• Zella Hazelnuts out of Bend, OR was sampling delicious dry roasted hazelnuts made by generations of hazelnut growers. An interesting tidbit: The farmers switched from calling the nuts filberts to hazelnuts when they realized that no one knew what filberts were. (Here’s what the Oregon Hazelnut Marketing Board has to say about that.)
• Zorba’s Chocolates out of Ashland, OR uses raw, unroasted cacao beans in their chocolate making to be as close to “fresh off the tree” as possible. Their chocolate was intense dark, and the espresso and plain ganache  truffles struck me as delicious.
• Aside from local favorite Rogue Creamery, some interesting “new to me” cheese makers I look forward to exploring more in the future included Tumalo Farms from Bend; La Mariposa cows milk cheese made by an Argentinian transplant in Albany, OR; Portland Creamery; Briar Rose Creamery from Dundee, OR.
• I also had a wonderful locally made lavender jelly from L’Islandoux made by a delightful French woman.
• And to top it all of, fantastically fluffy marshmallows from Marshmallow Heaven from Rogue River.

See who else was there — a long list of fabulous food worth pursuing next year!

~Robin

I’ve got plenty of fig glory shots (see Fig 2), fruit at markets, and growing on trees. How could my figophilia have failed me?

Well if you hare a chef or food entrepreneurs in need of figs, look to Valley Fig Growers which is a co-operative doing an excellent job promoting California growers. Better yet, win the contest and get to America’s Test Kitchen!

Fig 2: Fig in All Its Glory

You can download the conference presentations.

CSA Tips from California Farms

Tom Broz from Live Earth Farm (Watsonville, CA) said goodbye to city life ala Green Acres, went through UCSC’s eco farming program, and found some land 16 years ago with a goal of raising his family in the country and growing healthy food. After starting with 2 farmer’s markets and the CSA, today Life Earth Farm has 60 acres and 800 CSA customers.

As his customer base grew, Life Earth gave up pen and paper for tracking and adopted Farmigo software, developed specifically for managing CSAs. The software gives customers choices about what to include in boxes and set vacation schedules etc, as well as make it easy to comply with governmental rules surrounding CSAs.

TIP: Produce as much as you can yourself, such as compost, to be more efficient and reduce costs.

Fellow recovering city slicker Shawn Seufert of Terra Bella Farm (Pleasanton, CA) had only recently heard of  chard and kale when he started his farm. The CSA began old school style on a shoestring: He traveled door to door, introducing himself. Now 300 families buy their produce, farmed on 7 acres.

TIP: Small upgrades in customer experience make a big difference: They invested in nice wood rustic stands at the farm store, which boosted sales.

Thomas Nelson of Capay Valley Farm Shop (Guinda, CA) started a farm shop in 2008, with the idea of an artisan marketplace on Hwy 80. The store lasted less than a year but in the meantime they’d put together the infrastructure for farms to work together cooperatively.

They had been approached by the product design company Ideo who wanted to get closer to farmers (or for the farmers to get closer to them). The idea was for Capay to stop at farms, pick up product, and end up in Palo Alto where they’d set up a private farmer’s market with a CSA. The city of Palo Alto took notice and loved the idea so much, they set up outside of city hall for employees. This led to a model for targeting institutions with mini-farmers’ markets. (Learn more.)

TIPS:

1) Band together numerous farms to enable a wider variety of products – fruits, veges, eggs, olive oil, honey, meat products, grains, beans – year round.

2) For efficiency they now pack the farm shares centrally.

MY TIP: Involve subscribers in setting drop off points. In Palo Alto a CSA subscriber allows the farm to drop off boxes on her porch, for neighbors to come pick up. No muss, no cost, and gives locals an excuse to commune.

Other Interesting Ideas for Farms from the Conference

• Charitable co-packing: In the Bay Area, the Pacific Farmer’s Markets are working on a plan to train disadvantaged people (through a local nonprofit) how to process fresh fruits and veggies from the farmer’s market into canned foods that can then be sold by the farmers. Talk about a virtuous cycle!
• Funding from the FDA for Farm Grants to create value-added products: Download the presentations from the event for details on licensing, processing regulations, and other rules for farms creating products. It is truly a quagmire of exceptions and guidelines (such as, it’s a different registration if you store the product separately from where you make it.)Additionally the grants, which are project-based, can be expensive, requiring accounting oversight. Still totally worth it to get a major initiative off the ground.
• Finding rural commercial kitchens: Becky from Frog Hollow (Brentwood, CA) had a great idea for farmers to tap into restaurants in their communities who may have kitchen time to spare. The farms could hire the restaurants to make products using their produce or the farm could rent the space. (Everyone in the room had a huge chuckle when one grower said they “heard” it was OK to process farm food at home. Talk about California dreamin’! We all wish.)
• Approaching new stores to sell your produce: Jim Cochran of Swanton Berry Farm advised: “Never call someone and ask if they’d like to buy strawberries. Bring the box into the store unannounced and you get your reaction. If the first word is ‘How much do they cost?’ you’re not going to make a lot of progress. If they first say ‘Wow these are beautiful!’ that’s going to be a good customer. Also, it’s hard to give credit to a store when they ordered too much; but it’s to his advantage to give the store credit so they have fresh berries on hand.

Overall this conference bringing together farms, experts, vendors, and advocates likely planted the seed (how could I help that) for future collaborations and farming success.

If you’ve ever wondered why clementines and mandarins are suddenly everywhere, read how this new “Tango” variety mandarin orange was developed and how it came to market via the UC Citrus Clonal Protection Program.

You’ll find this orange in stores under the name Tango or perhaps undercover as Cuties or other brand names you already see. The variety will be available in nurseries for home gardeners sometime soon.

Insider Peek at How Things Work in the Orange Industry

In December, I had a chance to stay with a commercial lemon grower and attend a couple of industry events, which fascinated this lifelong orange fanatic.

At the University of California, Lindcove Research and Extension Center (LREC) near Exeter, in the Central Valley LREC, scientists conduct research programs to develop new varieties of citrus, better ways to grow citrus, and new ways to manage pests, both conventional and organic.

Nestled against the Sierra Nevada, the LREC’s soils and climate are representative of the 190,000 acres of commercial citrus growing in the Central Valley of California.

The Center also helps growers choose the most appealing citrus to grow, the ones that leap off the shelves. And that is how I ended up at a Satsuma mandarin tasting where growers tasted over 25 variations of these delightful fruits.

I shared with the several orange growers who tasted and traded comments with each other which I’d marked as “love!” and those that earned a “tasteless.”

“We like hearing your perspective,” a trucker-capped grower commented. “We want to grow what people want.”

That comment ties into the other event I attended, one of the “Citrus Mutual” grower group in which the future of navel oranges was the topic at hand.

Do you remember the excitement of the first good navels showing up at the market?

Well those delightful little “ez peeler” mandarins are taking a bite into the navel industry. And even more interestingly, after doing consumer research, industry leaders found that it would behoove the growers to perhaps release the orange crop later to appeal more to modern consumer tastes. (Here’s a full article about the meeting.)

This causes a bit of conflict with growers, as many might miss the big holiday orange buying season as the navels generally aren’t ripe by then. It was interesting to consider how like any product, you need to take a customer-centric view. While in the short run releasing product early brings in cash, if the customers don’t have a good experience, they won’t be back for more.

Whether you’re a fan of buying only locally grown fruit or getting your hands on good oranges is the priority, now you know the source of your citrus fruit. It all starts there in one of the 2 California research centers.

Like this: A kind of kumquat hybrid which you may or may not ever see in person!

A non-photoshopped orange. Where the color “orange” comes from. Another variety in the research orchard.

When a citrus grower recently brought a few California-grown Australian Finger Limes – undersized like tiny fingers – to a party, cut them open, and squeezed out sacs of “lime juice caviar” … well, weeks have passed and we’re still obsessed.

Lime caviar on the rim of a cocktail; eaten straight from the lime; on frozen yogurt…our minds reeled. The juice sacs pop, which makes them the ultimate in nature’s molecular gastronomy much like a pomegranate but without the hard seed thingy.

Yet as I roved around Los Angeles spreading the word to local bartenders, the L.A. Times broke the story.

I took a special trip to the Santa Monica Wednesday farmer’s market where I met the Shanleys, among the first to introduce California grown finger limes, which they planted just a few years ago, to the market now that the trees have matured.

Want Finger Limes?

This variety of lime is still very new, in limited production. I have a few on hand (in Berkeley) for any bars or restaurants who want to experience them firsthand!

I’ve got a case of citrons on hand to give away to locals who want to  experiment in advance and share the “fruits” of your imagination. There’s no juice, only a firm white pulp. The citron’s oily peel holds the magic although you can cook with the full fruit as well. Here are some things made for our last event and other ideas for citrons:

* Citroncello, limoncello’s cousin
* Candy (June Taylor makes a great candied citron peel.)
* Marmalade (See Corby Kummer article)
* Syrup for drinks or cakes
* Baking
* Essence
* Something no one has thought of? I’ve been wanting to try soap or candles! Perhaps massage oil?

Learn about John’s rabbi-blessed fruit:

Can’t wait to sink your teeth into a peacotum?  Look into planting a tree yourself!

(Yes, you need to decipher the hybrid name yourself.)

If you want to use your citrons creatively after the holiday, here are some ideas. You can read more about the grower in The Saga of the Citron Selecting the Perfect Etrog.

We Learned
Through the magic of video and speakerphone, we learned all about citrons (esrogs) from the only large commercial grower in the US, John Kirkpatrick.

John grows five varieties of citrons, which have various characteristics such as differences in the peel, number of seeds, and proportion of pulp:
Temoni (originally from Yemin), Buddha’s Hand, Halperin, Kivelovitz, Braveman, Chazon Ish
The foam “bedding” keeps the citrons free from blemishes.

We Ate and Drank
Several of us brought the results of our citron cooking experiments, made with citrons received in advance:

• Preserved citrons - Based on a preserved lemons recipe from the Apple Farm.
• Citron marmalade – Made with 2 entire fruits
• Citron candy – Made by June Taylor. Visit the Ferry Building farmer’s market soon and you might be able to find a bag of this delicious chewy candy.
• Hangar One Buddha’s Hand vodka kindly donated by St. George Spirits, who call John a “marvelous human being.”
• Candied Citrons and Citron Syrup which I made, simply by putting equal parts sugar and water in a pan with sliced fruit and letting it reduce. But when I left the fruit in the syrup, the syrup ultimately became very bitter. In my first go around when I poured the syrup out right away, it was delicious (especially in a citron-jito with mint!)
• Citron Curd (like lemon curd) – This was everyone’s favorite.
• Citrons in Sugar, from an 1830 cook book, where slices layered with sugar extract the little juice there is.

…and we had FUN.

Where to Get Citrons
After the Sukkot celebration in October, the price of citrons will come down. You can find them at the Monterey Market and Berkeley Bowl in Berkeley, CA as well as various specialty markets around the US (although I’m not sure where).

Learn More About How John Grows the Citrons
Here’s a short video, roosters and all!