Eating local: Bay Area CSAs

We split a farm share with some friends through a local farm’s CSA (community-supported agriculture) program, which means we pay the farm quarterly and each week they drop off a box full of tasty fruits and veggies for us. It’s renewal time, and we were debating whether to stick with our current farm or potentially try something new, so I did some digging on the various options. (I also keep contemplating becoming a dropoff site for a CSA—we’d have to get some neighbors on board, but many of the pickup sites near us already have waiting lists, so it’s definitely an option.) Thought I’d share the research here, though, since CSAs are a terrific way to eat fresh local produce, save money, and support the local economy all at the same time. (The starred CSAs are the ones I’ve had direct experience with; all are good, although they’re each unique.)

In the Bay Area, we’re lucky to have access to the Central Valley harvest, which means our farmers’ markets and CSA boxes are full of all sorts of wonderful produce, but you can join a farm in many other parts of the country, too. (The one I belonged to in Boston went on hiatus for the winter months, but had great summer produce.) The programs vary in cost and format, and some aren’t year-round; others offer add-on products like eggs, flowers, etc. These are all primarily fruit/vegetable programs, though. We’ll save meat and grain shares for another day!

CSAs with drop-off spots in Oakland:

• People’s Grocery (Oakland-based; also a pickup site in Berkeley)
• *Terra Firma Farm (also SF, Berkeley, Alameda, Lamorinda, Kensington, and Sacramento/Davis area)
• *Full Belly Farm (throughout North Bay, East Bay, South Bay, and Sacramento/Davis area)
• *Eatwell Farm (various spots in SF, North Bay, East Bay, and Sacramento/Davis area)
• Riverdog Farm (various spots in North Bay, East Bay, and Sacramento/Davis area)
• Shooting Star CSA (Seasonal; also in Berkeley, Napa, Fairfield, and at the farm in Suisun Valley)

CSAs with drop-off spots in nearby cities:

• Live Power Community Farm (non-mechanized farm; member-distributed out of Mill Valley, SF,  Berkeley, and several spots in Mendocino County)
• Happy Child CSA from Frog Hollow Farm (fruit only; SF, Berkeley, Lafayette, and various Peninsula, South Bay, and Santa Cruz spots)
• Eating with the Seasons (SF, Peninsula, South Bay)
• Two Small Farms (SF, Peninsula, South Bay)
• Canvas Ranch (Marin, Sonoma)
• Eat Outside the Box (various spots in East CoCoCo)

Not in the Bay Area?
Check this website for a farm with a CSA program near you: Local Harvest.

Big Black Dog

Gratuitous pictures of the dog, in honor of his six-month anniversary with us!

Mmmm…..grass! I can’t believe you people got rid of this stuff.

Oh, please don’t put that cookie on my nose again.

I’m staying so nicely that I know you have a treat for me.

I also go to bed when you tell me to. Sometimes. Okay, on occasion.

….but this cuteness is all cleverly designed to hide the fact that I am POSSESSED! (Don’t believe me? Hang out here one morning around 7:30 am….)

City bees

For the last few months, we’ve been having a lot of trouble with fruit setting on some of the plants in the vegetable garden. While there are lots of potential causes of this (not least of which is me constantly forgetting to spray the plants regularly with milk and neem oil to fend off powdery mildew and munchers!), we also seem to have lost a lot of our hummingbird and bee visitors that hung out in the yard all spring when the trees were in bloom. So I’ve been doing a lot of research on how to attract native bees (which, lucky for us, are solitary and don’t sting!) and what to plant for both bees and hummingbirds, since we have a lot of empty perennial beds near the vegetable beds right now.

Turns out that, in the wake of the honeybee disappearance, there are some terrific resources out there for bringing back native mason bees to the city:

• UC Berkeley has a whole site devoted to urban bee gardens that includes not only a stellar plant list, but also tips on how to plant to attract bees. For instance, bees apparently need blocks of a single type of plant, so many of the beautiful landscapes you see around town don’t work for them, even if the plants themselves are bee-friendly. And the ground-nesters hate mulch (doh!).
• KQED did a Quest episode and also a web feature on bringing back city bees, too.
• CityBees hasn’t been updated recently, but has some good info on bees in San Francisco nonetheless, including more details on keeping honeybees (who, unlike mason bees, live together in a hive and produce honey).
• The National Wildlife Federation has a how-to page on building mason bee houses, which you can do by drilling 5/8-inch-wide holes in just about any old block of wood (if it hasn’t been treated).
• See what mason bees look like at Free Range Living.
• Finally, not a DIY type? You can order some really nice-looking mason bee houses at these (and other) websites: Mason Bee Homes, The Backyard Bird Company, Clean Air Gardening, Planet Natural, Gardeners’ Supply, and more.

Bee gardens from KQED Quest

Next on the list: a bat box, since I saw our first bat the other night, and we could sure use some help with mosquito control….plus, I was surprised to find out that bats are also important pollinators (especially for figs!) Who knew.

Poll: What should we do with our lawn?

Update: This really is a poll now! Yay for new WordPress functionality.

Okay, so as we inch closer to the rainy season, one of my big projects is to rototill all of our dead grass and get the yard ready so we can plant something drought-tolerant as soon as the rains start. (We do have a traditional sprinkler system that we’ll use to water it while it’s getting established, but after that I want something that can fly on its own.) We have a big labradane, so the second requirement is that we choose a groundcover that can survive being trampled. D.’s request is to please please please pick one that doesn’t need to be mowed. It doesn’t necessarily need to look pretty in all seasons, as long as it doesn’t keel over (so summer-dormant is fine by us). Natives are great if we can find a good mix that meets these goals.

So far, here are the top contenders, in no particular order:

1) California meadow sedge (Carex pansa)

Supposedly this one is summer-dormant, but it is a less traditional groundcover and thus won’t look like a lawn per se. Big downside is it must be grown from plugs (small plants), not seed or sod.

Carex pansa lawn from Greenlee Nursery

2) “No-Mow” grass mix

This is a local nursery’s recommendation. It’s a mix of fescue grasses that is apparently drought-tolerant and no-mow. A big plus is that it comes as sod and is from a California company.

No Mow from Pacific Earth

3) Fleur de Lawn, a low-mow flowering mix. It’s pretty but still needs monthly mowing. This comes as seed so it’s likely the cheapest.

Fleur de Lawn from Hobbs & Hopkins

Other contenders include chamomile lawn (but may not be appropriate to Northern California) and other fescue blends. Other ideas? Part of the yard gets full sun, and part gets shade for much of the day (but the bermuda grass was growing there quite happily). What do you think—which looks best?

Dine About Oakland: Ode to À Côté

I used to think Oakland’s restaurant scene was one of the city’s best-kept secrets. Fortunately for the city and unfortunately for me, this has changed a lot in the past couple of years, and now Oakland hot spots are getting everything from New York Times reviews to Michelin bibs (but no stars yet—c’mon guys, what gives?!?) But À Côté, a little restaurant in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland a couple of miles from our house, still seems to stay just under the national radar (though it has made the Chron’s top 100 every year since it opened). It’s one of my favorite places for dinner, topped only by Wood Tavern, also in Rockridge, and Rivoli on Solano Avenue in Albany. We go there a couple of times a year, sometimes for a special occasion and sometimes just because we’re biking by and want to stop for “fries and a beer” (which invariably turns into a four-course meal!) It’s one of the few spots in Oakland that reserves a chunk of tables for neighborhood walk-ins (though unless you go early, you typically still have to wait). They serve tasty Belgian beers, cocktails, good wine, and lots of interesting small plates, generally with a French/Mediterranean flair. We almost always sit out on the patio, which is this wonderful space that can’t quite decide if it’s inside or outside—surrounded by a velvet curtain with the heat lamps on, you can enjoy dinner here even on rainy winter nights.

Earlier this week we headed there to celebrate my birthday, and enjoyed the usual tasty goodness: some of the best frites around; chanterelle mushroom fritters; a wonderful pear, candied pecan, and blue cheese salad (their cheeses are phenomenal in general); and lamb roasted in their clay oven. Accompanied by a Belgian brew and an elderflower gin cocktail to start the night off (I’ll leave it to you to guess which of us had which!) and a flight of Spanish wines to follow, it was one of the best meals we’ve had in a while. Being that it was a birthday and all, we did have dessert too and our server, who was excellent, even remembered the candle—but as is often the case at both À Côté and Wood, I was less excited about the desserts. They were good, but not stellar after four dishes that were. I think I’m just not a creamy-goodness kind of gal, and that’s most of what’s on the À Côté menu right now, though we’ve been there a couple of times when they’ve had tasty fruit tarts that were more up my alley. (And in all fairness, we did pass up the odd-sounding peanut butter and jelly cake, which our server swore was the best dish in the house!) But overall, a lovely way to welcome my fourth decade (as my mom so delicately put it).

Anyway. À Côté. Check it out if you’re ever in Oakland. You’ll find it on College Avenue in the Rockridge district, and you won’t be sorry, because, as the Chron noted in its very first review of the place back in ‘01, it’s practically perfect.

Grade: A (on its way to an A+ if they ever get the desserts nailed down)
Price: $$$-$$$$

Top ten projects that there’s absolutely no reason to do…

…. except that I really, really want to!

So yesterday was my birthday, and in honor of that, I thought I’d post my project wish list. We have lots of real projects (many of them done now, thankfully) on our list: seismic retrofitting, new wiring, a new fence, some landscaping to stop runoff from making a beeline for the basement. But this is my dream list of things that really don’t need doing, but that I’d just love to do someday anyway. Since D is going to scream if I tell him one more thing about a project I’m not allowed to start yet, I figured I’d share them here instead.

Ordered from “things-I-might-be-allowed-to-do” to “things-I-will-never-be-allowed-to-do,” they are:

10. Add plate rail to the dining room. It’s just crying out for this. It’s not even hard to do. (The original rail was removed for unknown reasons, along with the built-in.)

9. Change the bathroom faucets and fixtures. I really hate the gold-and-chrome color scheme that’s in the bathroom right now, even though it’s perfectly functional. But it just doesn’t fit with the house at all. (They even changed the door plate out to match!) Here’s what I want to do in my dream world: Get rid of mirror; replace with medicine cabinet. Replace all light and bath fixtures with something more appropriate. Put beadboard in and replace crappy molding. Tear out floor and put in hexagonal tile. Voilà: an arts and crafts bathroom.

8. Tear out kitchen tile floor and refinish douglas fir subfloor. Replace crappy molding. We really might do this someday. A little afraid that the Labradane will destroy it, though. Anyone ever done this in a house with a big dog?

7. Tear up the concrete patio and put in something with a softer feel (flagstones?) that won’t crack and look like it dates to 1970. On the upside, there are signs that the patio once had fake green lawn glued onto it, so at least it’s worlds away from there….

6. Rebuild dining room built-in. It was taken out years ago, but there’s a weird gap where it used to be that just looks awkward. I’d love to build a custom cabinet/bench for this space that would snap into the room. Sadly for us we don’t have a kit house so finding salvage pieces that fill the space has proven virtually impossible.

5. Tear out kitchen counters. They’re brand-new and we can’t, I know. But they’re rose granite. Yuck! Who puts rose granite in a house like this, and then paints the cabinets pink to match?!? [Lesson to anyone selling a house: please please please don't install granite counters when you get ready to sell your house because you think you have to. You don't. If your counters are old, offer a counter credit. But taste is personal, and for every buyer who says "oooh, granite!" there's one who says "ugh, granite!"....and then deducts money from the offer.]

4. Strip woodwork and fireplace. Okay, I know that this will never happen given the time, patience, and mess involved. But this is my dream list, remember??

3. Tear out kitchen. Okay, I know, this one isn’t in the cards either. But again, I can dream! Honestly, even refacing the cabinets would help—they’re pretty awesome 1940s cabinets; they’re just ancient (but not old enough to have the charm of original arts and crafts cabinets). This would also involve replacing the furnace and taking down the furnace chimney, which is smack in the middle of our kitchen. Yeah, I know, we won’t be doing this anytime soon (or ever?) and it costs a gajillion dollars. But it would be pretty cool to open up that space, and a modern furnace wouldn’t need to be vented the way our current one does.

2. Install solar panels on our roof. Again, maybe if the incentives ever get good enough (or if Oakland gets its act together and develops a solar financing program like Berkeley’s) we’ll do this, but since we just finished upgrading the electrical and decided (with some misgivings) to put in a panel that won’t accommodate solar, it’s likely to be a while.

and….

1. And finally….convert our garage roof to a green roof, maybe with a deck off of the master bedroom. This might entail totally rebuilding the garage to support it, which is clearly not happening ever. But still, it would be incredible.

Tomorrow, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled renovating.

What to do with all that fruit…. (or: cool food organizations in Oakland!)

Our persimmons are on the verge of ripening, which means it’s time to figure out what on earth to do with the bushels upon bushels that our trees are going to start shedding. Last year we had just moved in and had no idea that two single trees could possibly produce that much fruit. Now that we’ve weathered the persimmon, plum, apple, and loquat harvests, we’re pros at this. And while apples (and applesauce) are easy to give away, persimmons are a little more challenging. Last year I dumped a bunch at work, made our friends eat persimmon cake and persimmon pudding for weeks, froze a few as an experiment, and threw the rest (by which I mean dozens) into the green bin to help with Oakland’s city composting efforts.

This year I’m a bit wiser, and am not planning to attempt to use these all ourselves. Neither of us really likes the hachiya ones except in baked goods, and my noble attempt to freeze lots of puree for wintertime baking really didn’t pan out so well given that in California we get fresh local fruit all year round. Instead, I’m going to have one of these Oakland orgs come out to harvest them and cart them away—though we haven’t decided which yet.

PUEBLO’s Urban Youth Harvest: This program, a joint effort with Cycles of Change (another great local group!), has Oakland youth cycling through the city collecting ripe fruit, which they then donate to low-income seniors in the city. Not only do we get to help provide food for our neighbors, but we also provide jobs for youth and get them excited about sustainable local food and biking. You’d think choosing this would be a no-brainer.

Except….except! There’s also Forage Oakland, a new local project that offers a neighborhood exchange: you give them your edibles, and you get someone else’s edibles. I really like this idea; it reminds me of Portland’s backyard fruit trees project that got neighbors talking with one another as they traded the harvest.

So I’m torn. PUEBLO’s gig sounds like a better choice for benefitting the city overall, but the experimental/artistic vibe of Forage Oakland is compelling too. Of course, we do have two persimmon trees, so maybe we’ll just share the wealth….

Is small the new cool?

That’s what the Chron’s Mark Morford is asking in a recent column.

It’s funny, because we weren’t exactly thinking about size when we were house-hunting, beyond avoiding anything that was reminiscent of a dorm room. It was mainly a matter of getting the most house we could afford in a neighborhood we wanted to live in. As it turned out, we ended up with a small bungalow that’s exactly the kind of house everyone seems to be singing the praises of these days: close to the city center, transit-accessible, walkable and bikeable, near lots of services and amenities. (Okay, we could definitely use a few more of those, but Oakland’s working on that too.) The fact that it’s a single-family home is definitely a vote against it on the footprint front, but our neighborhood is one of the city’s densest, and even the freestanding homes here are packed in on tiny lots. (We’re lucky on that front, too; ours is among the largest lots in the neighborhood—which is to say, we have a small-but-not-tiny, sweet backyard that’s nicely matched to the house.)

It’s no small coincidence that Oakland is full of small bungalows; the city grew up in an era when space was at a premium, and homes were designed to be efficient, utilitarian spaces. To wit: a family with five children lived in our home for much of the 1920s—I was astounded at first, but as we’ve lived here longer, I see how that could work (though there must have been some wait for the bathroom!) With two of us, we rarely use two of the rooms. We’ve also embraced spaces that my family never used in the houses I grew up in—we eat most meals in the dining room, for instance, and we just have a single large living room that can be either formal or informal as required. The breakfast room also has a built-in baking counter, so that’s another room that doubles up uses. A lot of this comes back to the fact that California bungalows that haven’t been muddled around too much are just really well-designed spaces that flow well for daily life. There’s a lot packed into the tiny footprint, and if anything, it sometimes seems that we have too *much* space. As a bonus, we also have super low utility bills and it’s very easy to tackle projects like rewiring or retrofitting, because the house is very compact and well-defined.

So is small really the new “cool,” or are people just momentarily swept up by high energy costs and the economy? When gas and fuel costs come back down, will people head back to their spacious luxury digs, or are small spaces truly back? I’m curious….I’m a bit biased as someone who lives in and loves the bungalow model, but I do hope it gets embraced once again if some of these value shifts stick.

This isn’t our house, but it’s awfully close! (From About.com’s great bungalow plan library)