get to know your farmer

August 16, 2005 12:17 PM

This journalis intended to share my love and appreciation for the hard work farmers and their families do to create such beautiful places and beautiful food. Tana Butler visists small farms near Santa Cruz, CA, sharing her thoughts and photographs [ farms | farmers | markets | food ].
posted by 김치 (21 comments total)

This is great and not just because she's doing this in my town. Its a neat project too.

It also doesn't hurt that this area also has some rather large farms as well as the smaller spots and vineyards up in the hills too. Makes it pretty easy to get top quality produce and then there are the food festivals too, Gilroy Garlic Festival, Castroville Artichoke Festival, Watsonville Strawberry Festival and a whole bunch of others.
posted by fenriq at 12:57 PM on August 16, 2005

Wonderful FPP!
posted by luriete at 1:08 PM on August 16, 2005

This is an excellent post, and a truly excellent blog, what the internet should be used for instead of all this shit that we see everywhere. The pictures are quite good, the woman is a good photographer. It's worth it for those alone.

It's funny, I was just at The Book Thing here in Baltimore, which is a free book exchange, and I found a copy of Clabbered Dirt and Sweet Grass by Gary Paulsen, which is an excellent book about life on an old-time farm. I urged my friend to get it, but she hasn't read it yet. I see the books OP now, but at .65 on Amazon, you can't go wrong, even adding the price of shipping.

Anyway, as usual, thanks 김치.
posted by OmieWise at 1:10 PM on August 16, 2005

Heh, as someone who grew up in North Dakota I find all of these pics of well-groomed botique farmers pretty amusing.
This is a much more typical farmer.
posted by TungstenChef at 1:11 PM on August 16, 2005

I'm so glad to see this here! Tana is a personal friend (we met through online 'food fora'), a sincerely good person and a terrific photographer/writer trying to do (more than) her part to support local farms and farming.

Her blog truly deserves the designation 'best of the web'.

Cheers,

trip
posted by trip and a half at 1:21 PM on August 16, 2005

Agreed, TungstenChef. Growing up in So. Dak., I went to school with a lot of kids whose parents farmed (and I'm not talking massive corporate farms, either, but small family-run farms), and none of them looked like the people in the FPP. Then again, they didn't have places like Chez Panisse to cater to.
posted by DakotaPaul at 1:28 PM on August 16, 2005

I'm glad to see it too, just because of the memories of smells those photos invoke: strawberries on the air while driving to Monterey; artichokes; garlic on the way to Gilroy. There are some fantastic farmers' markets in the area, with stuff I'd have no clue how to identify, let alone cook.

I'm a little disappointed in myself that I've only been to a couple of the restaurants she lists as providing local produce. An excuse to go back...
posted by tracicle at 1:50 PM on August 16, 2005

Heh, as someone who grew up in North Dakota I find all of these pics of well-groomed botique farmers pretty amusing.

Tana has asked me to pass this along regarding the "well-groomed bo[u]tique farmers":

Would you please say, on my behalf, that the reason the farmers are so dressed up is because I don't interrupt them when they're working, and because a lot of those photos were taken at farm dinners?

[Me again:] Tana has worked very hard to cultivate the relationships she has with the farmers, with great honor and respect for the hard work they do. Believe me, these farmers do not look like that all the time!

Cheers,

trip
posted by trip and a half at 2:03 PM on August 16, 2005

Those must be the yuppie farms us midwestern folk have read about.
posted by DieHipsterDie at 2:07 PM on August 16, 2005

And regardless of the clothing, these still don't look like any farmers I grew up around.

Oh well.
posted by DieHipsterDie at 2:08 PM on August 16, 2005

Aww heck, I may have met some of those folk!

When I head down to the Santa Cruz/Monterey area to do some diving and visiting kin, I always stop at the small roadside (and some not so road-side) markets and bring fresh veggies back over the hill. I know the area well.

Nice post. Damn, I feel a costal trip coming up soon.
posted by elendil71 at 2:29 PM on August 16, 2005

I dunno, Frank looks pretty much like the ur-farmer. In California, the "hippy" organic farmers and the "classic" small farmers and ranchers actually share a lot of converging interests, and you will often see them side by side at farmers markets.
posted by footnote at 3:30 PM on August 16, 2005

Hey, it's hangul! I am finally both logged in and on a computer with the east Asian fonts, post unicodeization.
Still can't read it, but at least I can see it. No more '??'.
posted by blacklite at 4:50 PM on August 16, 2005

This is a great post. I would love to go get pictures of all the farms that are left around here, before they get paved for more mcmansions.
posted by dejah420 at 5:34 PM on August 16, 2005

It's cool how the whole Farmer's Market thing is a scene just like the indy rock scene, with all the party people in all the photos, only with vegetables.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 5:50 PM on August 16, 2005

Thank you for the post double-question-mark.
That's a beautiful weblog.
posted by peacay at 8:05 PM on August 16, 2005

It's really worth getting as fresh-as-possible fruits and vegetables. Did you know that carrots are sweet? I didn't know that til I had one that was an hour old. All my life I ate half-frozen, snapping-in-half factory farm carrots. No. Real carrots are soft and sweet.
posted by raaka at 1:07 AM on August 17, 2005

I second the appreciation, great site and fantastic photos.

It reminds me a lot of the farmland and vineyards in Tuscany, only it's possibly even more beautiful. And larger. And with an even better climate.
posted by funambulist at 1:32 AM on August 17, 2005

Even if this is indeed a different type of farming from midwest farming, I'm not sure why that makes it less interesting or authentic.
posted by OmieWise at 6:46 AM on August 17, 2005

Great post! The photos of the produce, food, AND people are amazing. I've worked a few summers on an organic farm in Northern California and can attest that while these folks may not look like your typical midwest farmer, they sure work as hard as one. Perhaps we should see what they look like after a morning of handweeding carrots, an afternoon of picking tomatoes (your hands, arms and other extremities turn brown and black from the resin), and a early evening hoeing peppers. Speaking from experience, I was often too tired after all that to clean the dirt off my feet, let alone take a real shower. Let them clean up and enjoy their day off, instead of trying to determine who the "real" farmers are!
posted by vitpil at 7:54 AM on August 17, 2005

Heh, as someone who grew up in North Dakota I find all of these pics of well-groomed botique farmers pretty amusing.

[...]

Agreed, TungstenChef. Growing up in So. Dak., I went to school with a lot of kids whose parents farmed (and I'm not talking massive corporate farms, either, but small family-run farms), and none of them looked like the people in the FPP. Then again, they didn't have places like Chez Panisse to cater to.

[...]

Those must be the yuppie farms us midwestern folk have read about.

And regardless of the clothing, these still don't look like any farmers I grew up around.

Oh well.

The highly conspicuous determination of legitimacy by a perceivedly slighted party is fascinating.
posted by gramschmidt at 3:34 PM on August 17, 2005