Certified Organic Vegetables, Fruit, Flowers & Wool Since 1985
Open Farm Day is Saturday April 6th ––
We would be so happy if our CSA members were able to come and visit us on April 6th for a day to walk around the farm, visit our newborn lambs, picnic on the grass and taste the delicious pizza that we bake in our wood-fired pizza oven. The farm is open for visitors from 10:30 to 3:30. Please leave your dogs (except for service dogs of course) at home. The farm owners are looking forward to meeting you! [Read more…]
Oh Spring! You have descended upon us this past week, gracing field, hillside, and human spirit with the seduction of warmth and days that stretch out like a cat after a long slumber. This year you have been away longer than normal – the cold and rain of January, February and early March now all but forgotten with your bursting on the scene. The trees have been patiently awaiting your beckoning call. Our peaches and plums are finally blooming nearly a month late. Apricots and pears are swelling… [Read more…]
Shhhh… don’t let anyone know but I love my job. I love our farm, I love all the people I work with, I love going to the farmers markets, I feel blessed to be able to help each day to make this farm productive and beautiful. I feel good about what I do everyday. I believe in my life and work each morning when I awake and even more so when I fall asleep. Strange, I know, but true. [Read more…]
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…]
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…]
The landscape on and around the farm is noticeably shifting green to brown each day in this early May week. We find ourselves hanging on to the spring’s green-ness willing it to stay as long as possible. We are storing the memory of green deep, to be pulled up in the heat of the summer’s long days. These near perfect days of 80-degrees are kind to all life on the farm as we undertake our transitions through spring to summer.
The spring crops that you find in your box – lettuces, potatoes, carrots, greens and strawberries are nervously feeling temperatures that are creeping up and are urging us to hurry and get them out, keep them cool and move on, for their season is passing. [Read more…]
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…]
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…]
Mothers’ Day Sunday always presents a plethora of options for families wanting to spoil that amazing mother (or grandmother!) for her special day. Well, we have a secret up here in the Capay Valley – the most perfect experience you could ever give your mom – the Capay Valley Mothers’ Day Garden Tour. Here are the top five reasons why this tour is exactly what that special mother (or gardening fanatic!) deserves for Mothers’ Day:
#1. It is in a spectacular setting. There is nothing more beautiful than this agricultural valley (that we are lucky enough to call home) in the middle of May. The Capay Valley is home to 5 small towns and winds through them all over 20 miles. The gardens are blooming, the temperature is typically ideal (usually in the mid 80’s) and best of all, the first fruit of the season will be starting with peaches, mulberries and strawberries! [Read more…]
The Water Information report from our local Water District says that Indian Valley Reservoir received just over 11-inches of rain this year, compared to almost 31 last year. This includes runoff from last week’s storm, which added a precious 3-inches for the two surface water sources (Clear Lake and Indian Valley Reservoir) that provide irrigation water at Full Belly Farm. Word is that despite the very low water year overall there will be enough water in Cache Creek for our summer irrigation season.
Spring rain creates a forceful motivator on the farm when there is a long list of projects to complete. Not only is there a daily deadline when the sun goes down, but the promise of rain on the way means that all field activities will have to stop when the rain arrives. Last week, tractors were still out in the fields as the first drops fell. [Read more…]
Saturday 3/24 was Open Farm Day at Full Belly Farm. We all had a lot of fun. Delicious pizza, fresh orange juice made on the spot, kite-flying, playing in the brook and listening to the frogs, tours of the fields, lamb petting, and playing and picnicking on the grass. It was a warm, beautiful spring day. CSA members received a jar of marmalade made from our Full Belly oranges. [Read more…]
Hannah and Dru today continuing their passion.
“It wasn’t as if the flowers themselves held within them the ability to bring an abstract definition into physical reality. Instead it seemed that…expecting change, and the very belief in the possibility, instigated a transformation.”
The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
My daughter Hannah and I share a passion for cut flowers. Actually passion might be too light of a word – obsession might be more appropriate. We scour seed catalogs for endless hours in bed, read blogs, follow hundreds of flower growers on social media, and go to flower meetings on Sundays –our one-day off. We beg for cuttings, attend conferences and belong to the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers (who knew this even existed!) We go to seed swaps, have flower growers to the farm, lead workshops. We lie in bed at night worrying about rain, frost, drought and wind. Oh yes… AND we grow 15 acres of cut flowers at Full Belly Farm. [Read more…]
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…]
Full Belly is busy! Crews are mowing down cover crops, bedding up fields, spreading compost, burying drip tape and transplanting seedlings.
Despite all the hustle and bustle, Amon and Jenna made time to start a kids garden. In the photo above are several bins containing soil and compost. The kids planted a few melon and tomato seedlings, as well as seeds of cucumbers, eggplants, okra and other summer vegetables. In a few days, the bins will be moved to Guinda, just outside of the Corner Store. [Read more…]
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.
Yesenia Gaxiola Vega, Wendy Arita Paz, and Maria Machado Castro harvesting garlic. [Read more…]
A Flower Explosion!
Last week was our biggest flower sales week in the history of our farm! Our team of flower harvesters and bunchers made well over 3,500 bouquets of flowers last week – each one unique and beautiful and sent off to brighten someones day. We grow a little under 15 acres of fresh flowers on our farm, all of them are varieties that we love. Right now, we are in the thick of larkspur, godetia, and sunflower harvest. In the next few months, zinnias will begin to pop up everywhere on our farm.
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