Common Greens

2:54:03 PM EST

Can you believe it's January 24th and right now, outside my door, it's, ohhhh, 35 degrees.  I'm freezing.  I've got the space heater blowing directly on me in my office and it's just tolerable.  I'm wearing clothing I wear while hunting in Oregon in November and I'm still cold.

Crazier than that, I've just been working on the applications for the 2007 farmers market season and I got to the part in the cover letter from 2006 where I mentioned we had a blog on the website.  I had always thought that a blog was a place where multiple people went to discuss.  Our Common Greens blog is a sad little thing where I go, obviously sporadically, to rant.

So, here's the first rant of 2007.  I decided, just 2 minutes ago, that we really need to sign up with a service so we can have people subscribe to our newsletter.  Not that we have a newsletter yet, since we don't have anyone to send it to.  So, I'm now off to the "your mailing list" people to sign up for service and dammit, we're gonna have a newsletter this year!

And maybe, just maybe, if we have a newsletter in it I can broadcast to the world that there's a blog!  Ahhhhh, amazing.

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10:34:41 PM EDT

It's Cinco de Mayo and today I ate my first tomato since last October.

I can hardly believe I ate a tomato.

It was delicious.

It came from Eva Bruins' place in Winters.  I never get a chance to shop at the Napa market, so today I went up to St Helena.  It was their opening day and Yolanda Tierrafria of Mi Fiesta Catering was doing the chef's table demo.  I also had an appointment to be on Paul Franson's radio show at 9:30am, so I just did the interview from the farmers market. 

Since I was up there I actually shopped!  I bought a few tomatoes from Eva's farm.  Eva herself doesn't sell at that market, but they were her tomatoes.  I didn't catch the name of the gal she has working there, but she's VERY nice.  I must tell you, they are hothouse tomatoes, but they don't TASTE like hothouse tomatoes.  They taste GREAT.  I came home and had a tomato sandwich for lunch and it was like summer really IS here.  Sliced sourdough bread, some mayonnaise, tomato and a little fresh ground sea salt.  There's NOTHING better.

I also bought some delicious strawberries from Rachel at Mehl's Berry Farm.  Also fantastic.  Rachel was lamenting the continual March/April rains.  She was carefully checking through the baskets because of the damp conditions still at their farm and didn't want to send me home with any that were aging too quickly.  So far they've all been perfect and I'm through one full basket.

And some wonderful head lettuce from Grandpa Jack's rounded out my meager purchases.  I said I shopped.  I didn't say how much TIME I had to shop.  Still, dinner was a salad of Grandpa Jack's greens, sliced strawberries and a little creamy caesar dressing.  Disgusting, you say?  Hardly,  It really hit the spot.  I don't know where I picked up this thing about the sliced strawberries in the salad, but it's a habit I plan on keeping.  A lemony vinaigrette might have been a better dressing choice, but I was feeling particularly lazy and went with what was in the fridge.

Our Tuesday morning market began three days ago on May 2nd and it was a beautiful day and it turned out really well on just about every level.  We received fantastic front-page coverage in the Napa Register the following day--terrific photos, above the fold, and quotes from customers, vendors and possibly the dumbest comment by me, but still, there's no such thing as bad press and this was FAR from bad press.

We only had 10 farmers for opening day, but those who were able to make it did really well. 

Brad and Cynthia Morgan from Grandpa Jack's

Don Baldridge of Bald-Ridge farms who does lillies

Phil Rhodes from Visalia managed a couple of boxes of squash, some tomatoes and MELONS!  I couldn't believe he had a few melons.  I didn't get to find out what variety they were.

Stan DeVoto of DeVoto Gardens with some wonderful flowers.  The rain has been really tough on the flowers, but Stan managed to make a beautiful showing of it.

Chris came with mushrooms from Solano Mushroom Farm.  From Shiitakes to Portobellos, she had the usual wonderfully exotic display of mushrooms.

Rose Loveall-Sale of Morningsun Herb Farm was on hand with every kind of plant, it seemed.  Michele Bera of Bera Ranch helps her out early in the season, so even though we don't have Michele's organic stone fruits yet, we had Michele.

Eva Bruins, of the above-mentioned tomatoes, was at the Napa Market.  She's having staffing problems.  We had hoped she'd be with us on Saturday at Vacaville, but she's still looking for a worker.

Fruit Factory sent one of their guys with oranges, tangerines, and I think those little guys are called clementines.  I'm not that familiar with the citrus once you get past navel oranges, but the quality looked good.  And for those who like grapefruit, there was grapefruit available.  It's just not on my to eat list.

Our newest vendor, besides Don Baldridge, is Mr John Xiong of Fresno.  He sent me home with some of the most delicious lemon basil from his table.  John also has pickling cucumbers, squash, I think I saw some lemongrass on his table, some lettuces.  Mmmm.  It looked great.

And of course, my neighbors from Vine Village were there.  Tucker brought out Calla Lillies and some plants ready to put in the ground.  He had a few other items on the table as well.

So, we're off to a good start in spite of the rain.  On an average year we would have had 20 farmers yesterday, but this is no average year.

We had a full complement of specialty foods and crafters.

Joining us this year is Yara Oliveira with her Brazillian Cheesebread.  I'd not met Yara in person until Tuesday.  I don't know what I expected, but she's a knock out and has the most fantastic accent.  I felt like she should have been doing a tango through the market.  And her bread is amazing.  We managed enough electricity for her to cook up her samples.  I hope the bread was flying out of the freezer because it's just amazingly good.

In the returning favorites column, from left to right, Chambier Bechtel from Tres Classique was splashing up a storm with their Lemon Sauvignon Splash.  Yolanda Tierrafria from Mi Fiesta, like Yara, was doing hot samples.  What a treat to get a taste of Yolanda's cooking hot off the stove.  Jan Pruitt and husband Jim from Granny Jan's Fudge were on hand.  Jeff from Cap'n Mike's Holy Smoke Salmon had every conceivable fish on hand.  And of course Billal from East/West Gourmet was over there charming all the ladies with more than just the Bolani and the spreads.

The crafters were also out in force.  We were missing David Bosch, our knife sharpener, who will be on hand May 9th.  He had to bow out for opening day.  And the kettle korn will be back as well, but I have made them promise that they must sweep up all the spilled kettle korn before they leave the parking lot because I'm tired of doing it.

Sam McClellin of Got Jewelry made it for opening day, but now he's off to Oregon for a while on a fishing trip.  And then he's having a hip replaced.  I guess he's deciding to do some inner remodeling this year.  I hadn't noticed the limp before, but he seems pretty happy about the new hip.

Jerry Rothfeld brought his wife Marilyn's handbags and felted hats to the market.  Oh that Jerry.  He won't be at the market on 5/6 because it's his birthday weekend and Marilyn is taking him off somewhere.

Anna Wingfield brought her new sales associate, son Miles, to the market.  He's 5 months old now and I think he's going to make a stellar salesman, although he had a little trouble popping up the new EZ UP.  Anna does Napa Valley au Naturel potions and lotions.

There quite a few more and I'm running out of the energy to talk about all of them. Suffice to say it was a great day.  Next entry I'll talk more about our volunteers and the job(s) they are doing around the market.  For now I really have to get some sleep before tomorrow morning's market.  Dean wants to start at 5:00am with Setup.  Oy.  Good thing I bought the new spotlight thing from Costco.  15million candlewatts or something like that, so we can see what we're doing at 5:00am.

 

 

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8:12:14 PM EDT

I just read my last entry and I was so surprised it was March.  Forget that, it's now the END of April and the markets are actually starting in 4 days!  But we're ready.  That's the good news. 

We've had to give up the Yountville market, but our vendor friend Chambier has taken up the slack and will be running the show up there.  If you were a vendor interested in attending that market then Chambier will be interested in talking to you:  707-939-7930.

I just finished up an HOUR on the radio with Nancy Levenberg.  Nancy is the CEO of the St Helena Chamber of Commerce and a great friend of mine.  She hosts the "everybody's business" show on KVON 1440AM on Fridays at 3pm.  I got to blab for an entire HOUR about farmers markets.  I'm waiting to hear from friends as to how stupid I sounded.  All I know is that for 60 minutes there was NO dead air and we didn't even get to all the different topics that we might have spoken about.

One of those topics that we didn't quite get to was the Farmers Market Advisory Committee and the $40,000 that the "industry" is short on their budget.  In a nutshell, every quarter that a farmers market occurs, the "market" pays the CDFA (California Department of Food and Agriculture) .60 (cents) per farmer per week.  So, for example, you've about 20 farmers at the market per week, there are 13 weeks in the quarter.  You'd pay the State Ag people $156 per quarter.  Obviously some markets have more like 60 farmers per week so the fees can be considerably higher. 

It's an honor system.  The Ag Department sends you a form to fill out at the end of each quarter.  YOU tell THEM how many farmers you had.  YOU calculate the number of farmers by 60 cents and send them a check.  They really don't know how many farmers you had each week so you could conceivably tell them anything.

This 60 cents per farmer per week is what funds the Direct Marketing Program, which is what the Farmers Markets are known as at the State level.  This covers the guy who coordinates all the county ag commissioners, and his staff who create the agendas for the Farmers Market Advisory Committee, of which I happen to be a member. 

When the Direct Marketing program was first conceived the State put money into.  They funded it for years and years.  And then just a few years ago they decided that with about 350 farmers market (at the time) throughout the state it might be time for the industry to start funding itself.  That's when they came up with this 60 cents per farmer thing.

Of course, 60 cents was never really enough.  I think that first year they went $40,000 over budget.  That $40,000 has been hanging around now for several years and finally, this year, the guys at the state level are putting their foot down and saying that we have to cut the budget and work within what we're collecting.  Of course, now we're up to closer to 500 farmers markets per year.  It's somewhere around 450 and seasonally it might be about 500.

The whole program runs for under $200,000 a year and they're quibbling over $40k.  I don't get it.  The advisory committee has spoken at length that the 60 cent thing should have been a dollar in the first place and now CACASA (the Ag Commissioners from all around the state) are thinking it should be $3 per farmer per week.

All I know is that we've got nearly 500 farmers markets in the state and an advisory committee that is supposed to be advising and it seems no one's actually listening.  Because the advisory committee can't sponsor legislation there needs to be someone stepping forward who can push this thing through the legislature.  I'm totally at a loss as to the politics of the whole thing and I really am at a loss as to what the big deal is.  With a national debt that's now in the trillions, having an industry with nearly 500 "businesses" (and countless farmers and other businesses involved) that runs on what I can only describe as a paltry $200,000 a year that happens to have a $40k debt sitting around, good grief!  That's just NOTHING.

I could be totally wet on this whole thing, but I'll tell you to "stay tuned" on the issue.  We're having a Farmers Market Advisory Committee meeting coming up the second Monday in May (the 8th) and I'm sure it's going to be a looloo as we discuss this issue and try to get the state guys to get their heads out and help us solve this without scrapping the advisory committee and actually fund it properly so that we can have REAL enforcement, checks and balances within the program instead of the rather haphazard enforcement that we can afford now.

Aaaarrrrgh.  OK, well, both of you who apparently read this, hope that was enjoyable.  Hopefully in a couple of weeks we'll have "Real Tales FromThe Market" to tell and something more entertaining than crabby politics and finance issues.

Joan.

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2:12:00 PM EST

     Wow, how did it get to be March?  I feel like the season is now officially underway since applications finally (!) went out about two weeks ago and completed applications are already returning.  We have about a dozen back so far with the deadline of April 1 still feeling like it's months away rather than weeks.

     The big news is that Lassa will be managing the Chefs Market this year, which I think is just an amazing thing.  We are currently working on this year's "menu" for Friday nights and I think it's going to end up being a really good year for this event. 

     Much to my surprise, we've got some support rolling in for a new market in the town of Dixon.  The downtown association there has asked us to do a feasibility study for them, so we've been putting the idea out there to farmer friends and they are responding rather favorably.  Looks as if we'll have some seriously good news for the downtown association when we finish compiling all the possibilities for them.

     Nut Tree Village isn't looking too good at the moment.  Rain, rain, and more rain, are making us think we'll be pushing the opening of that market off until September.  It's another one of those 'well keep you posted' things.

     I keep hoping an actual dialog will get started here.  Any comments or suggestions out there for us???

     Our other big news is that we are moving ahead with our plans to pursue 501c3 non-profit status.  Articles of incorporation go to the state later this week and then the next step of the process will follow.  We hope to be a full-fledged nonprofit by the end of the year.

     That's the story for the moment.  Hope to hear from you.                Joan.

 

 

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12:25:35 PM EST

You know, I'm just dying to know who's actually been reading this blog.  I know someone's looked at it, but then I wonder if they've just stumbled into it by mistake.  Seems entirely likely since I'm STILL the only one posting entries.

The news of the week, and by now (4 days later) it's totally old news, is that the CSEC in Sonoma made its decision about the farmers market.  By a 7-2 vote they decided to keep the current management rather than go with us. 

It was an incredibly interesting meeting, and you can not say that the CSEC blew this off.  They spent three hours of serious and in depth discussion over the issue after hearing public comment and applicant presentations. 

It's our hope that Sonoma will indeed get the market that it deserves.

And for us, now, on to other things.  More meeting are ahead and by the end of January we will know, for sure, which markets we'll be managing this year, dates, times and locations.  Until then, whoever happens to stumble into this blog, we hope you're having a great winter, staying dry and keeping warm.  Today we're off to UpValley to visit.

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1:01:05 PM EST

Ha!  Well, just when you think you've got something figured out, they change the dates.  I was positive that the CSEC (Community Services and Environment Commission) were going to review the farmers market applications for Sonoma on February 8th.  Turns out, as usual, I was all wet on that one.  They are reviewing applications on January 11th.  Yep.  Tomorrow if you noticed the date I'm writing this entry.

So, anyone interested in getting comments in to the commission should e-mail them to Al Bandur, Public works at alb@sonomacity.org.  That'll do it.

If you're actually attending the meeting, and I know I'm really just talking to the trees on this one, it's at 7:00pm in the upstairs conference room at the Sonoma City Hall in the Sonoma Plaza.  That's all she wrote.

 

 

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12:03:57 PM EST

So, it's a new year and here we are at Common Greens, wondering if anyone besides poor old Joan here is going to read the blog?

Two more letters to the editor of the Sonoma Index Tribune have been written.  We've spoken directly with one of the writers and had what we would call a really nice chat.  The question was about non-profits at the market (which are welcome at all of our markets) but the misconception was that it was already a done deal for Common Greens to manage the Sonoma Farmers Market.  Not so.  The CSEC (Community Services and Environment Committee) will be looking at our application versus the existing manager's application at their February meeting (I believe that's February 8th, but you can check at the city of Sonoma's website). 

The second letter was a little more difficult to understand.  The writer seems to think there are great benefits to be reaped by running a farmers market.  If there are, we haven't figured out exactly how to do that yet.  Our reason for running markets in general has never been about making a fortune.  A decent living would be nice. 

We've responded to the editor for the first letter, but there's really not much to be said on the second. 

A few more people have looked at the blog since the last time I made an entry.  We'll see what happens is about all I can say at this point.  Happy New Year, everyone, and considering all the flooding in Napa and Sonoma counties (and others) over the holiday weekend, we hope everyone's warm and dry right now.

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1:56:32 PM EST

Hi, All.  Joan here again.  I've been checking the website periodically, hoping to see that someone out there has decided to join in the blog.  So far no takers, although someone has been looking at the site besides me, and I don't think it's the webmaster.

I can't encourage people enough to go ahead and say what's on your mind in this forum.  It's pretty painless and frankly we'd really like to know what you're thinking.  It's amazing how printed material can be misconstrued, so if you're feeling uncomfortable about something and want clarification--let's get it out there.

Our letter to the editor appeared on the 9th in the Sonoma Index Tribune, and also that week's issue of the Sonoma Sun.  It was a pretty good letter, if I do say so myself.  If you haven't read it you can find it in the www.sonomaindextribune.com archives.  I think if you simply search for "farmers market" it should come up.

Last night, December 14th, was a meeting of the CSEC (Community Services & Environment Committee) in Sonoma.  It was a really good meeting.  I was actually delighted to see a group that large (8 of 9 or 10 members were present) that could disagree with each other in a pleasant way, yet get something accomplished.  Criteria for evaluating farmers market applications appears to be in its first draft.  I'm sure the group will refine what they came up with (17 points) as they go along, but I felt it was a great start.  And still not a shoe-in for Common Greens.  It appears it's going to be a fair process in reviewing the applications and who could ask for anything more.

I also just got a note from Tony, our web guy, who has added some great stuff to the Common Greens site.  If you hadn't looked at it yet, check out the "What's Fresh" and "Season by Season" listing.  It's really pretty cool.  And of course, we'll be working on that throughout the year as well.

So, that's the story for today.  I'm meeting a friend for sushi at 2:00pm.  Life is good. Hope you can join in.

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10:06:58 AM EST

     Today is November 21.  Common Greens has been in business for almost a year now.  Considering the events of the last week, I had the idea that it might be a good idea to start a public blog to help keep the people who are interested in our adventures in Napa, Sonoma and Solano counties up to date. 

     For a little background, Common Greens is the company started in January 2005 by Joan Taramasso and Thalassa Skinner.  We manage farmers market.  This year we worked with four markets (Tuesday-Napa Downtown Farmers Market, Wednesday-Yountville Farmers Market, Saturday-Napa Downtown Farmers Market and Saturday-Vacaville Farmers Market).  All four markets enjoyed a measure of success.  The Napa market did the best, increasing business dramatically from 2004, which had been a bit of  a down year.  Yountville did well considering there had been NO market there in 2004 and we spent most of the year reminding people in the community that they once again had a farmers market each week.  Three weeks of rain didn't help us there, either, but we survived.

     Vacaville was another challenge.  The market managers from 2004 decided not to return, but through some miscommunication the Vacaville Downtown Business Improvement District didn't know they weren't coming back until we, Common Greens, asked if they might be interested in new management.  We were incredibly lucky in finding a fantastic local manager who really made the market work for the farmers who attended. It turned out OK in the end, but more on this later.

     Now we've managed to open a huge can of worms in the City of Sonoma.  Vendors who are currently attending the Tuesday night market, as well as some vendors who are no longer selling there, have asked us to please, please, please put in an application to run that market.  The big issue is that no one has ever put in a competing application for an event such as the farmers market.  It's different than putting in an application for a one-time unique event.  The farmers market is a weekly event.  It draws hundreds to thousands of people each week.  It's very much a local community event.  There's lots of emotion and passion running through its vendors and patrons, and obviously the current manager.

     While the phrase "nothing ventured, nothing gained" sounds a might flippant, that's pretty much where we are at the moment.  We've submitted a proposal/application to the City of Sonoma and their Plaza Use Commission.  If you're interested in reading it, we can e-mail it to you (give us a little time to re-format it so it makes sense without all the actual application pages).  You can reach us at joan@commongreens.com or lassa@commongreens.com.  One of us will be happy to send it over.

     The proposal is actually three proposals.  The first is to simply take over the market and run things exactly the way they've been run for some time, utilizing the horseshoe portion of the Plaza.  It's not our favorite idea.  The last City Council meetings we attended, it was quite clear that Public Works and others thought the Plaza was being over-taxed with use.

    The second part suggests moving the market to First Street East alongside the Plaza, maybe 75 yards from where it is now.  There are always a number of pros and cons to closing a street, but it's quite do-able.  One major draw here is that we could close the street to give the vendors a decent amount of time to set up and then have slightly longer market hours.  Currently vendors have 20 minutes to set up in the horseshoe and many of them have to off-load and then move their vehicles out of the way.

     The third part considers using the parking lot behind the Cheese Factory.  It's a little bit off the plaza (maybe 200 yards) and a little bit hidden, but it's a perfect size space for the market and would be very easy to control traffic-wise.  It also has the advantage of not interfering with any of the plaza businesses.  This also has the advantage of giving the vendors time to set up and allowing the market to run a little longer into the evening.  The big issue here is that apparently that parking lot is owned by the State and we don't know yet if we can even have permission to use it.

     So, that's where we stand today.  We've been invited to be on KSVY radio at 8am on November 28th and we're very much looking forward to the interview.  As they say, stay tuned for more . . .

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