The answer is complex. We know and love our local producers, but for many reasons they are currently unable to supply us with their amazing animal products. One of the main challenges has to do with the requirements a small producer has to follow in order to sell their meat through a retailer like us. The animals cannot be processed and packaged at the farm or a local butcher shop, but rather, they have to be processed at a USDA approved facility. These are few and far between, and there are none located within Santa Cruz or San Benito counties. Producers we have worked with have found themselves traveling 200 miles or more to reach one of these facilities, only to find that the animals they took so much care to raise have been processed differently from how they had specified or have been processed in ways that unnecessarily waste a portion of the animal that they would prefer to use or sell. Poultry producers we work with such as Hain Ranch in Tres Pinos or Fogline farm in Soquel rarely have a sufficient quantity of birds to sell through us, although we are hoping Fogline will for most of this coming season. The same goes for the beloved orange-yolked pasture-raised eggs — can’t seem to find a steady supply from the more-local producers we know at this time. Any of this could be changing soon, but in the meantime…

Marin Sun Farms offers a great option for us as a supplier of high-quality pasture-raised meat and eggs. They are still SCLF Local within our 100 mile radius, and they have their own USDA butchering facility in San Francisco, where they can cut and package the animals to fit our needs. And we’re really happy to be able to round our high-quality whole foods selection with meat and eggs once more!

Escarole is back, and you need to try it!

 

Escarole with Eggs and Cous Cous An excellent way to enjoy this winter green Ingredients: 2 large heads of escarole, 1 cup pearl couscous or fregola sarda* About 5 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced 1/2 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth 4 large chicken or duck* eggs View the Whole Recipe.

January strawberries. Strawberries. In January.

We’re happy as always to offer strawberries from Swanton Berry Farm up near Davenport–pioneers in organic berry growing, and committed to fair labor practices. But we’re happier than ever to find their plants still fruiting, sweet and juicy, all the way into January this year! These berries are still bursting with midsummerness, it’s crazy.

What better way is there to fill wintery sweets cravings than with something fresh, ripe, and so very local?

Sweet Sustenance

Also hitting the sweet tooth, and a very special place in our guts, we feel like we could keep going until Spring on these awesome Japanese sweet potatoes from Coke Farm. Chopped and roasted–with a little oil and salt, maybe some onions and other root vegetables–these tubers are incredible. They roast to a creamy bright yellow, caramelize beautifully, and satisfy in a sweet way that truly reveals how nutritious they are. They’re also great steamed and mashed.

But they do bake into amazing pies, if you want to go that route… In which case, please invite us over.

Nourish the Sweet Earth

Perhaps less appetizing, but every bit as nourishing: horse poop. We’ve been hauling and shoveling truckload after truckload of manure to our new little homestead, amending the neglected fruit trees and guilding them with worked garden plots.

Food doesn’t get any more local than home. For those farming their neighborhoods along with us, now’s a great time to lay out a sheet mulch (a lasagna of compost, straw, manure, newspaper, cardboard), and prepare a cover crop for when the rains come in. Anticipating the onset of a late winter, this is the season to return organic material to the Earth, build soil and nourish soil life, and to set ourselves up for a sunny Spring even more fertile than the last.

Please let us know if you have any tips (or spare plants!) for gardening a Santa Cruz January. We’re eager to be spreading the knowledge along with the good foods…