Santa Cruz Farms- Oh. My. God.

I’m exhausted, and I’m on an adrenaline rush from a gorgeous day out and about in the farmland south of San Francisco. I can barely talk, but I’ll let the photos do the work.

Let me take the opportunity to thank Tana “Banana” Butler from [I Heart Farms](http://smallfarms.typepad.com) for taking time to share this incredible landscape and charming grandson with me.

First, we visited former Tai Chi instructor Bob Thorson and his partner Jean Harrah at Deep Roots Ranch in Watsonville. They bought the farm- so to speak- from Jean’s parents who had rented the land to berry farmers who left the soil in less than ideal shape. Bob and Jean- with help from Gort the Dog, have grown a beautiful and fully functional animal pasture in its place, with grasses, clover and wildflowers growing as high as me in places.

Gort

View from Pig Pen- not kidding

After lunch and some misadventures with a group of septuagenarian cyclists, we hit the Farmers’ Market, where I got to meet Joe Schermer from Dirty Girl Farms- which, by the way, is in the city limits of Santa Cruz, also unbelievably, neighboring another farm.

I also got to meet Joe Rubin from Live Earth Farm just as he was giving what-for to some old bat preoccupied with USDA organic, trying to tell him that “we” need the USDA to tell us what is good and what isn’t. Joe’s answer? Buy produce from a farmer who lives in your community that you can talk to and visit the farm.

Joe Rubin

This woman, who- by the way- is at a farmers’ market talking to a farmer, tells Joe that people aren’t going to talk to farmers. I almost grabbed her by the cheap straw hat and said, ‘Yeah, foxy mama, let’s trust the government with our food just like foreign policy. Yeah!.’

Theresa’s Produce

Anyhoo. I also met this very nice/cool woman named Theresa, the name of whose farm I didn’t scribble down, but I did take a picture of her beautiful self, beautiful produce and rocking t-shirt (it’s the most basic precept of organic farming). John Gorzynski, if given an ear to bed, can go on and on about “the husbandry of the soil.” If you have the opportunity to have your ear so bent, I recommend you listen.

Theresa talked me into some Berenice Lettuce, which is a slightly bitter green oak leaf variety; and she twisted my arm damn near out of its socket to buy some garlic scapes, a few weeks ahead of NY’s scapes, no less.

Theresa and Her Cool Shirt

The day sort of randomly ended with us cooking the spoils for dinner at Tana’s with her partner Bob and their super cool grandson Logan (Logie-O), who discovered this rocking hiding spot at the market.

Logan’s Feet

Listening: The rental car has a jack for an iPod. We love that. Right now, it’s REM: Orange Crush.