April 15th, 2011 by Catherine Meng
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Everyone is out & about in their shirtsleeves but market wise, spring’s a little late this year. We visited the Derby Market on Tuesday and talked to Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm in Yolo who said that due to the late rains, the ground has been too wet to work. Finally, this past week…
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June 18th, 2010 by Catherine Meng
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We’ve been getting the first local freshly dug potatoes from the Capay Valley for the past few weeks. The above beauties are German Butterballs from Full Belly Farm. When potatoes are freshly dug their skins haven’t had time to harden so they need to be refrigerated if kept more than a few days. They are creamier, less starchy, and sweeter, although the flavor is…
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March 10th, 2010 by Catherine Meng
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Another week closer to spring and another visit to the farmers’ market with Chef Paul Canales and Bill Fujimoto. This week, we hit the Derby Street market in Berkeley to see some truly awesome specimens of artichoke grown by the one and only Maria Catalan of Catalan Farms in Hollister. Paul explains how they will be used in the Oliveto kitchen* & gives us some good tips on what to do …
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December 9th, 2009 by Catherine Meng
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We stopped by the Derby Street Farmers’ Market in Berkeley yesterday to talk with some of our farmers about how they’ve been dealing with the recent mercury plunge. Both Riverdog Farm and Full Belly Farm in Guinda lost electricity, and had problems with irrigation lines freezing. There was a mad dash before the cold set in to harvest as much broccoli, cauliflower, and celery root as possible. Many recent transplants, too fragile…
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October 1st, 2009 by Catherine Meng
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‘Tis the season of abundance and acute ripeness, as summer crops put all their remaining energy into their final fruits and seeds in one last attempt to be sown back into the earth. The farms themselves seem at their most beautiful, and the harvest months have a certain celebratory cheer about them, the true pleasure in a job well done…
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September 28th, 2009 by Catherine Meng
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We queried our farmers last week, just before the Autumnal Equinox on September 22nd, to get one last report as the tomato season comes to a close and to find out what is planned for the cooler months of fall.
Welling Tom of Brookside Farm had this to tell us:…
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March 25th, 2009 by Bob Klein
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All around the Bay hundreds of thousands of tomato seedlings are going into the ground—Week One of Tomato Watch 2009. Here at the Oliveto Community Journal we’ll be watching their progress, from the coast to the inland valleys, north to south. Tomato cam?!?!? Not exactly—we hope it will be better, richer. We’ll track a wealth…
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