Life Begins at 30

Spring Rains Continue to Have Their Effect

In April, I wrote a post on Bay Area Bites talking about the spring rains and how we'd see their effect on local farms for a while.  In our CSA box last week, Nigel Walker, the farmer of Eatwell Farm wrote an article about how the April rains are having their effect even now.  I asked him if I could reprint it because I think that the article has wider implications than just our CSA box. 

If you shop at farmers' markets in the Bay Area, chances are your farmers are experiencing similar frustrations. 

My recommendations now are the same that they were then.  Support your farmers with your dollar and a smile when possible.  Switch your menus around to match what's in season now -- rather than what should be in season.  Taste before you buy, and judge on taste instead of looks.  Listen to your farmers. 

Here's what Nigel had to say:

*******

It has hardly rained here since April.  The roads are dusty and the crops need lots of irrigation water.  This spring was a different story: the rains stopped play on the farm for six weeks, making our tomato plantings very late.  Not only did the plants have a late start, they also suffered while waiting.  Now I look at them and see only green fruit -- and it is almost the middle of July!  In an early year we pick the first Sungold in late May and in a normal year during the first week of June.  I have not picked one yet.

If this were a normal year, in your box today there would be a mix of heirloom tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.  There would be peaches and or nectarines and possibly plums and a melon.  In fact we have a great box for you today but it is the very first box in over ten years into which we have not put a single piece of fruit.  Even in the dead of winter we have fruit.  None of the farms whose support group we are in have fruit, or at least none they can spare.  It is quite the conversation amongst farmers.  You will notice the high price of fruit in the market.  Some growers fared better than others and some even have full crops.  It is the nature of spring rains that they are localized and we got them this year.

You do have some tomatoes from Terra Firma in your box.  We have never bought tomatoes to put in the box before.  Terra Firma was able to get into their field and plant in early spring, only just a small planting and the conditions were not in any way perfect, but they do have fruit.  The price is high which will make up for the reduced yield by planting in poor conditions.

So two firsts today that we would rather not repeat.

Nigel Walker is the proprietor of Eatwell Farm in Yolo County.  Eatwell Farm is about 90 miles from San Francisco.  You can read more about Eatwell's Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program on their website. This article was originally published in the Eatwell CSA Newsletter on July 13, 2006.  Reprinted with permission.

LOST: One partially full notebook

I don't keep a diary ... I never have had the attention span to sit down and document the ins and outs of my life day after day.  But I do carry around notebooks, which I fill up with a combination of notes, grocery lists, to do lists, work notes, interviews, notes about lectures I attend, book I want to read, places I want to eat, blog ideas -- you get the picture. 

About a month ago I lost one of these notebooks, so my notes for a good portion of 2006 are missing.  I am disorganized enough that it was weeks before I panicked, thinking it would show up in one place or another.  But now, I am convinced it's gone.  I have even had a couple dreams about it over the past week and woken up sure that I would find it in the location I dreamed about, but it's never there.

So if you've by chance found a partially-full, kind of cool, pink notebook that's lost it's way, please send it on home.  This blogger will be very grateful.

My favorite notebooks of the moment are shown above:  They are by Mirage Paper Company, and I pick them up at Flax.