EcoFarm: the organic church of the West

Over 1,500 people came together at the Asilomar conference center last week, just south of Monterey. Under pine trees and on white sand beaches they met and talked about all things related to sustainable agriculture. Lectures on subjects ranging from the Farm Bill to cover cropping were packed with attentive crowds. At meals, novice farmers sat shoulder-to-shoulder with seasoned producers. Business cards and advice flurried like a snowstorm.

This was the 33rd annual EcoFarm conference, which describes itself as the oldest and largest gathering of ecologically sustainable agriculture advocates in the West. People came from as far away as Malawi to participate in what Bolinas farmer Peter Martinelli called his yearly “organic church” experience. Most other attendees seemed to feel similarly.

“The EcoFarm conference is an essential organism in the body of organic agriculture that feeds the culture of farming,” said Dina Izzo of BluDog Organic Produce Services. “It feeds the heart and soul of many farmers who are isolated during the year, a reminder about brothers and sisters who along with them steward the earth while making measurable strides towards giving our earth the care she needs to thrive.”

The conference kicked off with preliminary events including a bus tour of sustainable farms, a butchery skills seminar, and a course in pollinator conservation. I missed this part, but it sounds excellent. In the body of the conference, there were roughly 30 workshops, lectures and discussion groups on Thursday and Friday, the two main days of the conference, and a dozen more on Saturday. These sessions were spread throughout the spacious, forested Asilomar campus; nametag-bedecked conference-goers were free to wander from one to the next.

People from my neck of the woods, West Marin, turned out in force—both as attendees and lectures. Albert Straus, owner of the renowned dairy, shared how his farm generates electricity using methane captured from manure. A talk on the implications and opportunities stemming from the 2012 Cottage Foods law was given by my friend Fred Smith.  Helge Hellberg, former ED of Marin Organic and producer of the radio show An Organic Conversation, offered advice on finding a niche market through specialty crops, value-added production, and selling the farm’s story.  And Penny Livingston-Stark of the Regenerative Design Institute in Bolinas discussed permaculture, local food independence, and regenerating our foodsheds.

National and regional notables were also present. Fermentation guru Sandor Katz lectured and led discussions on the benefits, biology, and history of ferments such as kimchi, kefir and sauerkraut. Mary Pittman—the Mary behind Mary’s Free Range Chickens—told how she and her husband managed to buck the pressure to grow conventional poultry. And Amigo Bob Cantisano, an organic farmer, activist, and one of the founders of EcoFarm, seemed to be everywhere at once, with his long dreadlocks bouncing.

Yet many of the most interesting exchanges were informal conversations. Whether in the cozy and rustic social hall—designed in 1912 by Julia Morgan—or around a late-night bonfire on the beach, EcoFarm is set up to encourage chance encounters. Meals were pricey but especially rewarding--you were seated randomly at large tables, perfect for meeting people. And because everyone there shared the goal of learning and networking, conversation was made even easier.

“The Ecological Farming Conference is the best place to be, come late January. Whether you are farmer, distributor, or just a person of interest, this is the highlight of the year for me,” said Steve Schuman of North Valley Produce. “It is not very often that we, as an industry, get to come together and learn, laugh, and play together. The potential is unlimited.”

The conference has certainly grown over the years. The very first one, in 1981, was held at the firehouse in the town of Winters, with 45 people in attendance. Then and now, the event is put on by the Ecological Farming Association, a non-profit focused on education, alliance building and advocacy.  The group describes their goal as promoting  a safe and healthful food system that strengthens soils, protects air and water, encourages diverse ecosystems and economies, and honors rural life. In addition to EcoFarm, the association also hosts the Hoes Down Harvest Festival and the Heartland Project.

The closing ceremony on Saturday held in a large, wood-walled hall where a dance had lasted into the small hours on the night before. In the morning, a more subdued group reconvened in rows to listen to a speech by nun, activist and organic farmer Miriam MacGillis. In the middle of the talk, which focused on the interconnectedness of life, MacGillis asked the audience to have a moment of silence while five women walked slowly up an aisle, bearing baskets of seeds like a sacrament. In silence, they passed the baskets into the crowd. In silence each person took one seed, to hold and contemplate as they listened to the rest of the talk.

“We aren’t in this world, we are it,” MacGillis said later. “From a seed sprouting to a thriving ecosystem, life is only possible through a complex web of relationships and ancient processes.”

(Pictures from 2012, courtesy of EcoFarm. A different version of this article was published in the Point Reyes Light on January 31.)

Harvest gleanings

On a sunny summer afternoon I find myself raking through rows of dry earth, scrabbling for perfect little pearls of potatos. This is a gleaning event with a local non-profit, Marin Organic. A local farm has opened their gates to the non-profit organization (and to us, their volunteers) so that we can come along and "clean up" after their regular crew has done their regular harvest. What most non-farmer folks don't realize is that there's plenty of good food left once a field has been worked over for market. On the day I went out to help harvest this "second crop", we filled boxes with potatos and bags with kale. The sun was warm, the breeze was fresh, the conversation was brisk, and the food we gathered is donated to local schools instead of lying in the field to rot. Marin Organic boasts that gleaning has delivered more than 160,000 pounds of organic produce to the schools since the program started. Who knew!

Behind the cheese curtain

The Nicasio Valley Cheese Company is the latest innovation of a century-old dairy family. Today they are making award-winning--and organic--cheeses. Here are some photos from a behind-the-scenes tour of one of the Bay Area's many artisan cheese makers.

Have you ever been to Swans?

The room is long, narrow, and smells like the sea. Customers are crowded along a marble bar, behind which gruffly charming men sling fish and dish out sauce. This is Swan's oyster bar, a San Francisco institution that still is unknown to many. But though most of my friends look blank when I rave about my latest meal at Swan's, the line is still out the door at lunchtime. My dad and I have been coming here since I was a kid, and I'm always delighted to go back. Here is fresh, no-nonsense seafood, salads and chowder. The same family--several brothers, and now their kids--have been running it for decades, and it has a whiff of an older, bluer-collar San Francisco to it. I can't wait to go back.

What it feels like to be a cow

Visitors to the Giacomini Dairy get an up-close view of the milking stations (they are standing where the cows usually do). The dairy also produces award-winning cheeses, and on our tour we got to see the entire cycle of milk production from grass to calf to milking machines. But we weren't allowed in the cheese making room...

Farming at the Urban Edge

This article was originally published in Bay Nature magazine.

by Jacoba Charles

On a typical early summer day at the Sunol Water Temple AgPark, Fred Hempel is multitasking. After advising two of his workers who are having trouble filling a restaurant order for edible radish pods, the wiry farmer fields phone calls as he walks between hunched rows of tomato plants, inspecting his most prized crop.

Fred Hempel of Baia Nicchia farms

“Even with the cool weather the last couple of days these things are growing like crazy,” he says. “We really need to get them trellised up. Is that a ripening tomato over there? That’s amazing!”

He pulls out a pocketknife and the tomato–a muddy greenish-red–is sliced, tasted, and dismissed as too watery. To an untrained palate, the barely ripe fruit is better than any at the grocery store. But Hempel is a biotech research scientist turned tomato breeder turned farmer, and his preferences are exacting. He says they need to be.

“The tomatoes make the most money by far,” he says. “The first thing we think about every day is, ‘how are the tomatoes doing.’”

Yet diversity and creativity are essential to survival and success as a small commercial organic farmer, Hempel adds. In addition to the heirloom tomatoes, his 10-acre farm at the AgPark east of Fremont also grows unusual varieties of squash, peppers, exotic herbs, and edible flowers.

“We do a lot of testing of crops from other places,” he says, explaining that finding seeds that thrive in this particular place can be a time-consuming process. But the effort has been worth it, letting him build up a business working with high-end wholesalers, plus direct relationships with Bay Area restaurants that ask him to grow varieties they can’t get anywhere else. “The chef at Oliveto was in Italy a few months ago, and he brought back some stuff for us to grow,” Hempel says, pointing out some red-stalked corn seedlings in his greenhouse as an example.

The historic Water Tempel, as seem from the Sunol AgPark.

Diversity and creativity are likewise hallmarks of the 18-acre AgPark in general. Though it looks like any other small farm–a patchwork of neatly tilled rows ribboned with dirt roads–this is in fact an innovative collaboration between a public agency, a nonprofit organization, and private businesses. Hempel’s Baia Nicchia is the largest of the four farms on the property. Others include Terra Bella, which grows produce for its community-supported agriculture business; Iu-Mien Village Farms, a collective of Laotian immigrants whose organic strawberries are sold at places like Monterey Market in Berkeley; and Fico, a small heirloom fig enterprise.

The AgPark is the brainchild of the nonprofit organization SAGE, or Sustainable Agriculture Education. The goal of the project is to support community-benefit farming, natural resource stewardship, and public education. SAGE leases the land from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), then subleases parcels to farmers who get infrastructure, community, and support in exchange for participating in public education programs that SAGE conducts on the farm.

“It would’ve been really hard to do what we’re doing in any other place,” says Hempel, who started Baia Nicchia with partner Jill Shepherd in 2006. “[SAGE] provided mentoring–how to put in irrigation, when to weed, what kind of tractor to buy. And if you’re selling things in the Bay Area, you can’t beat the location here.”

All that was part of the plan, says AgPark education manager Roger Kubalek of SAGE. Today, the group is developing a new curriculum and working with SFPUC on plans for a visitor center. “Now that the farming and the stewardship aspects of the program are on their way, we’ve started to focus in on education,” he explains. “It’s a great place to learn. Many of the students have never visited a real working farm.”

Free, free on the range...

While hiking near Point Reyes Station I spotted this calf, romping like a puppy across a pasture. I don't actually know whether this particular calf is fated for a plate--but I do know that plenty of local, grass-fed cattle do have similar freedom (eg Stemple Creek Ranch meats of Tomales, which have some of the best flavor that I've tasted. But there is a wide variety to choose from...)