Theme: winter

News From the Farm | February 4, 2019

February 4, 2019

Three  beds of tulips have all started to bloom at once, the first flowers available for 2019. They will be available at our farmers markets: Berkeley on Tuesday afternoon; San Rafael on Thursday morning and Palo Alto on Saturday morning. 

What You Ate Last Year  – On our Full Belly web site in our description of our Community Supported Agriculture program, we promise that if you join, you will “eat the freshest, most nutritious fruits and vegetables available.”  There are lots of ways to parse that promise, but this week we’re going to take a look at our program using a pretty straightforward metric:  What did we deliver to you in your boxes last year? [Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 28, 2019

January 28, 2019

Soaking potatoes before washing them  ––

I had the opportunity last week to join some interesting conversations about nutrition and health — and their intersection with organic agriculture.  We reported in this newsletter previously that researchers are increasingly finding that people eating more organic food have a reduced risk of cancer.  Of course, other healthy behaviors, in addition to eating organic food, are obviously also very important to staying healthy — things like getting exercise and not smoking tobacco.  But it turns out that healthy behavior (over which individuals have some control) may only be a factor of about 30% in terms of influencing your health outcomes.   [Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 21, 2019

January 21, 2019

Saturday Walk Around –

We have had a week of heavy rainfall, so our fields are very wet.  None of the farm work can be done by tractor when the fields are so wet and a lot of mud gets tracked into trucks, our office, and the packing shed. The crews tread heavily in boots that pick up the sticky mud in the fields.  Their rain gear is coated with mud and everything is a little bit slower, adding to the costliness of keeping the doors open and the crew working during rainy weather.  The crew only came in for 4-hours on most days last week since we were mostly only picking for farmers markets and CSA boxes.  And besides, it was cold and messy work, not a nice walk in the rain to jump in the puddles!  Full Belly has a commitment to providing year-round work for our crew, as well as a commitment to showing up at markets and CSA pick-up sites year-round without fail.  But when the weather is cold and wet, it can take a toll. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 14, 2019

January 14, 2019

60,000 lettuce and cabbage getting started for the first New Year planting.

There are several opportunities in 2019 for you to visit us at Full Belly Farm.  Here are some of them.

Open Farm Day will be on April 6th.

Come and meet your farmers and visit the farm! Our lambs will be 1-1/2 to 2 months old and you will get the opportunity to meet them as well.  We will give a farm tour and you are welcome to stay for a picnic.  We will set up a farm stand, and will be selling our homemade brick oven-baked pizzas.  There is no charge for Open Farm Day tours. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 7, 2019

January 7, 2019
This photo from the 2009 archives is captioned, “First CSA Box”! Yes, we used to print a paper copy of the newsletter and put it into every box. This was before we had the Stop Waste Green Box, and were using waxed cardboard boxes that couldn’t be recycled.

This week we will be harvesting and packing fruits and vegetables for the first CSA boxes of 2019. If all goes well, there will be 47 additional CSA-box-weeks in 2019 and we are ever-hopeful that each week will deliver a surprise, a well-loved favorite and the inspiration for nourishing meals. At least, that’s our aspiration! We are also likely to send you stories from the fields that touch on the weather, the soils and the people that are growing your fruits and vegetables — the stories behind the fruits and vegetables in your box. The meals we all create and consume are strongly linked to our health and well being, as are the connections back and forth between farmer and CSA member. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | February 26, 2018

February 26, 2018

I love my woodstove. Every cold night in winter, I fall more and more in love with the glow of fire, its warmth, comfort, and protection. So as I sit by the wood stove, penning this note, stoking another evening log into the firebox, I can’t help but wonder how the young and emerging seedlings out in the greenhouse are faring on this rapidly freezing night. With so many young plants, most of which are very cold sensitive, checking in on them like I did with my own children sleeping in the night, is pure instinct. After a week of substantially low temperatures and freezing weather, the safe haven of the greenhouses have been nearly breached, as heavy frost has encased the poly sheathed hoop houses and fatal cold has endangered plants closest to the outside walls. In the past, I have woken up to “frozen and fried plants” many times over the years, so I know that growing plants in a greenhouse is a 24/7 responsibility. Tonight, on this especially cold evening, I will check the greenhouse one more time before I go to bed.

[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 12, 2018

February 12, 2018

103rd Annual Capay Valley Almond Blossom Festival

Every February, the Capay Valley celebrates the number one cash crop in Yolo County: the almond or “ahh-mand” as they are pronounced around here. While we can all agree that a glass of almond milk is delicious, in our area, local farmers don’t only grow them for their juice. They are also roasted, turned into butter, made into soap, and even eaten in ice cream!

[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…]

News From the Farm | January 22, 2018

January 22, 2018

Full Belly has been investing in solar power for a couple of decades by installing roof-top solar panels on several of our big barns. The solar power that the panels generate is hooked into the vast electrical grid and is used to pump water for irrigation and to cool our fruits and vegetables.  Harvesting the huge amount of light that arrives from the sun every day isn’t an activity confined to the plants and crops that we are cultivating!

Last week, we completed another step in generating electricity from solar power, and this time it is off the grid and not on a rooftop.  Amon and Jenna (two Full Belly owners) recently acquired a parcel of land  on the west side of the Valley, just across the highway from the main farm, that had no power drop.  With the help of Sustainable Technologies, a company based in Alameda, we designed and installed a stand-alone system that will be able to power a pump and irrigation system on the property. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 15, 2018

January 15, 2018

The first week back from the Full Belly break brought more than it’s share of CSA mix-ups, culminating when one of our drivers delivered CSA boxes to the wrong site!  By the time our office staff found out, the driver (who was filling in for the regular staff) was long gone and members were wondering where their veggies were.  Luckily, one of our kind and generous members volunteered to ferry the boxes back to their correct location, while in the background the host (who was out of town) offered support and encouragement. So we got it all straightened out, but the adventure really brought home to us the way that this CSA program relies on the contributions of so many people — the wonderful hosts who allow our members to pick up veggies at their homes or businesses, and our members who have patience learning how it works and who cooperate and collaborate to make it a success.

Thank you to all of you, and a special thank you to the heroes of our first week in 2018, member Jenny Postich who drove our CSA boxes to their correct location, and Danville Host Kerri Heusler who was able to provide up-to-date intelligence using her porch camera, from her remote site out of town. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 8, 2018

January 8, 2018

With short days over the winter break, many of us were able to enjoy sunrise, sunset, and incredible clear starry skies in between, reminding us of the mysteries of our planet, as well as of human nature.  Here’s hopes for a peaceful and healthy year in 2018.  We will do our best to spread that spirit.

During the last few weeks of 2017, a few things happened on the organic policy front that are worth noting. We will discuss one of those things in this article, having to do with the welfare of organically raised livestock. Full Belly is home to a flock of sheep, several pigs and as of 12/10/17 a delightful group of 8 healthy piglets!  While many of our CSA members and farmers market customers have let us know that they would rather we not include farm animals in our production system, we have decided that the animals are an important element of our healthy farm, and we treat the farm animals with care and respect.  One of the most active responsibilities during the break, was the pressing daily need to care for the chickens, sheep, pigs, cows, goats, cats and dogs that make the farm their home. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | October 23, 2017

October 23, 2017

Gifts that keep on Giving

Believe it or not there are just six short weeks (shorter because the daylight seems to be slipping away!) until Full Belly Farm takes its winter hibernation break. The farm goes into its light slumber from December 10th through January 8th – “light” because there are always home projects on the list, attending to all of those things that got left on the back burner during a busier-than-ever summer. Somehow the past nine farm months have been packed with more things than we can remember –weddings, garden tours, summer campers, school visits… oh and yes the picking and packing of thousands and thousands of boxes of produce.

Before the break starts we have another long list of “finishing up” projects: picking 3 tons of olives, pulling stakes from 15 acres of tomatoes, sowing cover crops, spreading compost before the winter rains start, and most importantly –selling all of our fall crops and all of the wonderful things we have been “putting” away for you this summer –jams, dried fruits, nuts and lots of dried flowers! [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 5, 2015

January 5, 2015

Happy New Year to all of our Full Belly Farm CSA members. We are happy to be back in action and ready to deliver your delicious boxes for 2015!

Here are a few notes from the field, observed over our break. 

At this time of year we usually have young plants growing in our greenhouses, prepared for transplanting to the field at a stage in their lives when they are less vulnerable to weed and weather pressures than if we grow them in the field from seed. This year, we have probably the largest set of transplants in the greenhouse (lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, greens etc) that we’ve ever had before. But December presented a challenging greenhouse window. Our climate is usually sunny even when it rains, but this year there were more than two weeks of very cloudy, cool, humid weather in December. This created the perfect conditions for rot and mildew diseases in the greenhouse that we have not typically had to deal with. With additional ventilation and care in watering, we were able to pull through and will be transplanting into the field in the next week or two. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | Week of January 13, 2014

January 13, 2014

Or rather, winter farm?  It’s been so warm that even the bees think it is time to come out and look for flowers.  They are finding the odd mustard flower and a few wildflowers, but it is slim pickings.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWhen I was little, growing up in New Mexico, an artichoke was a huge treat.  My family of five would get one artichoke, and carefully divvy up the leaves and the heart.  The first time I ate artichokes at the farm, I was floored when a huge steaming platter of them was brought to the table and everyone ate at least 3!  It is still a huge treat, and I can’t wait for these little babies to be ready. [Read more…]

Weather Report – January 20, 2013

January 20, 2013

Given how significant this recent period of freezing temperatures has been, we feel very fortunate that we have so far made it through with relatively little damage. While we might not have seen the LOWEST temperatures ever, the recent cold snap may be unmatched in its length — dipping down consistently into the mid-20’s, staying there for many hours of the night, and doing the same thing repeatedly, night after night.

Everything that we have growing right now likes a frost, but not a freeze. Even the frost-hardy crops start to have problems when the temperatures dip to the mid 20’s, especially when the cold lasts for awhile. Cell walls get stressed and sometimes burst when the water inside starts to freeze.

Citrus grows well here, but this is the limit of its zone of comfort in terms of winter cold. Full Belly has three orchards, each with a different micro-climate, spanning a 6- or 7-degree difference in the cold that is experienced. We have never turned on the sprinklers so many times to protect the citrus from freezing temperatures as we have this winter — probably a dozen times since mid-December. We jump out of bed and turn on the water because the ice acts like an insulating blanket, protecting the trees from the colder than freezing temperatures. As the water freezes on the leaves, it also gives off heat, protecting the tree. Our final strategy is to pick some of the fruit when the temperature is predicted to drop. This year we have picked about a quarter of our crop in order to protect it.

News From the Farm | December 4, 2012

December 4, 2012

News From the Farm

A powerful winter storm passed over the farm last night bringing deep soaking moisture. By mid-morning, Cache Creek, running along the eastern border of the farm, had peaked at nearly 15,000 cubic feet per second, and was a fierce power, sweeping whole trees, piles of floating cattails, and debris past the farm at incredible speed. Our relationship with the Creek is a bit like having a semi-wild creature for a neighbor. We respect its beauty and marvel that it is a sanctuary for so many animals, birds and other life forms. Yet its power can be at times a writhing, churning, brown powerhouse, licking at bank edges, uprooting plants and trees, transporting millions of tons of sand, silt and gravel past the farm and to the basin near the Sacramento River. Within six hours the creek level rose from 2,000 to nearly 15,000 cfs, and 12 hours later was back down again — an astounding change.

The value to the farm of such a downpour is substantial. This is the best weather start to a fall season in many years. Our wells are getting recharged as small feeder streams are running full. Walnut, almond, fig and peach orchards are storing moisture deep in the soil profile, lessening the need to pump water next summer. Winter hay and grain crops are lush and healthy, off to an early start, and now with reserves to root deep and withstand prolonged cold or dry weather that may come.

[Read more…]

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