Feeding Caspar
A Community Breakfast Dishing Next-Level Food
by Holly Madrigal
Pancake breakfasts evoke a host of nostalgic memories for me. I can remember many mornings in a large hall, greeting old-timers and inhaling the smell of freshly brewed coffee and sizzling bacon. At its core, the pancake breakfast is about community—a group of folks who want to provide an affordable meal to their friends and neighbors, offering delicious nourishment and the rare opportunity to relax, chat, and get caught up on the local goss.
Soon after it was formed in 2000, the Caspar Community Center decided to organize and host a monthly community breakfast. Dalen Anderson raised her hand and volunteered. She had just retired from a leadership role at Whale Gulch School, and was ready for a new challenge. She proceeded to create a seasonal monthly menu, then spent the next 25 years organizing scores of volunteers to serve up exceptional breakfast fare for a multitude of delighted diners.
Dalen looks for what is in season and local, including what's in her own home garden in Caspar's sunbelt where mounds of dahlias and roses share space with pole beans and luscious basil. She strolls among the zucchini and lettuces, looking for a particular combination of ingredients that will make the community meal really shine. “You know gathering the volunteers to make the community breakfast is the best disaster preparedness we could imagine. When you are working together and cooking together you get to know one another,” says Dalen. “I learned early on that if your fundraiser has a food component, you will get many more helpers.”
Anyone can enjoy the fun and feasting by showing up on the fourth Sunday of the month between 9:00 and 11:00am. Dalen and her many volunteers will have spent the day prior preparing the menu. “I'm a bit of a recipe nerd,” she says. “We usually have four entree options, always one that is vegan and gluten free,” she shares. “I’ll make hearty huevos rancheros or Queen's Puff, which includes sausage and mashed potatoes folded in and baked in an egg custard. We did a salmon quiche the other day that was very popular.”
Jennie Stevens, the volunteer coordinator, exclaims, “That quiche was so delicious! I also loved the Monte Cristo, which I had never tried before. It was a ham and cheese sandwich prepared like French toast and dusted with powdered sugar. That was a decadent savory-sweet treat.” Vegan options might include a sweet potato hash with roasted vegetables.
Dalen has honed her skill for bringing out the best in her high quality ingredients. “I really believe that everyone should have the opportunity to try healthy, nutritious food that is delicious,” she adds. Over time she has learned what vegan options are popular, like roasted seasonal veggies over quinoa with a tahini dressing. “People tell me they want something that they won't make at home,” she laughs. “I always have a number of breads, cakes, and pastries—some gluten-free so that everyone can enjoy them. We have some neighbors who just want eggs, potatoes, and coffee. It is really a way to feed the whole community.”
And community is what this is. The physical hamlet of Caspar has a population of around 500 but the impact of the Community Center reaches far beyond these boundaries. “Caspar Community Center has become a gathering place for the whole coast,” says Paul Schulman, Dalen’s husband. The warm space with soaring ceilings and faceted glass cupola is a former schoolhouse. The ten-member board and dedicated community members generously donate their time to this thriving hub. Many events are hosted in the space, from weddings and quinceañeras to concerts and tango lessons. What makes all these offerings possible is the work of a small staff and a dedicated group of volunteers.
For each breakfast, the team of volunteers serves between 80 to 100 meals. Dalen's grandkids are now getting involved. She describes how “they will come to serve breakfast and just the other day they made over two hundred cookies for CasparFest,”—their annual fundraising party. “It has been such a pleasure to work with everyone over the years,” she concludes.
“We are actively encouraging new volunteers to come introduce themselves,” says Jennie. “People still find out about us from posters that we put up around the coast. We reach out on social media and Instagram, but we’ve also had people come to the community breakfast because of a flyer, some made by local artist and Caspar volunteer Michelle Noe. I work with folks to find out how they want to pitch in,” she adds. “Dalen has created these amazing breakfasts for more than twenty years, and we need to think about this next generation of chefs. We need to cultivate new cooks to help carry these breakfasts into the future.”
It was a big step when the Caspar Community Center was able to hire paid staff to take on some of the tasks that the volunteers had been doing. Jennie is the volunteer coordinator, and Nick Gueli manages rentals. Sienna Potts works with everyone on the business side to keep the place running smoothly. The dedicated board members and volunteers are too many to name but their hard work and dedication have brought the Community Center to where it is today. “After years and years of fundraising and some generous donations we were able to pay off the mortgage this year,“ smiles Dalen. “That is a huge accomplishment and now the board is deciding what projects to tackle next. Teaching the next group of volunteers is a big part of that.”
Events at the Caspar Community Center have such a good feeling—the love that is poured into this place is palpable. “We’re planning some game nights in the fall with snacks available and drinks to purchase,” shares Jennie.
Local mom Emily Ellickson Brown loves bringing her 8-year-old son Ray. “The Caspar Community Center is amazing because we can come for breakfast or game night, and when Ray is done he can go to the playground or hang out with other kids. I know he’s having fun and that the community is looking out for him. The adults can still socialize knowing that the space is protected, and the kids can run around and just be kids.”
The center is also a great way for new arrivals to find their niche. New residents Emma and Connor just moved up from the Bay Area and showed up at one breakfast to ask how they could help. Neighbors had encouraged them to volunteer as a way to meet other members of the community. Emma is a baker and Connor works in the natural wine business, so contributing to a monthly food event is a great fit.
It is easy to get into personal habits like hitting the couch after work and zoning out on your digital device, but there is another option. You can add the Caspar Community Breakfast to your calendar and share a couple of hours with your neighbors. The menu on offer is innovative and fresh and will delight your tastebuds. The community connections you make along the way will fill your heart as well as your belly.
Caspar Community Center Monthly Breakfast
Fourth Sunday of the month (except December) 9:00 - 11:00 am
15051 Caspar Rd., Caspar CA
(707) 964-4997
View the calendar or sign up for the mailing list at casparcommons.org.
To volunteer, contact Jennie at casparvolunteer@gmail.com.
To rent the space, contact Nick at casparevents@gmail.com.
Holly Madrigal is a Mendocino County maven who loves to share the delights of our region. She takes great joy in publishing this magazine.
Photos by Holly Madrigal
Farola
From Argentina, with Love
by Holly Madrigal
There are times when a love of country is best described by a food. Culinary offerings form the taste memory of a place. The empanada fills this space in the heart of Pedro Herrera Rovetta, locally known as Peter Farola. When he met his wife, Bailee, they traveled to Argentina together and she had her first taste of Argentinian empanadas.
This magical food, served across the globe, has key consistent components—a half-moon of dough with filling. These small hand-held pastries are known by many other names, but the empanada originated in South America.
“I always recommend the Argentine beef, which has the flavors that we remember.“ Bailee describes her suggested order at the Farola Argentinian Empanada’s walk-up window on the corner of Clara and State Street in Ukiah. “And a fugazzetta! People usually take my recommendation,” she quips. A fugazzetta is similar to a pizza, with dough covered in multiple high-quality cheeses topped with oregano and sweet onions that are charred slightly by an open flame. Peter and Bailee have made this into an empanada that draws rave customer reviews. “If we ever enter an empanada contest, I think we should submit this one,” says Bailee. ”The charred onions add an umami depth that is so good. It would win all the awards!”
“This business came from love,“ adds Peter. ”We love to spend time together and because of our other jobs, we didn’t get to see each other very much.” The pair opened Farola to allow them to combine their love for each other and delicious bites. “I was working full-time in another restaurant, and it took up so much of our time. Deciding to do this together meant that we could work together. Peter has always had a love of food, and so the idea of working together was a natural fit,” says Bailee.
“I’ve eaten empanadas since I was a little kid,” shares Peter, whose family heritage is a mix of Italian, French, and Spanish. “Our family moved to Buenos Aires and I was able to try all different types. So many different cultures mix in the city.” Buenos Aires is the historical port of much of South America, leading to vibrant and rich culinary traditions. Peter would try different empanadas wherever he visited. The flavors shifted and changed from one province to another, since Argentina is geographically large and encompasses so many different climates and terrains. The ingredients and methods of cooking the empanadas could differ depending on where he found himself. When he met Bailee and brought her to visit, she fell in love with the snack too. “Everywhere we went I was like, can we get empanadas tonight?” remembers Bailee. “It's one of my favorite foods,“chimes in Peter.
Bailee was raised in Ukiah and has worked in several culinary establishments in her time. The couple met and fell in love in Ukiah, and despite traveling widely, they decided to make their lives here. “As soon as we met, I could tell she was passionate about food, and so was I,” adds Peter. “That was one of our first connections,“ Bailee recalls, a smile lighting her eyes.
The couple realized that there was no restaurant specifically offering empanadas in the area. She had previously worked in a Greek restaurant in the same spot their business now occupies. Peter notes that he always had a good feeling about this corner spot on North State Street. “I could see something there. It is a sunny spot, and I could envision the sun mural on the wall. Our friend painted that and the logo above. I thought a walk-up window would make it even nicer. I approached Stacy, the owner, and she asked for a business proposal. She liked our project. We remodeled the space to work for us,“ explains Peter. “We ended up with this idea of empanadas because of the versatility of it. You can put any kind of filling in them and really experiment."
The word Farola describes a type of lamp, the old-fashioned kind that graced the streets of Buenos Aries in colonial times. Peter remembers, “At the same time, my favorite restaurant as a kid was called La Farola, so ours is a little different as a matter of respect, but it honors that place. I like the simple parallel. It represents a little bit of the essence of Argentina in that it’s a Spanish word that sounds Italian but still Spanish.”
For the business, Peter developed a signature dough. “I have so many memories making dough with my grandma, mostly for pasta, but I realized that we could make this for empanadas,“ he shares. When describing the perfect empanada dough, Bailee says you want it to be crunchy and buttery but not too flaky. It must be light and not bready, but sturdy enough to hold up to the filling. While refining their recipe, Peter turned their dining room table into a test kitchen. “One day I came home from a long day, and he had covered our dining table with dough and flour everywhere. Peter had been making dough all day. This went on for weeks until he got it just right—buttery but doesn’t disappear in your mouth,“ Bailee shares.
They officially opened on 7/7 at 7:00pm in 2023, and they have been growing and evolving ever since. The couple invested in a custom press mold so that each empanada is identified by letters (like a CK for chicken or a SM for spinach and mushroom) to show what type of filling is in each pastry. You are still allowed to taste each type if you prefer, but the markings are an ingenious way to identify all the way through from baking to the first bite. Versatility and creativity infuse each offering. Imagine Fried Buffalo Chicken, or Steak & Cheddar, Quesabirria (their favorite Mexican dish in empanada form), or the Mojo Pork empanada, which has a citrus marinade-bathed pork with black beans to create a taste of Cuba.
Bailee likes a bit of spice, so they created the Rocoto Crema which includes a Peruvian pepper. “I wanted to use a pepper from South America, and this one has just the right flavor and level of heat,” she describes with a grin.The flavors available change and build on what is in season or what tickles the chef's fancy.
House-made sauces are available upon request, including the traditional Argentinian chimichurri. “It's good on everything!” says Peter. “We make a garlic aioli which is creamy and garlicky, many people love that.”
It is clear that the couple is passionate about what they do. They want to expand to selling their empanadas to the rest of Mendocino County and even beyond. “It is so wonderful to be invited into people's celebrations,” Peter says. “When customers order our empanadas for a party, wedding, or winery event, we become part of that. It feels really good.” Peter and Bailee plan to continue to grow and work together. Peter’s parents just came for a long visit, and it is clear that the love of family and each other is what powers this restaurant. You can taste the love in every bite.
Farola Argentinian Empanadas
585 N State St, Ukiah
(Walk up window on Clara Ave)
Open Tues - Fri 12pm - 9pm, Sat 12pm - 8pm
Insta: @farola.ukiah
Couple and exterior photos by Zach Samphsel. Emapanada photo courtesy of Farola
Mar Vista Farm & Cottages
A Seaside Slice of Heaven
by Deanna Boettcher
“It was no mistake or happenstance that we ended up at Mar Vista. As a matter of fact, I think we would both say that our entire career paths were leading us here all along, even when we weren’t aware of it,” shares Deanna Boettcher when she reflects on her life stewarding an 80-year-old hospitality resort into the future. Along with her husband, Christopher Boettcher, she purchased the lodging property and small farm known as Mar Vista Farm + Cottages in late 2020. Rather than referring to themselves as owners, they consider themselves stewards, preserving and protecting the land while creating enriching guest experiences that celebrate nature.
Christopher (Cab) has worked in hospitality his whole life, starting in restaurants, then hotels, and eventually private clubs. Deanna’s prior career was in the fashion industry. She grew up in New York and also lived in the Midwest, and no matter what she was doing, she always found room for gardening. Whether in pots on her balcony or in a community garden, she was always counting the days until she could really get her hands in the dirt. She turned her passion into a vocation when they moved to California in 2014, going to school for Environmental Horticulture and Design and then working as a fine gardener for homes and estates around the Bay Area. She also spent time with a few non-profits, building edible and native gardens for outdoor lessons at elementary schools.
It was late 2019 when Cab and Deanna began to dream up a new life, one where their work would embody the lifestyle they wanted to live. They craved work that connected with nature, including growing food and sharing it with others. They did not know Mar Vista existed yet, but it matched the business plan they had developed perfectly, including the three goats! Cab remembers the moment they slowly drove up the driveway, mouths hanging open in awe. "We could feel everything in our bodies slow down. This place was different, it felt like we stepped back in time." The goosebumps confirmed it—they had found their new home.
Mar Vista was originally founded by Louis Kovacs and Ramus Echsen Eriksen. The pair were immigrants from Hungary and Denmark respectively, and partners in both life and business. Louis purchased the land in the late 1930s but didn’t bring in Ramus until they decided to build on the site in the 1940s. Countless fishermen asking to crash in their barn sparked the business idea: building cabins for those same traveling fisherman. They built the first six in the early 1940s and the second six after the war.
Over time, Mar Vista has changed hands several times, and although there have been upgrades and improvements made, much of what Louis and Ramus built still remains: wide open spaces, ocean views, the original redwood soaking tub, ponds, access to Fish Rock Cove beach, a short but beautiful redwood forest walk, and the original Fish House (specifically built for pounding abalone and cleaning fish). Fishermen were eventually replaced with vacationing couples, families, and singles.
As for Deanna and Cab, they are delighted to be living the country life now. They enjoy morning walks through the small grove of redwoods or down to the secluded beach. Deanna spends a lot of her time in the dirt, working in the gardens and greenhouse, making sure there are year-round greens and microgreens for the guests (a perfect addition to the eggs delivered to their door each morning). Each cottage has a full kitchen as well as shears and a harvest basket, inviting guests to pick their own goodies from the garden (with help from instructive signs posted throughout). Or they can avail themselves of pre-picked offerings from the garden stand that Deanna stocks daily. There are Brussels sprouts in winter, brassicas in spring, and strawberries and blueberries in summer. Cucumbers, beans, and tomatoes also show up in the summer, though those are grown in the greenhouse due to the cool coastal location.
Besides the flock of chickens, the property is home to a dog, three cats, three (male) goats, and two bunnies. The property has WiFi and cell service, but is still an excellent place to unplug. There are no phones or TVs in the cottages. Instead, guests enjoy complimentary yoga and meditation on weekends, garden tours, backyard chicken-keeping classes, and animal interaction events like “goat gab,” “bunny banter,” and “chicken chat.” Area attractions include amazing ocean views at the Point Arena Lighthouse, endangered African ungulates at B. Bryan Preserve, and a fascinating 50-acre ode to stones at Mendocino Stone Ranch. River kayaking, horseback riding, and hiking are all on offer as well. And of course there are a number of local beaches on which to blissfully do nothing.
It could be days spent out in the fresh air, or the comfy beds and lovely linens, or even the lullabies provided by waves, frogs, and seals (depending on the weather and the season), but many guests report experiencing their best sleeps ever while staying at Mar Vista. Because of the farm's remote location, it "forces people to slow down, but in the most gentle way," Deanna reflects. "Some people just don’t realize how much they need it until they get here."
As for the future, Cab explains, “Our goal is to continue enhancing what is already here, while preserving and protecting the natural landscape and wildlife. Like the first time Deanna and I drove up the gravel road, feeling the magic of this place and the world melt away... that is exactly what we want for every guest that comes to Mar Vista.”
Mar Vista Farm + Cottages
35101 S Hwy 1, Gualala
(707) 884-3522 | marvistafarmandcottages.com
Photos courtesy of Mar Vista Farm & Cottages
The Fate of the Stars
The Effort to Restore Pycnopodia to Our Coastal Waters
by Sarah Reith
Not that long ago, one of the reliable delights about a day at the beach was piles of rotten seaweed, buzzing with contented flies. On the way home, the car would smell like wet, seaweed-infused dog. That’s how you could tell that sunflower sea stars, pycnopodia helianthoides, were patrolling the waters nearby, devouring purple urchin or terrifying them into submission. Purple urchin have an insatiable appetite for seaweed, but the pycnopodia has an insatiable appetite for urchin. Adult pycnopodia can weigh up to 13 pounds. They have 16 - 24 limbs, spanning a meter and covered with thousands of tube feet. Compared to most sea stars, whose mobility level borders on the ornamental, pycnopodia are sprinters. They would run down purple urchin, dissolve their hard spines, and relish the uni inside.
Prior to 2013, they were so good at what they did, no one bothered to learn much about them. That year, a heat wave began to linger in the Pacific Ocean. Since then, an estimated 99% of the pycnopodia from Mexico to Alaska have succumbed to a wasting disease. The previously well-controlled purple urchin proceeded to eat 96% of the kelp, outcompeting other grazers like abalone. (Another beachgoer’s delight used to be plucking an abalone off a rock and eating it shoreside with friends. The large mollusks have faced other pressures too, including poaching, but those days are long gone.)
The waters off the Mendocino coast were hard hit by the kelp die-off. Animals that relied on the underwater forests saw their habitat dwindle to a few forlorn fronds. Remnant populations of wild pycnopodia do survive in the fjords and British Columbia, and there are regular sightings of a single charismatic juvenile off the Mendocino headlands, and scattered reports of others. But divers and tidepoolers report that purple urchin are the dominant life form in areas that used to swarm with variety.
A consortium of organizations has assembled a plan to restore the pycnopodia. In 2022, The Nature Conservancy published a “Roadmap to Recovery for the Sunflower Sea Star Along the West Coast of North America.”* An incomplete list of participating entities includes multiple state departments of fish and wildlife, as well as federal agencies, aquariums, and universities across the continent.
Much of the roadmap is a guide to acquiring basic knowledge of pycnopodia biology and genetics. Can they be inoculated against the wasting disease? How resilient are they? And can viable strains be bred in captivity?
Norah Eddy, associate director of the oceans program for The Nature Conservancy in California, is especially proud of the captive breeding program that’s flourished since the Roadmap was published. Though sightings in the wild are encouraging, she noted drily that, “We’re not doing back flips” about the occasional appearance of a celebrity sunflower sea star here and there. She maintains that the captive breeding program has resulted in “a ton of strides in epidemiology,” as well as an understanding of the inherent resilience of captive-bred specimens. Scientists at the Friday Harbor Labs at the University of Washington, led by Dr. Jason Hodin, have already released, and are now studying, two small cohorts of captive-bred pycnopodia, one in April 2023, and the other in August 2024. It’s a vital step on the way to a strategic reintroduction.
Closer to home, a few thousand tiny pycnopodia are swimming in carefully maintained quarantine at California Academy of Sciences’ Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco. Some are barely flecks, and others fit in the frame of a fingernail. Urchin, oysters, and other kinds of sea stars are also being raised onsite to feed them.
Interest in the pycnopodia is gathering momentum. One Friday afternoon, Kylie Lev, a curator at Steinhart Aquarium and pycnopodia project lead, had back-to-back engagements with writers eager to meet her tiny charges. Spawned on Valentine’s Day at San Diego’s Birch Aquarium, they’ve graduated from floating passively in the water column and eating phytoplankton to settling on the bottom and catching prey. “They’re trying to eat us out of house and home right now,” Lev laughed, as a tiny pycnopodia perched on top of a tiny oyster, dining at a leisurely pace.
But apex predators don’t even need to eat herbivores to keep them in check. Eddy reported that, “Sea urchins are actually terrified of sunflower sea stars.” When a pycnopodia is on the prowl, she said the urchin behave like herd animals on the Serengeti, giving a wide berth to a hunting lion. “Recovering the pycnopodia will not only reduce sea urchins because the pycnos will eat them,” she explained. “It’s also going to change the way urchins behave…They are just out there doing whatever they want to do. They are eating kelp like crazy.”
Dr. Hodin has been breeding and studying sunflower sea stars at his lab in Washington since 2019. But this is science, where every data point has to be pored over and replicated and reviewed before it can be presented as fact. It’s unlikely that captive-bred pycnopodia will be deployed to restore order in the urchin barrens immediately. But stocking every tidepool is not the only metric of success. Lev insists that the effort is proceeding apace, “as long as you’re learning along the way and it has a positive impact in both data gathering and collaborative efforts.”
In the meantime, some humans are trying to fill in for the missing predator. Another consortium, with many of the same players that are working to restore the pycnopodia, is working on strategies to discourage urchin and restore the kelp forest. Tristin Anoush McHugh, the kelp project director with The Nature Conservancy, reported on efforts to clear urchin from two sites off Mendocino, one near Portuguese Beach and the other off Albion. “It’s been a great summer,” she declared, shortly after Labor Day. Since June, partners from Moss Landing Marine Labs, Sonoma State University, U.C. Davis, the Sea Urchin Commission, CDFW, the Ocean Protection Council and California Sea Grant, Reef Check and Above/Below had removed 52,910 pounds of purple urchin from a combined six acres from beaches in Big River and Albion.
But the tactics aren’t limited to suppressing the urchin. The Nature Conservancy is simultaneously leading tests in kelp enhancement methods, which, if successful, could lead to overall vegetative recovery in targeted restoration areas.
Scientists have also developed a technique that allows kelp to grow on strings from experimental modules above the seabed, where urchin can’t reach it. Two years after the first outplanting at Albion, Anoush McHugh exulted that much of this kelp “grew to adult, hit the surface of the ocean, created the sorus (reproductive) tissue, and has now released back into the system.” She described early signs of habitat restoration, from unicellular organisms creeping back onto the scene to the recruitment of rockfish, which is a valuable commercial species, especially with the closure of the salmon fishery. “We’re obviously still tinkering in the early days,” she conceded, “but everyone has been so on it, and we’re so excited by what we’re seeing.”
Eddy, too, is optimistic about the chances for both species. “We’re not talking about old-growth forests,” she said, acknowledging the climate change despair that sets in at some point during any conversation about restoring the environment. “Kelp are some of the fastest-growing organisms on the planet. Marine invertebrates have an amazing capacity to rebound when conditions are there … a lot is moving in our favor.”
The human effort to bring both species back from the brink is extensive. It includes raw labor, like clearing urchin and farming seaweed, and plenty of scientific innovation. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums is collecting reproductive cells from sunflower sea stars and cryogenically preserving them, to diversify the captive breeding program as much as possible. And nature itself could be poised to welcome the return of the missing species. Though the wasting disease is not yet fully understood, it appears to be strongly correlated with warming waters. The pending La Niña system is expected to cool the oceans, which could invigorate both pycnopodia and kelp.
It’s been over ten years since a day at the tidepools involved sightings of sea stars with a lot more legs than anyone else. Lev, the curator at Steinhart Aquarium, hopes to introduce her young ones to the public soon. And maybe someday, they will eat their way out of the house and find their way home to a welcoming sea.
Photos at Steinhart Aquarium and of the baby pycnopodia by Gayle Laird © California Academy of Sciences. Photo of sea star found in the wild by Nicole Ravicchio © California Academy of Sciences. Photo of group in sea cave by Sarah Reith.
Sarah Reith is a writer and nature enthusiast living in northern California.
*Find Roadmap to Recovery for the Sunflower Sea Star Along the West Coast of North America at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366177598_Roadmap_to_Recovery_for_the_Sunflower_Sea_Star_Along_the_West_Coast_of_North_America
Hard Head Bread
Baking to the Beat of a Different Drum
by Will Stenberg
Jesse Stenberg—along with his partner in business and romance, Maria Flynn—is the founder of Hard Head Bread, a cottage bakery in our hometown of Fort Bragg. Jesse is also my younger brother. Jesse and I grew up there, first as barefoot kids running around in the woods, then as disaffected young punk rockers who couldn’t wait to get out. We both did as soon as possible but have since come to love our hometown, warts and all. Jesse even came back to Fort Bragg, where he and Maria started Hard Head Bread in December of 2022 in our childhood home. In fact, the bakery itself is in my old bedroom, once festooned with Ramones posters and angsty poetry, now producing the finest long-fermented breads on the North Coast. Life takes some unexpected turns.
I had a chance the other day to talk with Jesse and Maria about the origins of the bakery. Jesse was hired at Grand Central Bakery in Portland, Oregon in 2002, where, “being young and without any formal college education,” he fell into the kind of counter-service job that had kept money in his pocket since his early teens. But this time, Jesse became friendly with head baker Mel Darbyshire, who asked if he wanted to come back and learn. To this day he gives “big props” to Mel, whom he says has always been available for “questions, support and advice” on his journey to becoming a master baker.
It was in 2007 when fate played its hand and Maria ended up with the same company. She recalls how she felt “very much like the bakers were the cool team, rowdier and having more fun, throwing dough balls at each other”—as opposed to the more composed and conventional front-ofhouse. I don’t know if Maria sneaking salt in Jesse’s water was what started everything, but if so, her prank caught his attention. The two have been inseparable ever since.
Jesse found baking “pretty interesting from the beginning.” He recalls, “I remember when I first transferred to the baking department, Mel printed me out a forty-page pamphlet from one of her books. I dove into it. I asked questions. I’ve always been fascinated with stats. That’s one of the reasons I’m such a big baseball fan, and baking is all percentages.”
Eventually, Jesse and Maria left Portland for California’s Central Coast, where Jesse continued his education in other bakeries. It was there that the two first began thinking seriously about opening a bakery of their own. They partly credit their friends Jesse and Christina at Hey Brother Baker in Long Beach, who showed them an example of “serious and passionate” baking on a “smaller scale.” Jesse embarked upon a reconnaissance trip in order “to see the scope and hang out with them and see what their set-up was. [The trip] made it less abstract and more tangible, where I realized this was a feasible thing.”
But why choose to come back home to Mendocino County to make this dream a reality? “I missed being around ferns,” says Jesse. Maria adds that a visit to Fort Bragg around the time that Fort Bragg Bakery was being sold gave her hope that they could succeed here. Hanging out at The Golden West one evening, a whole crew of old friends encouraged them to move back and try their luck, promising support. “And then when we moved here,” says Maria, “people followed through with that support. Unique to this town is that people just want to see you succeed, and they’ll help you as much as they can. Most towns talk about it; this town backs it up.”
“Look at the fight to keep big box stores out,” adds Jesse. “We’d rather keep our Corners of the Mouth, our Down Home Foods, our Pippi’s Longstockings, our Purity. Small local shops. Fort Bragg really stays true to that.”
When I ask Jesse about what style of baking he practices, this long time Wu-Tang fan says, “I like to say we’re kind of the ODB [Ol’ Dirty Bastard] of baking: there’s no father to our style.” Maria chimes in with, “Some might describe it as a rustic style where the crust is meant to be very crusty and the interior is soft…”
“… Like me,” offers Jesse, getting a chuckle. Then, more seriously: “I want to make bread that everyone can afford. We’re here to feed people. We’re here to nourish people. Being an elitist can be detrimental to the mission, which is to make people happy. Keeping it small—no staff, baking at home with an affordable rent—we’re able to maintain our prices at a reasonable level.”
Some staples include the Sourdough Country Loaf, the Baguette, the Sourdough Bagels and, for those with a sweet-tooth, the indispensable Triple Chocolate Rye Cookies. Recently, Jesse has been “super into the Sesame Khorasan Loaf,” stating that “toasted sesame is in our blood as Lebanese people. I love the smell of it.”
With Jesse baking and Maria handling “literally everything else,” Hard Head Bread has been servicing the Fort Bragg area since December 2022, offering primarily pick-up, while delivering for a few choice retail accounts. They recently celebrated their best month ever, and couldn’t be more grateful.
“We have been so supported,” says Jesse. “I couldn’t imagine doing this anywhere else.”
As for me, while it’s always a bit of a shock to go into the room where I played my first guitar chord and see a commercial baking oven, I couldn’t be prouder of my little brother, his wonderful partner, and all they’ve accomplished.
Order bread online at hardheadbread.com
Photos courtesy of Hard Head Bread
Will Stenberg is a screenwriter, poet, and musician who hails from Fort Bragg and currently lives in a cabin in Oregon with his dog and turtle.
Ocean to Plate
Buying Fish Right Off the Boat in Noyo Harbor
by Terry Ryder
California fisheries are considered a “Legacy Industry” that sustains local families while helping to attract tourists. Shockingly, the California commercial fleet that included 5,000 boats in 1980 diminished to only 464 vessels by 2022, and Fort Bragg is home to 103 of these registered commercial fishing boats. The fish catchers who are still fishing are finding it increasingly necessary to “adapt or die.” Fortunately, Noyo Harbor seems to have some very resourceful people who have taken this challenge to heart and devised some innovative ways to help get the freshest fish onto your dinner table.
Dan Platt, aka Captain Dan, is a commercial fisherman, diver, and owner of Noyo Harbor Tours in Fort Bragg. He owns two boats: the Zhivago, a converted 1931 former Coast Guard craft for fishing, and The Noyo Star, his eco-friendly electric tour boat. The recent tough times in California fisheries encouraged Dan to think outside the box. To improve his bottom line, he is sometimes able to sell his fish direct from his boat to customers on the dock, cutting out the middleman. He has a fisherman’s retail permit that allows him to sell whole fish using a state certified scale. The customer pays for the whole fish, which Dan then happily cleans and/or fillets, as requested. You can’t get any fresher than this, and it shows in the flavor and texture of the fish.
As a member of the Pacific Fisheries Management Council, Dan has been instrumental in exploring sustainable fishing practices. He will fish and sell salmon if there is a legal season for it. At other times, he sells rock fish (there are 32 different kinds) or sablefish. His fish are caught on hooks mid-way between the surface and the bottom. He often fishes alone as far as seven miles out. Only the fearless need apply. “Conditions can change quickly,” he says calmly and with a steady smile. “I love the water so much that I need to be around it.” His harbor tour business helps to “keep him afloat” when fish seasons are lean or closed entirely. His hour-long tours of Noyo Harbor are fun and educational—perfect for families, and his sunset tours (bring your own wine) particularly appeal to adults.
With 40-plus years in and around Noyo Harbor, Dan knows what is going on and is generous in sharing his knowledge. He often mentions other fish catchers who are working hard to bring fresh fish direct to customers. He has great praise for Harbormaster Anna Neumann, who is trying to build up the “Blue Economy,” which, according to the World Bank, is the “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and jobs while preserving the health of ocean ecosystem.”
A conversation with Anna reveals her dedication to all things sustainable, ecological, and environmentally sound. She is working to bring traditional farmers market vendors down to the docks to sell their products alongside the fishermen. The Noyo Harbor would like to see a Fisherman’s Market once a month, meeting near the Fisherman’s Memorial and the Harbor office at 19101 South Harbor Drive.
Using a grant from the State Economic Development Department and working with the West Center Business Development Office, Anna is hoping to have an online notification system built into the Noyoharbordistrict.org website by mid June. If customers want to buy fish off the boats on the dock, they will be able to find out when and where. Traditional physical signs are also posted around the harbor when the fishermen are “in” and selling.
Taking things a step further, Laura Miller and Rich Holmes, owners of a 32' x 11' salmon trawler called The Animal Fair, have developed an online selling system that allows customers to buy their fish before it even hits the dock. Customers can provide them with an e-mail address (at salmonlumi.com), and they will provide 1-2 days notification of when they will be selling. After the fish have been caught, patrons can submit their request online, and the fish will be bagged, tagged, and ready for pick-up as soon as the boat docks. Dan believes that the dock sales are best suited to smaller boats like his, as the larger boats can probably use their time more profitably selling their whole catch wholesale. Laura notes, “In the life of a modern fisherman, you have to be open to change and to try new things … Word of mouth does wonders in a small town.”
On days when the fisher-catchers are not selling from the dock, fresh local seafood can be found at Princess Seafood Market or the Princess Restaurant. This all-female crew, headed by owners Heather Sears and Wendy Holloway, catch fish aboard their boat, The Princess. The catch is given a blast freeze at sea to seal in freshness. The flavor of their fish is noticeably more delicious than what can be purchased at a supermarket. For smoked local fish, head to Roundman’s Smokehouse in downtown Fort Bragg. Harvest Market in Fort Bragg’s Boatyard Shopping Center also sells locally caught fresh fish.
So next time you get a yearning that only seafood will satisfy, head to Fort Bragg. You are guaranteed to find something super fresh and tasty no matter when you go.
Go to noyoharbordistrict.org to learn about events and news for Noyo Harbor in Fort Bragg.
Terry Ryder Sites lives in Yorkville with 4 cats and 1 husband. A graduate of Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Clown College, she writes a weekly column for the Anderson Valley Advertiser. Photos by Terry Ryder
The Great Poppy Experiment
Exploring the Bountiful and Beautiful World of Poppies
by Brence Culp
Near my home in the Anderson Valley, there are some old raised beds from a time when someone actively cared for the property. Now the garden beds are a sanctuary for thistles the height of my waist. Every spring when the thistles rise and dominate, I’m determined to kill them, but I get distracted, then give up when the tarweed comes in.
One spring, I bought coveralls and a weed whacker to clear a path to the beds. It was strangely satisfying to level the towering giants, which I did for hours until my coil of orange cutting string ran out. I then switched to hand-to-hand combat inside the bed, shoveling thistles out by their roots, kneeling to excavate lesser weeds by hand, cursing as they stung me through my gloves. While indiscriminately yanking everything I saw, I caught sight of a short clump of greyish-green leaves showing themselves, all lacy and light. A poppy? With an orange bloom, most definitely a California poppy.
Is it possible a person once planted poppies in the vegetable garden for the pure beauty, comfort, and pleasure of a flower? Thirty years ago, a husband and son built this house to create a gardening sanctuary for their wife and mother. Had she introduced them here? I got onto my knees and into the weeds to pull each weed by hand, carefully avoiding the delicate poppies. By the end of the day, a scattered bed of lacy leaves and small blooms were free to the sun and the air: the beginnings of my first recovered garden bed.
Later that night, thistle remnants still behind my ear—but at least now with a cocktail in hand—I searched online for poppies. Having raised our children in Southern California, I had seen California poppies a million times. My mother-in-law had a yard full of them in Pasadena. But what about other varieties? Was there a New York poppy? An Illinois poppy? My mother-in-law once told me her scientist colleague from Greece snuck a pocket of poppy seeds back to the States for her. Were there also poppies from Kazakhstan? The Andes? Were they different? The same? Most importantly—could I grow them here?
What I discovered online was, literally, a world of poppies. In addition to my mother-in-law’s Greek poppies, there are Spanish (Papaver rupifragum, actually from Morocco), Icelandic (Papaver nudicaule, growing in places far beyond Iceland), Mongolian (a type of Icelandic poppy), Japanese (Glaucidium palmatum, not to be confused with Oriental poppies, Papaver orientale), as well as others hailing from the wilds of the Caucuses (Papaver commutatum and its Iranian and Turkish domesticated cultivar Lady Bird, along with Turkish tulip, Papaver glaucum). There are poppies that showcase the imperial reach and refinement of Europe’s formal gardens (including Sissinghurst White, one of many gorgeous cultivars of Papaver somniferum, Flemish Antique, featured widely in 17th century Dutch paintings, and Danish Flag), and poppies that imitate other fabulous flowers on tall stems such as large, showy Peony poppies (Papaver paeoniflorum).
Lucky for me (as I now know they grow well here), there are about 100 cultivars of California poppies (Eschscholzia californica), with colors ranging from buttercream to flaming red, including my favorite, the dazzling vermillion Mikado. Equally beautiful and drought-friendly are the Mojave (Eschscholzia glyptosperma), Matilija (Romneya coulteri), and Prickly poppies (Argemone munita, also known as Chicalote, with a fascinating medicinal history dating at least back to the Aztecs), to name a few.
My explorations through the world of poppies online revealed an abundance of varieties. Both wild and cultivated poppies are beautifully displayed across websites and seed catalogs, with seeds for sale in little paper packets with seductive photos and long explanations of their cultural and historical significance. For example, the American Legion poppy is a cultivar of Papaver rhoeas which is known, among other names, as Corn poppy and Field poppy, since surviving relics depict it as emerging in fields after corn was planted by the ancient Egyptians (who revered the poppy). Papaver rhoeas is also known as Flanders poppy and Remembrance poppy, because it bloomed on a field where more than 50,000 soldiers died in WWI, a moment that was captured in a famous poem. Flanders poppies still signify commemoration of lost soldiers in many English-speaking countries.
In the middle of all this online digging, a search prompt popped up: “Is Growing Poppies Illegal?” I am not a practicing lawyer, and I am not giving legal advice. However, in response to this particular question, the collective wisdom of the interwebs seems to be that: 1) there are two main types of poppy—one from which heroin is made and the other from which it is not; and, 2) if you grow the one from which heroin is made, you are not breaking the law unless you intend to and are, in fact, using it to make heroin. The seed companies advise you to independently confirm that it is not illegal to grow poppies in your country. Yet they also say, “If we’re selling this to you, then obviously it’s not illegal.”
From that perspective, I figured a few packets of so-called Breadseed poppies would be okay. I justified their addition to my garden since I used their beautiful deep-blue poppy seeds to make my grandmother’s beloved German poppyseed cake for New Year’s, a treat both my dad and his brother particularly enjoy. I like the grow-your-own culture of Mendocino and, while I don’t grow-my-own you-know-what, I really enjoy great dinners from my own backyard, and growing poppies for poppy seed would be a special addition to that. As far as I can tell, the best poppies to grow for poppy seed are the Pepperbox or Florist Pepperbox (apparently also great as a cut flower), Hungarian Blue or Hungarian Breadseed, and Giant cultivars of Papaver somniferum (the Latin name referring to sleep, as depicted by the sleep-inducing poppy fields in the Wizard of Oz). Papaver somniferum is alternately known as Breadseed poppy (apparently boasting dramatic California history episodes including the Poppy Rebellion of the 1940s) and Opium poppy, again, depending on the intention and the use.
For my part, I watched the California poppies in my reclaimed garden bed bloom and form seed pods that look like little wizards’ hats. By mid-summer, the poppy leaves had mainly died back. By late-summer, the dried seed pods burst, scattering millions of tiny black seeds everywhere. I had purchased 20 different varieties, mostly from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, prioritizing beauty first, then diversity, and finally those that would likely thrive in the microclimate of my garden. In November, a friend helped me sprinkle the seeds in open areas of the poppy bed, each marked with a Sharpie-inscribed wooden shim. Three weeks later, most had sprouted.
After leaving them alone all winter, the following spring, we had poppies galore. The specimens that were most successful included Lady Bird, Sissinghurst White, American Legion, Flemish Antique, and Mikado. They are all reseeding themselves, and I hope to see them ultimately take over the poppy bed where thistles once dominated, with little to no intervention from me.
My dream is that someday in the future, the garden beds will be teeming with towering poppies boasting massive, feathery blooms the size of your hand. I hope that, long after I’m gone, the next person to approach the long-overgrown beds may see, instead of the reign of thistles, an empire of poppies from around the world.
Brence Culp lives with her family in Anderson Valley, where she’s learning to become a gardener.
Photos by Brence Culp
Parents & Friends
How a Local Garden Helps Adults with Disabilities
by Anna Levy
Parents & Friends at the farmers market
Parents and Friends, a local organization focused on providing services and support to adults with disabilities, has a long history in Fort Bragg. Since its inception in 1955, when a group of women founded it to support families whose children were not allowed to attend school, it has been a mainstay of the community, seeking opportunities to help people integrate into everyday life on the coast through a variety of experiences, connections, and job support. It has only been in the last decade, though, that they’ve gotten into gardening.
According to Robert Kuhn, the garden leader for Parents and Friends, the CEO of the organization was inspired in 2013 to reach out to a local expert, Gowan Batist, to ask about the possibility of starting a garden on Cypress Street. “She built the garden,” Robert says, “and I was the first employee to take it over.”
From the beginning, the garden project fell under the LIFE initiative at Parents and Friends. “It stands for Learning Independence from Experience,” Robert explains, “and our department is called Community Integration.” In that department, he says, some people “get jobs, other people go on outings.” The garden, however, gives people a chance to do many things at once: get their hands dirty, learn the ins and outs of growing and tending to vegetables and flowers, and work with others.
It also gives people the opportunity to participate in the farmer’s market on Wednesdays in Fort Bragg, selling what they’ve grown and building a sense of community among other vendors. “We have regulars that come every week, and they love our flowers and lettuce, so people get to see those friends,” Robert notes. “It’s a way for them, our clients, to pretty much run the booth. They need a little bit of help with making change and answering questions. They get the feeling of independence.”
For Robert, that sense of community extends to other experts and resources throughout the Mendocino Coast. He regularly connects with others working on home gardens and larger projects, and he’s particularly appreciative of the group that works on the Garden Friendly Community Fort Bragg project. “People have really helped us,” he said. “They’ve helped us grow this.”
It’s a project that is likely to continue to grow. According to Xaviera Hall, the Program Director of Parents and Friends’ Community Integration Services, the organization serves 105 participants, and the garden has become an important part of services offered to their population. “The five who help Robert regularly are a small group from the LIFE department,” he says, though “there are other participants who assist in the garden but do not participate in the harvest and farmers market.”
It can be an important part of overall development. “The garden gives the participant the ability or opportunity to work on their individual goals,” he continues. “This could be healthy eating, counting money, or taking care of the environment. The garden has also been beneficial to our aging population.” He notes that, “it has helped with fine and gross motor skills and sensory therapy.” During the pandemic, the garden even helped fill the need for access to healthy food, for both participants and some staff. Through the garden project, they have built what he sees as “great natural support and lasting relationships.”
Of course, as a nonprofit, it seems that there is always a need for additional support. To that end, Robert says, he would love to have more people volunteering on their Sunday work days in the garden. “We are always there by noon,” he says, “and we work until 3:00 or 4:00.” Anyone who is interested can contact him directly or reach out to Parents and Friends through their main contacts. Xaviera adds that there are additional needs as an organization. “We are always looking for funds to help with paying for training, transportation, or even updated technology,” he says. “We are also looking for Direct Support Professionals, board members, and volunteers—people who want to make a difference in people’s lives.”
The goal for participants, he notes, is straightforward: “Help them be as independent as possible, confident, and live their best lives.” Though Robert has been gardening since the 1970s, it’s not his long history that he looks at for guidance. Rather, as he considers the people he works with and the possibilities within the garden, “it’s the future that inspires me.”
Parents and Friends, Inc.
parentsandfriends.org
Contact Robert at gardenleader@parentsandfriends.org or Xaviera Hall at xhall@parentsandfriends.org for additional information. Find the garden project participants at the Fort Bragg Farmers Market every Wednesday afternoon.
Anna Levy lives on the Mendocino Coast with her family.
Photos courtesy of Parents & Friends
Reza’s Bread
Community Rising
by Holly Madrigal
Reza Ghannadan goes to Petaluma every Monday to pick up 500 pounds of organic bread flour, which he needs for the week's baking. Reza praises the flour he can get from his favorite miller, Central Milling. “Their methods are so consistent after all these years of milling. They have been in business since 1867!” Reza smiles as he bustles about his small state-of-the-art breadery, created from a former garage in a quiet Willits neighborhood, stating, “I’m bringing about 150 loaves to market tomorrow.”
Reza’s earlier career was in the medical industry, maintaining the electrical devices that dispense medications for hospitals, but he baked as a hobby for decades. While working at Adventist Health Howard Memorial Hospital for the 10 years of his final professional position, he would bake bread on the side and bring it to the doctors and nurses. Reza became fast friends with Dr. Bowen, famed orthopedic surgeon. They worked side by side over the years, and Dr. Bowen would often tell him, “You know, Reza, you could be selling this bread. It’s delicious.” Reza also delivered bread to his friends twice a week. But then the pandemic changed everything. “I went from working elbow to elbow with my colleagues and friends to a complete shutdown.” When he could no longer serve in the way he used to, Reza decided to begin baking professionally in 2020.
Reza and his wife, Debbie, live in a beautiful home in Willits. When asked how they met, Debbie laughs gently. “Reza’s other life was as a programmer and field technician. I made a service call, and this man showed up within minutes! It turned out he had already been in the parking lot for another purpose.” The two bonded over their shared love of hot sauce when Debbie noticed Reza's hot sauce holster, and the two were smitten with each other from that moment forward.
Their custom-built home, where they have lived since 2017, is made for entertaining, with a wrap-around porch and a sunny patio where they had a brick pizza oven installed. Before they found this oasis, they lived for a short time at the Willits Senior Center Apartments. They got to know a lot of people there, and they learned that when there was a power outage, the seniors in the housing community suffered. Those who relied upon supplemental oxygen or other medical measures that require electricity were being sent to the hospital. So the Ghannadans decided to host a fundraiser pizza party to help the Senior Center purchase a generator. Along with Adventist Health Howard Memorial Hospital and the Willits community, they helped to raise over $43k. Now the senior community has alternative power for their residents.
This began a legacy of baking for charitable organizations that are close to the Ghannadans’ hearts. Reza has joined the board of directors for the Senior Center. They also support Our Daily Bread, the Caring Kitchen, Veteran’s Hall in Ukiah, and many other organizations. “You see tangible results to this kind of giving, and it really makes me happy. It is really rewarding,” says Reza.
At the start of Reza’s professional baking career, the pandemic was still new, so they built an honor system bread stand in front of their house. “At first, we would take the donations and gift them back to the organizations we care about, but then it evolved into a business,” says Debbie. They became profitable within the first nine months.
Reza’s baking efforts quickly outgrew his small kitchen. At that time, Reza was using his home oven to turn out loaves of sourdough, which he could only do one at a time. The baking process took more than eight hours. It was unsustainable, so they transformed their garage into a bakery. Now he bakes 600 loaves a week with the help of Jessica Cichowski, who preps for him so that he can bake in the early hours for market. A culinary school graduate, she comes in three days a week. “I could not do this without her,” Reza explains. “We have the same work ethic. Jessica is intuitive and a very fast learner. I find myself texting her photos of the loaves that she helped create. They are so beautiful!”
Reza is entirely self-taught. His shelves are filled with books about baking. Iranian by birth, his ancestors were confectioners. His last name—Ghannadan—means confectioner in Farsi. Reza believes that, “Food is something that becomes part of the eater’s body. It is a sacred exchange.” Reza’s voice takes on a reverent quality when he speaks of his key ingredient. “My sourdough starter is 32 years old. The sourdough is my baby. Her name is Ava. [Interesting side note: there is a library of registered sourdoughs—Puratos in Belgium—and Reza’s sourdough is registered as number 43.] When the sourdough is ready to mix, she lets me know. She is my boss … My classic sourdough is water, salt and flour, and sourdough starter. No additional yeast is used.”
Reza elaborates, “We have created 30 different varieties of sourdough, all organic and with the best ingredients.” He started with traditional sourdough rounds, then branched out into Seedalicious—to this day, the most popular. Debbie lists all the heavenly sounding flavors: cinnamon walnut raisin, whole wheat, Rumi (saffron, cardamom, and rosewater), and holiday special breads. ”We make a Persian naan … Because it is flat, you need to eat it that day—ideally, snacking on the way home from the market,” Reza jokes. “I make a glaze of flour and water and brush the naan with that, and it helps preserve it. I top it with nigella and sesame seeds. It’s hard to stop eating because it is so delicious.” They also make multiple kinds of focaccia, such as gorgonzola and caramelized onion, tomato garlic rosemary, and garlic parmesan, and they sell frozen pizza dough.
People are not the only ones who love sourdough. Reza explains, “One day, I put six buckets of sourdough starter outside because we were making rye, and it was hot, and I wanted to slow it down as it was cooler outside.” He left it there, only to return and find all six buckets gone. A bear had passed by and ate the entire lot. “That almost brought me to my knees. It was so much of our starter. We still had the mother, but it took a while to re-ferment some. They ate it all. It was horrible,” says Reza. ”The deer have stolen our Persian naan!” adds Debbie. “We never leave the door open these days.”
The timing window for baking is very narrow. Jessica starts on Thursday for the Saturday market. Mixing takes about forty five minutes, then the dough rises in tubs. She stretches and folds the risen dough four times, then she leaves those tubs for about five hours. Reza scales them, cutting to size, weighing out portions, and pre-shaping the loaves. He takes those and creates the final shape, then he puts them in bannetons (wicker baskets) and places those in the fridge for about eighteen hours. Reza explains, “That is the time that the starter does its magic. It develops a slow, steady flavor, breaking down the starch and creating a natural sugar. That natural sugar caramelizes and makes that gorgeous, glossy sheen. The tang and sweetness develop. When I do a rye, I leave it for thirty hours because I want that real tanginess.”
“I also like to introduce people to interesting and exotic grains and flours like Khorasan.” According to Reza, Khorasan was originally cultivated 9000 years ago in Iran. Trademarked as kamut, the berries are 3x the size of a regular wheat berry and the color of golden turmeric. Reza uses that grain and shares the history with as many people as he can. “That bread is, in my opinion, what bread should taste like.” He likes those ancient grains. He also works with spelt, which has a very fragile gluten structure, so it’s sometimes better tolerated for people who have a gluten sensitivity.
The couple tried selling their breads in restaurants and markets, but they found they enjoyed the one-on-one connection of the farmers market. They now attend the Windsor, Willits, Fort Bragg, Ukiah, and south coast markets. Reza says, “I learn things at every market. I let the customers tell me what they want, what flavors they are interested in. I have been baking for 30 years and I still learn things every day.”
“Willits has been so welcoming,” Debbie adds, “We are good friends with our neighbors. Reza's former colleagues at the hospital are still my best customers. In community, you get what you give. The director of the Senior Center drove all the way to San Francisco to pick up our current oven." Bolstered by their reciprocated love of community, the duo provides nourishing loaves to their dedicated customers and friends. And on weekends, they host fundraising events for the non-profits they want to support. “As long as there is a need, I will keep baking. Baking is my passion,” declares Reza.
Word of Reza's bread made its way to Food Network's Guy Fieri, who has stopped by the Windsor Farmers Market twice to meet Reza. Guy's co-executive producer for Guys Grocery Games has now scheduled Reza's Breadery to be included on a future episode. Filming begins in August to be televised soon after. While it will be fun to see our local breadmaker on television, it can't compare to delicious gratification that comes from enjoying one of his fresh loaves in all its glory.
Reza's Breadery
Rezasbreadery.com
Available at Fort Bragg, Willits, and Ukiah farmers markets.
Holly Madrigal is a Mendocino County maven who loves to share the delights of our region. She’s fortunate to enjoy her meaningful work as the director of the Leadership Mendocino program and takes great joy in publishing this magazine.
Photos by Holly Madrigal
Faux-mage at The Bewildered Pig
A Deep-Dive into Crafting Truly Scrumptious Plant-Based Cheese
by Janelle Weaver
Look anywhere in history and you will find creative minds dealing with adversity and turning it into creativity. We were about a year into the COVID rollercoaster, and navigating the ongoing challenges of surviving the crisis continued to present huge burdens of uncertainty, stress, and discord. I decided it would be a good idea to disappear into a gastronomic rabbit hole for a while, and I decided that rabbit hole had to be located in new culinary territory. In order to enliven both brain hemispheres, it had to excite the creative right and pose endless opportunities for new and exciting flavor profiles. But it also had to fulfill the linear left with aspects of technical mastery. Hoping that something creative and delicious could be channeled out of all the hullaballoo, we closed The Bewildered Pig for “R&D Sessions” so we could realign our spirits and focus on the future. Making plant-based food was not the initial impetus for or the muse of this cheese-y venture. Rather, the idea was born as a confluence of a quandary and a quest. And in the process, we created delicious, nutritious, and beautiful plant-based cheese.
There’s a lot of hype about plant-based cheeses these days, and there’s a lot of confusion and quibbling about calling these products “cheese,” rather than “cheeze.” The current nomenclature, albeit somewhat abbreviated, is that they are referred to as “cheese” if the product is actually cultured, and therefore age-able, and “cheeze” if it is just a combination of starches and binders. As echoed in the dairy cheese world, the most sought after, complex versions are small batch, artisanal, and unique to the maker and/or affineur. Thankfully, the same trend is emerging for plant-based cheeses, and that is what I wanted to make. Not because I don’t like or eat dairy cheese—in fact the opposite is true. I love dairy cheese, and the stinkier and gooier, the better! Therefore, the idea was to make plant-based cheeses that both plant-based folks and dairy cheese-lovers would appreciate, and that has become the standard for how we grade our creations.
Early in this endeavor, a good vegan friend of ours (who also happens to be a big inspiration for this project) turned us on to a well-respected retailer in the country who specializes in vegan foods from all over. We ordered a smattering of plant-based cheeses, and we invited a dairy goat-cheese-making friend to taste them with us! I interspersed our own first renditions of cheese alongside about 10 other samples of plant-based cheeses and cheezes. Admittedly, much of what we sampled ranged from pretty underwhelming to nothing short of gross. There was only one cheese that truly impressed, and we offered it in the market until we could produce enough of our own to satisfy the slowly growing demand.
The lesson we learned from tasting lots of other vegan cheese products was that simply inoculating a substrate with culture(s) and watching it grow does not create a delicious cheese all on its own, and I’ve learned that with my own creations as well. I knew pretty much nothing about making any kind of cheese when I started, and that was probably for the best. I had no idea that I’d have to become a pseudo-mini-biologist, measuring temperature, humidity, pH, and other important factors that encourage the microbes to safely and properly transform into mouth- watering cultured cheeses.
Over the last 18 months or so, we’ve experimented with various wheel sizes, combinations of cultures, and different aging and processing techniques. These months of experiments have taught us much about what works and what doesn’t. Asking if it “tastes delicious” has become the very simple benchmark that we use to decide if we should continue making it.
The other simple benchmark is if people come back for more. I didn’t initially realize just how many folks are either sensitive to dairy or just want to consume less of it. We have so many people that love our cheeses and return for them repeatedly. It’s been very gratifying to witness the joy they have from being able to eat something that really tastes good and satisfies in the way people thought only dairy cheese could!
Faux-mage is what we call our collection of house-made, artisanal, plant-based cheeses. We make four different Faux-mage varieties, and the flagships are Faux-bert and Powerhouse. Faux-bert represents the initial vision of the project: a bloomed rind, aged, creamy cheese reminiscent of its dairy counterpart, Camembert. It is made from local baby butter (lima) beans and cashews and is comprised of 3-4 cultures, depending on the seasonal flavor profile desired. Its initial bloom starts at about 2-3 weeks and is lightly yeasty and buttery scented. As it further matures, the cheese develops more herbaceous notes. Fully aged (around 7-10 weeks), the nose yields fresh hay and barnyard characteristics, the flavor is more deeply pronounced and the texture more concentrated and firm. We vary the flavors to include a slightly smoky vegetable ash center or locally foraged wild mushrooms, and we grow and forage our own flowers and herbs to encrust the beautiful white, pillowy rind.
Powerhouse started out as a desire for a nutrient-rich, delicious super-food. This cheese is incredibly savory and delicious, with layers of complexity. Umami dominates—imparted by the culture, shiro miso, and koji—and is met with the brightness and spice of turmeric, local garlic, and mustard. The intense flavors are housed in an almost-whipped texture base made from Brazil nuts, pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds, and cashews. It’s great spread on veggies or crunchies, like our house-made sourdough nigella crackers. As Powerhouse ages, its young precociousness evolves into unapologetic assertiveness, pinpointed and bold. People either like it or they don’t! Most do, and some like it so much that they ask for a 16 oz container of it, so we happily oblige!
Faux-cotta is a cultured cashew version of ricotta and is reminiscent of clabbered cream. It’s amazing as is, can be melted onto anything, or combined with maple syrup or something sweet and added to desserts like fruit cobbler, scones, or biscuits. We often make a vegan “crème anglaise” from it at the restaurant.
Seasonally, we offer Faux-mozz. Modeled after burrata or fresh mozzarella, these savory, tangy, creamy spheres topped many a tomato and basil salad this past summer, surprising the heck out of our guests, who never once suspected that it wasn’t a dairy cheese!
People often assume that The Bewildered Pig is a meat-centric restaurant (or even a BBQ joint), so for us to make and serve plant-based cheeses to our guests, regardless of their culinary proclivities, completely correlates with our deliciously satirical reputation. Additionally, our provocative, ironic tendencies are reflected in the merchandising of Faux-mage: it is positioned right next to our impressive display of house-made, old world-style charcuterie like splendid pâtés, rillettes, and liver mousses, all made from heritage, locally raised pork, rabbit, lamb, and pheasant. People are pleasantly bewildered by this juxtaposition, which implies that our eating choices need not segregate us, but can rather unite by their shared roots of being made with delicious, healthy, and humane intention.
We offer Faux-mage as well as other gourmet “Pig-nic” items through the market at the restaurant. Distribution of the Faux-mage on a wholesale level requires a much more complex process, both bureaucratically and logistically. One of the key requirements is having a dedicated production facility, no matter how small the production. While this idea is a bit daunting, I cannot deny the appeal of visions of aging the Faux-bert in a coastal facility, with the fresh, briny air imparting the salt component required in the aging process.
Faux-mage has provided a wonderful way for us to engage with our community. We are a very small “mom and pop” place, and fairly logistically challenged. Since our opening in 2016, we have often been unable to participate in many community-held food events, as doing so usually requires closing the restaurant. Our remote location has also posed challenges in gathering valuable customer feedback. This year, however, we featured our cheeses at the Mendocino Film Festival and at the annual Good Farm Fund Gala. Sharing Faux-mage at these beloved events has helped us share our cheeses with over 400 people within a few hours! The overwhelmingly positive reception has been another wonderful gift.
Ultimately, the whole process has been an incredible experience. Faux-mage has grown to be a perfect union of participating with our community, as well as creating something delicious that everyone can enjoy. We feel as though we can be proud of a genuinely unique and locally-made product that fills a nutritious and celebratory niche.
It has also been a great reminder that it is often through the process of overcoming adversity that we experience positive change. No matter the reasons people like or buy our cheeses, the elation they express about having it on their table is the kind of joyful satisfaction that only a passion for food can inspire. So, every time you enjoy a bite, remember that change can be a catalyst for manifestation. It is true that food can and does unite us all.
The Market at The Bewildered Pig
1810 Highway 128, Philo | (707) 895-2088 | TheBewilderedPig.com
Open Wednesday – Saturday, 12:30pm – 5pm
Henderson Studios
Expertly Crafted Fiber Art Made in Mendocino County from Start to Finish
by Torrey Douglass
When weaver Jennie Henderson and her husband Michael were building their home and looking for carpeting, she knew what she wanted. “I went from place to place, asking for wool. They kept trying to talk me into the synthetic carpets, but I kept asking.” The pair have enjoyed that same wool carpet in their home for 25 years, and Jennie notes, “My sister down in Sea Ranch has regular carpeting and she’s had to replace it twice during the same amount of time. Mine still looks like new.”
Jennie’s love of wool began well before her hunt for carpeting. It has brought her around the world to England, New Zealand, and Mexico, but the first spark was lit in Denmark. A college student at the time, she was ostensibly in Denmark to study International Relations—at least that’s what her parents understood. But she spent all the time she could spare (and maybe more) learning about weaving instead. “I mostly hung out in craft shops and weaving studios and took a class at the Tomtex weaving studio/shop,” Jennie recalls. She even cashed in her return ticket to purchase her first loom by the Swedish company Glimåkra, the gold standard for weaving looms, which she shipped home to southern California. Once back on home soil, she jumped into weaving, guided by nothing but how-to books and her artist’s intuition.
This passion for working wool was a natural extension of Jennie’s lifelong love of creating with fiber. Her grandmother lived with them when Jennie was young, and she passed along her skills in both knitting and tatting (a delicate craft where thread is knotted and looped, sometimes to make doilies). By the time she was in high school, Jennie was sewing shirts and dresses she had dyed herself.
While she was a student at Whittier College in Los Angeles, Jennie met Michael Henderson at her dorm, which had once been a hospital—the very hospital in which Michael had been born. They were introduced through friends and they connected through their love of art and the outdoors. After they married, Jennie worked as a teacher in El Monte while Michael completed his Masters in Counseling. They took trips into the desert whenever they could to escape the traffic and pollution of Los Angeles.
In 1977, Jennie’s family purchased the campground at Anchor Bay, and they invited the couple to move up and manage its operations, leaving Los Angeles behind for good. Jennie’s weaving output at that time consisted of handspun sweaters she would sell at local craft fairs, woven with mail-order fleece from New Zealand, since local products could not compare in quality. In 1980, she visited family friends on a sheep ranch in New Zealand, and Jennie’s original spark of interest in weaving wool turned into a blaze.
“I love the process from beginning to end,” shares Jennie. “I like all the touching and feeling involved.” She’s spun everything from pet hair to dryer lint, but she landed on sheep wool as her preferred material and now uses it exclusively, finally able to source good wool locally. Alder Creek Ranch in Manchester raises Icelandic sheep, a breed known for producing fleece that is strong, beautiful, and soft. Jennie also enjoys using wool from Romney sheep, a New Zealand breed, whose fleece is the perfect balance of soft and durable with a long staple, and common enough locally so it’s easy to find.
Jennie exudes the embodied energy of a creative person who has found her groove. She strides around her studio and a high-ceilinged living room with a large stone hearth, clearly the heart of the home. Looms, spinning wheels, baskets of wool, and works in various stages of progress are everywhere. Not unlike pianos, many of the looms made their way to her when the original owners passed away and the heirs needed to re-home them. Her quick laugh, inviting warmth, and obvious enthusiasm for weaving all speak to a person who finds deep satisfaction in doing her work.
Jennie’s creative process relies heavily on her artistic intuition. She does not sketch out designs, instead opting to just get started and see what happens. She weaves in one direction for a spell, then will change course when the time feels right. In the past she has dyed her fleece with natural dyes made from foraged plant matter like bark, lichen, moss, and mushrooms, but today she likes to let the natural colors of the wool form the design. The bulk of her work includes throws, shawls, and rugs, though she plays around with smaller items like scarves to round out the offerings during open studios. Sometimes she’ll wash the fleece, sometimes she’ll card it, but usually she prefers to “spin in the grease with flicking but no carding”—in other words, she uses unwashed, uncarded fleece that has had the ends combed out to remove tangles. Jennie elaborates, “Holding the staple (the length of sheared wool) by the sheared end, you flick out the curl or snarled weathered ends in order to easily spin directly from the staple. Very long, low crimp wool like a nice Romney fleece is great to do this way, and you can get a beautiful worsted spin with very little work.”
Jennie can rely on her intuition since it’s rooted in deep experience informed by a broad study of different weaving traditions. She learned the techniques of Navajo weaving from friend and neighbor Jacquetta Nisbet, and she attended workshops at Pacific Textile Arts in Fort Bragg with renowned rug weaver Jason Collingwood from Colchester, England. One of her most treasured periods of study was in 2013 in the artisan pueblo of Teotitlán del Valle in Oaxaca, a village of traditional Zapotec weavers, where she studied with Master Weaver Erasto “Tito” Mendoza and learned weaving methods that are centuries old. On the wall of her studio is a gift from some of the weavers she worked with during her stay—a small rug incorporating the three primary traditional patterns used by Zapotec weavers to remind Jennie of what she learned there.These experiences have developed a deep well of inspiration and ability on which Jennie can draw when she sits down at her loom, not unlike a singer training their voice to reach new octaves so they can perform a broader array of songs.
The undyed fleeces of Jennie’s rugs result in a muted palette of creamy white, varied browns, and soft greys. Yet the pieces use clean lines, bold shapes, and contrast between light and dark to create striking designs in spite of the softness of both the hues and the medium. In some rugs the forms are sharply geometric, while in others they are organic. Yet in all of them, the abstract compositions evoke the natural world, bringing to mind light reflecting off water, or the silhouette of hills on the horizon during the colorless hour before the sun restores vibrancy to the landscape.
For people looking to warm up their space with a stunning hand-woven wool rug, Jennie sells her work through twice-yearly open studio tours on the coast, on the FiberShed Marketplace website, and at The Discovery Gallery Cooperative in Gualala. Useful and beautiful, a rug from Henderson Studios is a genuine Mendocino artifact, made from locally grown wool in the hills above Point Arena, with Jennie’s love for her craft and her home woven into every one.
Henderson Studios
Point Arena, CA
HendersonStudiosPointArena.com
FibershedMarketplace.com/merchants/henderson-studios
Photos by Torrey Douglass
Hoop Houses
Extending Growing Seasons and Crop Options for Farmers
by Lisa Ludwigsen
Perhaps you’ve noticed them while driving past a stretch of farmland—large structures covered with heavy-duty plastic. Hoop houses, also known as high tunnels, have become a popular alternative to traditional greenhouses, which utilize traditional glass or plexiglass panels. Whereas greenhouses are typically used to grow food or plants in pots or raised containers, the lightweight tubular construction of hoop houses offers more affordable and flexible options for growing food directly in the ground. A relatively low-tech tool to extend the growing season and provide a more secure local food supply for small farms, hoop houses are proving to be a real game-changer.
Small-scale farmers, homesteaders, and even backyard gardeners across the country, in all climates, are installing hoop houses to increase productivity and expand their selection of crops. Large models can cover as much as 6,000 square feet, accommodating a tractor inside to till the soil. Smaller models can be fit into tight spaces and disassembled or relocated to allow flexibility of planting schedules and land use.
Imagine harvesting baby lettuce and spinach from the ground when the temperature outside is 10°F and snow covers the ground. With a little assistance from a wood stove or propane heater, heated hoop houses can allow cold-climate farmers to grow food in the ground year-round. Even without a heating element, they are effective growing season extenders, helping farmers in all types of climates get both an early start and more time to grow into the fall and winter months.
In traditional organic farming, seeds or seedlings are planted in the field as soon as the last frost has passed and the soil is not overly wet. Depending on location, that last frost could be April 1 or even May 30 in some areas. The growing season continues until the first hard frost, which kills most annual crops. In Northern California, a killing frost typically occurs in late November. At season’s end, fields are either planted with cover crops to provide soil nourishment over the winter, or they are left fallow. The farmer then moves on to winter projects like infrastructure work or planning for the following year. So goes the cycle of farming.
Getting a few weeks’ jump on the growing season can mean a significant financial boost for small farms. This is where hoop houses really shine. Mendocino County’s cool, wet springs can often prevent farmers from getting crops into the ground, because working in wet soil can severely damage soil structure, often with long-lasting consequences. A large hoop house allows row crops to get into the ground early, and controlling the temperature inside gives the plants a comfortable, healthy start. As the season progresses, the hoop house sides can be lifted to allow adequate air flow and temperature control. Hoop houses also provide protection from environmental factors like damaging hail or high winds (though severe weather can damage the house).
With an average summer temperature of just 65°F, the Mendocino coast has its own, rather unique, agricultural challenges. Though cool weather crops like lettuces or brassicas thrive in a cool coastal climate, growing tomatoes or other heat-loving summer crops presents considerable hurdles. Nye Ranch in Fort Bragg utilizes hoop houses to grow summer crops and flowers for their popular farm stand and farmers market customers. Hoop houses deliver reliably warm temperatures and help control moisture which can promote blight, mold, and other unpleasant plant diseases.
“We couldn’t grow tomatoes on the coast without the hoop houses” said Shea Burns, owner of Nye Ranch. “They don’t like the direct salt air.” The covered arches also protect against the late rains. “This year, because of the protection these provide, we were able to beat the inland farms to market with the first tomatoes,” Shea elaborated. “We also grow bell peppers and basil in ours.”
They even have one one hoop house used as an “experimental tunnel.” Shea explained, “We’ve been growing flowers in that one. The late rains damaged many of the blossoms that were growing outside the hoop house, but those inside were protected. [The hoop houses] allow us to overwinter some crops while planting the rest in a cover crop to renew the soil.”
Just a few miles inland as the crow flies, farms deal with different weather extremes, as summer temperatures regularly reach into the high 90s and hard frosts can occur even in late spring. Jessie Taaning-Sanchez of Inland Ranch in Redwood Valley says that the hoop house she borrowed from another farmer allowed her to stay ahead of the game at the start of the growing season. “I have my tomatoes started under the hoop house and so I got a head start even when a hard frost hit in late April. This was easy to pop up and get my plants in.” Later in the season, when the temperatures rise, shade cloth can replace the plastic, or the plastic can be removed entirely.
Chris Duke, owner of Great Oak Farm in Mason, Wisconsin, utilizes a collection of hoop houses to keep his 40-acre farm productive all year. “We start seedlings inside our small greenhouse in early spring and then plant directly into the ground in our large houses,” he shared. Planting in hoop houses allows Duke to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers in a very short growing season, as well as harvest some crops in the dead of winter. “We can get into trouble if there is too much wind or if heavy snow accumulates along the edges of the hoop house, but in general they are a great assist in our cold northern climate,” he explained. Duke’s farm supplies a year-round CSA based in Wiscon-si’s Bayfield and Ashland counties. In winter, the CSA relies on stored staple crops like beets, potatoes, onions, carrots, as well as frozen meats and value-added products, but fresh produce is a big bonus for those supporting local agriculture all year. Duke added, “We also really value our employees and want to keep them on the payroll, so we don’t want to shut down production in the winter. The hoop houses keep us going.” Northern California farmers rarely deal with the drastically cold conditions found in far northern climes, but Mendocino County’s wildly variable geography presents its own challenges, and local farmers are also seeing the benefits of hoop house farming.
Of course, there are a few concerns about hoop houses. Primarily, that’s a lot of plastic, and when it breaks down, disposal is difficult. Another concern is that insect infestation, once established in a closed hoop house system, needs to be addressed quickly.
The USDA has recognized the effectiveness of hoop houses on small farms. They are offering grants through the Natural Resources Conservation Services program, with the focus of the grants on soil health and erosion prevention. Planting directly into the soil is a requirement, which is perfect for the design and function of hoop houses.
Supporting a network of small food producers at a national level is an encouraging development for the stability of regional food supplies. For anyone interested in building a high tunnel/hoop house—even backyard gardeners—YouTube is filled with firsthand stories and advice. Or take a drive around Mendocino County and check out the hoop houses in use. They’re hard to miss, and though they’re not particularly lovely, they will help provide us with farm-fresh produce well outside of the traditional growing season.
Top article photo courtesy of Nye Ranch. Additional photos by Lisa Ludwigsen.
Lisa Ludwigsen is a writer and marketer working with food, farms, and family small businesses throughout Northern California. She has worked in organic agriculture, natural foods, and environmental education for over 20 years.
Living the Legacy
Sally Schmitt’s Granddaughter Reflects on Lessons Learned
by Polly Bates
When I was little, every so often I and my younger sister, Rita, would venture “up front” to our grandparents’ house at the entrance to The Apple Farm for a sleepover. We would push the couches together to make a giant nest to play and eventually sleep in, and challenge Grandma Sally to never-ending rounds of fast-paced card games. She usually destroyed us. Later on, as Grandpa Don prepared apple juice spritzers (we were still too young for wine coolers), we would help Grandma as she indulged our young, simple palates by making what we lovingly called “Creetzas.” This delicacy consisted of stone ground crackers with our favorite Jack cheese from Lemon’s Market melted on top, as if it were a pizza. Simple. Local. Delicious. I’m sure they ate something else for dinner themselves, but the Creetzas stand out for me because, in retrospect, it’s hilarious that our renowned gourmet chef of a grandmother would make such a thing. Yet, it’s also telling because I would still describe her food in the same way—simple, local, and as fresh as possible.
My grandparents first made their mark on the food world in Yountville, Napa Valley, where they managed the Vintage 1870 building. It started as a “shopping arcade” that featured handpicked local artists and supported many first-time business owners, but it soon expanded to include my grandmother’s cafe and later her restaurant, The Chutney Kitchen. Sally’s food became very popular, and eventually they purchased an old building where she could create a restaurant that truly reflected her vision—the celebrated French Laundry. I don’t remember much from those days besides running around the gardens, trying to ride in the dumbwaiter, and playing with my grandpa’s orange slice boats in their hot tub when we visited. Yet, even at that age, I had a sense that the community they were cultivating and the food experience they offered were a special endeavor that would influence the trajectory of many lives.
In 1984, my grandparents purchased The Apple Farm in Philo, an old, rather run-down 32-acre farm, as a place to eventually retire. They asked my parents, Karen and Tim Bates, if they would like to try their hand at farming apples. So my parents moved to the property with my two older siblings, and have since spent nearly 40 years reviving the original orchard and adding almost 80 heirloom apple varieties to it. They became pioneers in organic and biodynamic farming, and soon I, and later my sister Rita, joined the pack of kids running around the orchard.
When my grandparents finally moved to the farm in 1993, the welcoming spirit that had surrounded The French Laundry came with them. They built a commercial kitchen, four guest rooms, and a home for themselves off the end of the old barn. From the moment it was built, the “big kitchen,” as we called it, was always overflowing with some tantalizing smell. No one on the property could stay away for long. Once you came near, you would inevitably get roped into some task: sifting flour for baking, cracking apricot pits to extract the kernel for jam, or washing the never-ending dishes. We didn’t mind, though. We wanted to be around whatever magic Sally was cooking up in there. It was like we all floated around the edges, putting little pieces of the puzzle together, which she would eventually gather up and fit into the frame she’d made. The final result would always be a delicious creation of such beauty and delight. I remember our family always saying, “Some people eat to live, but we live to eat.”
As a teenager, I spent many nights helping my mother and grandmother execute the cooking lessons we offered out of that kitchen. Those lessons allowed my grandmother to continue sharing her love of cooking and food philosophy with our guests without the daily demands of running a restaurant. I didn’t always love being there, cleaning up the mess of a bunch of adult strangers, but now I wish I’d paid more attention to all the little culinary details that were imparted. Luckily, I still managed to learn a lot “by osmosis,” as my mom says. Sally had a stern but gentle way of teaching. Mistakes were quickly corrected, but there were always more opportunities to try again and get it right in her kitchens. I now know, though, that the most important lessons I learned from her were not actually about food at all.
A legacy cannot be established in just one generation. It is a build-up of small acts of love over time. Sometimes we don’t even realize what we are part of until someone from the outside helps us see it with fresh eyes.
A few years ago I was working as a mentor at an arts-based youth camp in Oregon, when Sola, one of the program facilitators, asked how I’d arrived at this work. I didn’t have a clear answer at first, but my family’s farm came up, as well as the fact that everyone on my mother’s side was some sort of creative entrepreneur. I knew that I was, too, but my calling to the performance arts had always felt like it didn’t quite fit—like it was too sparkly and urban to be put in the same category as running a small farm, restaurant, flower business, or arts and crafts furniture company. My work friend wanted to know, “Where did that entrepreneurial spirit come from? None of those are easy things to do, so surely there was some encouragement or support coming from somewhere?”
My mind immediately jumped to a conversation I’d had with my Aunt Kathy and my Uncle Bill. I was trying to help my Grandmother Sally with her cookbook memoir project—a brilliant but often overwhelming undertaking instigated by my cousin Byron on Sally’s 80th birthday. It had become a little stagnant due to busy lives and the recent passing of my dear Grandfather Don. I had some time on my hands and thought I would take a crack at trying to help keep the project moving forward. Byron and his brother, Troyce, had already taken a ton of beautiful photos and laid out the design, and my grandmother had written a lot, but it needed more structure. My enthusiasm about the project reignited Sally’s excitement, and I took a heavy box of manuscripts home to sort through them.
In reading the manuscripts, I realized that Grandma Sally was so humble that it would be hard to convey the true impact of her life through her words alone. Byron had done a lot of interviews with her old staff members that were very revealing, but I wanted to find a way to include more of her five children’s perspectives. So I sat down with her daughter Kathy (and Kathy’s husband, Bill) to learn more about my grandparents. Bill, who came into the family as an employee first, described them as truly self-effacing (because “the ultimate in being impolite was to blow your own horn”) and private, unlike the generations of today who live their lives so publicly online. They would never share when they were in a challenging financial situation or needed help, but the things they did share through their actions deeply impacted a whole community of young people.
My Grandpa Don was a true storyteller and a powerful but humble public figure. He loved people and was an incredible host, and, according to Bill, he believed that “if you nurtured people, they could do great things.” I remember getting small tastes of this from him in the rare moments I got him alone. At one point he handed the Apple Farm Napa deliveries over to me and took me along to show me the route. Hearing his stories about his connection to each restaurant and chef we visited, and seeing his pride when he introduced me, showed me how much he invested in building relationships in his communities and bringing people together. He was known as the ultimate host—always ready to top off your wine glass with the best the region could offer.
My grandmother’s way was much less direct. Kathy described her as often having an impact on people without realizing it. “She had confidence and instilled that in all of us.” There was a whole group of young folks who became adults in her kitchens, where it was “expected that you jump in and help where it was needed,” Kathy shared. “In that process, you learn about everything and become better at creating the end product if you’re involved the whole way. And that’s what makes it more fun and interactive for everyone.” So many of them left there well equipped to start their own successful projects.
Kathy described how she was able to easily transition into building her own floral business by incorporating the little lessons her parents had taught her while she was growing up in and around the Vintage 1870 and the French Laundry. She just felt like she naturally knew what to do and how to understand every angle of the business and how to bring her employees along. Kathy put it this way: “They gave us a base and a fundamental training that all of us used,” but they also “let us feel our way; they didn’t come down on us for not making certain choices. I think that’s what makes our family a little unusual—we are not afraid to always be exploring or trying something new.”
As I recalled that conversation and was describing my grandparents to Sola, I realized that every single one of their family members had inherited not only their confidence, but also their desire to pass that forward, to instill it in others through their own form of mentorship. My parents were no exception. They had taken on the operation of the Apple Farm with very little knowledge of apples, and were not only doing an incredible job at maintaining and evolving the farm, supporting and eventually taking over the cooking experiences and the event space, but for years they had also been bringing us (their four children) along in the process. On top of that, they had also been taking on young “farmhands” interested in learning farming skills and welcoming them into our home and family. They were mentors in the deepest sense of the word, carrying forth my grandparents’ philosophy that, “It’s not just about teaching people a specific skill—it’s a whole sense of community and sharing a table together that makes an experience valuable.”
This was exactly what I had been learning through mentoring at these camps as well. It wasn’t specifically about the dance skills, stilt lessons, or sewing techniques I taught these youth. It was about the community we could create when we all came together to share, and the inspiration and confidence they could also bring to the table when they felt held, heard, and cared for by those that came before them. Identifying this characteristic in my grandparents allowed me to recognize and acknowledge how my path and my life choices fit into a framework that is so much bigger than me.
In this last year, I had the honor of caring for my grandmother and helping her build physical strength (using my personal training skills) to retain her independence and mobility as much as possible. It was so challenging for all of us to experience her health and autonomy shift, but it was also incredible to see how four generations of family came together to care for her. She was able to celebrate her 90th birthday in good health, hold her incredible cookbook memoir, Six California Kitchens, in her hands, and share it with all of us. I was blessed with the opportunity to be there with her, holding those marvelous hands, as she transitioned out of this physical world.
One evening after we did her exercises, I prepared a simple goat cheese and spinach dinner omelet for us in the way she’d lovingly taught me when I visited their home in Elk. I will forever think of her when I eat omelets. Simple (but requiring good technique). Local (cheese from our goats, eggs from our hens). Delicious (if you think omelets aren’t for dinner, think again). When we sat down to eat, I asked if she and Grandpa realized the legacy they were creating for our family as it was happening. In her characteristic modest manner, she chalked it up to luck and good timing. I’ll admit I was a little shocked. I’d created this story in my head that my grandparents had planned this thing out from the start, had seen the run-down farm they bought in all its potential glory, and had clearly imagined passing this land on to the next generations. If you take a look around The Apple Farm today, and the beautiful family compound it has become over the years in addition to everything else it produces, you might recognize, like Sola did and like I do, that there was a little more to it than just luck and timing.
All those little acts of risk-taking, of teaching, of hosting, of feeding, of encouraging, of sharing what they had, and of mentoring added up to something much more. I still call it a legacy, even though Grandma Sally may have been too humble to claim that word. I am so honored to call them family, but more importantly, I am in awe of the way that everyone who spent time with my grandparents was left with the tools, knowledge, and desire to continue and expand upon their legacy in their own unique way.
The Apple Farm
18501 Greenwood Road, Philo | PhiloAppleFarm.com
All photos courtesy of The Apple Farm
Polly Bates currently splits her time between The Apple Farm, where she is the Director of Communications, and Oakland, where she runs her own wellness and entertainment company called Daring Arts Movement. She is passionate about travel, dance, functional fitness, and working with youth to build sustainable practices and systems for a better world.
Barra Ranch Alpacas
An Unexpected Arrival at Barra of Mendocino
by Lisa Ludwigsen
I found myself pondering about alpacas as I headed down the windy road to visit the Barra family’s home ranch, Redwood Valley Vineyards. Alpaca is just another name for a llama, right? They’re from South America, and their long necks and stature stand out in fields as they protect livestock, mainly sheep, from predator attacks. After an hour visiting with these sweet, funny, inquisitive animals, I was not only charmed, but I realized that my assumptions about alpacas were mostly wrong. I wanted to learn even more about them.
It turns out that alpacas differ from llamas in many ways. Both breeds hail from the mountainous areas of western South America, where llamas are used as pack animals and predator control. Alpacas, though, are smaller and less instinctively protective, so they aren’t typically used as guards for flocks or herds. Alpacas also have a shorter nose and pointier ears. Perhaps the most important difference between the two animals is that alpaca hair makes an exceptional fiber (llama hair has historically been less desirable for fiber work, though breeding is changing this). Their fleece can be a variety of natural colors–white, beige, brown, auburn, and pure black. It is a prized fiber in many parts of the world, and can be blended with silk and wool to beautiful effect. Just like sheep wool, alpaca fleece can be sheared, carded, and spun into yarn to make textiles of all kinds. Unlike sheep wool, however, alpaca contains no lanolin, so it is hypo-allergenic. This makes it a great alternative for those with wool sensitivities.
The invitation to visit the alpacas was prompted by the unexpected arrival of two alpaca babies—known as cria— to the small herd of five that the Barra family purchased in August of 2020. “The gestational period of alpacas is between 300-350 days, so we had no idea that two of our females were pregnant when the animals arrived at the ranch . . . It was such a pleasant surprise to have these adorable babies show up unexpectedly,” shared Martha Barra, owner of the Barra of Mendocino and Girasole Vineyards wine brands, as well as the Redwood Valley Cellars custom crush facility.
Martha explained, “We purchased the alpacas and three goats from a rancher in Boonville after a pack of neighborhood dogs tragically attacked and killed 13 of our beloved goats in one night. After that heartbreak, we thought alpacas would be a smart replacement, since predators like dogs and coyotes don’t often attack them.” It has worked out exceptionally well. Three new goats share a pasture with the alpacas, where they all look after each other. Martha added, “They really are a delight to be around and make a great addition to the small flock of chickens on the property. We dress them up with traditional Peruvian ribbons, take pictures of them to share on our social media marketing, especially on National Alpaca Day. Everyone, from our staff to ranch visitors, enjoys seeing and visiting with them.”
The Barra alpacas range in color from a light beige to a rich, dark butterscotch and sport names like Coconut, Toffee, Carmella, Sugar (one of the babies) and Yuli, who was born near Christmas. Their expressive faces, pointy ears, and friendly dispositions make them appear to be ready to start up a conversation with a visitor. If you’re in the area, pull over and stop by for a chat
For information about making a group reservation to visit the alpacas at the ranch, email info@barraofmendocino.com.
Barra of Mendocino Tasting Room
7051 North State Street, Redwood Valley
(707) 485-0322 | BarraOfMendocino.com
Open Sat & Sun, 11am - 5pm | Mon - Fri, 10am - 5pm
Full Circle Wool
Tackling Climate Change with Tiny Sheep
by Torrey Douglass
What do sponges, wildfire safety, and 45 of the world’s smallest sheep have in common? The answer: Marie Hoff, a maker and shepherd living in Potter Valley.
Marie was in her late 20s when she decided that she’d had enough of the financial uncertainty of life in the Bay Area. Her post-college years had begun as a free-spirited time of living as cheaply as possible, working random jobs, and devoting the rest of her energy to creating and experiencing art with friends. But promising career openings for arts degree graduates are limited at the best of times; in an economy still reeling from the Great Recession, they had dried up faster than splashed paint. Eventually the grind of service jobs with no clear path to a more stable existence began to deflate her spirit. Marie knew it was time to take a step back, take stock, and figure out something new.
So began a period of reflection. Marie looked back on her patchwork of jobs and realized her favorite employment had been in the farmers markets. Meeting the farmers, selling the produce, and participating in a food system that was healthier for people and the climate aligned with her values and brought her joy. After growing up in Southern California suburbs, she’d been drawn to the Bay Area by its energy and artistic vibrancy. Now it was time to seek new pastures again.
Marie is warm, thoughtful, and patient, all good qualities in both a farmer and a friend. She reached out to contacts she’d made at the farmers markets and began spending time on their farms, working beside them, and learning all she could. “I loved the lifestyle,” she shares. “I thought, ‘This is where I’m supposed to be.’” She particularly loved the West Sonoma farms and, through housesitting and live/work arrangements, was soon able to shift her home base out of the city.
Marie spent some time living with her friend and mentor, Hazel Flett of Bodega Pastures, where she worked with sheep for the first time. Remembering that period, Marie reflects, “I liked moving around with them, shepherding them to new pastures and learning about their flock dynamics, seeing how my movement affected them and developed a relationship to them. And then how my movement and their movement impacted the land and grasses, how the relationship between me and the sheep affected the landscape.”
Not long after, Marie worked at Heart Felt Fiber Farm south of Santa Rosa, under the wise guidance of farmer and fiber artist Leslie Adkins. On a trip to the East Coast to meet other sheep ranchers, Leslie visited a Massachusetts farm where she encountered the smallest breed of sheep in the world: the Ouessant. Originally from the westernmost French island, Ile d’Ouessant, the sheep weigh around 50 pounds and stand 18” at the shoulder for ewes, 19” for rams. They are curious and gentle, yet hardy and independent enough to endure the cold wet winters in the hills of their home island.
Leslie was smitten by the Ouessant and purchased a pair for her farm. After returning to California, she convinced Marie to buy some of her own, and soon seven more joined the original two. Collectively, they were the first of the breed on the West Coast. Marie called her flock the Capella Grazing Project, aptly named after the shepherd star. She changed the name to Full Circle Wool after moving to Potter Valley three years later in 2016, not wanting to be confused with the Calpella community.
Full Circle Wool sells products made from wool provided by Marie’s herd and also sourced from other ranches in the region. She only uses wool that is Climate Beneficial™, described on her site as “a verification by Fibershed (501c3 nonprofit), confirming that the fiber is grown on a farm or ranch operating under, and actively implementing, a Carbon Farm Plan.”
Full Circle Wool products include wool sponges, handkerchiefs, skeins of beautiful yarn, and art hangings. It’s even possible to sponsor a newborn lamb. Sponsors get to name the lamb, visit it, and receive photo updates as it grows. They are sent wool from the spring and fall shearings, and can even attend a wool crafting class led by Marie. Not surprisingly, sponsorships, which open up in late October and early November, tend to sell out fast.
Wool products are ideal for climate conscious customers: sheep eat the grass to produce the wool, the wool is processed and used to make all sorts of items like sweaters, blankets, and rugs, and at the end of their life cycle, those goods can be composted and returned to the soil that grows the grass for the sheep. The weakest part of the cycle is the making of products—lots of wool gets thrown out because there are so few artisans to buy it. Restoring the infrastructure for processing to strengthen the overall market is a motivating factor behind Full Circle Wool.
Marie’s understanding of this cycle, as well as of the strengths and vulnerabilities involved in sheep ranching, can be traced to her work with the Fibershed, a nonprofit that develops regional fiber and dye systems while prioritizing economy, equity, and ecology. She served as the Producer Program Coordinator from 2016-2019, a multifaceted role in which she coordinated with the different producers, helped to organize events like the Wool & Fine Fiber Symposium and Fashion Gala, worked on the blog, managed the Climate Beneficial program, and oversaw in-person meetups for producers. “It taught me a lot of skills related to admin work that, while sometimes tedious, are really helpful in running Full Circle Wool,” Marie remembers. “I learned a lot about the different producers in Northern California, the different land bases, the different fibers and what landscapes they grow on, and carbon farming.”
Today Marie’s herd numbers 44, with 10 ewes, 14 lambs, 16 wethers (castrated males), and 4 rams. There is one Black Welsh Mountain Ram to maintain genetic diversity, since it’s challenging to purchase and ship new purebred Ouessant from afar. The flock provides more than just wool for Marie’s products. They are uniquely designed for wildfire fuel abatement to make properties more fire safe. Thanks to their short stature, attributed to the poor food sources of their home island, the sheep evolved into indiscriminate browsers (who eat brush and leafy branches) and grazers (who eat grasses and ground plants). Plants passed over by more finicky beasts, like poison oak and coyote brush, are deluxe entrees for the Ouessant. This is one reason they are so hardy and can thrive even in drought years. And thanks to their small size, they can eat down brush and tall grasses without damaging the land by erosion the way larger hoofed animals do. They leave nothing behind but cleared pastures and enriched soil from the nutrients their waste leaves on the land.
Vineyards like to hire the herd in January or February, right before bud break. The sheep eat down the cover crop when it is high but has not yet gone to seed. Ewes are best for vineyards, as the males’ enthusiasm can damage vines. The wethers are excellent for general fuel abatement, usually in March or April when the vegetation is thick and green after winter’s rain.
Marie likes to consider the sheep and what they provide from a holistic perspective. “If you think about it, the sheep are turning accumulated fire fuel into sponges and leaving the soil improved in the process,” she observes. The sponges are popular and sell out frequently, which is not surprising—all sponges need to be replaced on the regular, but wool sponges can be composted after use, while their synthetic counterparts end up in the landfill, or, worse, shred into microplastics that endanger ocean life. The challenge of keeping the products in stock reaffirms Marie’s take that manufacturing is the weakest part of the “Full Circle” that inspires her work. But with the patience, creativity, and determination she’s exhibited so far, Marie and Full Circle Wool are equipped to take on the challenge.
Full Circle Wool
PO Box 123, Potter Valley, CA 95469
FullCircleWool.com
Green Uprising Farm
A Small Family Farm Confronts Climate Change
story & photos by Ree Slocum
At a time when small family farms are disappearing, a five-acre farm outside of Willits has been thriving. But because of drought, fires, lowering water tables, and climate change in general, they are currently struggling to continue doing what they love—growing food and herbal medicine for their community.
In the 1990s, Sara Grusky and Michael Foley were Political Science professors in Washington, D.C. They met, appreciated one another’s politics and world view, fell in love, married, and had two children. Michael secured a tenured professorship in D.C., and Sara quit academia to join Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen Organization, working on water issues in Latin America and Africa, where the slogan “Water is Life” was inspired.
During the couple’s time in D.C., Allegra Foley, Michael’s daughter from a previous marriage, was living and working in San Francisco and becoming disillusioned about city life. So she decided to apprentice on a farm in Pescadero. Allegra smiled as she explained, “It was beautiful and everything I ever imagined. We spent our days planting things and making jam. There were trails, and the beach was right there. It was country living!” She attended the U.C. Farm Program that eventually led her, her father, and then Sara into quitting their city jobs and becoming farmers in California. When local family members found land for them to purchase in Little Lake Valley outside of Willits, Michael, Sara, and Allegra were ready.
The farm was an established homestead with water supplied from the bordering Davis Creek. The kitchen garden was surrounded by fruit trees, bushes, and grapes. There was an orchard and meadows. Since their purchase in 2007, the farm has grown with organically sprouted ideas that each person contributed from their diverse and companionable interests. This has resulted in more established vegetable gardens, an ever-expanding medicinal herb garden, additional fruit trees planted yearly, hoop houses and drying sheds, a goat herd, and a new photovoltaic system that powers 90% of the farm, designed and installed by resident Michael Hackleman.
There is much to do, and each person who lives at Green Uprising has responsibilities often based on a passion, one that fits their personality, or a need. Water supply is at the top of the list and is taken care of by Michael Foley and Michael Hackleman. Currently, the two Michaels have their hands full.
When asked how they feel about farming now that they’ve been at it for a while, Michael F. responded, “I still love doing it. I love having plants in the ground and figuring out how to grow them better. I like trouble-shooting and figuring out diseases, all that stuff. One of the reasons I got into farming is that I like putzing around with all the constant repair, rebuilding, devising systems, and keeping them running. I’m peculiar. I just like doing that,” he laughed. Sara added, “The amazing thing about Michael is that he bottom-lines everything. He’s the person everybody goes to if there’s a problem. And that’s from water issues to human relations.”
Sara has many and varied responsibilities. Through the years, she has managed the market garden with Michael and Allegra, planted fruit trees and vines, developed her medicinal herb garden, taken herbal classes, and herded up to seven milk goats with kids, preparing the milk for sale, delivering it, and loving many aspects of it even though it eventually felt like a ball-and-chain. Last year, the CDFA shut them down for selling raw goat milk, so Sara took the opportunity to further develop her passion for herbal medicine instead of goat herding. And she joined Michael in creating other exciting ideas for revenue. “Michael and I have been playing around for a while with the concept of ‘Food is Medicine and Medicine is Food.’ We’re thinking of having classes here,” she said.
The nature of Sara’s early water work with the Nader organization was helping disenfranchised people deal with drought, water privatization, and other related issues. Those issues are now a reality for her family and their farm. Sara disclosed, “Right now, there’s almost no water. We have no idea how long our farm crops will mature since we don’t know if there’ll be enough water or not. There’s not been a season in the last three years that we haven’t been impacted by climate change, whether it’s wildfire or drought.” Though the current water shortage is likely primarily due to climate change, they can’t help but wonder if the large, commercial cannabis grows around them are depleting the ground and surface water that feed the creek and water table.
“It’s a funny, weird, weird moment,” Sara reflects. “Here we are with climate change. We, like everyone else, just want to continue on doing the same things we’ve always done. Now we can’t, and we’re faced with some major decisions about how to move forward. We’ll probably have to let some of our gardens die back, and we have to rethink how we do things.”
Green Uprising, along with many other local farms, is learning to operate within these new climate parameters. Sara, Michael, and Allegra have navigated numerous changes in their lives, and it is something they do well. But truth be told, small farmers will need all our support to survive and thrive in the new normal, and we wish them all the best as they recreate what it means to farm with this new twist.
Green Uprising Farm
2301 E. Hill Rd, Willits CA 95490
(707) 216-5549 | Greenuprisingfresh.wordpress.com
Self-serve Farmstand 9am to dusk, except Thursday
Willits Farmers Market in Rexall Parking lot, Thu 3pm - 5pm
Ree Slocum is a fine art freelance photographer and writer who calls the edge of the wilds in Mendocino County “home.” She takes pleasure living with bird song, the breathing fog, and wildlife’s cast of characters when not on assignments. See her work at ReeSlocumPhotography.com.
Farm to Ferment
Mendo Ferments Makes Locally Inspired, Creatively Crafted, Deliciously Fermented Foods
by Sara Stapleton
“Fermentation is magic. It’s alchemy, really,” shared Michelle Costa, the owner and creative force behind Mendo Ferments, as we peered into a sturdy steel fermentation vat. Visible inside of the vessel, under the weight of traditional ceramic fermentation stones, was the vibrant magenta hue that only her Beet Ginger Sauerkraut could impart. Alchemy—a word that may conjure thoughts of the ancient mystery of transformation and creation—can, in its simplest sense, be described as taking something ordinary and turning it into something extraordinary. Some might argue that cabbage is anything but ordinary, and Michelle’s creations surely dance with it. Salt, spices, and time, paired with farm fresh produce and her trained and watchful senses, bring to life delicious, healthful, living foods jarred and bottled for us to enjoy.
Fermented foods have existed for thousands of years, allowing people throughout history to preserve their harvests and to create foods and beverages that were more easily digestible. Within the last decade or so, they have come wildly back in style, and for good reason. Research suggests that the gut may actually be the center of our health, affecting not only our physical body, but our mental and emotional states as well. Believe it or not, serotonin, a neurotransmitter and key hormone that acts to stabilize our mood and feelings of well being, is made there. The gut is also home to a large part of our immune system, and by enjoying fermented foods teeming with probiotics, you are nourishing its lining, or mucosa, and strengthening that natural barrier. Ferments are truly an ally for the times.
Michelle began experimenting with kombucha in the 1990s, but it was in 2010 that the fun really began, when she and her husband, Craig, picked up a crock and Sandor Katz’s early zine on fermentation at Bountiful Gardens’ old Willits storefront. She cites Katz’s work, as well as the classic cookbook, Nourishing Traditions (Fallon, 1995), and the Cultured Pickle Shop in Berkeley, to be amongst some of her biggest inspirations. But what she does is truly a work of her own.
Michelle allows her love of the land and the seasonal bounties it provides to guide her in crafting many of her specialty products. Springtime brings her “Mendo Blendo” kraut, made with the delights of fresh wild greens and flowers—dandelion, chickweed, yarrow, burdock, and violet—and reminding us that food is medicine. She also crafts a jun made with our regional delight, the candycap mushroom, as well as a home-brewed madrone bark tea—a true taste of place. After a few years of experimenting in her own kitchen, Michelle was feeling called to create something for herself. She had discovered how good these foods felt in the body and wanted to share the gift of fermentation with the greater community. So, Mendo Ferments was born.
Mendo Ferments got its start with the help of the folks at Mariposa Market, who allowed Michelle to bulk order organic vegetables to be delivered to the store, solving one of the problems of living rurally where large trucks simply can’t access. She also credits the Little Lake Grange as instrumental in the success of her business, as they have allowed her, along with a few other local entrepreneurs, to rent their commercial kitchen space at a fair rate. It is difficult to find affordable commercial space in the area, but she does someday hope to find a place for Mendo Ferments to call home.
In 2019, Michelle met with a local business advisor. They shared ideas for ways she could grow her business, and while she took the advice to heart, and even drove down to Sonoma Country to begin marketing her product, she soon had a realization—she really didn’t want to grow her business to a large, impersonal scale. What she really wanted was to stay truly hands-on and to be involved in every step of the process, with quality remaining paramount. Admirably, Michelle says that while she may never get rich, she wants to stay small and serve our community by being a big part of our local food web.
This local food web has played a huge part during COVID-19, particularly in regard to the area’s food supply. “It’s not just by chance that we were able to be so resilient here in Mendocino County, to adapt and continue to thrive while so many big name grocers throughout the country were left with their produce supply dwindling. It was the farmers and food producers here that created that,” Michelle said. It is as a result of their hard work and commitment that we’ve been able eat so well, even through those early, uncertain months of the pandemic.
Michelle purchases from area farms such as Covelo Organics, Inland Ranch, and the New Agrarian Collective whenever possible, and you will often see her take a quick step away from her booth at the farmers market to roam the stalls and see what is fresh and in the moment. “It can be hard, you know! With so many incredible things always popping up, we often find ourselves making lots of fun, small batches inspired by what we find.” With many of these batches not large enough for her higher volume accounts, you might be able to scoop one up at the farmers market if you’re lucky! In addition to some of her most popular offerings, such as Kim Chee, the Sea Witch Sauerkraut made with locally sourced sea palm, and a hibiscus jun, you’ll also find seasonal items such as fresh cucumber pickles, a local rose kombucha, and a white Kim Chee made with the addition of Asian pear.
In talking with Michelle about her products, and even more so in tasting them, her excitement and passion for the craft and of the care that goes into them really shine through. And though often behind the scenes, her husband, Craig, plays a big part in the production process, and is key in recipe research and development.
There is an abundance of possibilities for enjoying the goodies within Mendo Ferments’ charming cylindrical jars. Kim Chee over ramen or in fried rice, sauerkraut atop salad or piled on a warm Reuben sandwich. And don’t forget the kombucha to quench your thirst while delivering delicious benefits for your belly. All told, we are lucky to have our own local “Kim Chee Lady.” To your health!
Mendo Ferments is available at local organic markets and co-ops and the Ukiah, Fort Bragg, and Willits farmers markets, as well as the MendoLake Food Hub.
MendoFerments.com | @mendoferments (Instagram)
Sara Stapleton lives and farms with her partner in the mountainous valleys of southwest Willits, and is currently sowing the seeds for her postpartum doula business.
Constant Evolution
After 100+ Years, Emandal Farm Continues to Thrive by Adapting
by Anna Levy
The first time I drove from Willits to Emandal farm, I was 23 years old, moving to the West Coast for the first time and filled with an optimism that perhaps is most pronounced around that particular age, an age when possibilities are endless and independence is paramount. I’ve traveled the same road many times in the intervening years, returning to the hospitable farm along the Eel River that has operated as a guest ranch since 1908.
In the years since then, I’ve been privileged to visit the farm countless times, yet I’m always reminded of the way in which that first summer came to represent a beginning for me—a rebirth, if you will. So in this moment, when we’ve been in a pandemic for nearly a year, it feels appropriate to write about this special place, to talk with owner Tam Adams about upcoming changes for such a beloved institution in the midst of uncertain times.
Emandal—named after its first owners, Emma and Albert Byrnes—has survived through such uncertainty already. Though it’s hard to imagine needing an escape from the city in the early 1900s, it has existed as a family camp since then, taking on additional iterations over time: a children’s camp, a retreat for private groups, a source of brick oven pizza for the local farmers market. Its tendency toward reinvention invites visitors to consider something similar.
Tam has lived on the land since 1967, when she moved there from Ukiah to work for a summer. Emandal got under her skin, as did one particular person. She fell in love with Clive, the owners’ son. They married in 1968, under a plum tree not far from the dining hall and in the shadow of the iconic wooden barn.
“Clive wanted to stay here,” she tells me one afternoon as we sit, distanced, in the sun. “He knew he had to marry somebody who wanted to be here, so fortunately, it worked out.” We’ve just spent an hour walking through camp, with its cabins and outdoor showers, and I’m struck by how vivid my memories are of witnessing life unfold in this place, the families and the friends gathering night after night, children playing on the lawn.
Clive’s parents had owned the farm for about 20 years when Tam and Clive married, and it was time for some changes. They were both interested in not only maintaining the family camp, which by that point was already a tradition handed down through generations, but they also wanted to explore new possibilities. To that end, Clive had started a boys’ camp about four years before their marriage, “and then,” Tam says, “we offered a chance for girls to come.”
The children’s camp was a success. As Tam and Clive built their family, eventually welcoming four children of their own, so, too, did the camp grow, eventually attracting kids and counselors from all over the world. There was a particular sweetness in those days—singing in the dining hall after breakfast, whooping with delight in the river, holding hands in a large circle to say goodnight.
Even as they focused on children’s camp and family camp, though, Tam and Clive continued growing the farm. “We added weekends in the spring and fall for families to come,” she says. “And there was a period of time when we started doing our jams and jellies and did the mail order business. We were just trying to make it work.”
They made three meals a day for visitors and staff, as well as snacks in between, and became known for their wholesome, unforgettable fare, sourced from the farm whenever possible. The cuisine became part of the farm experience. Talk to just about any person who visited in the last several decades, and the meals they remember inevitably become part of the conversation: Blackberry Chicken, macaroni and cheese made with breadcrumbs from freshly-baked bread, cinnamon rolls, avocado ice cream.
Though it was hectic, they found their rhythm. “It was wonderful,” Tam says. “And then, in 2003, Clive died, and the farm had to be reborn.” His memorial, held at the farm, was attended by hundreds of people, including locals from the Willits area and folks from much farther away.
“It really changed everything,” she explains. She decided to end children’s camp and instead focus on family camp. Her own kids, adults by that point, had already been involved with running the farm in various ways and continued to influence its growth. “We’ve had ups and downs and ins and outs,” she says, “and so it was just bumbling along.”
The farm continued to evolve. There were cookbooks to write and immersive Art Stays to host. The Willits High School Peer Counselors held their training retreats there for a number of years, and people drove out for short excursions in the form of Cowboy Poetry and occasional Work Weekends. Throughout, Tam and her crew made changes by moving gardens, adding animals, building staff housing, tending to irrigation, and fixing the canvas hoop chairs that guests sometimes spent entire days lounging in.
And then, the pandemic hit. It had been a hard summer in 2019 because of smoke from nearby fires, but 2020 suddenly meant no guests at all. “It was really a stepping back and going—wait, can we weather this?” Tam looked back through the archives of photos and records and realized that it was the first summer that the farm hadn’t welcomed guests. Even the 1918 pandemic hadn’t stopped operations.
As a result, they’ve had to reimagine the farm yet again. In 2021, Emandal will open for groups who make reservations together as a cluster, with the biggest change being that Tam and her daughter Kashaya, who lives at the farm and who has played a significant role in the dining operations for years, will not be cooking for visitors. Instead, the guests themselves will be responsible for that, in their own kitchens near the parts of the farm they rent out.
In making this change, it seems that they’ve decided to, in some ways, take a clue from the past as they move forward. “If you look at older pictures of how it used to be, when people had to cook for themselves, the dining room wasn’t always available. So maybe it’s a circle.”
The pandemic has “. . . caused us to stop and rethink everything,” Tam says. “Were we ever going to do that?” With the world in such a state of flux, they’re not looking beyond the coming summer to know exactly how things will unfold.
Sitting on the back deck of the dining hall with Tam, looking out at the gardens as they wait for the plantings of spring, it’s striking to consider that Emandal is changing once again. It seems fitting, considering how the farm has provided a backdrop for countless people to grow ever more into themselves. “For some,” Tam says, “it’s a marker of where they are in their lives and what they’re doing. To come back year after year helps them realign for where they’re going.”
I think of the way I’ve known the farm through the years, how the seasons influence its pace, the countless times I’ve stood transfixed under the stars, and I know I’m one of the lucky people who has been shaped by this land. So many things here—the smell of pennyroyal or the feel of a fresh summer morning, the sound of the river or the scurry of chickens when I step across the cattle guard—remind me of who I once was, even as I still imagine who I might become. I know the land doesn’t miss me; I am one of thousands who have passed through. But Emandal itself is never far from my heart, no matter the changes that may come.
Emandal Farm | 16500 Hearst Post Office Road, Willits
(707) 459-9252 | Emandal.com
Anna Levy writes, cooks, and plans travel of all sorts whenever she can. She lives on the Mendocino Coast.
Going to Seed
A Consummate Homesteader Defies Convention by Growing New Apple Varieties from Seed
by Steve Edholm
After moving to this 40-acre homestead in the coastal range of Mendocino County about 15 years ago, I became fairly obsessed with apples, collecting and testing hundreds of varieties. I had just read Michael Pollan’s chapter on apples in A Botany of Desire. Unfortunately, Pollan’s story is woven around a common myth, which is that apples grown from seed are nearly always useless for eating. I had reason to believe otherwise.
When grown from seed, instead of by grafting, apples show a very high variability in size, appearance, growth habits, and flavor. Some take a negative view of that trait, pointing out that they may turn out too different than the parent tree, or even unpalatable. While that is possible, this variability is also the reason apples are our most diverse fruit outside of the tropics.
In the early 1900s, Albert Etter of Humboldt County asked his plant breeding mentor about improving apples by growing new varieties from seed and was told not to bother trying. Ignoring that advice, he bred some fantastic varieties, becoming a pioneer in apple breeding. Among other apples, he is responsible for the most well known red fleshed apple, Pink Pearl.
In 2010, against the advice of many, I planted seeds from a Wickson apple acquired from my friends at The Apple Farm in Philo. I was already hooked. The idea that I might make new apple varieties with unique traits like exotic flavors and red flesh was extremely compelling, and by 2011, I was making intentional cross pollinations. I chose one parent with incredible flavor and deep pink flesh called Grenadine, and I gathered pollen from a few excellent apples to pollinate it with. By choosing both parents, I have more control of the traits I want, like crossing cherry flavored apples with red fleshed, berry flavored ones. The resulting trees were then grafted onto dwarf rootstocks and planted in rows to await fruiting, which typically takes five or more years.
In 2015, the first of those original seedlings fruited and turned out to be very good! I named it BITE ME! for the people who said it couldn’t be done. Etter had not only inspired me to follow the same inspired risk, but I also use many of his apples in breeding for their unique traits. BITE ME!, grown from a seed of Etter’s Wickson, is my poster child for growing apples from seed.
I determined to spread the obsession, and began making videos about the project for my YouTube channel. I’ve sent out grafting wood, pollen, and seeds across America, and to many other countries. I hear back from people regularly that they have their own little apple breeding project, and some not so little. Many of these people have never really grown anything at all before.
I’ve sent out thousands of Wickson seeds alone, and thousands of others, some intentionally cross pollinated and some randomly pollinated by bees. Given that the very first apple I ever fruited from seed has become one of my favorites and a top 10 variety out of hundreds grown here, this is going to get extremely interesting in the next few years, when all of those dispersed seeds begin to bear fruit! Clearly this project has had a desired ripple effect, but it’s not just about apples and the many amazing varieties that will result.
When the apple first came to America, it exploded in diversity. New varieties cropped up by the thousands. Some were only known locally, and these local crop varieties were of critical importance to successful small scale farming. Farmers created, propagated, and discussed them. Consumers who bought them knew their names, loved them, talked about them, and looked forward to them in season. Beginning in the early 19th century, large scale farmers growing for broader markets gravitated toward a few varieties with particular profitable traits, such as appearance and shipping durability. As more citizens became consumers instead of producers, apple diversity went off a cliff, and most varieties were lost forever. Consumers became less savvy, and eventually the market became dominated by three apples at a time, red, yellow, and green.
The industrial food model brings us many benefits, but also many grave pitfalls. The secret to maintaining apple diversity is not in the hands of consumers buying politically correct apples, though. Nor is it in housing rare apple varieties in large collections. The heart and soul of apples and all food crops will atrophy unless they are part of a living food culture that talks about, grows, eats, shares, and propagates them. Breeding and selection of our food crops is the facet of that viable culture which we have become most divorced from.
Before the industrial food paradigm, many great apples were grown from seed, or selected from chance seedlings by ordinary people. Large breeders now pursue very narrow goals, starting and ending with profit for large growers. The victim’s stance is that we are being exploited by this system, but unless there is a law against planting seeds, we can blame only ourselves for the tragic loss of apple diversity and those disappointing cardboard tomatoes. To regain it requires only seeds, soil, water, intent, and patience. Not only is it possible for us to breed outstanding new apples that serve people over profit, but the great diversity of form and flavor dwelling within the apple gene pool has actually only just begun to be realized. Apples, in all their intriguing diversity, are the gateway fruit back into that vibrant, living food culture.
I currently have selected out over 20 seedling apples for quality assessment and use in further breeding. I plan to make any varieties which prove to be worthy available to orchardists in the future at the Winter Abundance Seed and Scion Exchange in Boonville and elsewhere. For more on this project, see my YouTube channel SkillCult. This altruistic project runs on personal funds, seed, pollen, and scion sales, and small contributions which are graciously accepted.
Find out more at: www.skillcult.com | www.youtube.com/skillcult
www.patreon.com/skillcult | Instagram @SkillCult
Steve Edholm is a long time practitioner and teacher of practical arts and self reliance skills. His main goal is to encourage greater physical and mental independence in an age of increasing dependency and helplessness.
Holy Goats
A Local Program Exploring the Edifying Relationship Between Goats & Humans
by Holly Madrigal
The sign almost stopped me in my tracks. It was hung across the gate of the beautiful old cemetery in Little River and read, “The Goats Are Coming!” Since sudden stops on Highway 1 are not recommended, I safely did a U-turn to make sure I read that right. Sure enough, the banner proudly declared that “Holy Goats—Your Fire Prevention Angels” would be starting at the site soon. This innovative business idea turns out to be a community collaboration with spiritual roots, practical leadership applications, and a visionary future.
The idea was initiated by Dr. John Gallo, Reverend Matthew Davis (Pastor Matt) of the Presbyterian Church in Mendocino Village, and Elisha Yager of Fort Bragg High School. It was fiscally sponsored by the Conception Coast Project, whose mission is to protect and restore the natural heritage and community resilience of our regions through science, planning, and community involvement. The group started a “Goat Fund Me” (yes, seriously) campaign to raise the seed money to launch the project.
Three beautiful dogs welcome me as I arrive at the Holy Goats coastal pen in Little River. “These are Anatolian shepherds,” explains Pastor Matt. “There are mountain lions and coyotes around here. One was spotted across the road from the cemetery. So these dogs keep our herd safe, but they are ok with people too.” The dogs take turns exploring the perimeter fence but keep returning to Pastor Matt and the herd as we talk. The owners of the Little River Inn, Marc and Cally Dym, heard about the goat project and offered a small piece of property just behind the gas station for the goats to live. The goats have eaten down the coyote brush and poison oak on the property, and they enjoy a panoramic ocean view while they do it.
Pastor Matt has been interested in the relationship between humans and flocks of goats for some time. Growing up near Tucson, Arizona, he was influenced by the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980s along the southern border, where political refugees from Nicaragua and Honduras fled war and violence to the U.S. Some of the activists involved in that movement became disillusioned, and a Quaker friend decided to help by pairing each person with a goat and sending them out into the Sonoran desert to meditate and “just be.” The spiritual solitude and absolute dependence on another being helped heal their spirits. Pastor Matt realized that collaboration with these animals could go beyond agriculture.
Later, when he was training at a little country church in New Jersey, a microfloral rose was taking over the state. “I suggested to my congregation that if we had a herd of goats, we could take this thing out. But they didn’t go for it,” Pastor Matt said. “Of course, now you have this whole industry of goats across the nation who are doing invasive species removal and fire prevention brush removal. I was here in Mendocino Village for a year or two when the awful wildfires hit Santa Rosa and Redwood Valley. I realized that it was a perfect time to start a project over here. At the same time, I was working to engage the youth of our community.”
The Holy Goats project was modeled after a similar program in Oakland, where the first official commercial goats-as-fire-prevention operation was started in the 1990s after the Oakland Hills Firestorm. A moveable 12 volt electric fence lets the goats browse in a particular area, eating down the vegetation that could otherwise become wildfire fuel. This method is much cheaper than having to remove fuels by hand, and goats can often access areas that are too steep or hard for humans to reach. The fifteen-strong Holy Goats herd is made up of different breeds including La Mancha, Nubian, and Swiss. Many were rescue goats from a high-end dairy in Napa, where they would have been put down after they were no longer of breeding age.
Pastor Matt wanted to provide leadership experiences for local kids (the human kind, not the goats). Often churches have fellowship groups, but Matt sensed that kids are over-programmed these days. Working with the elders of Mendocino Presbyterian, he started a leadership program. He connected with a local teacher, Jenni Windsor in Fort Bragg, through teaching kids classical guitar (you can’t make this up), and the two envisioned the Iona Project.
Matt explains, “Iona is a little island in Scotland that became the center of Celtic Christianity back in the 600s. It was redeveloped in the 1930s as a kind of justice center. Their themes are hospitality, peacemaking, gender justice, environmental justice, political activism—all themes where, if you are religious or not, you know what these things are.” So Matt and Jenni arranged for this diverse group of local kids to form a peer group that meets regularly and participate in discussions around these themes. The group hosts a few evening gatherings where they share with the community what they have learned. The incentive at the end of this program was a trip to Iona, Scotland in a pilgrimage type experience. “Some of these kids have never been out of the country. And this has been a huge leadership opportunity for them.”
This style of creative guidance is a hallmark of how Pastor Matt weaves his philosophy into his work. One goal of the Holy Goats program is to develop to the point where these local students, as part of the Iona project, can spend segments of time tending this flock.
Pastor Matt says, “We are tying this back into the Holy Goats project because, what I would really like to do is to create a national fellowship opportunity where we train students from San Francisco Seminary, Princeton, Yale, Duke, rabbinical schools and create an opportunity for students to learn through wilderness. One of the rotations, similar to a medical residency, is that the students would live with the goats for a time and immerse themselves in the local community.” Coming full circle, this harkens back to the idea of shepherding as spiritual practice.
Elisha Yager, who is a recent graduate from Fort Bragg High School, is a founding partner in Holy Goats. She grew up here and has been doing 4H since she was a little kid (pun intended). Elisha is the “ranger.” She knows the goats and trims their hooves, helps feed and care for them. The plan is to grow the number of contracts for brush clearing services to provide a modest income for her. The Mendocino Cemetery District has been collaborating with Holy Goats around helping with their brush maintenance needs. The community of Caspar has a significant, invasive gorse problem. Goats happen to love the thorny brush, so the Holy Goats project is in conversation to see if they can help.
Conversing with Pastor Matt is like a Renaissance immersion course. He is writing a grant to help fund this idea of the fellowship through experiencing wilderness, pulling in other groups to partner with, like the Noyo Center for Marine Science and B. Bryan Preserve in Point Arena. The latter is exploring starting an endangered black rhino breeding program. Matt would like to have the students visit and volunteer at these places to grow their environmental knowledge as well as to round out their spiritual practice. He is also applying for a large ecumenical grant that would help fund these multiple collaborations.
At the heart of this wide-ranging tapestry of community relationships is the peace-centered practice of tending a herd of goats. As Shasta, the elder Anatolian Shepherd, sits regally in the meadow watching the goats graze the hillside, a quiet descends. Looking out over the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean makes me think these goats, and their mission, may be holy after all.
For more information or to discuss hiring Holy Goats for your brush clearing or fire prevention projects, contact Pastor Matt at 20holygoats@gmail.com. To donate, checks can be written to Conception Coast Project with Holy Goats in the memo line: 1241 Willow St., Fort Bragg, CA 95437.
Local Food is a Team Sport
How Cinnamon Bear Farm, the MendoLake Food Hub, and Ukiah Natural Foods Co-op Work Together to Bring You Fresh-from-the-Field Foods
by Lisa Ludwigsen
Farm to table is a popular concept right now. The phrase conjures the vision of a simple journey of the vibrant, delicious food sitting before you on the plate or on the shelves of the grocery store. It’s a simple concept: grow the food nearby and get it to the customer as quickly after harvest as possible.
In fact, there are many moving parts to growing and transporting food successfully. Those of us living in Mendocino County are the fortunate beneficiaries of a thriving local farming community that not only feeds us, but also contributes to a secure local supply of food. However, the logistics of getting food from one part of the county to another hold significant challenges.
Standing in front of the rainbow of colors jumping off the produce shelves of the grocery store, we rarely consider the journey each of those items has taken. It’s a safe bet to assume that the carrot or cauliflower grown locally is going to taste better and have a longer shelf life than the same carrot shipped hundreds or even thousands of miles from a large-scale farm far afield.
To minimize transport distance and maximize freshness, local grocers turn to area food producers like Ukiah Valley farmers Alex and Sarah Neilson of Cinnamon Bear Farm. The Neilsons farm 1-1/2 acres of Russian River riverfront owned by Jack and Mimi Booth in Calpella. The Booths have lived in the area since 1990, when Bob was a wildlife biologist and enthusiastic beekeeper. “We sold honey to neighbors and at the farmers market for many years,” says Jack. “Then we grew tomatoes.” Today, they lease a portion of their seven acres to Alex and Sarah, who grow mixed crops including tomatoes, carrots, garlic, kohlrabi, and greens of all types, to name a few.
“We’re very excited about our microgreens,” shares Sarah. “We grow sprouted sunflower, radish, and peas used in salads, smoothies, and sandwiches.” Micro greens also make great kid snacks. The Neilsons also grow wheatgrass, which is juiced and used in smoothies or consumed as a straight shot.
Not for the faint of heart, Alex and Sarah’s type of small-scale farming is extremely labor intensive, with low profit margins and relentless work. “Since we farm year round, my motto is, ‘Grow better, not bigger,’” states Alex. Their fields produce high yields in a relatively small area, thanks to their use of organic principles. “We are Mendocino Renegade certified, a local program that allows us to sell to local grocers like Ukiah Natural Foods Co-op, which sells exclusively organic produce.” Since 2003, Mendocino Renegade has provided county farmers a system to certify the organic quality of their products.
Once farmers like the Neilsons harvest their crop, they must get it to market. In a county an expansive as Mendocino, delivering produce to grocers and restaurants is a challenge. Temperature-controlled vehicles are required in order to deliver produce in top condition, and delivery can require long drives, adding extensive costs for the grower, which are then passed on to consumers.
Enter the MendoLake Food Hub. Caroline Radice, Food Hub manager, says, “The Food Hub is the centralized link between the local farmer and the customer.” The Hub is a local distributor, providing strategically placed refrigerated nodes throughout Mendocino and Lake counties to accept and store farmers’ products. Twice each week, farmers list crops ready for harvest on the Hub’s website. Grocers, restaurants, school districts, and other wholesale customers then order the produce, which is harvested to order and delivered to their closest refrigerated node. A delivery truck then picks up from the node and delivers the order to the customer. The MendoLake Food Hub also cross-transacts with other regional food hubs to make local produce available to customers from San Francisco to Sacramento. This neat and tidy process has taken over five years to develop, and refinements are still being made.
The average shopper doesn’t realize that a huge network of distribution companies delivers the vast majority of the food to their local grocery stores. Moving food is big business. After the devastating floods hit Houston as a result of hurricane Harvey, a friend there stated, “We don’t have to worry about getting food because we can walk to the grocery store from our house.” She didn’t consider that, if she couldn’t use the roads, then neither could the large delivery trucks moving food around the country—all the more reason to support folks working to create a robust local food system.
One of the Food Hub’s top customers is Ukiah Natural Foods Co-op, where produce manager Libee Uhuru streamlines her weekly ordering via the Food Hub. Libee places orders year round from Alex and Sarah at Cinnamon Bear Farm, including the micro-greens, which continue to grow in popularity. “Through my dealings with Alex, I’ve come to see that he is a dedicated and passionate farmer who cares about the quality of his product. He’s also an innovative businessperson, looking for his niche in our local food forest. He really cares about what he’s doing.”
Libee continues, “Placing orders via the Food Hub takes me about five minutes, compared to the hours spent returning phone calls and coordinating delivery schedules before the Hub. My department runs more efficiently, which makes me very happy.”
The Food Hub also serves as the facilitator of Libee’s forward contracts with farmers. “Each year I put together proposals based on the previous year’s sales and pricing. I determine the estimated quantity of an item then submit them to the Hub, which forwards them to farmers.” She continues, ”Forward contracts give me some assurance that I’ll have the produce item on my shelves, and it helps the farmer plan for the year. The Hub is a huge help with this.” It’s a win-win-win—for farmers, wholesale buyers, and consumers.
Farm to table is, indeed, a big deal, and creating a smooth process that allows carefully grown food to reach its intended destination is all the better when the community works together. Mendocino County is proving that a healthy local food system is possible, one carrot at a time.
Lisa Ludwigsen is marketing manager at Ukiah Natural Foods Co-op. For the last 25 years, she has worked with families, farms, and food through school garden programs, small scale farming, and the media.
Photos by Ree Slocum, courtesy of MendoLake Food Hub.
Diversity is Resiliency at the New Agrarian Collective
by Sara Stapleton
Wendell Berry writes in his essay, “The Pleasures of Eating,” that “eating is, inescapably, an agricultural act.” His statement implies that the way we eat—the way we source our food and the way we cook—“determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.” If eating is an agricultural act, then farming can surely be a revolutionary one. And when you bring together on the front lines some of the most spunky, passionate, and fearless young agrarians in our county, diverse, spirited, resourceful, and powerful things are bound to unfold.
It’s an autumn morning on Ridgewood Ranch, and Ruthie King and Joshua Sternberg are processing the beets that Joshua just harvested, grown from seed with thoughtful intention. The wilted greens that they pull off of these deep red, nutrient-dense root crops will be fed to the sheep that Ruthie grazes and raises with her fellow collective member, Eliot Hartley. Those sheep will feed members of the collective, as well as members of the community through the farmers market and through their meat share program. The hides are tanned, the wool often sheared and spun, and sometimes even utilized by Jes Pearce and Keith Michalak at their Buttercup Compost Lab to experiment with the many ways of creating microorganism-rich compost that will help to build healthy, working soil. Everything is connected and nothing is wasted, and it is that interconnectedness that is the spirit of the collective.
Traditionally, a collective is a group of entities that shares or is motivated by a common interest or goal. The objective that brings these agrarian rebels together is their desire to change the way that we interact with our food and with our environment through sustainable agricultural practices—to live in reciprocity with the land that provides so much. All of the members bring different skills, interests, and businesses to the table, and the collective acts as an organic support network. It is the glue that holds them accountable, encourages creativity, gives time for reflection, and binds them together as a team. It is the backbone that supports their radical endeavors, both physically and emotionally.
The members of the collective came together largely through the School of Adaptive Agriculture in Willits, a hub that has brought together many like-minded folks from farms and organizations all over the county since its inception. After a number of years working closely with the school, though, the members of the collective were seeking a greater sense of autonomy, ownership, and security. They wanted to express their own individualities while still working as a team. “Many minds make for more interesting dreams” after all, said Ruthie and Joshua, and diversity is resiliency. The school offered the opportunity to immerse in theory, while this project would bring deeper understanding and knowledge through experience and experimentation.
They aren’t looking to reinvent the wheel, but rather to do new things in old ways and old things in new ways, to call back upon a time when communities joined together in meaningful work. Joshua, who co-manages the Mendocino Renegade Certified vegetable and flower farm with Caroline Radice, brings his skill for deep observation and attentiveness, as well as his sometimes dark and often sarcastic humor, to the group. Caroline Rehrberger leads the harvests and organizes their abundant, mile-high tables of produce for the farmers market, greeting customers with friendly warmth.
Dedicating themselves to small scale, organic vegetable farming and providing thoughtfully grown food is their form of activism. Ruthie and Eliot head the livestock operation, she becoming one of our area’s most enthusiastic shearers and he the local bread wizard, making hearty loaves from locally grown grain, some of which he cultivates himself. Through their grazing strategies, they work to improve water, energy, and nutrient cycles, increase biodiversity in the soil, and reduce fuel for wildfire. Jes and Keith manage the waste stream and work passionately to close the loop, creating both beautiful produce and compost through their labor of love, farming biodynamically and by hand, focusing on the efficiency of scale.
The crew also includes local renaissance woman Caroline Radice, who manages the Mendo Lake Food Hub and co-founded the Good Farm Fund. She provides everything from office management to harvest help, and she particularly loves managing the cut flower program and planting. When reflecting on her role, Caroline says, “I also love unique and heirloom varietals of produce, so I tend to be the one who sneaks the “weird” things into the field.“ She does all this in addition to owning Black Dog Farm and Catering, where they utilize the amazing produce and meat grown and raised by the collective.
All of their titles aside, it is what the general public might not get to see that truly makes them a dynamic team—repairing a broken water line in the midst of blazing summer heat to make sure crops don’t buckle under the hot sun; herding sheep and setting fence lines before dawn; finding ways to cope and bounce back from predation; constantly striving to find a balance between agriculture and the wild. Jes and Keith recently laid 43 hens to rest in their compost after a bobcat found its way into their pasture and made a kill that weighs heavy on the crew. Farming is incredibly hard, brutal, and sometimes disheartening work, but to have the support of comrades in this valiant cause, to sit down once a month and share a meal, to break bread, talk shop, and find solace amongst the struggles and the triumphs—it is messy magic, but shared between them is a deep love of what they do and a hope to create change, to have a positive impact on the world around us.
With so many creative minds, the team is constantly working to improve operations and solve problems that come up in the day-to-day, because with farming, we know that the work is never complete. The element of surprise is thrilling, and a streak of healthy competitiveness in the group adds to the fun. The collective is a constant practice of relationship-building, communication, and self-growth, a reminder to be open to the process.
If they are the revolutionaries, let us be the army behind them. Consider strengthening your commitment to building a stronger local food economy—to learn the skills of generations past, to learn and to love every part of the animal, and to eat with the seasons, preserving the bounty and sharing with your neighbor. Talk to your farmers, shake their hands, and let their work inspire you to join them in moving toward a more resilient tomorrow.
Sara Stapleton lives high up on Greenwood Ridge and feels most at home in the tall trees, alongside meandering streams and birdsong. She is a passionate eater, seeking out local food wherever she goes. You can find her serving up farmer tales and deliciousness at the Bewildered Pig in Philo.
Pazzo Marco Creamery
by Holly Madrigal
It’s a cool 55 degrees inside the aging room of the Pazzo Marco Creamery, and the humidity is about 93%, mimicking the traditional cheese-aging caves of France. It is impossible to tell that a teeming summer forest is alive outside. In here, the smell is hard to describe—almost earthy, but with a pale sweetness, the smell of the wooden spruce planks tinged with the barest hint of natural ammonia. Rounds of hard cheeses in orderly rows fill the shelves to the ceiling. The unique climate of the cheese-aging shed feels almost sacred.
The creamery is located amongst the trees on Fish Rock Road near Gualala. Two small buildings house the entirety of the cheese and gelato operations. Marco was a software engineer in a previous life. He and his partner, Paul, started looking for something creative that would challenge their brains a little bit, as well as something that used local ingredients. Given Marco’s Italian heritage and the proximity of the Stornetta Dairy nearby, they decided that gelato fit the bill.
The duo is largely self-taught. Marco, who speaks Italian, lived in Bologna in 2007 to study at a gelateria. He explains, “Pazzo in Italian means crazy, and Paul affectionately calls me Pazzo. So when we were trying to decide on a name for the company, he said ‘Let’s call it Pazzo Marco!’ I said, ‘No, people will think I’m a crazy person.’ But everyone loved it, so we kept it. But often when we are at market and Paul is standing right next to me, I introduce myself as ‘Marco, and this is Pazzo,’ and he says ‘No, it’s not!’ And I joke, ‘Hey, at least your name is first!’”
Paul and Marco wanted a hyper-local, small-scale focus for their new endeavor. Gelato came first, and they eventually expanded to crafting cheese. “We intentionally scaled our business to be local, and our machine only makes a gallon and a half at a time,” says Marco. Once a week early in the morning, they drive about an hour down Highway 1 to Stornetta Ranch to pick up 500 lbs of milk, filling old-fashioned milk cans, to transform into cheese or gelato. They drive slowly, so as not to jostle the milk on the country roads. (Jostling the milk causes the molecules to get smaller, which results in seeping when the whey is drained off and a much lower final yield.) The milk straight from the cow is about 104º, and it cools to around 88-90º on the drive back from the dairy to their creamery in the woods.
Wondering about the difference between ice cream and gelato? Ice cream uses much more cream, resulting in a higher fat content, and it is whipped to incorporate air. In contrast, gelato is more dense and rich. It is not whipped, which allows for a creamier and more luxurious mouthfeel. “You could say that gelato is better for you!” says Marco. “Gelato is more intense, sorta like Italians” he adds. “If you get a good gelato, it tastes so good you don’t need to eat that much of it. You are satisfied by the third or fourth bite. Ice cream has so much air in it and more fat coating your tongue, so you don’t taste the true flavors. And because it has more fat, it needs more sugar so that you can taste it and it will freeze properly.”
Most gelato makers use a pre-made gelato “base,” but Pazzo Marco makes everything from scratch so they have much more control over the sweetness and flavor. A refractometer allows them to finely tune the amount of sugar in each recipe. “This is where my software brain comes in handy,” Marco laughs. “If we have homegrown strawberries to add to the gelato, I puree them and use the refractometer to gauge the sugar content.” He has developed a spreadsheet for his recipes using the science of flavor. “I plug the brix [sugar levels] of those strawberries into my spreadsheet to see how much sugar is needed. In this way, I maximize the contribution of the sugar from the fruit and not from anything else.”
Pazzo Marco gelato is sold at farmers markets, Surf Market, and Bird Café, among other locales. They have developed over a hundred flavors, making five flavors per week and rotating them in and out with the season. Almond Chai Spice is very popular right now. Liqueur of Amarula (a nut grown in South Africa) is a flavor full of rich caramely depth. “We created a Local Huckleberry, a Balsamic Basil, and I am working on a recipe right now for Honey Lavender and Chevre,” Marco explains. They also do retro stuff like malted milk chocolate, and they make two signature gelatos for Anchor Bay Thai—Matcha Green Tea and a Coconut Pineapple non-dairy sorbetto. Sorbettos don’t include any milk fat, but their Italian gelato machine ensures that it comes out with a silky-smooth texture that is not at all crystalline.
After a few years of making gelato, the two had a fair amount invested in the creamery. They wanted to stay small, and when they started looking around at what else they could do, they settled on cheese. “I love cheese even more than I love gelato,” laughs Marco. His eyes light up, indicating the freshly made cheeses covering every table surface, and he describes the complex alchemy of artisan cheese-making. “Milk is around 87% water and 13% solids,” he explains. “When you make cheese, there is a yield of 10%, so it takes 100 lbs of milk to make 10 lbs of cheese.” They add the milk to the cheesemaking vat, heating to whatever temperature is needed for that particular cheese. They then inoculate it with a lactic acid bacteria, which changes the acid level in the milk. Over a period of about 24 hours, they lower the pH to start forming the cheese. This fends off unwanted bacteria. They add rennet, which interacts with proteins in the milk to form a network of molecules making cheese curds. They use blades to gently slice the curds into small squares, releasing the watery whey, which is drained off. The loose curds are then placed into forms and pressed into shape, removing even more of the liquid, and formed cheese is moved into the aging room to sit for three months to a year, depending on the type of cheese. They are flipped once a week and washed or rubbed with olive oil to help build the rind.
Marco displays the first batch of a new wash-rind cheese, called Serafina, that he is developing—similar to Cowboy Creamery’s Red Hawk, but like an Italian Taleggio. Once the Serafina rind forms, the cheese will be washed in Gowan’s hard apple cider. The alcohol keeps unwanted molds or bacteria at bay, as well as providing a food source for the desired molds. “It’s like gardening, if you think of your milk like your soil. You are tending it to be the perfect balanced microbiome,” explains Marco.
For now, Pazzo Marco, helmed by this dynamic duo, is exactly the size and scale they want to be. The work keeps them in creative and problem-solving mode, and the learning never stops, according to Marco. Pazzo Marco welcomes visitors by appointment and relishes the community that has formed around the Gualala Farmers Market. If you want to taste their delicious—can we say healthy?—creations, stop by and say hello. Tell them Word of Mouth sent you.
Holly Madrigal is a Mendocino County maven who loves to share the delights of our region. She’s fortunate to enjoy her meaningful work at Leadership Mendocino and takes great joy in publishing this magazine.
Surf Market in Gualala
by Holly Madrigal
It took all of two days to turn me into a Chile Crunch convert. I had heard tell of this condiment from friends in the tiny southernmost coastal Mendocino town of Gualala. A lightly spiced chile oil infused with garlic and onions, the creators manage to make the garlic both crispy and crunchy. One taste was all it took to convince me to buy a small jar of the stuff. I promptly drizzled it over that evening’s tacos, followed by an Easter morning where we poured it over scrambled eggs and used it as a dip for breadsticks. Just like that, I was hooked!
Surf Market holds an oversized collection of delicious offerings like this. The BBQ stands out front of the store and serves up a mouthwatering selection of ribs, rotisserie chickens, and prime rib, as well as fresh corn on the cob slathered in—you guessed it—Chile Crunch (plus parmesan cheese, butter, and fresh squeezed lime).
Caroline Ducato’s eyes twinkle when she describes all the wonderful products, foods, and farms that they work with at Surf Market. As Marketing Director and a Specialty Food buyer, she goes out of her way to provide a venue for local products. This support of local farms and purveyors is baked into their ethos. The shelves are filled with bright, eye-catching “Made Local“ stickers. Stories of the craftspeople that make these items and grow this food are placed strategically around the store.
Discovering great local foods and providing the stage for them to shine is a role that Surf Market excels at. Farmers Markets, though a more immediate connection with the farmer, are not always convenient for shoppers. Surf Market, with its regular hours and refrigeration, provides additional access to really great food. For example, Allan Hogle lives up on the ridge with his wife, Astrid, where they grow a full complement of micro greens, radish greens, sunflower sprouts, and more. At the summer Farmers Market, Astrid makes thin German waffles to order—“no maple syrup,“ Allan laughs, “just fresh fruit and cream tops these waffles.“ Not to be left out, their son, Michael, is now working at the Surf Market BBQ out front.
In case you want more decadence, Pazzo Marco Creamery is the Gualala-based creation of Marco Moramarco and Paul Vierra. The pair are passionate about gelato and cheese. Surf Market is the only retail location outside of the Gualala Farmers Market or their mobile gelato cart where you can taste this dairy divinity. The five handcrafted seasonal gelato flavors in the cold case tantalize the mind: Toasted Almond Chai, Huckleberry Chevre, Bergamot Orange, Meyer Lemon, and Mixed Berry Sorbetto. I dare you to try and make it home before popping the top off the gelato carton for a taste. Or you could pick up a wedge of Pazzo Marco’s award winning cheese. The Monsieur Phillipe, made in the style of a Manchego, is a personal favorite. They use milk from organic jersey cows from Stornetta Dairy in Manchester. Pazzo Marco is committed to working with local restaurants and businesses, like Surf Market, that mirror their appreciation for good wholesome food.
Surf Market is always bustling with activitiy. They tend to be a bit of an outpost for Sea Ranch, Irish Beach, and Gualala. When I stopped by recently, Deborah Schatan of Edible Complexe was providing tastings of her mahjoon, a savory Moroccan condiment with ground pistachios, figs, and cashews, combined with middle eastern spices and aromatics. Wild strawberry, sour cherry, as well as traditional fig and date mahjoon were also on hand. The Blenheim apricot flavor uses a fruit which is on the Slow Food list of endangered foods. By supporting the farmers growing these apricots, Deborah contributes to its conservation, and it provides the mahjoon with a deep, tart, rich apricot flavor. Deborah recommends mixing the mahjoon into softened butter, wrapping and chilling the concoction in the fridge, then slicing it into rounds to top fish before cooking. Or it can be spread over a layer of local fresh cheese and encased in crust for a savory tartlet.
Surf Market offers an impressive array of these home grown, unique items for their customers. When you bite into a loaf of Pelican Bread, it tastes like what bread was always meant to be—full of whole grains but still soft and chewy. James McKenna makes all his bread fresh the day he sells it, and it sells out fast. Based out of Point Arena, you can pick up loaves at Surf Market when available. Hand-ground rye from the Mendocino Grain Project, a freshly ground spelt loaf, an olive rosemary round, or even coastal sourdough may be on offer. When you grab one of these breads and it is still warm to the touch, you know that you are making good life choices.
Of course, not all of the products carried at Surf Market are local (did I see smoked chocolate chips and Kentucky bourbon syrup one aisle over?), but developing these local relationships both enhances the offerings at the store and leads to lasting community friendships. Now, where did I put that jar of Chile Crunch?
Surf Market
139250 Highway 1, Gualala | (707) 884-4184 | SurfSuper.com
Open daily 7:30am–8pm
Holly Madrigal is a Mendocino County maven who loves to share the delights of our region. She’s fortunate to enjoy meaningful work with the Leadership Mendocino program and takes great joy in publishing this magazine.