All the news that's fit to eat
FruitGuys Chicago Brings Aid to Tornado Area By Pia Hinckle Meta Dunn was driving to work at The FruitGuys Chicago warehouse listening to radio reports of the devastation from the massive tornado that destroyed miles of Moore, Oklahoma, killing 24 people including 9 children, when she thought, “What can we do to help?” Meta contacted [...]
Powered by Horse By Heidi Lewis New Family Farm of Sebastopol, California, was one of six farms awarded grants in April 2013 from The FruitGuys Community Fund, a fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives. An outgrowth of the company’s Farm Steward Program, the Community Fund gives resources to small farms for sustainable agriculture projects that [...]
by Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop I was recently in Detroit for a food and farming policy meeting. While there, our group took a field trip to meet local leaders in the urban gardening and farm to school movement. On the way, looking out the windows of the bus, we [...]
by Jeff Main of Good Humus Farm, Courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop With the passing of the equinox a few weeks ago, and all the warmth and wetness of the last week or so, everything on the farm has finally decided that it will go with: It’s Spring! And with that decision by all [...]
The farm is so alive during this time of year! Everywhere you turn, it seems like something new is blooming, growing or coming to life. Though the hot summer seems to be racing towards us, with harvests of tomatoes, melons and squash coming soon, everyone seems to be totally rejuvenated by the bright green hills [...]
By Reed Adam, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop On a warm June day, the aroma from field of sweet peas behind the T and Y Strawberry Patch, located just west of Woodland on Highway 16, is overpowering, providing a sensory counterpoint to the stunning display of the flowers themselves: a sea of whites, reds, [...]
By Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Years ago, when European lords and ladies were interested in botany and agriculture, greenhouses were elaborate, beautiful buildings covered with glass and full of complicated heating, cooling and lighting equipment. If these grand greenhouses at Kew Gardens or the Palace of Versailles form [...]
By Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop When I first heard the term “food safety” I knew that even the term itself was a problem, representing an approach to our food that calls lettuce bathed in chlorine “safe” and lettuce with a speck of dirt on it “contaminated.” Now, a few years [...]
From Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop This week we wanted to let folks learn a little bit more about the people who work at Full Belly Farm, so we interviewed one of the crew members who irrigates the crops, Arturo Gaxiola. Full Belly: First, please tell me a bit about your job [...]
Farming with Heart By Heidi Lewis The main ingredient in good vegetables, says farmer Jim Durst, is soil: “Feed the soil, and the soil will feed the plants.” Jim and his wife, Deborah, have been farming their land at the mouth of the Capay Valley in Yolo County, CA, since the 1980s. Jim caught on [...]
From Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop March 18, 2013 Saturday March 16 was a banner day at Full Belly Farm: one of the earliest days in recent years that we were able to plant our first tomatoes. A crew of 8 carefully transplanted the tomatoes from their warm safe spot in the [...]
by Paul Muller of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop There is an eye with which we experience the world, an interaction between the object perceived and the observer. Often times two people looking at the same object or event can see very different things. It is a Confucius-like allusion that could be [...]
By Jeff Main of Good Humus Produce,courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop How many stories have we read about in the last five years about people around the country eating spinach, strawberries, salad mix, cantaloupe in various states, farms organic or not organic that have caused sickness to the extreme of dying from eating these [...]
As the weather warms and dries a little in February and March, it’s easy to think that spring has arrived and therefore the warm weather crops should be close behind. But the delay from the green house or the field to your FarmShare is 2- 3 months or more. Some of the leanest months for [...]
New Non-Profit Group Will Help Small Farms By Pia Hinckle The FruitGuys has formed a new non-profit organization to promote sustainable agriculture practices for small farms, an evolution of the company’s Farm Steward Program, which has provided farmers with aid since 2008. “We thought that the development of a non-profit entity was important so that [...]
Cranberries by Hand By Heidi Lewis Have you ever been browsing in an antique store and found a wooden box with rakish teeth on it? It could be a hand cranberry rake, a farm implement of yore. Possibly the same kind that farmer Brian Ruesch of Ruesch Century Farm uses today on his tiny organic [...]
Profile: Iron Creek Farm of LaPorte, IN By Heidi Lewis In America, the small family farm has become a heritage breed as cherished and coveted as the heirloom plants some of them grow. The 2007 agriculture census reported that nearly 40 percent of all U.S. farms are under 50 acres. According to the census there [...]
By Judith Redmond, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Our refrigerator offers leftovers, several days after our Thanksgiving feast. We’re still enjoying roasted vegetables, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie. But this isn’t altogether unfamiliar – our Thanksgiving feast is only different in terms of scale – the farm always provides such abundant quantities of food [...]
Courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop The Fiddler’s Green is a place first described in 18th century Irish sailing lore. The Fiddler’s Green is utopia where all your desires are met; where the grog never runs dry and the tobacco pipes are always full. Farmer Jim Eldon is one of the lucky ones to stumble [...]
Sonoma County Apple Veteran Dave Hale By Heidi Lewis In Fall, you can’t miss the explosion of roadside color that is Hale’s Apple Farm as you drive along Route 116 just north of Sebastopol, CA. The riot of piles of brilliant gourds can cause the unwary traveler to swerve. Best pull over for a better look. Orange and [...]
Courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Although the Capay Valley is increasingly known for it’s amazing fruit and vegetable farms, there are other projects and crops worth noting! These three made it into several local newsletters recently, along with a little Capay Valley history. Organic Indigo From Riverdog Farm We are growing a ½ acre experimental [...]
By Jeff Main for Good Humus Produce, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Waiting for Rain. It’s been a long six months since we felt rain on our faces. The last rain was in April, mid-spring really, and now it is mid-Autumn, with a long, long summer just passed. That is a long stretch without [...]
by Jeff Main of Good Humus Produce, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop OK. Can we finally stop and say summer is finished? We have crossed what we assume is the finish line still standing, wobbly and exhausted. Looking around, we notice that we have crossed several starting lines while approaching this finish. The muddy [...]
By Rawley Johnson of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop October is my favorite month on the farm because of its in-betweenness. The weather is not so extremely hot anymore but not so extremely cold yet either. The first rains freshen and green up the parched dry ground, but spares us the [...]
By Paul Muller of Full Belly Farm, Courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop For those of you who were able to attend our October 6th Hoes Down Harvest Festival, thank you for making the day an incredible experience and wonderfully successful event. Nearly 6,000 folks celebrated the closing of a long summer season with dance, great [...]
How about a U-Pick CSA? By Heidi Lewis There is such a thing as too much love. Lucy and Torrey Olson’s Gabriel Farm in Sebastopol, CA (Sonoma County) was one of the few U-Pick apple farms in the San Francisco Bay Area. People loved to come pick Fuji apples, persimmons, and blackberries at their lovely [...]
By Heidi Lewis I have them. You have them. We all have them. Imperfections. The keen fruit observer will notice that commercially grown fruit is generally quite uniform, and fruit from smaller, local farms often isn’t. For example, family farm–grown apples, compared to those produced in a big agricultural operation, may come out with imperfections—stems [...]
By Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Last Saturday was the Equinox – it happens twice a year, once as the days become shorter, once again as the days become longer. For us here in the northern hemisphere, we feel the approach of Autumn. On the other side of [...]
By Hallie Muller of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Twenty five years ago the Hoes Down Harvest Festival at Full Belly Farm started as a seed with the intent of bringing people out to the country, creating a memorable time and at the same time planting in their heads the significance [...]
Farm Steward By Karla Milosevich In 2011, The FruitGuys’ Farm Steward program financed a $3,000 no-interest loan to Baia Nicchia Farm and Nursery in Sunol, CA. Baia Nicchia is a family farm, run by Fred Hempel and Jill Shepard, that grows heirloom tomatoes, specialty squash, peppers, and herbs. FruitGuys volunteers also helped plant tomato seedlings last May. [...]
By Heidi Lewis In agriculture, weather is more than a conversation starter—rain, sun, wind, and frost are collectively the Numero Uno topic for farmers. This year for Midwest farmers, weather is more about the Walk than the Talk. The Midwest fruit belt region in general, including southwest Michigan, where The FruitGuys buys a lot of [...]
No, it’s not a new TV series—Marty’s “angels” are Angelcots, a special variety of apricots grown exclusively by Marty Maggiore and his family in Brentwood (Contra Costa County), CA. Every year, at some point during stone fruit season, The FruitGuys crates across the country feature these light, cream-colored apricots with a bit of blush and [...]
Courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop 8/6/12 The mystery white peach orchard was so prolific – both high yielding by sheer number of fruit but also by size – this year that we are sun-drying some of them this week. They ripen quickly off the tree and have to be picked firm to prevent bruising. [...]
From Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop. Last week, if you were to consult a weather map, you would find that temperatures in the Bay Area were almost 50° cooler than those that we were experiencing in Guinda. The daytime highs forecast for our coming week are as follows: 111, 109, 108, [...]
Walker Family Stuck Through Boom and Bust By Pia Hinckle Lee Walker has been farming with his family in their Graton, CA, apple orchard his whole life, except for a tour in the army and a few years playing pro baseball. Lee has kept growing Gravenstein apples through both the thick and the thin-skinned times [...]
By Jeff Main of Good Humus Produce, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop This last weekend was the Peach Party, our midsummer thanksgiving to all the bounty that comes our way, year after year. Then Monday morning, amid tears and hugs, we sent our daughter Claire off to her last year at Cal State Monterey. [...]
From Riverdog Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop July 2, 2012 Summer crops are beginning to fill the fields and coolers; pallets of beets and greens are sharing space with summer squash and potatoes. White peaches are ripening for the pick, and most of the onions are already in storage. On the tomatoes, corn [...]
By Katharina Ullman, UC Davis Graduate Student in Entomology & Good Humus CSA Member, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop For many years now we have researchers from UC Davis ask if they can come to the farm to work on their individual projects. The first was Bob Bugg studying knotweed and the Big Eyed [...]
Courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop The Full Belly family is eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new member – the first of the third generation – due in late August, a perfect melon ripened baby who will certainly have at least a dozen arms outstretched each day for holding. Amon and Jenna are undoubtedly [...]
from Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop We use our hands a lot in our work at the farm. Pulling small weeds, cleaning garlic, picking flowers, finding cherry tomatoes hidden in between the vines. Our fingernails aren’t polished, our fingers aren’t dainty. With work, hands flatten out and get bigger and stronger. [...]
Courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop June 4, 2012 Unexpected cloud cover today brought rain, cooler temperatures, and pleasant humidity during a time of year that is typically hot and parched. Thunderhead clouds gathered to the north of Capay Valley, above the mountains in Mendocino, before the rain started. During the summer months, when the [...]
By Paul Muller of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Sunday Mornings start the week in a relatively quiet and reflective time here at the belly. We can sleep in – usually about 7 am or so – start slow, sip rather than gulp a cup of coffee, and maybe engage in [...]
By Andrew Brait of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop My son’s 8th grade class recently celebrated graduation from middle school with a trip to an amusement park. When asked about the day, he remarked, “It was wild, Dad, kind of like our life on the farm.” If farming and seasonal production [...]
From Good Humus Produce, courtesy of Capay Valley Farmshop From the Luxemburg Gardens in Paris to England’s Blenheim Palace to the imperiled orchards of Brentwood and ‘Gilroy, California’s finest apricot has had a long journey. Whether you call it the Blenheim, the Royal or, covering all bases, the Royal Blenheim, this petite but sublime variety, [...]
by Annie Main, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop When I am unsure what to write about I always take a walk around the farm-it is an easy place to get motivated just seeing what is happening in the different fields…..well I came back to the office a bit empty this time-we are still in [...]
From Riverdog Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop May 7 Mild weather and sunshine has boosted crop growth in the field and in the greenhouses. Peppers and celeriac transplants arrived last night from Headstart Nursery in Gilroy that will go into the ground this week. It is warm enough during the day and at [...]
Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm, Courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Resting in a prominent corner of our farm, under a native black walnut tree, there’s an enormous Allis Chalmers crawler tractor. This is one of those yellow tractors that were built in the ‘40s and 50’s, weighing up to 70 tons, with huge [...]
By Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Years ago, when I was studying at the University of California, I noticed that there was research being done on “organic” agriculture with results that proved it to be not viable. Upon closer examination it turned out that the researchers had compared [...]
by Farm Shop team member Jesse Capitonio, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop On April 21st, Capay Valley Farm Shop held an orchard tour and tasting to give folks a firsthand experience what it takes to produce world-class olive oil. Twenty people from Yolo County and the Bay Area braved the heat to spend a [...]
by Jeff Main of Good Humus Produce, Courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Ryan Dolan stopped by last week just before picking up his son Milo returning from a trip to Hawaii with his Grandparents. Milo was born while Ryan and Liz were working here, and now he’s off to see the world. While Ryan was [...]
From Riverdog Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop 4/2/12 It’s getting close to tomato transplanting time. The plants, all 80,000 (about 9 acres) of the first seeding, have been ready to go from the tray into the fields for about 2 weeks but the rainfall has delayed the transplanting. That’s ok – we need [...]
By Heidi Lewis It’s spring. Blossoms are abundant. Time to get pollinating in the fruit orchards. But since colony collapse disorder has been decimating the honeybee population, we’ll have to look outside the organization for some help. As they say in the bee biz, “No bees, no honey; no work, no money.” We all admire [...]
By Dru Rivers of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop The rain these past few weeks has been an incredible blessing. Us “old timers” at the farm were getting pretty anxious about the lack of water this winter – already planning to cut back on crops in fields where water is in [...]
By Roxanne Crittenden, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Even though I grew up here in California, I find the cycles of abundance and scarcity here a little surprising. In a Mediterranean climate like ours, winter is a time of plenty when it comes to fresh produce. Greens, root vegetables and citrus all thrive in [...]
By Becca von Trapp of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Well folks, the rain has finally come. Here at the farm we are heaving a collective sigh of relief as we are finally able to hang up our rain-dancing shoes for a little while. With the pregnant clouds, a new form [...]
By Jeff Main of Good Humus Produce, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Sometimes an unborn child’s heart will try to beat on its own while still in the womb, and the result is read on monitors as an unpredictable, fluctuating heartbeat. As spring tries to start and winter tries to hold her grip, the result is similar. Rain [...]
By Heidi Lewis The USDA classifies family farms as “any farm organized as a sole proprietorship, partnership, or family corporation.” But a cold definition is never the whole story, is it? Mick Klug grew up on his family’s farm. His parents established their 40-acre farm in the 1930s. The reason you often hear of farms [...]
Courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop This week Nolan O’Brian, one of the Full Belly Farm interns interviewed orchard manager, Jesus Jacobo Garcia. Where were you born? My hometown is called “El Fuerte” (the strong). It’s a neighborhood in Sinaloa, a state in Mexico. It’s a beautiful part of the country. There are many farms [...]
By Dru Rivers of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Almond blossoms are everywhere at the moment on Full Belly Farm – filling the air with honey scented smells and brightly dotting Highway 16 as it winds the twenty two miles up the Capay Valley. Along the way the five small towns of [...]
From Riverdog Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop In 1990, Riverdog Farm began as a 2-acre organic vegetable garden in Napa County. Currently the farm is located in Guinda in the Capay Valley where rich creek bottom soil, intense summer heat, and winter frost make exceptionally tasty fruits, nuts and vegetables. Annually, the farm grows [...]
By Jeff Main of Good Humus Produce, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop The month of January and the first few weeks of February are the winter doldrums. The sun still low in the sky, the days short, the ground a big reservoir of cold, soil life at a low ebb. For the farm life, [...]
By Thomas Nelson, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Farmers, seed and equipment suppliers, food distributors and retailers, NGOs and community members from across the country, came together last week at the 32nd Annual EcoFarm Conference at Asilomar, Pacific Grove. Located in a stunningly beautiful coastal setting, propagators of a sustainable food and farming system [...]
Winter Farm Conferences By Heidi Lewis The Monterey Peninsula is one of the most beautiful spots in the world, but it wasn’t just the sparkly ocean breeze dancing through the pines that brought a near sell-out crowd to this year’s Eco Farm Conference held February 1-4. It was the exchange of important ideas and sharing [...]
By Paul Muller of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop It is a fine Sunday morning. The sun is shining on a windless, cloudless blue sky. The light frost last night kissed crops with the cold they need to be sweet and slow growing. Late December and early January are historically our biggest [...]
Karen Morss Traded Silicon and Lemons By Heidi Lewis Karen Morss is called the Lemon Lady. She started her suburban Emerald Hills, CA (San Mateo County), organic citrus farm, Lemon Ladies Orchard, in 2004. She has done her part breaking glass ceilings in boardrooms and the wild blue yonder with careers as a software entrepreneur [...]
By Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Every work day, Road 43, leading to our Full Belly Farm becomes a busy thruway. First, as soon as it is light, our crew arrives, parking their cars under the trees along the sides of the fields. Families and car-pooling neighbors head [...]
By Jeff Main of Good Humus Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Sometimes, we come to a moment that is so scary that all we can do is stop, sit down and eat ice cream. The mind is numb, really numb, and it feels like the best protection because we really don’t want to [...]
Courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop I’m trying to make sense of time. It is after all, the end of another farm year. If we agree that “time flies” we must concur that time really is all relative. Did every day or week or month clock out at the same pace? Was it a straight [...]
By Pia Hinckle During the 2011 holiday season, generous FruitGuys’ customers provided thousands of people fresh fruit at 22 community-based organizations across the country. “The produce donation went over very well this holiday season! We handed out the product in our Grocery Center to our HIV/AIDS clients as an extra special holiday treat,” said Mike Coughlin, [...]
By Nina Andres, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop What I love about eating with the seasons of the Capay Valley is that by this time of year I have had my share of delicious summer fruits and vegetables and can say “I’ll see you next year” to most of them without too many cravings [...]
By Heidi Lewis It sure is dark here in winter. But consider how dark it is in the rest of the universe. The universe is estimated to be 95% dark energy and dark matter; only 5% is ordinary matter, things like: us, planets, suns, asteroids, space stations, and galactic gas. NASA posits dark energy as [...]
By Roxanne Crittenden, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop For those of us that work with farms, food is a lens through which we view the year. We tend to think in terms of which crops did well, what weather each season brought us, and what we were able to put in your boxes each [...]
Paying it Forward By Pia Hinckle In a year when more people continued to struggle with less, The FruitGuys GoodWorks program responded to the realities of the continuing hard economy by making micro-loans to farmers; increasing donations of fresh produce to food pantries; and promoting fresh food access for all communities, especially those experiencing hunger. [...]
Growing Home Gardens By Kim Jordan Photos courtesy of Nationalities Service Center PHILADELPHIA–Every Monday morning Adam Forbes travels to The FruitGuys’ Philadelphia warehouse to load his pick-up truck. Apples? Check. Bananas? Check. Citrus? Pears? Check. Adam brings the fruit, and any other produce that wasn’t used in customers’ crates that week, back to the Growing [...]
St. Anthony’s Dining Room Nourishes the Needy By Pia Hinckle Photos courtesy of St. Anthony’s Dining Room SAN FRANCISCO — Andrew Hudson is holding a pear in his left hand and wearing a big smile. “I love fruit! Oranges, plums, nectarines. Fruit is good for you!” Called Dancer by his friends, the 59-year-old Atlanta native [...]
By Chris Mittelstaedt The college application process was not an easy one for me. I didn’t know where I wanted to go to school, and I had no idea what to say to encapsulate myself in an essay. I finally settled on telling the story of the summer I spent rehabbing houses in the Appalachian Mountain towns [...]
Capay Valley FarmShares Member Jay Edwards on Why He Loves His FarmShare I love my Farmshare because it’s turned me from being mostly carnivorous to a solid omnivore, even dabbling in vegetarianism. Unlike most people, my parents never told me I had to finish my vegetables. French fries and mac-and-cheese were common side items growing [...]
By Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Each season on the farm has its own tempo. The harvest overwhelms everyone’s attention for most of the year. The lambing season in February is another high point. Paperwork and regulatory reports flood through the door at year’s end. Animal chores are [...]
