Rethinking the Farm

This article was originally published in Marin Magazine.

By Jacoba Charles

Inside a bright, high-ceilinged room, students watch chef Tracey Shepos Cenami of Kendall-Jackson Winery make a summer salad of melon and prosciutto. As she peels a large honeydew, people take notes and sip wine. A screen mounted on the wall shows a close-up view of the demonstration. This is The Fork, the Giacomini family’s latest enterprise. A center for cooking classes and other events, The Fork sits in the middle of the family’s working dairy farm on a hillside north of Point Reyes Station. Students, paying upwards of $100, are offered a behind-the-scenes tour full of gritty detail: Newborn calves, grassy fields, feeding barns and muck — it’s all there.

“We think it’s important to show how everything they see outside translates to the flavors on the plate,” says Jill Giacomini Basch, one of four sisters who are now running — and diversifying — the family business. Eleven years ago the sisters started the Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company, and in 2010 they opened The Fork. “We decided to quit our day jobs, come back to the farm to really give it a go,” Basch says.

Marin County has a strong agricultural heritage, with many ranching families such as the Giacominis going back five to seven generations. Dairy farming is a $26 million-a-year business in Marin, and small, family-run dairies and cattle ranches still dominate Marin’s rural west side. But keeping these ranches financially sustainable — and keeping younger generations involved — has been a struggle.

Roughly half the land in Marin is still used for agriculture, but ranching has never been a way to get rich, especially here in one of the most expensive places in the country to live. Phyllis Faber, one of the founders of the Marin Agriculture Land Trust, which buys the development rights to rural land in order to preserve it for agricultural use, notes that ranchers are challenged by the high price of land and fuel, combined with demand for low-cost food.

Moreover, “a lot of our farmers don’t have the big acreage necessary to compete if they are just producing conventional milk and conventional beef through the normal markets,” says Dave Lewis, director of the University of California Cooperative Extension program in Marin, which provides agricultural resources to farmers and ranchers as well as consumers. So local farmers are turning their small size, their prime location and a growing demand for local, fresh food to their advantage through value-added products.

Instead of simply selling their milk at low prices to traditional dairy cooperatives, local dairy families such as the Giacominis of Point Reyes Station, the Lafranchis of Nicasio and the Strauses of Marshall are making cheese, yogurt or ice cream that they sell directly to consumers or grocery stores. Instead of traditional corn-fed beef, local ranchers such as Dave Evans of Point Reyes Peninsula’s Marin Sun Farms, the Pancias of Tomales’ Stemple Creek Ranch and the Gales of Chileno Valley Ranch are switching to grass-fed herds and adding other livestock such as sheep, goats and pigs.

In addition, many West Marin ranchers are responding to the growing demand for fresh, local food by going organic, or cutting out the middleman and selling straight to customers at farmers’ markets or on the ranch. Some, such as the Pancias, also lease their land to up-and-coming organic farmers and other agricultural entrepreneurs such as cheesemakers. From making jams and jellies to sausages and steaks, people are still finding a way to earn their living from the land.

“In the last 10 years the value-added concept has gone from a few pioneers and innovators to being part of the norm,” says Lewis of UC Extension. “What’s really great is that the next generation sees this as their addition to the farm. They love that they are continuing the family tradition while bringing some new business skills and their own motivation.”

Returning to Their Roots

“We’re a 90-plus-year-old dairy operation, and now we’re engaging in cheesemaking traditions from the same village in Switzerland that our grandfather was born in,” Rick Lafranchi says, sitting at a table in the salesroom of Nicasio Valley Cheese Company, which opened last year on Nicasio Valley Road. A large glass window in one wall enables visitors to watch Rick’s brother Scott work in a white-tiled room making one of the company’s six varieties of farmstead cheese. Down the road, Randy Lafranchi manages the family’s organic dairy.

“We started talking about cheese after a visit to Switzerland,” says Rick. “We looked on it as a chance to allow the ranch to continue, because the dairy business has been really hard for the last 10 years.”

The new venture not only is financially stable but has also enabled Rick and his siblings to rejoin the family business. “We wanted something that would let the dairy survive as well as thrive and also make the best use of the land,” he says. “Cheese seemed to make the most sense — and we have a passion for it. It’s been very exciting, very challenging and very rewarding.”

The Lafranchis are part of a growing coterie of local cheese-makers. Though Marin French Cheese has been operating since 1865, the opening of Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station nearly 15 years ago marked the beginning of an explosion in cheesemaking in the county. Now numbers of artisan cheesemakers are increasing throughout California, and more than half are located in Marin and Sonoma counties. A third of them opened their doors within the last three years, with more set to open soon.

Building a Better Buffalo

One of those budding cheesemakers is Craig Ramini, who left his Silicon Valley job to launch a second career making America’s first water buffalo mozzarella. “It’s exciting to think that cheese is emerging as an artisan industry in the county,” says Ramini, who leases 25 acres of ranchland from the Poncia family, near Tomales. He expects to produce his first experimental batches in a few months.

While there is inherent value in using an exotic animal like water buffalo — which are renowned in Italy for making a delicious mozzarella — there also are challenges, Ramini says. Because the breed that is common in the United States has always been a meat animal, they are not temperamentally or physically suited to producing milk.

“Imagine if someone said, ‘We want you to start a cheese business, but you have to use beef Angus,’ ” says Ramini. “It’s really hard. It would be lovely if you could just load a bunch of these buffalo on a plane in Italy and fly them over, but the USDA won’t let you do that.”

Branching Out

Cheese isn’t the only field in which ranchers have been diversifying. “In the last five years, what we see at the farmers’ market has changed drastically,” says Brigitte Moran, CEO of the Agricultural Institute of Marin, which operates the weekly farmers’ markets at the Civic Centers as well as others throughout the region. “A bunch of ranchers have transitioned into selling directly to the consumer. And we’ve seen a lot of diversity from farmers who used to only do one crop; they are going back to the old ways where they had a diversified farm.”

One example of this diversification is Chileno Valley Ranch, a 600-acre spread that sits in a broad valley between Petaluma and Tomales. As twilight throws a rosy glow on the surrounding hills, owner Mike Gale crosses a pasture to check on three 900-pound steers that have been put in a corral, ready to be shipped to slaughter in the morning. “Our main business is our beef business,” Gale says. “Everything else is secondary and complementary to the raising of beef.”

Yet the beef business that Gale runs along with his wife, Sally — who is the fifth generation of a local ranching family — is far from conventional. Instead of selling their cattle to brokers who fatten them up on feedlots as far away as Idaho or Oregon, the Gales sell a minimum of a quarter of an animal, and only to individuals. The steers stay on the property until they are sent to the slaughterhouse in Petaluma; customers can pick up their cut and wrapped steaks at Ibleto Meats in Cotati. A quarter of a steer yields about 100 pounds of steaks and other cuts and costs about $375 fully butchered.

“We learned within a year that the traditional model wasn’t going to work for us,” says Gale. “Ranching is a lot like biology: You have to evolve or die.” Since the couple moved to Marin in 1993, they have experimented with different ways to make ranching pay. Today they sell pasture-raised eggs, heritage breed pork, and lamb in addition to beef. During the fall, they also have a you-pick produce business. Visitors can drop by the farm on Sundays and harvest the certified organic apples, pears and tomatoes that grow in tidy rows in the lee of a weathered barn. “Basically we are selling a story — it’s the story of how we do ranching,” says Gale. “But if people don’t like your product you don’t have a business.”

Wine vs. Salmon: Water Wars Hit Sonoma County

This article was originally published in the New York Times and the Bay Citizen.

The dense forests of redwood, oak and Douglas fir that once covered much of Sonoma County have for many decades been giving way to pastures, orchards, subdivisions — and vineyards.

Now, those vineyards are emerging as yet another threat to a fish that would go just perfectly with the region’s signature pinot noir: the coho salmon.

Battered by a long history of habitat loss, logging and development, a dwindling number of coho struggle to survive in the rivers and streams where they return every year to spawn. Now they must contend with water-hungry vines, and especially a frost-prevention method that involves spraying plants with 50 gallons of water per acre, per minute. In smaller tributaries, the technique can literally suck stretches of a stream dry.

“There are a lot more grape vineyards than there really is water for,” said Brian Cluer, a scientist with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The acreage planted in vines has increased as much as 50 percent in some parts of the county over the last decade, and Mr. Cluer said the county was still issuing permits for new vineyards without requiring proof of an adequate water supply. “It’s a water-scarce area,” Mr. Cluer said, “and permitting and regulation hasn’t addressed that. It’s been a big mistake.”

Though salmon are the biggest concern, vineyards’ water use has effects that ripple through local ecosystems and communities. In the last three years, the fisheries service has documented more than 60 vineyard-related deaths of juvenile coho, an endangered species, and steelhead trout, a threatened species, in three streams. It estimated that in one of the events more than 25,000 fry, or baby fish, were probably killed. Sonoma County enacted an ordinance last year that asks vintners to register with the county if they use water from streams, but it imposes no limits on such use and allows landowners to monitor stream flows themselves. The State Water Board is now preparing to step in with much stricter rules to protect fish.

The proposed rules, along with sporadic efforts to sanction vintners after the fact, have met with vociferous objections from an industry that views itself as environmentally conscious. Green Pastures Valley, a 10-acre vineyard outside Healdsburg that boasts of its conservation ethic, is disputing a $115,000 fine levied last year by the fisheries service , which said it killed young coho by pumping too much water for frost protection. 

“The small farmer is the endangered species here,” Eric Stadnik, a co-owner of Green Pastures Valley, wrote in an e-mail. “I hope we can avoid bankruptcy over this ordeal.”

The Sonoma County Winegrape Commission also objects to the idea that vineyards are responsible for serious environmental harm. “I don’t think the scale of the problem is nearly as large as has been assumed,” said Nick Frey, the commission president.

The fisheries service disagrees. “Common sense tells us that there likely are more events that we aren’t aware of,” said Dan Torquemada, chief investigator with the agency’s Office of Law Enforcement in Santa Rosa.

Environmental organizations have increasingly begun to monitor vineyards’ behavior. “If we see something out of the ordinary, we initiate the complaint process,” said Steve Krimel, co-chairman of Save Mark West Creek. Mr. Krimel blames viticulture for a steady decline in the stream that flows through his backyard near Santa Rosa.

“The local vineyard and the local winery up the road are sucking it dry from the headwaters,” he said. Chris Poehlman, president of Friends of the Gualala River, describes seeing oddly fluctuating streamflows in areas where vineyards and other heavy water users are found.

“In the summertime,” Mr. Poehlman said, “there’s been severe drawdowns with no correlation to the weather. The water level goes up and down, and that takes water from pockets where fish are trying to survive.”

Water levels are only one of the issues worrying Mr. Poehlman’s organization, which has spent years opposing vineyard proposals in Annapolis, a remote town west of the Russian River valley. More viticulture means interrupted wildlife corridors and less biodiversity, the group says.

“Once one project gets approved it will set a precedent for others,” said Dave Jordan, a member of the group, adding that he has seen the tide of vineyards overtake neighboring landscapes. “Now all of the trees are gone, and it’s just grapes from one side of the hill to the other. We want to avoid that same fate here.”

Twilight of the tanbark oak

The beautiful tree is dying.

From Big Sur to Brookings, entire groves have browned and fallen. Single snags stand in forests like wisps of smoke, like ghosts.

Sudden Oak Death is old news now - but how does news of a plague become old? The beautiful tree is dying, and eventually it will be gone. With its loss, the entire balance of our Pacific coastal forests will change.

There is a reason the Kashaya-Pomo called the tan oak Chishkale, or "beautiful tree". Its copious harvest of acorns was one of the most prolific and reliable food sources around. The Kashaya soaked and beat the nuts into breads and cakes, gruel and soup. During a flu, acorns were sucked like a cough drop, and the tannins were said to soothe the throat. Strung acorns were twirled in the air to make music.

Chishkale has been a generous neighbor to humans and non-humans alike. Northern flying squirrels, dusky footed woodrats and black salamanders are just a few of the myriad creatures that call its root and limbs home. Tan oak's bitter nuts are a staple food for deer, squirrels, woodpeckers and jays. They were a favorite snack for grizzlies, before the bears were driven from the state. And when feral pigs arrived, acorns became a rooting prize for the hogs as well. Other creatures eat the creatures that eat the acorns, and when fruit and flesh decay, still more creatures dine on that.

The tan oak's nutrient-packed nuts are a key fuel driving the engine of the ecosystem here in the coastal hills where it lives. Without them the engine will falter-and then, because nature eternally adapts, it will change. But something precious will be gone for good.

So, if you aren't from around here, go outside now. Go and spend time with the tanoaks while groves still live. While they still stand in crowds and pairs and sometimes singly amongst other trees on a hillside.

Ideally, do this in late summer, when the acorns have fallen and you can see how thick they are on the ground. Find somewhere that the trees grow closely. In places the acorns crunch under your feet like gravel. Notice how dark green the leaves are: serrated like a bread knife, with undersides coated with a soft beige fuzz.

Leave the trail; you are on a brown carpet of those fallen leaves. The air smells uniquely dusty and a little soft, like the leaf-fuzz you saw. Sunlight filters down in small shifting patches, and squirrels and jays chatter and call. You may notice that the sound these particular branches make in the wind is like all branches in all wind, and also like no other branches on the planet. If it is a warm day maybe you will want to find a nice tree, an old one with a broad trunk, and take a nap at its base. When you wake up, you may think of how long your companion has been in this spot, of what it has stood witness to. And remember that soon it-and all of its kin-will be leaving.






References:
Forest legacies, climate change, altered disturbance regimes, invasive species and water.

Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, UC Merced.

Native plants associated with Sudden Oak Death and their use by California Indians: Fact Sheet #6.

Sudden Oak Death: endangering California and Oregon ecosystems.

USDA NRCS national plant data center plant guide.