October 4, 2016 – You might want to reconsider plans to leave town this Columbus Day weekend and instead stick around for the third annual Corralitos Open Farm Tour on Sunday, October 9th. With a goal of celebrating our rich local agricultural heritage and educating the public about sustainable farming, the Open Farm Tour zeros in on the nine square miles of Corralitos as an epicenter for food and farming.
Penny Ellis, who co-founded the tour in 2014, collaborates with the Live Oak Grange to offer this unique and free opportunity to all of us. She says, “Basically the tours are all about connecting community with the family-owned farms that are utilizing sustainable agriculture practices in growing our food. The farms are not about turning a high volume, they are not about high profits and they are certainly not about doing anything that doesn’t jive with their values. They are family farms deeply rooted in the concept that we can all lead productive lives by doing what we love and connecting with community. They work hard at growing incredibly good tasting, nutrient rich food that nurtures us and the Earth.”
It is impressive that even with a stipulation for utilizing organic and sustainable methods, all ten farms participating this year are within a ten mile radius. And we will see more than just furrows and rows and hoop houses, too. It’s a very diverse farmscape out there, with intriguing crops and techniques for us to learn about and in some cases, experience with our own hands. From olives to turmeric to turkeys, this will be an exciting day!
“We have four new farms participating this year and they all have different things relative to what they grow. Dos Aguilas olive grove is hosting a U-pick with a olive curing workshop. Blossoms Biodynamic Farm has an interesting solar-powered herb drying room and beautiful red bourbon turkeys. Whiskey Hill Farm has a whole distillery operation tied in to utilize the crops they grow, which is fascinating. Jean and Jerry Thomas of Thomas Farm will be holding the tour on their original farm land with Jean’s art studio where she makes wreaths from dried flowers they grow. All ten farms have different things of interest going on and the best thing to do is to check the website before the tour to pick a few farms of interest to go to and spend some time getting to know what they’re about,” says Ellis.
As if the self-guided tour wasn’t enough to keep you busy, there will also be a marketplace hub set up at Alladin Nursery, with food vendors from the El Pajaro Incubator Kitchen like My Mom’s Mole, Burn Hot Sauce and The Green Waffle, BBQ by Corralitos Meat Market, wood-fired pizza from Fired Up Fresh, local beer and wine, and many more chances to taste your way through the day.
The Marketplace will also feature live music all day, with Taki-Runa until 1pm followed by the Steve Abrams Quartet until 4pm. And workshop demonstrations on fermentation, canning and pickling will be open to everyone as well. You can even try your hand at silk screen printing, or have local artist Lucas Elmer do it for you. He is the one who designs the tour’s logo and will happily plaster it on your t-shirt or tote.
Aside from how much fun this tour will surely be here in our bucolic harvest season countryside, Penny understands that events like this tap into something on a deeper level, where we are “connecting on a community level and forming relationships with our farms, food and each other”
“This has been an especially turbulent year with increasing issues of climate change, big government and the dysfunction of our political and health care and economic systems in general. People have had enough and are realizing that it’s basically up to them to take control of their lives…Developing those types of connections to our food is important for our food sovereignty,” she adds.
See you out there! And remember, the tour is free, just download the map here and pre-register for a chance to win prizes and to donate to keep the tours going for years to come.
About the author
Amber Turpin is a freelance food and travel writer based in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
