This is article shows how the globalization of the food marketplace has benefitted some of the larger scale farmers in California. A quote from farmer Stuart Woolf: “Bakersfield to Sacramento is like a giant greenhouse with really good soil,” he said. “The big picture is that we are going to be perpetually stretching our resources as California feeds more people around the globe.”

Breathing much easier now that rain is dropping in the Ojai Valley. If anyone is interested in precise precipitation measurements, check out this feature of the National Weather Service.

The discovery of tainted rice 35 miles from a damaged nuclear plant has Japan scrambling to plug gaps in its food-screening measures.

“As we face uncertain and extreme weather patterns, growing scarcity and expense of oil, lack of water, and a growing population, we will require farming systems that can adapt, withstand or even mitigate these problems while producing healthy, nourishing food. After 30 years of side-by-side research in our Farming Systems Trial (FST)®, Rodale Institute has demonstrated that organic farming is better equipped to feed us now and well into the ever changing future.”

Our first detailed cultivation about tomatoes is now available via Scribd.

Now’s the time to start to think about planting seeds. Check out our seed company, All Good Things Organic Seeds, and find our certified organic seed varieties. New varieties are being added all the time! (Pictured: Fizz Kale).

Our first Sunday pick of the year returns us to our regular CSA schedule. We picked a bit lighter this past Tuesday to avoid putting strain on the field for this pick, which is occurring five days later. Sorry if you missed the chards and collards we put out. Basically we reload the greens on the table to keep them fresh rather than putting them all out at once and we didn’t get back to the field in time to reload the containers. If this gave the impression that the pick was especially light, we apologize for this and hope that folks will come back for an extra bunch of greens sometime.

This week we’ll have signs next to most of the produce items, so everyone can identify vegetables more readily. This system is in beta so sorry for any kinks we are still working out.

The warm weather coupled with the increasing day length has got us outside planting. In the greenhouse we started a grip of romaine lettuces and culinary herbs, and out in the field I planted new a new bed of kale. We put 10 new fruit trees in the ground (five mulberries, four cherries, and a persimmon), and I am getting really excited to see what our trees from last year look like in their second year.

Throughout the winter and spring we are aiming for a consistency of the staples. Carrots, chard, kale, lettuces, broccoli, radishes, potatoes, beets – onions later in the spring. More flowers for sure. There will also be the ongoing surprises, for instance, fennel, arugula, edible chrysanthemum, artichokes, mint, lavender…

Our quest for value-added products continues. I’ve been doing a lot of investigating egg-laying chickens and we will either be adding them to the farm by late February (for a July egg season) or wait until the autumn to start our flock. More updates forthcoming.

-Quin

Although a few months old, this piece about D. Landreth Seed Co. offers some historical insight into the economics of the seed industry…

We are proud, if often overwhelmed members of the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) network. This article from the Los Angeles TImes describes a bit of the history of the organization, with a specific focus on the Southern California WWOOF context. Favorite passage:

“Not all farms are created equally,” said Jess Sullivan, 24, a graduate student at UC San Diego who runs a one-acre WWOOF farm with her boyfriend in southeastern San Diego County. Sullivan worked on farms in Maine and Belize during her undergraduate days at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

In recent months, they have been flooded with applications. She has received as many as 110 in one month alone; she takes only about three volunteers at a time.

She said applicants fall into several categories. The confused — those who have finished college and are avoiding figuring out what to do with their lives; the wanderers — the ones who blithely travel the world with a hunger for exploration; and the ambitious — those who are hooked on the trend of community farming, with a genuine interest in agriculture.

The agency said the widespread administration of a common class of antibiotics known as cephalosporins may have contributed to the development of drug-resistant bacteria that infect humans.