Marin Magazine - Organic Marin: Recipes From Land to Table

About the Recipes

Meyer Lemon Sorbet

Fresh Fruit Scones

Apple-Brandy Crisp

Double-Chocolate Bread Pudding

Janet Brown of Allstar Organics leads a tour of her farm in Lagunitas sponsored by Marin Organic.

Food is our common ground, a universal experience.

James Beard

F ood fosters community. Thats what Mickey Murch says. Hes a young organic farmer from Bolinas, the tiny Marin County town that, as much as any place in California, embraced the practices of organic farming long before it was fashionable. Theyre just three little words. But they encompass a huge idea: the connection between food and community, between farmer and family, between land and table. The passionate belief in that linka link missing in much of todays commodity-based agribusinessnourishes Marins organic movement, making it not only a source of fresh, healthy food for the San Francisco Bay Area, but also a wellspring of innovative, sustainable farming practices that have been copied throughout the world.

This book was inspired by that idea and the many people who make it a daily reality here in Marin County. Those of us who live here know that we are fortunate. Year-round we can shop in farmers markets and buy just-harvested food directly from the person who pulled it from the ground. Our regions local restaurants from the internationally famous, like Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Slanted Door in San Francisco, to the ultra local, like Rustic Bakery in Larkspur and Small Shed Flatbreads in Mill Valleyhave menus that feature organic produce and dairy products that have traveled only hours, not days or weeks, to their kitchens. Beef and hog ranchers produce flavor-filled cuts of meat from animals that have been naturally raised and have lived a full, organic life.

We are fortunate, indeed, to live amid such plenty, to be able to taste the best the Earth has to offer, and to enjoy the fruits of the hard work of farm labor done by people who believe that feeding good food to their community will make the world a better place. This book, Organic Marin: Recipes from Land to Table, celebrates that effort and that hope.

Organic farming pioneers Dennis Dierks (left) of Paradise Valley Produce and Warren Weber of Star Route Farms, both in Bolinas.

Marins organic roots reach back more than thirty years to the days when young idealists like Warren Weber and Dennis Dierks put their postsixties values about clean living, community, and collective effort into action in West Marin. They bought land and started farming organically, learning one crop at a time how to work with nature rather than against it.

Today, Weber and Dierks are still growing organic food, and many others have joined them. Their farms, Star Route Farms and Paradise Valley Produce, are two of more than sixty certified organic food producers in Marin. Their products range from row crops of nearly every type of vegetable to cool-weather fruit; farmhouse cheeses, yogurt, and other dairy goods; and pasture-raised pork and beef.

Even that extensive list, though, doesnt fully describe the variety produced by Marins organic farmers. Allstar Organics in Nicasio and Lagunitas, for example, grows more than two dozen types of tomatoes. Little Organic Farm in Tomales plants more than twenty types of potatoes, and Paradise Valley Produce in Bolinas has more than a dozen varieties of lettuce in the field. Fresh Run Farm in Bolinas has heirloom apple trees dating back more than half a century. Not only are the organic buyers of Marin eating chemical-free food, theyre treating their taste buds to flavors that can only come from specialty growers whose livelihood depends not on mass production but on quality and uniqueness.

Scenes from land to market: A picturesque dairy farm nestled in a valley east of Novato (left); (above) farmer Jesse Kuhn of Marin Roots Farms works his ten-acre field; and a local produce farmer cuts sweet organic peaches for customers to taste at the Marin County Farmers Market.

In some ways, Marin County was an unlikely candidate to become the nations organic-farming standard bearer. The smallest in size and population of the counties that contain the 7 million people in the Bay Area, it is usually seen as a place of quaint tourist attractions like the bayside town of Sausalito, or natural wonders like the towering redwood groves of Muir Woods. Just minutes from San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin attracts hikers and mountain bikers to the trails of 2,571-foot Mt. Tamalpais, strollers and beachcombers to its wild western beaches, and backpackers and day-trippers to the magnificent parklands of the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Even though more than 50 percent of Marin is designated open space, to the casual observer the most visible signs of agriculture are the pastoral scenes of cows wandering the hillsides of West Marin. Indeed, 99 percent of the agricultural land in Marin is pasture that feeds more than thirty thousand head of cattle, sheep, and goats. Row cropsthe lettuce, chard, beets, cabbage, and carrots that entice buyers at local farmers marketsrepresent only 1 percent of the countys farmland.

It is a wonder, then, that from this small slice of land such a big idea sprung. It didnt happen by chance, says Warren Weber. It happened because people were doing creative things.

Not just people. Marin benefits from a perfect storm of collaboration between farmers, local government and consumers. First and foremost, says Helge Hellberg, executive director of Marin Organic, an advocacy and education organization of local and organic farmers and ranchers, we have some of the best agricultural producers in Marin County, people who are true environmental stewards.