Opening day of the Oak Park Farmers Market is still three weeks away but the three-year-old market is already tempting me with at least three reasons to switch my farmers market shopping day from Sunday to Saturday starting May 5. Reason 1: Site improvements. The market site in McClatchy Park at 35th St. and 5th Ave. has been spruced up for its 2012 opening, with improvements like concrete walkways, granite paving for vendor stalls, landscaping, shade trees and benches. Reason 2: Dollar-for-dollar food stamp match. Market customers can use their EBT cards to purchase tokens that are redeemable for purchases from market vendors. Thanks to a contribution from Rabobank, the farm-friendly le

Two cannabis-themed events with “frightful” overtones are planned for Saturday night at two Sacramento medical cannabis dispensaries. One event is a fund-raiser for a group of patients, medical professionals, scientists and concerned citizens promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research. The other event marks a dispensary’s closure as Sacramento County and the federal government put the scare on the industry. At Common Roots Collective in south Sacramento, the cannabis activist group Americans for Safe Access hosts “Puff Puff Politics.” According to ASA’s flyer for the event, “It’s like a wine tasting but with cannabis.” Three top medical strains will be ta

With more than $5,000 in code violations and the threatened closure of two adacent businesses, Johnny Zonneveld, a U.S. Marines combat veteran who uses medical cannabis to battle post-traumatic stress disorder, conceded a skirmish in Sacramento County’s war on medical cannabis dispensaries and closed Sunnyfields Collective on Thursday. Sunnyfields joins One Solution, City of Trees, California Holistic Care, Citizen Collective, The Reserve, PACC Wellness, All Natural Solutions and Fort Kush among the confirmed casualties in the $1 million war that Sacramento County is borrowing to wage on medical cannabis dispensaries. The story of former infantryman and dispensary owner Johnny Zonneveld

A former Assistant U.S. Attorney speaking in favor of the federal government’s pot pogrom said recently that a letter from the U.S. Attorney warning medical cannabis dispensaries and the landlords who rent to them is a good thing. “This letter is the best news that marijuana growers have ever received from the federal government because this letter is a courtesy that most people don’t get,” Bill Portanova said. In the courtesy vein, but on the opposite side of the battle, Auburn Health & Organics, one of scores of medical cannabis dispensaries operating without the required permits that Sacramento County refuses to issue in the first place, is giving its patients the courtesy of a heads-

Once upon a time, when I was a restaurant critic in a second city in a bad economy, I chased restaurants -- the delayed openings, the quick closures, the inspections in between, the cooks who served good food vs. the operators in it for a buck. It put a taste in my mouth. Today, in the state capital of medical cannabis in an even worse economy, I spend a lot of time chasing medical cannabis dispensaries -- not the ones that advertise themselves openly and regularly in Sacramento's newspapers, keep regular hours of operation and work hard to make themselves part of the Camellia City's community, but the ones that don't advertise themselves to the public, or maybe do once or twice to mark t