A Friend in Cheese Is a Friend Indeed

This is my husband's rockin' childhood friend, Tabitha.

She is a master chef. Chef friends are the best 'cause they have impeccable taste in food and they know how to cook it. I get all my best kitchen tips from them.

Tabitha runs a jam company, Friend in Cheeses. She also makes cheese. Her business tag line reads "Dare to pair 'cause it pays to play." Hell yeah, it does, baby! With ambrosial flavors like Forbidden Fruit Marmalade, Lavender Plum Jelly, and Patzo (a strawberry, balsamic, and black pepper preserve given the Italian name (pazzo) for "insane"), a heaping spoonful of any of her creations on top of a chevre smothered cracker is divine, indeed.

Deep in the heart of the Santa Cruz mountains, Tabitha lives on a small vineyard

where she raises veggies and a flock of hens with names like Aunt Sponge, Aunt Spiker, and Oprah.

The chickens live in a converted plastic playhouse.

Tabitha has loads of cool stuff laying around. I'm super jealous of this collection of pots for the succulents.

Gotta love the juxtaposition of these objets d'art.

Tabitha even has a dinner bell.

I want a dinner bell!

Last week, Tabitha invited me to go gleaning with her. That's how she gets most of the fruit for her jams. I love how her product is made from stuff that would otherwise be wasted and left to rot. What a great business plan: get free goods that no one wants and make something delish out of it. 

Well last week we hit the mother load. A friend of a friend connected Tabitha to a woman whose golden plum tree had a major freak out this season. Honestly, I don't believe I've ever seen anything like it.

The limbs of the poor plumb were cracking under the immense weight. The fruit was gorgeous,

 dripping like grapes.

Photo courtesy of Tabitha

 Pure plum porn.

Photo courtesy of Tabitha

Between the two of us, we probably harvested around 100 pounds of fruit. And that was gathering only about a quarter to a third of the pickings.

This tree was so enorm that it had 9 foot suckers growing off of a tap root. I snagged one.

Photo courtesy of Tabitha

Then there was that figuring out how to get it home thing... in a convertible. This is when I found out Tabitha is as much of a MacGyver as I am. How could she not be? She scores free fruit! Tabitha suggested wrapping my baby in saran wrap. Voila!

We were ready to roll.

Then it was off to lunch at Tabitha's friends restaurant, Smoqe BBQ. If you find yourself in the area, you gotta go, if only for the beef brisket fries: sweet potato or regular fries coated in mac and cheese sauce and topped with barbecued beef brisket. Holy crap, that shit is good. We also had oysters.

And a bubbling tray of farm cheese. So good.

Told you. Chefs know where to find the best eats.

As a side note, I'm not sure if that sucker will survive. I don't think it is a grafted tree, which means the sucker will produce like the mother (on grafted trees, suckers don't taste like the host). In fact it was already bearing fruit when I ripped it from the ground. Right now it is marinating in a bucket of water seasoned with chicken crap and rooting hormone. Keeping my fingers crossed on this one 'cause them was some tasty plums.

Goodbyes Are Hard

Lucy was in a foul temper this morning. That makes two of us. I trotted out to the yard with the oh-so-bright idea that I would attempt milking her out completely by hand, but found myself more than a touch regretful when half way through the squeezing, Lucy planted a poo laden hoof into the milk pail. I leapt off of the milking stool erupting, "You fucking bitch!" I think the gaggle of teenagers at the bus stop (our yard looks over a main thoroughfare) overheard me as I could hear the snickers echoing up the hill "Who's she calling a bitch?" I could have kicked myself for being so cavalier, so presumptuous... so public with my colorful outbursts. Damn it, I knew better. Eh, Lucy did plenty of kicking for me. She coated my brand spanking new, totally awesome "Millions against Monsanto" t-shirt with a slime of crap and milk. I washed it off, but by early afternoon I detected a baby puke odor following me about.

I guess Lucy had a right to be upset; Fred and Ginger went to their forever home this weekend. Lucy's been agitated since they left. Even Ethel was miffed. I understand. We miss them too, even if they were only here for a short while. They're just so darn affectionate and adorable. But they've got great new digs down in Watsonville with Pam at Peaceful Valley Farm.

They will surely be happy there. Pam's got a great plot of land with all sorts of interesting residents, like this bantam frizzle,

these Polish ladies who, contrary to assumptions, are great layers,

this gorgeous roo, whom I wished I could have taken home but for that darn crowing issue,

and these cute-as-can-be turkey poults.

Chickens running around the yard is pretty pedestrian stuff to Pam. She grew up in the San Jose area where her mom always had a flock in the backyard. Her mother, who now lives in Los Gatos, often drops by to help her with the ladies. Pam's got all kinds of interesting breeding things happening. Right now she's working on crossing Ameraucanas with a brown layer (I think she said a Cuckoo Maran) to produce hens that will lay olive colored eggs. So cool.

I was super impressed by the number of onions Pam had planted: 365, one for every day of the year since that's how much her family eats on average. She's really got those suckers packed in here.

And check out this celery plant.

Good god, it's like a bush! The poor puppy could get lost in there. Maybe one day I'll get a celery plant to grow that ginormous. Though I suspect Pam may have some sort of plant crack in the soil. You should have seen the Dino Kale tree. Wish I would have gotten a pic of that. It was so impressive that I begged Pam to send me some of the seed when she collects it.

We wandered around the farm for a good long time, procrastinating on our goodbyes. It's so hard to let go. Fred and Ginger are super special to us. They are our first babies.But Pam promises that she will keep us all posted on their to-doings on her blog. Thank you, Pam, for taking Fred and Ginger into your fold.

Farm Trilogy

I spent the past weekend having an absolutely fabu time visiting various groovy farms around the bay area. There are so many exciting things happening in the world of urban farming that I often become overwhelmed with emotion about it all. But instead of getting all mushy and weepy or drowning us all in sentimentality, I thought I'd give a snapshot of some of the super cool folks who are getting their farm on in our neck of the woods.

Dog Island Farm

I had never met Rachel before heading to her house in Vallejo for a backyard BBQ. We knew each other in cyberspace only, through her blog (full of great urban farming tips and which I can't recommend enough - it's over in my blog roll) and Facebook. I had been eager to see her digs and thought this the perfect opportunity, even if I am a bit shy at these kinds of things (you shut up Tina, I am too!).

Wow, what an incredible patch of terra firma! After seeing Rachel and her husband's place, I've come down with a pretty severe case of garden envy. These guys had corn, beans, and tomatoes all towering above my head, not to mention miles of volunteer squash vines meandering all over the place. Do you know how big my squash plants are right now? I don't even want to talk about it. They've got a spacious set-up with plenty of room for entertaining, a little pool, a HUGE veggie patch and orchard, bees, chickens, and goats. Their animal area is about four times the size of ours here at Itty Bitty!

Rachel has pygmy goats, which are different than our Nigerians. They are a dual purpose miniature breed from Africa that can be used for both dairy and meat. Rachel says she plans to eat the male offspring, which is something we are also considering. There's just not enough demand for bucks and wethers out there. It's one of the realities of practicing animal husbandry; if you want milk, you've got to make choices. I'm hoping that I can find some courage from Rachel to "do the deed". I know I'm going to need a lot of hand holding. I hate the killin', which I suppose is as it should be.

The shindig itself was great fun. Rachel and her husband roasted an entire pig for the event, which they told me took them two and a half hours to get the lady skewered and then over half a day to roast her. That's some commitment to the pork! But boy was it worth it. That meat was so juicy and succulent, I could have sat there all day noshing.

Ute spent her time with the kids in the pool as it was a hot day over in Vallejo. Thank you Rachel for inviting us, serving up all the yummy treaties, and getting us out of the fog for a day.

The School Farm at the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the School of the Arts

As the new garden coordinator for Monroe Elementary, my daughter's school (did I tell you I volunteered for that last minute?), I have had the chance to meet the lovely people over at ECOSF who helped set up Monroe's garden. One of the projects that they are working on right now is a little farm on a high school campus at the top of Glen Canyon. On Sunday, Ute and I grabbed our work gloves and went up there to help plant some native trees and bushes that will provide a windbreak for the veggie garden.

Sam, Davin, and Tori, the team behind ECOSF, have got some big dreams for this place. Their vision is to

create a vibrant outdoor learning space including a food producing research farm with a diversity of fruits, vegetables, herbs, native habitat, and urban livestock, on-site compost production, greenhouse nursery operations, rainwater catchment system, an outdoor classroom/kitchen powered by solar energy and small, functional examples of natural building techniques and appropriate technology from around the world.

So far they've got a bunch of beds for veggies, a cob oven that we ate yummy homemade bread from, a cob brick and woven wood chicken coop that is still under construction but looking beautiful already,

and a straw bale classroom amphitheater that will double as a windbreak and which is just beginning to take shape. Eventually, they hope to add other animals like pigs and goats to make it a real working farm.

They often hold volunteer work days at the school farm and if you live in the area, I highly recommend that you take a few hours out of your busy schedule to stop by and lend a hand. It's an exciting project run by some wonderful, generous, genuine, and knowledgeable folks. Davin and Sam are walking encyclopedias of plant knowledge and they can identify almost anything you hold under their noses. Tori raises chickens down in Half Moon Bay and can tell you all about owning cluckers. Volunteering with these guys can give you some real hands on, practical experience with all kinds of gardening, farming, and environmentally sustainable projects like building with cob, constructing rainwater catchment systems, and creating structures with straw bales. And if that doesn't entice you, the potlucks at their Baker's Alley events are filled with scrumptious homemade goodies like fresh baked bread and pizzas from the cob oven. Yum. You can find their schedule of events here.

Little City Gardens

I am in total awe of Caitlyn and Brooke, a couple of gals who are testing the viability of running an urban market garden as a means of making a living. A couple of years ago they began farming a lot in the Mission district, with the permission of the landlord, and selling the greens and herbs that they grew to a local restaurant and a few caterers. Recently, they have expanded and acquired another spot near Itty Bitty. We were thrilled to hear that we now have more urban farmers in the hood!

We know how tough it is to massage a weed clogged bit of earth into a thriving garden so we offered any help we could provide to our new neighbors. Fortunately one of the things they needed was cinder blocks. Lord knows we've got plenty of those to spare.

I also volunteered on Monday to put my shovel to the plethora of fennel plants that they've got over there. I fear my efforts were a tad lame as I had less than an hour to spare, having spent the morning putting up cherries from the farmers market and making a quiche with the never ending river of eggs that flow through our doors. But I'll definitely be back to help out as much as I can.

Though we are traveling different paths, both Itty Bitty and Little City Gardens are heading towards the same goal of reinventing the way we live and eat in urban areas, bringing our food sources closer to our front doors, and constructing more sustainable ways of providing sustenance for ourselves and our communities. We wish these ladies the best of luck with their business and ask that you consider supporting them as well. We need more of these kinds of ventures in our cities.

A Tour of Ghost Town Farm

If it wasn't for Novella Carpenter, we here at Itty Bitty would never know the satisfaction of raising urban goats. I vividly recall the evening some six months ago when I happened upon her blog whilst perusing that infinite maze we call the interweb in search of more info on raising chickens in the city. You see, even though we'd planned on getting chickens for over a year, the Disgruntled Farmhand never wanted the cluck clucks. Whenever the topic would come up, he would spat, "They smell. I want a goat." To which I would retort, "I would LOVE to have a goat too, but we can't have one in the city. We COULD have fresh eggs though." And then low and behold, I stumbled, or more accurately "Googled", upon Novella's Ghost Town Farm in Oakland. She had goats. A few of them. I could scarcely breathe I was so beside myself with glee, reckoning that if she could keep goats in Oaktown, I could certainly attempt it on the other side of the bay. I shouted to the DF, who was in another room getting his Internet crack on, "HONEY, WE CAN HAVE GOATS!" His sheepish, laden with child-like joy reply was barely audible, "Really?" And so began our little adventure.

Novella recently published City Farm, a book about her foray into raising livestock and gardening in an urban environment. I anxiously waited weeks for it to come into print and devoured it as soon as it arrived. The story is a fascinating look at one woman's attempt to be closer to the source of her food while living in a blighted, urban ghetto. Her pioneering spirit pours forth from every page as she humorously recounts tales as outlandish as raising 2 full sized pigs for slaughter on nothing but compost bin leftovers from Oakland's Chinatown and Berkeley's chic restaurant district. I highly recommend this read, even if you have no interest in raising your own meat or eggs. As well as being a captivating narrative of a new kind of modern urban lifestyle, her enthusiasm for bringing food closer to home is infectious and relevant to our current societal woes of food security, environmental degradation, reliance on foreign oil, and alienation from basic survival skills.

So of course after reading her book and following her blog religiously, I have been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to visit this little patch of citified grange. Lucky me, as a part of Oakland's Eat Real festival, Ghost Town graciously opened its doors for an all day farm extravaganza, which included a chicken slaughter and goat milking demonstration. I would have LOVED to have stayed all day, meeting like-minded folks, sharing ideas, and learning new urban farm tricks (really got to learn how to milk those goats!), but alas it was scorching hot in the East Bay, there were a ton of people in attendance, which was awesome, but made it difficult to hear, and I had an overheated 5 year old at my side who was adamant to know why we needed to look at some lady's goats when we had two perfectly good ones at home. The overbearing midday sun had turned my brain to mush and I was rendered incapable of reasoning with the small set (let's face it, I struggle with that on a good day). So we skipped most of the "official" tour and opted for a self-guided version. The veggie beds that littered the vacant lot adjacent to the house were lush and enviable,


the baby goats were cute as can be as they gorged themselves on alfalfa directly IN the manger,


and Novella, the farm lady herself, was absolutely charming and personable (with great taste in eyeglasses!).


While she was signing books, I approached her with a small gift from Itty Bitty, a jar of lemon apple butter, kicking myself the entire time for not having brought my copy of her book to sign. We briefly talked about goats and I realized in that moment that I have been a bit desperate for community - you know, like personally knowing a couple other folks whom I can talk to about chicken and goat stuff. It took all of my willpower to refrain from ambushing Novella with a million and one question assault of all things related to backyard livestock. I'm hoping that she will have a workshop on goat husbandry in the near future, as I am particularly nervous about that "goats giving birth in my backyard" thing and could use a mentor.

Thank you Novella for your inspiring presence in this world. You are an amazing lady!

And BTW, if any of you out there know of someone who is raising chickens, goats, rabbits, etc. in the city, trying to grow more of their own food, or just interested in this kind of stuff, please send them my way. I'm lonely. Maybe we could have a potluck or something.