or send someone from her Chez Panisse kitchen to do so.  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | April 20, 2015

April 20, 2015

We have had a number of inquiries about the water situation and it seems time for a Beet article on water and California’s ongoing drought. There have also been questions about whether one can eat almonds without guilt, when many are pointing fingers at new plantings of permanent crops like almonds as a clear example of what seems to be wrong with the investments being made in farming and the water needed to support that farming.

There is little that is easy or clear when it comes to the debate about water in California. The issue is complex, affects all of us and requires that we begin to plan for both times of abundance and cycles of scarcity. Indeed it will be our response to the common issue of scarcity that will require wisdom, restraint and clear thinking as to how the over-promised resource gets divided and allocated among divergent interests. It is not easy to look at water without entering into the complexities of weather patterns, climate changes, year to year fluctuations, indigenous water resources, cropping patterns and historical use. [Read more…]

News from the Farm | February 9, 2015

February 9, 2015

As if breaking a spell cast on the land, rain came and the farm breathed a sigh of welcome.  The driest January on record for the region is now past and the sobering reality of three consecutive years of warm temperatures and little to no rain and low Sierra snowpack should be reason for the farm community to consider the practices they employ and develop comprehensive strategies for the long term.

The impacts of the last few years touch many parts of our farm. Our fruit trees are short on the chilling hours that they require for healthy bloom and fruit set. Things are blooming early – by more than 2 weeks – which may mean more susceptibility to frost later in the spring. Winter rains are needed to replenish our wells. When the small side creeks that border the farm flow even for a few short days, we can measure a rise in well water levels as the ground acts as a reservoir for the beneficial winter rains. [Read more…]

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