Popcorn Picking, Processing & Popping Party
Friday, September 27th 4-7pm
9055 Olmo Lane, Davis, CA

Join the Cloverleaves for a popping evening of picking and processing this summer’s popcorn crop! We will be picking more than 10,000 ears of popcorn, removing their husks, and decobbing the kernels in a hand-cranked corn sheller. The farm will provide cocktails, snacks, music and games of cornhole. We will also be popping popcorn on site, so bring your favorite popcorn seasonings!

WHAT TO BRING
Please bring your family, friends, and kiddos. (No dogs, please.) We would appreciate if you can bring a snack, cocktail and/or popcorn seasoning to share with the party. Bring a water bottle, sunscreen, hats and sunglasses to protect yourself from the sun. If you have sensitive skin, we recommend wearing long-sleeved shirts, long pants and closed-toed shoes to avoid foxtails and other pokey scratchy debris on the orchard floor.

DIRECTIONS TO THE FARM
The Cloverleaf Farm is located at 9055 Olmo Lane (Davis, CA). From I-80, exit at Kidwell Road. Head west on Kidwell Road. Turn right onto Olmo Lane. Turn left at “Journey’s End” onto a gravel road. Stay left when the road forks and follow signs to the orchard. You will pass a pond and a large white tented area before arriving at the orchard. Park on the south end of the orchard without blocking the road. Walk on foot into the orchard.

We sell a lot of fruit to a lot of different people. And I’ve gotta say: y’all CSA members are my favorite. You’re similar to a farmers market customer — you make eye contact, converse sometimes, maybe even offer a compliment or some heartfelt feedback — but more loyal and committed, less fickle and not so easily seduced by conventional alternatives and prices. You’re less cost effective than a grocery store with its relatively massive purchasing power, but you don’t perpetuate food insecurity nor erect financial barriers imposed by the operating costs of middlemen. You’re different from the average shopper in that you seem to understand the value of our labor and our fruit, enough to make a financial investment at the beginning of the season that sustains us farmers through busy hot summers and dreary wet winters.  

And we know you have options. Maybe you’re in it for the deal, but let’s face it, you could be paying less at a huge supermarket chain. Or maybe you’re in it for the “local,” but California is the agricultural mecca of the United States and just about everything is locally available in this state. Maybe you’re an organics enthusiast, but there’s sooo many organic big ag options at a lower price at your local grocery store. Maybe you just love the regular delivery service, but you could be having “Farm Fresh to You” dropping a box right at your door. Maybe you think the taste is incomparable, but you could buy the same exact fruit at the food co-op and avoid the whole upfront financial commitment you made earlier this spring and probably some food waste. Maybe you think the CSA model is the future of socially sustainable agriculture, but heck, you chose our little farm!

After studying and working intimately with food systems for more than five years, I’ve realized again and again that at the epicenter of all of the damage endured and perpetuated by agriculture is the broken relationship between the consumer and the producer. For the vast majority of our existence, the consumer was the producer. Over time, the vast majority of our species has become estranged from the soils, the practices, the ecology, and the people who nourish our bodies and souls. As a modern-day producer, the degrees of disconnection are apparent in the dismissive tone of a shopper who contests our prices. Or when I receive my monthly paycheck, it’s not hard to recall that our country’s agricultural origins were born in the throes of slavery and displacement.

Per the logic of laissez faire economics, there’s no reason for you and I to have this relationship. It’d be easier for us to sell one kind of fruit to one kind of buyer. It’d be easier for you to buy your fruit somewhere cheaper and more convenient. We know this. We know you made a choice, and we know your choice makes it possible for us to make a choice that gives us a little more power in this crazy relentless world. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you, dear CSA customers. We love you. We hope to see you next spring, and if not, please continue to support small-scale farms that are trying to build a different world for farmers, customers and the planet. Peace. 

We get asked frequently on tours of the farm about how climate change is affecting us as farmers. While we haven’t seen a lot of big changes yet, there are many small changes that add up. This year, the late rains led to much more brown rot and a much larger compost pile than we planned for – we doubled our compost bin size this year, but it is overflowing every week. The drought that ended last year meant that we were uncertain about our water supply, and resulted in a long-needed groundwater management act going into effect next year, but so far we have heard that the new act will put a lot of small farms out of business. In the winter, we are never sure if we are going to get enough chilling hours for fruit set, so we leave more fruit wood on while we are pruning, which results in more thinning in the spring. Local weather, of course, isn’t what climate change is about – this summer has been one of the coolest I can remember in Davis, but world-wide it has been the hottest summer on record. I watch the videos of the Arctic ice melt with dread.

Sometimes it feels as a small-scale farmer that there isn’t much we can do about climate change. We have to drive pick-up trucks and vans to move the produce — one my least favorite things is to be stuck in a traffic jam with peaches in the van in the Bay area. We have made small changes: install solar panels on the top of the barn to power our water pumps, put in soil moisture sensors to reduce water use (see photo), use no-till farming to reduce our tractor use, and this year we made fewer and more efficient trips to the bay area. Still, I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent picking peaches feeling like we aren’t making the changes fast enough to fix agriculture and the planet’s problems. I feel like farmers are well poised to help with climate change if we worked together with scientists – farmers deal with food waste, water use, soil carbon, vehicle emissions, land use on a daily basis. This latest article in Science is some glimmer of hope – if the world planted a trillion trees (i.e. 132 trees per person), on top of reducing emissions, humans might be able to pull through this. Of course, that means that every person needs to have access to enough land to plant and maintain 132 trees. I know the Cloverleaf crew is fully on board with this mission – hopefully we will find enough land this winter to accomplish it!

Peaches are like people. They are born by their aging tree mothers arranged in clusters of commingling shapes and sizes. They grow and swell to maturity against the odds of climate change, disease, and an onslaught of ravenous wildlife and insects. The result of all these environmental pressures is an immense and amazing spectrum of difference. Us farmers spend our days combing over every little variability in every peach, often impressed and amused by the diversity. 

There’s the winking peach, who’s skin tightens up into a goofy gnarled toothless grin and looks like it might just spit into a spittoon. There’s the mini peach, often found in the leaf curl-ridden canopy of the trees or down in the shade in a cohort of mini peaches that bartered for limited nutrients in these restrictive growing conditions. There’s the split pit peach, who generously provides a home for a family of pincher bugs. There’s the pecked peach, who nourishes the red-breasted robin mothers of speckled blue eggs. There’s the outie peach, who, well, has an outie (see below). There’s the voluptuous peach, who somehow soaked up the sun before the rest and is already bursting with juices when the farmer arrives. 

Perusing the piles of fruit in the grocery store, the average customer wouldn’t know such diversity exists. Not unlike the lingerie stores that plaster airbrushed images of the bodies of models in a storefront window, grocery stores will only allow their shelves to advertise a particular shape, a particular color, a particular texture and a particular size of peach. The rest of these fruits find their way to feed the earthworms, the trees themselves, the squirrels, a snacking farmer, or maybe even an open-minded customer.

The days are long, hot and itchy. The summers are relentless and unforgiving. The fruit-laden branches demand your watchful attention lest they drop their fruit before you get your $2.85/pound. Regardless of how much you could use a hearty meal, a solid eight hours of sleep, or even just a few pages of a favorite novel, the cogs of the food system machine grind on. It’s so easy to get lost in it, to lose yourself. But outside of this tunnel vision, tucked in all the nooks and crannies of the trees and soil, there are a myriad of little hidden treasures to find. Sometimes we slow down just enough to notice. I captured some on camera for you.

An enchanted orchard:

Fungal friends, such as this birds nest fungus.

And creepy crawly buggos the size of your thumb.

Lizards basking in patches of sunlight.

Farmers’ best friends, of course.

A creekside hideaway free of peach fuzz and direct sunlight.

Wondrously large fruits of our labor.

Joyrides in the back of Katie’s pickup.

And some damn good peaches. Duh.

A while back, we met with our business advisor, Thomas (Kitchen Table Advisors), and he said something that has been rolling around in my brain a lot over the past few weeks. Memory is a funny thing, so I paraphrase, but here it is:

“A farm is basically made up of the people that work it”

You all know us by the fruit we harvest from the trees. The juicy peaches, the silky apricots, the vibrant nectarines. The succulent berries, drooping figs. And yes, by tasting them, you experience all of ourselves that we’ve poured into them through the year, over the years. But, of course, we are all more than that. So, in the name of the Local Food movement, in the name of Know Your Farmer, allow me to sketch you a portrait.

The trees are groaning with peaches. The quiet clang of boots on aluminum rings like muted bells as we climb up, and down, softer this time, gently cradling an armful of tender fruit. Eric plays Motown, and laughs brightly at every one of your jokes. Brianna whispers sweetly to the trees, and apologizes for bending their branches. Kyle wears Crocs, and quietly cracks a joke – his eyes twinkle when he knows you overheard. Tree is waxing poetic about fine wine and good food, and always finds something in common with everyone. Yurytzy is quietly observing, and never misses a beat. Kaitlin is talking about her feelings, and she wants to hear about yours too. Emma is getting us excited about her new idea, a brand new way to see the world. Neil is making sound effects, and offering to help. Daniel never stops smiling, and always has something positive to say. Mel is showing up to pack the CSA, and singing like an angel. Maria is dancing along, and offers to work out that kink in your neck. Jack has his mind on a hot spring, and yet, here he is, helping us out in yet another fruit emergency. I look on, buried in a warm, ripe Red Haven, and I can’t help but smile.

I don’t know if it’s my Japanese heritage manifesting itself or if food is just my primary love language, but I have always loved eating, feeding and convening over food. Wanna get together? I’ll make you dinner. What’s my favorite part of any camping trip? Cooking over the campfire. It’s your birthday? Let’s go to brunch! So you can see why a career in feeding people appeals to me. 

Yet, for some strange reason, more than an entire year at Cloverleaf elapsed before I experienced the most gratifying moment of my people-feeding career. After a long day at a farmers market, I arrived home exhausted on a hot June afternoon, plopped down in a chair on my partner’s porch, and wrestled my boots off my aching feet for the evening. Moments later my partner’s roommate stomped up the front stairs, cradling a brown cardboard CSA box. Sitting on the porch, the boys gathered around and unlatched the cardboard tabs of their first CSA box to reveal the luscious red blush of Zee Diamond peaches contrasted starkly against the radiant orange of Robada apricots. Within seconds, a flurry of lunging limbs and outstretched hands snatched up the pieces of fruit, followed by explosions of juice and shortly after, a chorus of guttural moans and belly-deep satisfaction. Half the box had disappeared.

When you’re teetering on the top of a ladder in the midst of a heat wave in the midst of fire season or wondering how your barely above minimum wages compare to the probably salaried farmers market customer berating you for your prices, it can be really hard to remember why you signed up for all this bull shit. It can be damn near impossible to convince yourself that you can continue doing this at all. But when you see your partner, your mother, your neighbors, a five-year-old, or even a total stranger go wide-eyed and lose their fucking mind over a peach, it all becomes very clear.

Fall is the time for getting things ready for the next year. I love the feeling of putting the farm to bed, covering the garlic with straw, planting cover crop and peas, and bringing  the final harvest in. We are so glad that the rains have finally come, putting out the Camp Fire, and germinating the cover crop. The tiny green shoots are coming up and in the spring, we hope to have a lush cover crop we can mow down and let the earthworms munch on.

We have an interesting soil prep method we’ve been playing around with at the Cloverleaf – no-till no-chemical organic farming! We mow the cover crop, spread compost directly on top of it, and then cover with a reusable landscape fabric. We let the ground mulch for at least a month, ideally 2 or 3 months, and then remove the fabric and plant. When we plant our strawberries, we just leave the fabric in place and cut permanent holes in the fabric, and then plant into the holes. The landscape fabric can get used again and again — so far it’s lasted 5 years and it still looks great!

We got a Healthy Soils grant from CDFA to look at our no-till soil practices and also to plant two new hedgerows at the farm. We are going to soil sample every year to look at organic matter, soil chemical properties, respiration, compaction and evaluate whether the health of our soils are improving over time. We’re excited to be measuring this and we will share the results here as we learn them!