Newest articles on The Sacramento Press tagged as "vegetables"

Davis Farmers Market celebrates the season with annual festival

2010-11-01T18:33:52Z

Fall was definitely in the air Saturday as the Davis Farmers Market held its annual festival to celebrate the season.

In addition to the typical market fare of garden-fresh fruits and vegetables, the festival, which is held on the last Saturday in October, brought a fall theme including Halloween decorations, a scarecrow display, additional vendors and more activities for families.

Overcast skies and cool air accompanied the dozens of Mylar balloons, cornstalks and hay bales that made up the many decorations in the market area. Joy Wills, the assistant manager who has worked at the market for 18 years, described the festival as a “celebration of the fall harvest.” Wills also mentioned that stuffed little pumpkin baggies hanging from some of the trees are 16 years old and are still in great condition.

Davis’ Central Park is home of the weekly market that is held under a pavilion, but the festival brought out an extra 20 or so vendors who stretched the row of offerings across the park’s entire walkway. Items for sale included handmade jewelry, freshly popped kettle corn and slices of pumpkin pie.

Kristy Lyn-Levings of Cache Creek Meat Co. has been coming to the market for a year and a half to sell naturally raised chicken. Lyn-Levings brought her 3-year-old niece, Abigail, to enjoy the day, and they both got into the festival spirit by dressing in chicken costumes.

Among the families and customers at the market were Peter and Susan Dileanis, who moved to Davis from Sacramento a few years ago. They have been attending the farmers market since 1984.

“It’s much bigger, with the 4-H groups and activities just for kids,” Susan said.

Additional activities for children included pony rides, face painting, a chance to pet baby pigs and even a chance to join in the live music. The Peter Franklin Band, which played on the south side, and Music Matt, which played on the north side, each provided a variety of instruments for the little ones to play.

McKinley Park farm stand sells out on the first day

2010-07-12T04:31:28Z

Late risers were disappointed when they showed up for Soil Born’s newest farm stand in McKinley Park on Saturday. By 10:30, the stand had sold out of beets, carrots, green beans, cucumbers, apricots and blackberries.

Only potatoes and okra were left by noon, so Randy Stannard, Soil Born Farm’s food access coordinator, turned shoppers away, promising to triple the amount of fruits and vegetables next week.

“We’ll have to make it bigger,” Stannard said. “We had an amazing response. People are just really excited to be able to have something down here in the park.”

Soil Born chose McKinley Park for its stand because of its popularity. “Many people, a diverse amount of people, use the park and are here already,” Stannard said. “We don’t have to pull people here for the produce, they’re already here on their own accord.”

He estimated that 500 people visited the stand to buy fresh produce from local growers throughout the Sacramento, Yolo, Placer, El Dorado, Yuba, Sutter, Solano and San Joaquin counties. But Soil Born’s farm stand isn’t your average farmers market.

“Instead of a traditional farmer’s market that has 10 farmers all coming to one place and has a bunch of separate booths, we go to the farms or they come to us,” Stannard said. “So we have produce from 10 different farms, but it gets sold through one booth or one market.”

Soil Born Farms hopes to add more seasonal fruits and vegetables to its selection in the coming weeks, Stannard said, including red, heirloom and cherry tomatoes, peaches, melons, red bell and hot peppers.

The farm stand encourages electronic food stamp users by letting them use their EBT cards and offering them a 25 percent discount. WIC checks are not accepted, but individuals in the program also receive a 25 percent discount. Proceeds from sales subsidize food prices for those needing financial assistance.

Soil Born Farm’s farm stand at McKinley Park will remain open Saturdays through Oct. 30 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

'Follow the Chef' through the farmers market

2010-05-06T03:15:15Z

With more than 10 local farmer's markets open weekly starting this month, it's difficult to navigate all the options and choose something you can easily prepare. Enter Michael Tuohy, Grange Restaurant's executive chef and leading proponent of the Slow Food Movement, whose mission is to "understand the importance of caring where their food comes from, who makes it and how it’s made," according to its website.

Tuohy holds a weekly "Follow the Chef" lunch at the Grange, located on the corner of 10th and J streets inside the Citizen Hotel. At 11 a.m. every Wednesday between May and October, he meets with a group of 15 people or less at the Grange and leads them through a tour of the farmer's market at Cesar Chavez Plaza.

He introduces them to farmers, shows them his favorite farm stands and talks about the different varieties of fruits and vegetables, as well as different ways to prepare them. After walking the group back to the Grange, he cooks up a meal featuring the locally grown produce bought at the farmer's market. It's served at a special "chef's table," the table nearest to the kitchen.

Wednesday was the first Follow the Chef lunch of 2010, now in its second season.

"Farmer's markets are the next-best thing to having your own farm or growing your own vegetables," Tuohy said. "You can truly cook locally here as much as possible."

He noted that spring and summer are great seasons to buy asparagus, artichokes, snap peas, fava beans and English peas. Strawberries, usually ready in early summer, are unusually not sweet so far this year, Tuohy said, pointing to the recent rain for their "waterlogged" taste.

Perhaps that's why a number of usual farm stands at the farmer's market were missing, causing the chef to remark that it looks a little "thin." He explained that since it's the first farmer's market of the season, the produce might not be ready yet.

But for the fruits and vegetables that were there, "the prices are good," Tuohy said. "I feel like they don't charge enough. It's amazing."

And there was still a large variety of in-season produce including cherries, beets, daikon, bok choy, garlic, leeks, broccoli, cabbage, cilantro and dates among others. Local apples are popular year-round, even though they're from the fall harvest. A few early tomatoes are also available, but slightly out of season. There will be more later in the summer.

Tuohy noted that not all of the farm stands are certified organic. But what does that mean, exactly?

"Buying local is more important than buying something organic certified, (as long as) they grow sustainably with no pesticides," he said. "Organic certified is a bonus."

Among other local media outlets, local food bloggers representing The Sac Rag, Cakegrrl, Sac Foodies, Sacatomato and Poor Girl Eats Well all took the tour and sat down for a sample four-course meal paired with wine, usually priced at $35.

The lunch group sat at the chef's table, slightly curtained off from the rest of the restaurant, while Tuohy and his staff worked their magic on the fresh produce in the kitchen.

Dishes included spring onion soup with crème fraiche; asparagus salad with dry beets and local Barioni olive oil; spring vegetable risotto with fava beans, artichoke and English peas; and a strawberry crustada with fresh strawberry, crème fraiche, caramel and St. Germain liqueur - created by pastry chef Elaine Baker (see below for photos). The dishes were paired with a choice of Bogle pinot noir or a Conway Deep Sea rosé.

Dishes vary by week, depending on what the chef purchases at the farmer's market. Reservations for the Follow the Chef lunch are available by calling 492-4450.

Above photographs of farmer's market credit Ashlee Gadd. Food photographs below by Jonathan Mendick.

Spring onion soup with crème fraishe

Asparagus salad with dry beets and local Barioni olive oil

Spring vegetable risotto with fava beans, artichoke and English peas

Strawberry crustada with fresh strawberry, crème fraishe, caramel and St. Germain liqueur

Front yard ordinance allows DIY food

2009-07-17T21:17:38Z

This is the second growing season that Sacramento residents have been able to grow vegetables, fruit trees and other food plants in their front yard thanks to a revised city ordinance. After a three-year effort by food activists, the city's Front Yard Ordinance was reworded in 2007 to specifically allow veggie gardens in that soil near the sidewalk. That change has enabled more and more Sacramento homeowners to grow their own food in an edible landscape, mingling [with] or replacing decorative foliage. Blueberries with your zinnias, perhaps, or tomatoes with your chrysanthemums, or lettuce where that brown scrubgrass used to be.

The original FYO was written into zoning code in 1941 and actually banned the growing of edible plants. Vegetables were confined to the backyard and growing any food plant on the front lawn was an offense punishable by a fine. This may seem like an unusual law, considering that homeowners own their lawns. The main concern of the old FYO was preventing overgrowth of plants, whether food or otherwise. It didn't explicitly forbid food plants, but didn't list them as legal either, whereas perennial grasses and decorative plants were listed as legal groundcover.

Sacramento resident Karen Baumann brushed up against that little-known ordinance when she planted tomatoes and a fruit tree on her front lawn in 2004, according to a city official. A neighbor reported her garden to city authorities, who then notified Baumann that she would have to pull up the plants or face a $750 fine. This was a surprise to Baumann, who asked folks at local gardening groups what she could do to save her leafy comestibles. Before she could act, an unknown party sprayed Baumann's lawn pretty heavily with RoundUp, a Monsanto-brand herbicide, and killed off most of Baumann's plants, as well as some nearby lawns.

Food activists citywide responded to Baumann's plight and petitioned the city council to revise the outdated law. "There was a tremendous amount of community pressure," Paul Towers, a Sacramento resident and state director of Pesticide Watch said. "There were articles in the News & Review, The Bee. Organic Sacramento got involved. It was everywhere."

This grassroots effort to make Sacramento lawns more than just pretty finally achieved their goal in April 2007. Baumann's war-torn lawn was later restored. Capitol Nursery donated a bundle of plants to replace her sprayed veggies.

The new FYO changed key wording to more explicitly allow food crops on front yards. There are still requirements for maintenance, but no limitations on what can be grown. There are limits on what you don't grow; the law requires that landscapes must be "landscaped, irrigated and maintained," and there can be no dead plant matter taller than 4 inches. "Basically, you can grow all you want," said Community Garden Coordinator Bill Maynard. "But make it look good."

A tricky segment of the FYO still causes some concern amongst front-yard growers. It reads: "All landscaping materials shall be mowed, trimmed, and/or maintained as often as necessary to prevent overgrowth and blight."

But Towers said "blight" is a vague term that city authorities would be hard-pressed to enforce. The FYO lists no definition of "blight," only the word. Fortunately, the city is presently uninterested in enforcement.

"The city sent around a code enforcement memo that said not to bust food landscapes," said Towers, and Maynard corroborated that the city isn't cracking down. Unless a withering garden is a clear fire hazard, then dried-out or overgrown lawns aren't a problem. In a dry season, water conservation is at a premium, and accordingly the city has revised its enforcement plan.

Growing a plot of vegetables can actually reduce a front yard's water consumption and benefit the community in drier times. "A lot of edibles are drought-tolerant plants, so people can tear up thirsty grass and replace it with food." Maynard said. "[The FYO] provides a whole 'nother way to think about your yard."

The FYO places no restriction on fertilizer or pesticide use but Maynard hopes that Sacramento residents will pursue 'river-friendly' practices to reduce chemical runoff.

A front yard garden offers advantages that a backyard garden might not have. More sun usually hits a front lawn, and backyards might be covered with a patio or a pool. The FYO benefits homeowners almost exclusively, though, as landlords would may be unreceptive to suggestions of tearing up grass for greens.

Still, the FYO allows Sacramento city-slickers double the opportunity to turn their lawn into a bountiful foodscape.

"Our mission is to make all landscapes more healthy and sustainable, and we always put food first," Towers said.

Four farmers markets to open weekly beginning May 1

2009-04-19T02:08:15Z

The following is a schedule of farmers markets in the grid. While Sacramento Central Farmers Market is open year round, Roosevelt Park, Fremont Park, Cesar Chavez Plaza, and Downtown Plaza Farmers Markets will be open starting May 1, 2009. The next article in this storyline will interview the owners of the farmers markets.

Sacramento Central (Southside Park) Farmers Market

Located in the State Parking Lot 8th and W Streets, the farmers market is open from 8 a.m. until 12 noon on Sunday mornings all year long.

Roosevelt Park Farmers Market

Roosevelt Park is among two farmers markets along P Street held weekly on Tuesdays. "Along the perimeter of the park, shoppers can buy vegetables, fruits, nuts, meats, herbs, flowers, baked goods and cheeses," says the California Federation of Certified Farmers' Markets website.

9th and P Streets, Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., May 1 through October 30.

Fremont Park Farmers Market

16th and P Streets, Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., May 1 through October 30.

Cesar Chavez Plaza Farmers Market

10th and J Streets, Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., May 1 through October 30.

Downtown Plaza Farmers Market

4th and K Streets, Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., May 1 through October 30.

A few tips from california-grown.com:

"Bargaining for small amounts is not well received. Bargaining for big boxes or great amounts is usually acceptable. Remember that these are the growers of the produce you are bargaining for. Do not insult them. They worked very hard to sell so cheap.
Have patience with the growers. They are not polished sales people, they are just farmers. They were up late picking and irrigating and up early to load and drive the truck several hours to market.
If you smile at and appreciate them, you will find them smiling back and appreciating you in return. That is what certified farmers' markets are really about. Smiles and mutual appreciation. Families growing food for families. Californians supporting California."

Colors of spring at Southside Farmers Market

2009-03-23T05:11:47Z

Spring is making its presence felt. Flowers are blooming, leaves are returning to the trees, allergies are flaring up, and colorful foods are finding their way back to the market.

Today, Sunday March 22, the Southside Farmers Market (across W St. from Southside park under the freeway) was displaying foods and flowers that have been absent during the winter months.

Asparagus, beets, sweet peppers of all colors, artichokes, strawberries, beans, and kiwi among other foods were splayed out in tall mounds of edible art. Multiple vendors sold flowers of all kinds to market goers eager to tout the signs of spring.

Southside Farmers Market was a hub of activity with people meandering through the converted parking lot from booth to booth picking out the perfect produce. The vendors, northern california farmers, were full of smiles and morning greeting while they weighed produce in hopes of driving home with an empty truck.

If you've never visited the market, you'd be surprised to discover the amount of food you can purchase for a small amount of money. Your money goes directly to the farmers--an added benefit to shopping there. Many vendors employ organic, pesticide-free farming, and all are local.

Check out the Southside Farmers Market, open from 8 a.m. until 12 noon on Sunday mornings all year long. Other year-round markets can be found at Sunrise Mall, Laguna Gateway Center, Country Club Plaza, and at Sears on Florin Rd. Seasonal markets will be opening in the downtown/midtown area beginning in May--check back around that time for a preview, or take a look at the local growers website at www.california-grown.com.