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Hello Dear Newsletter Readers!

It’s been a while; apologies for our winter newsletter “slumber,” but as the days shortened into cold winter nights, it seemed our updates should take a pause to match the activity level here on the farm. During the winter months, we typically spend a good deal of time going over crop plans and seed purchases, inventorying supplies and budgets, repairing equipment, and dreaming of tomatoes. We monitor the cover crops growth, hope for rain, and sometimes need to irrigate when that rain inevitably doesn’t come (it’s looking to be another dry year!). This winter was no exception.

What did make this winter different, though, was our winter veggie crop grown in partnership with our local food bank, the Yolo Food Bank.

In addition to being a stalwart leader of our Farm, Jim Durst serves on the board of the Yolo Food Bank. As a board member, he is well aware of the challenges facing our local food bank, and works to find ways that we, as a farm, can work to support the food bank in their mission to provide nutritious, fresh, food to our county’s residents in need. If you’ll remember (or scroll back way back on our feed), we did grow a small planting of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage last winter, the harvests of which ended up going home with our employees, out to a weekly distribution here in Esparto, and eventually the Food Bank.

This year's planting differed only in a matter of scale and intention. For the past two months, we have been harvesting up to 50 plastic bins (weighing around 14,000+ lbs!) weekly of broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and lettuce for distribution by the Yolo Food Bank. These fresh, organically grown, veggies make their way from our farm into distributions throughout Yolo County, including “Kids Farmers Market” programs at local elementary schools.

Since the mid 90’s, Durst Organic Growers has been offering abundant donations from the bounty of our production crops – asparagus, snap peas, melons, watermelon, tomatoes, winter squash – to the Yolo Food Bank. But what sets this planting apart is the fact that we coordinated with the food bank to grow it specific to their needs.

In the late summer, we reviewed our winter garden plans from last year and worked together with the food bank’s warehouse team and Yolo Grown program to come up with a (much expanded) crop plan that would supply their need for fresh vegetables all winter long – a time when fresh vegetables are typically a tough item for them to source. With the food bank, we worked out crop selections, amounts to be harvested weekly, and prices that would both cover our baseline growing costs and allow for them to purchase with ease. Having a reliable supply of local fresh foods is critical for the operation of our food bank.

Part of what helps offset the cost of producing these vegetables is the Food Bank’s volunteer harvest teams. As part of their Yolo Grown program, the food bank brings out a group of volunteers to harvest produce, with the help of a few of our farm employees to operate machinery, assist with harvest nuances, and answer any questions. Once the produce is picked, it gets loaded onto the food bank’s trucks and goes directly to their warehouse for immediate distributions. This, as Jim says, is truly “farm to fork.”

We just put in another planting to extend these crop offerings into May, and are working on plans for a summer food bank planting, as well. Seeing how successful this program has been in keeping our local food bank stocked with fresh, high-quality, produce is exciting and encouraging. What other ways could we form these partnerships in our communities to increase access to fresh, nutritious food?

While we rely upon sales of our produce to grocery stores, restaurants, and home kitchens across the country, it is particularly rewarding to us to be able to see it circulating in our own community, reaching those who may not otherwise have access to healthy, nutritious, organically grown, produce. This venture into winter and spring vegetables for the food bank has also led us to beginning a partnership with the newly formed Spork Food Hub in Davis, CA, which aggregates local produce to offer to school districts in the area for use in their cafeterias. Perhaps these local school lunches will be soon include asparagus (yes, that means our asparagus harvest is just underway!)…

As for what we’ve been cooking lately, it's been a lot of broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage! I thought it would be nice to share some vegetable recipes from the Spork before we get too hyped up on asparagus (as if we could ever eat too much of that spring treat…). On their website, the Spork has put together a growing collection of fresh, easy, fun (kid-friendly) recipes using produce they source from farms like ours and our neighbors (scroll down to the bottom of their page to find them)!

This Roasted broccoli, cauliflower and Cabbage with Lemon and Spices particularly caught our eye:

Roasted Broccoli, Cauliflower, and Cabbage

And, if you still have a few winter squash lying around your kitchen counters (or, even better, pureed and frozen!) why not try this smoky creamy pasta?

Did anyone spaghetti squash this year? Here's our favorite method:

How To “spagetti” squash

And last, but not least, what about a savory scone made with dried cherry tomatoes?

Savory (dried) tomato scones

...If you didn't do yourself the great favor of drying cherry tomatoes at the end of last season, consider that scone recipe a reminder to put it on your to-do list for this year!

That's all for now!
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