Back to the Farm

We just caught our breath. It has been quite a busy time with a tsunami of reservation requests since our schedule release on the first day of Spring. More events than ever and more people eager to have a seat at the table. This year we thought we'd make more room at the table by adding one-third more events. Everything has worked out well.

After all of that hard work in the office we've been looking forward to getting back out into the field. Last week we payed a visit to Blue Moon Organics in Aptos. Blue Moon Organics is the site of our first dinner on May 16th and OITF founder Jim Denevan will be preparing the feast. Farmer Greg Rawlings was out on his tractor plowing the field. Greg hopped off his tractor and took us on a walking tour of the property. We sauntered over to the greenhouse which has a lovely grassy area for our initial greeting of guests. Jim spied a nice table site near the blackberries. We went over and took a good look and Jim got very excited thinking about where things would go.







Tomorrow we head off to Catalina Island to scout out a dinner site for 2010. We're getting a tour of the wild side of the island. Looks like an Adventure Dinner! On the trip back up to Santa Cruz we will be stopping in to visit our friends Bill and Barbara Spencer at Windrose Farm in Paso Robles. Chef Chris Kobayashi from nearby Artisan Restaurant will be meeting us for a walk around the farm where we will discuss our June 18th dinner.

One more thing:
Outstanding in the Field is now on Facebook and Twitter- check it out!

Eco-Farm National Farming Conference

OITF founder Jim Denevan loves cooking for farmers. Jim has cooked lunch for the Eco-Farm farm bus tour for 17 years in a row! Eco-Farm is a long running winter sustainable farming conference in coastal California. Farmers come from around the country to take a break from farming, socialize and learn more from their peers. This year Eco-Farm asked Jim to speak at one of the conference seminars. Jim shared the stage with chef Annie Somerville of Greens restaurant and chef Jesse Cool of Flea Street Cafe. The subject of the seminar was "Food as Art." Jim had quite a bit to say and plenty of pictures.

Off Season - Art Season

The depths of winter is a slow time for Outstanding in the Field but a busy time when it comes to OITF founder Jim Denevan's art work. On several days of each month Jim heads up to a favorite secret beach north of Santa Cruz, CA to draw in sand. The trail to the beach is washed out so Jim has to wade down the center of a small stream to reach the sand. All this difficulty means few footprints and few visitors: a beautiful peaceful place to draw. The tide must be very low, only ten or more days per month have the preferred conditions. When conditions are right Jim spends hours on the sand, composing huge freehand temporary drawings that wash away with the tide.

Here are some photographs from the past month:

A New Year...

With a new year comes new ideas... One of those ideas is having more Outstanding in the Field private events. Florence was fun. New York City was good. And here in California in late December 'just up the road' is great. Yesterday, north of Santa Cruz, Pie Ranch barn was dressed up for an occasion. It was a signature Outstanding event with menu ingredients gathered from such past OITF participants as Hans from H & H Fresh Fish, Jeff Larkey of Route One Farm and Jerry Thomas from Thomas Farm.

Katy Oursler, farm tour veteran of four cross country trips and now OITF private events director orchestrated the elegant/earthy festivities which included an all galoshes tour of the farm. For those of you considering a special occasion visit our private events page.

Thank You

After a busy season and before seeds are planted the next one is a good time to rest and take stock. Into the new year as the days lengthen with promise of a new year we want to take an opportunity to thank everyone that made 2008 such a success. Our upcoming newsletter recognizes Outstanding staff that played a big part in our biggest year yet. We would also like to warmly thank all our dinner guests. Our guests support is what makes it possible to bring everyone to the table. Finally and most importantly we want to thank all our farmers, producers and artisans who joined us at the table. Your stories are what makes the food taste good. In the coming year we hope all of you will seek out and support the farmer and producer participants from past dinners. We have an updated event map and participants page to help with that effort.

Foraging Feast

After several weeks hiatus, the OITF crew reconvened at Pie Ranch in San Mateo County California for our 5th annual foraging feast. Besides having a lovely forest setting for our forage explorations Pie Ranch is a very cool operation that works to bring inner city youth out of the city and on to the farm. Jered Lawson, Nancy Vail and Karen Heisler of Pie Ranch partner with San Francisco high schools to get kids out to the field to "get their hands dirty". The farm's urban connection is Mission Pie, a sweet little cafe and bakery in San Francisco's Mission district. Mission Pie's menu features ingredients from local farms... including Pie Ranch. We are excited to support such a project, but also love Pie Ranch as it has the perfect nice cozy barn to host a late season event.

Though it was nearly December we were blessed with a beautiful and warm late fall afternoon. As guests arrived a cool fog gave way to bright sun while further up the hill guests gathered for the reception. Long time OITF supporter Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyard poured his Vin Gris de Cigare. A crisp glass of pink wine was welcome reward after the short hike through towering eucalyptus trees from the parking area below. Guests toured the farm sipping wine, nibbling salt cod crostini, picking strawberries, visiting the chickens and enjoying the sunny rays. Forager David Chambers tempted everyone with the aroma of sauteed porcinis, a special treat for after the foraging hike. Guests gathered, introductions were made and David tromped off with all in tow. With a glorious view of forest and ocean from high on the nearby hill all stood rapt soaking in the foragers lore. With a final 'Let's Eat!!' everyone began the long trek back to the barn to feast.

Guest chef Morgan Mueller and his spirited crew from Bacar were prepared for arriving guests with four delicious courses. The idea behind the foraging dinner is to use local Santa Cruz Mountains ingredients, highlighting foraged items such as seafood (mussels, abalone, fish), wild nettles, miner's lettuce and of course wild mushrooms like chanterelles, porcinis and boletes. A couple of times the menu has even featured wild boar!

A glass of Vin de Cigare Blanc and a steaming bowl of spicy, hearty soup welcomed our forest hikers in the corn- and gourd-decorated barn. The soup, composed of fresh fresh mussels (just harvested the day before by Andre LaFleur and David Chambers), potatoes, proscuitto and jalapenos warmed and satisfied our well-walked guests. Heaters warmed the guests as strangers became friends over good food and wine. Pictured below is both the soup and then a delicious platter of wild nettles (from literally right outside the barn), mixed wild mushrooms and black cod. See the full menu for the evening here.

Jered shared a beautiful little documentary (barn multimedia, something we usually don't have out in the field) about Pie Ranch, starring several Bay Area high school students visiting the ranch. By the time the pies were cut for dessert (pumpkin, squash, apple and elderberry & madrone berry pies, oh my!) it felt like one big family in the barn, celebrating Thanksgiving: local food, great farmers and foragers, winemakers and chefs. A wonderful finale to 2008.

Thank you to "Culinary Fool" Brenda Pederson for lending use of her beautiful photos from this event for this post. Earlier this season, Brenda started a Flickr pool for Outstanding in the Field photos. You can contribute to and/or enjoy it here.

Where do we put this thing?

Something we don't think too much about when we are on the road... we just park our bus anywhere we happen to be... since we are always moving we are unlikely to overstay our welcome. With very little space in front of Jim's small house in Santa Cruz (you can't see the house if the bus is parked in front) we needed a storage solution. Fortunately our new friend Stanley, a foraging dinner guest (Thanks Stanley!!) offered his Santa Cruz mountain redwood glade for winter storage. Another big adventure for driver Caleb as it is not so easy to take a big bus up up up into the mountains... not to mention get it off road and deep into the woods. Quite a spot to leave the old girl.

Cities Farm

Recently Absolut Vodka asked Jim to come up with a visionary idea for their 'In an Absolut World' campaign. Jim's idea: "In An Absolut World Cities Farm" resulted in an exciting gala fete on a Manhattan rooftop above Rockefeller Plaza honoring New York City's farmers and gardeners. A celebration of urban agriculture, our dinner ingredients were gathered from each of the five boroughs. Several weeks earlier Jim had designed a menu based on ingredients he found visiting farms and gardens in the five boroughs: Queens Farm, Taqwa Community Farm in the Bronx, East New York Farms in Brooklyn, Gericke Farm in Staten Island and Central Park in Manhattan. (see previous post)

The Absolut campaign includes other 'visionaries' such as Eddie Izzard, Kanye West, Perez Hilton and Improv Everywhere.

Leah and Jim arrived in Manhattan a few days prior to the event on Halloween night, promptly donning freaky scary Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein get ups to hit the town. Jim had received an invitation from the Accompanied Literary Society to an exclusive reading of a lost manuscript of Edgar Allen Poe read by actor Josh Lucas (dressed as glam rocker). Frank and Bride of Frank are always a good costume choices for the tall and lanky.

Next day tasks included foraging for berries in Central Park. Foraging day was also New York Marathon day, so getting past the bounding hoards and into Central Park was not so easy. The whole time en route Jim was thinking "Did the birds get those berries?" and "Maybe we should have picked them a few weeks ago and put them in the freezer." After some worrying and a long hike the bounty was rediscovered and they proceeded to pick.

In the week before the event, Santa Cruz local Johnny Wilson, who had relocated to NY for the summer to work at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture traveled the five boroughs and gathered all the ingredients. He delivered the goodies to our chef friend Alejandro Alcocer at Brown Cafe in the Lower East Side. Alejandro and crew would be preparing the food for the dinner.

Monday, November 3rd was the big day. A combined effort of Outstanding in the Field, Great Works and Shiraz Events, the dinner turned out wonderfully. Guests included many of New York's Green initiators, including representatives from Treehugger.com, Edible Manhattan, Just Food, Friends of the Highline and some of the cities eco-committees as well as TV celebrities/restauranteurs Tom Colicchio and Mario Batali. Also attending were some notable fans of Jim's art: David Ross the former Whitney Museum director and Neville Wakefield guest curator at PS1 and MOMA. Many of the guests had special interests in urban food and agriculture including rooftop gardening. We're sure there was plenty of interesting dinner conversation!

Prior to gathering at the table, dinner guests enjoyed the open rooftop with spectacular views. Our two featured cocktails of the evening: the Central Park (featuring wild viburnum berries picked near 79th and 5th) Bloody Marys (the tomato juice made with love at Queens Farm - 4 different versions with heirloom tomatoes: Green Zebras, Cherokee Purples, Brandywines and then a lovely mix of them all). Filmmakers from Absolut had followed Jim while he visited gardeners and farmers from the 5 boroughs. A short documentary about the gathering of ingredients and OITF was shown during the reception. You can see it here.

The menu for this delicious dinner is shared here.

Of course the wonderful farmers and gardeners who contributed to the meal were also present and essentially stole the show when they were given the opportunity to stand up and tell their story. Bobby and Abu Talib of Taqwa shared inspiring and heartfelt stories of planting their garden in the Bronx that transformed a crime ridden trash heap into a fertile city oasis. Michael Grady Robertson of Queens Farm shared his story with clear enthusiasm: that of Apollonia the pig. All gathered heard a lot about Appolonia's daily life on the farm. Michael said that one of the main reasons he sold Apollonia to us for our dinner (Queens farm only has 4 pigs...) was that the diners could also hear the pig's life story, something that would not have been possible if she had been sold to a restaurant or at the Green Market. Deborah at East New York Farms celebrated the growing success and interest in East New York Farms and their sidewalk-side farmstand. Jen Griffith of Just Food tied it up nicely by telling people about using Just Food as a resource to help access NYC urban gardeners/farmers and promote sustainable food systems in the big city.

This was documented by award winning filmmaker Victor Quinaz and the final product can now be seen here. Check out this Absolut's "In an Absolut World" Campaign site for more photos and info.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this event!

Ubuntu Adventure

After a short rest in Santa Cruz we began preparations for next dinner the following Saturday: a vegetarian feast set in the Napa mountainside farm/garden that supplies Ubuntu Restaurant. Ubuntu owner Sandy Lawrence's garden is tended by legendary master gardener/farmer Jeff Dawson (pictured below).

On Friday, Leah and Jim drove up to Napa early to visit both the gardens and the restaurant. In the garden we met up with Ubuntu chef Jeremy Fox who showed us around pointing out a variety of unusual crops... ingredients for what is probably the best vegetarian restaurant in the U.S.A.

A Tough Kid/A Worried Parent

While dining that evening at Ubuntu, Jim took a call every parent dreads. Jim's sister Tish was trying to track Jim down (his cell was off ) Jim's 16 year old son Brighton had a very bad skateboard accident with no helmet. He hit some construction debris at high speed while returning home from his food/farming internship at 'Food What!?' up at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Brighton's fall resulted in a traumatic head injury with fractured skull. Witnesses found him in the street unconscious and in convulsions called 911, paramedics arrived in minutes and he was quickly en route from Santa Cruz on a Life Flight helicopter to Palo Alto and Stanford's Lucille Packard Children's Hospital. Hearing the news Jim and Leah rushed to the hospital and arrived as Brighton was in mid-surgery. The scene was grim, all close to Brighton were in shock and hoping for the best. Neurosurgery on two hematomas successfully addressed the problem of life threatening swelling. Brighton was soon moved to the Intensive Care Unit. He remained unconscious for several days. Friends and family gathered in support from Santa Cruz and beyond and visited him at his bedside and watched and waited. After four days Brighton began to awake. His parents, friends and family were ecstatic. Soon, though covered with tubes, neck brace, respirator and IV he was moving around, talking, though still very confused and wrestling with Dad, trying to get out of bed, wanting to be outside and 'get to my garden'.

Full recovery was rapid from that point: Brighton was cleared to soon go home and even given a date to return to school. A return to school with a huge scar across the top of his head. Something to show all the curious kids contemplating a life of danger- without a helmet.

A huge thank you to police, paramedics, helicopter pilot, nurses, doctors and all and everyone who helped Brighton!!

Back to Ubuntu

Thankfully, tour veteran and now Outstanding in the Field private events manager Katy Oursler ably hosted the Ubuntu Gardens dinner. After a long season of events, the OITF crew was more than capable to put together the dinner without Leah and Jim there. (A very proud feeling for Leah- who has worked so hard this season to keep everything running smoothly). Sandy Lawrence and Chef Jeremy were unsure what to expect, although Leah kept reassuring them that everything would run smoothly. And it most definitely did. Katy was a wonderful host and all of the other elements came together seamlessly: an interesting tour of the gardens, a delicious menu and wonderful biodynamic Napa wine.

It was a gorgeous setting: the table fit perfectly at the top of the garden, overlooking the greens, tomatoes, New Zealand spinach and French ice plants. There was a collection of old and new OITF-goers and some veterans said it was one of the nicest events ever, with some of the most delicious food. As has been acknowledged multiple times, Ubuntu is definitely doing something right!

Jim and Leah are looking forward to returning to Napa sometime soon to enjoy the rest of their meal at Ubuntu and hopefully to work with Chef Jeremy Fox and Sandy Lawrence again.

Thank you to our guest Dave Scholl, who sent this photos after the event to share since Jim and Leah weren't there.