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PHONE: 619.662.1780
CSA Inquiries, please email rodrigo@suziesfarm.com
Local Chefs, please email robin@suziesfarm.com
For Farmer's Market Info, please email britta@suziesfarm.com
ADDRESS & DIRECTIONS:
For scheduled farm tours, our Kiki Town address is:
1856 Saturn Boulevard, San Diego CA 92154
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Restaurants & Chefs
Did you know Suzie’s Farm delivers in San Diego five days a week? Not only that, several acres of our farm in San Diego’s Border State Park is dedicated to custom growing for the specific needs (and imagination) of our local chefs. Can you say boutique and convenience all in one breath? You don’t have to. Just say Suzie’s Farm. Visit our Chef's Page to view our delivery schedule and learn more about our partnership with restaurants.
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- Local Locavore Enters Killer Sandwich Competition
- We’re Jammin’
- Box Contents September 7-12
- September Newsletter
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- Box Contents, August 31-September 5
- Eggplant Salad with Dill and Garlic
- moon gardening…
- Box Contents, August
- Have your Way With Fava Beans
- Box Contents, August 17/18
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- Zesty Wheat Berries…Friend or Foe?
- Much Ado ‘Bout Okra
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Last night Robin and I went to dinner at JSix. Chef Christian Graves has been one of Suzie’s Farm’s earliest and most enthusiastic supporters. He frequently gets our produce and visits us at our Farmer’s Market stall as part of his Chef’s Kitchen Experience.
Robin and I don’t get out too much - a result of operating two businesses and having 2 two-year-old twins - but we have decided that we want to support the restaurants that support us. In order to do that we are going to sacrifice ourselves and go to dinner at some of these amazing establishments.
For those of you who don’t know, I am vegan which means I always preview a restaurant’s menu to see if there is anything I can eat. Something that piqued my interest on the JSix was the Chef’s Mercy. The Chef’s Mercy is a 5-course meal (for a bargain $49) which puts you (as stated) at the Chef’s Mercy. He conjures from simple ingredients the most delicious food. I decided to go for that and to let them know early that I’m vegan so that they could make time to prep something - which they did.
Amuse Bouche - watercress with hearts of palm, hazelnuts and mandarin sections
First Course - a wild arugula salad with toasted pinenuts and beets and sliced kumquats - my favorite fruit!
Second Course - sweet onion and carrot soup topped with fried carrot shavings - Clearly this was made for me because this was not the soup du jour and you don’t whip up soup at the last minute.
Third Course - kale cigars with roasted carrots and mashed potatoes
Fourth Course - mushroom risotto with spinach
Fifth Course - ginger beer float with raspberry sorbet and fresh raspberries
Every course was more delicious and exquisite than the previous course. My fat receptors were firinig off big time.
What was most excitng for us - besides getting out without the kids - was to see some of our product transformed. Every sense was stimulated. Plus we had a front row view of Chef Elias Gonzales working his magic.
The dining room is warm and inviting, the service by Randall was attentive and informative, and the food and wine were divine.
I hope you get a chance to eat with the fine crew that make JSix exquisite.
Rogue lettuce
D’Avignon Radish
My all time favorite green - Tatsoi - surrounded by Braising Mix Buddies. All of them are damaged by Harlequin Bugs.
And here they are! The Harlequin Bugs feasting on some kale.
Here are some snaps of the lettuces and broccoli we are growing.
Enjoy..
Row of green leaf lettuce
Broccoli
Romaine - we are growing so much we are throwing it away!
Da Farm
When we arrived at Kiki Town today for a mass weeding party we discovered that someone had stolen our Suzie’s Farm sign.
Granted our logo is wonderful, designed by my good friend Holly Jones of Look See Design, but to steal our sign?!
It was a canvas jobber - an inexpensive outdoor signed created by Kinko’s in Hillcrest. I have always wanted a “real” sign made of wood or metal. I suppose this is the impetus to get that sign made.
But did you have to steal it? What good does it do you? Will you really enjoy it or appreciate it as we do? How does it serve you?
I want my sign back.
We have a recurring problem here at the farm, more irritating than weeds or rabbits or poor seed germination.
We lose our phone service. It’s been out since Sunday.
The smallest amount of precipitation - some rain, a light fog, somebody’s humidifier turned on high - and the phones go out. At least that’s what we attribute it to. We honestly don’t know. Is the Moon in Venus? The phones go out. A cat crossed the road? The phones go out. Someone in Vietnam took a photograph? The phones go out.
Right now I’m writing this on our personal laptop but here at work. There are 5 people jockeying for position on this baby. We get orders through email, so Andy, Ana and Robin are checking their accounts. Rodrigo gets CSA updates on his email account. I just like to spend my time on Facebook.
Yesterday we all finished our office work super early. Andy was playing solitare, Robin left at 2pm to check the home computer for orders and to pick up the girls, I left at 3. I got home to start dinner and found Robin taking a nap.
“What are you doing home?!” he asked.
Busted!
Actually I am glad he was taking a nap. The poor guy threw his back out last week what with the stress of the major storms and the cold. He deserves a nap.
In the meantime all of the phone calls get re-routed to Andy’s cell phone. Many chefs place their orders after dinner service, which means he’s receiving calls at midnight and later.
AT&T has been at it since Sunday. They said we’ve got a Hard Break, as opposed to a Soft Break. I suppose it’s the difference between a sprain and a break. We’ve had Soft Breaks in the past; at least six or seven soft breaks in the last three months. The Phone Guys say the Hard Break is better because once they find the break they will be able to fix it. The problem is finding it.
Until then, we are actually working. Few distractions make for efficiency. And for a lot of laughs.
I went into the tomato greenhouses this morning, just to check and see how they are doing. We’ve been slowly harvesting the yellow tomatoes for our own test purposes. You know, just to make sure the quality is good.
A few weeks ago when the day time temperatures were still in the high 60s, the greenhouse was in the 80s or even higher. The humidity was 100 percent with the interior walls sweating rain. The tomato plants were so happy, stretching and growing to over 6 feet tall on their trellises. They were flowering and setting out fruit. The heirlooms were coming along. Robin and I began our game.
It goes a little something like this. We squat in front of the plant with the biggest fruit. We gently cup the fruit in our hand. We begin.
“So, what do you think?”
“I don’t know, Robin.”
“You think two weeks?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I think two weeks.”
“Robin! Haven’t we learned our lesson from he Permabeds?!”
“So what, then? Monday.”
“Not Monday.”
“So when?”
“Maybe another month.”
“Another month! No. Impossible. Two weeks.”
“Not two weeks, Robin!”
This can go on for twenty minutes or so and continues at home over dinner, while brushing our teeth, while getting the girls ready for school in the morning.
We check them every day, which is like waiting for the phone to ring.
In the summer a lot can happen between the morning and the afternoon. A tomato barely blushing at 7:30 can be lipstick colored by 4.
But it’s cold now. Real cold. Granted this is San Diego cold, but it hasn’t been clearing 60 degrees at the farm this week. The warehouse and office are colder because of the lack of insulation and the proximity to the cooler. I just put the heater on right now because I can’t feel any of my digits, and I’m wearing four layers on top.
Even when I went to visit the tomatoes this morning the greenhouse wasn’t warm. It was still sweating big fat drops, but it was probably only 60 degrees inside. Which goes to show how cold it’s been at night.
The tomatoes look exactly like they did on Saturday’s farm tour with The Linkery. They look big and amazing and green. Not green blushing to yellow blushing to red. Just green. Very green.
So, no Robin, not Monday. Definitely not Monday. Nor in two weeks.
Maybe next month.
On Saturday we had a lovely visit by one of our favorite restaurants, The Linkery. Jay Porter wrote a lovely entry on his blog about the experience. And here it is.
Have you ever seen cauliflower grow? I don’t think most people have.
Most of the cole crops have a similar growing structure. There are myriad Rococo leaves that protect or cover the part that we end up eating. With cabbage the leaves are large and furled wrapping tighter and tighter around the head. Broccoli plants grow about waist high (depending on your height of course) and the broccoli flowers. We eat the floret, basically the bud. Brussels sprouts have an erect growing pattern with the buds attached firmly to the stem. You cut the mini-cabbages direct from the stem. In all of these cases the part that we eat, whether it be the Brussels sprout bud or the broccoli floret or the head of cabbage, is obvious.
This is not the case with cauliflower. Cauliflower has its own style.
Cauliflower grows on a stem about half the length of broccoli and Brussels sprouts. It’s leafy like it’s cole cousins, but the leaves are long and lean. One would think that the point of the cauliflower plant is to grow leaves. That’s because cauliflower hides.
Maybe she’s shy. Maybe she’s a diva. But you’ve got to dig deep in the cavern to discover the snowy white gem that is cauliflower.
We harvested our first cauliflower this week - 4.5 pounds. The Hope Diamond of Cauliflower. I love cauliflower steamed and pureed with olive oil and sea salt. Hmmm…bring me the cauliflower!
How did this happen? That December snuck up on us while we were recovering from Thanksgiving.
Fall is certainly turning toward winter now as even our days are getting chillier. The Moon has been enormous, hanging low in the sky as the sun sets weakly in the West. Every afternoon our daughters look for the moon, excitedly pointing to her when they find her. Sunset has been before 5pm, which makes for long nights. The girls seem to just be grasping concepts like “the dark” and “monsters” and “fear”. If it’s too shadowy in any corner of the house, they refuse to approach it. They are cold in the morning and cold at night. They want their “colchitas” and they want to cuddle.
I read somewhere once that your favorite time of year corresponds with the time of year you were born in. I was born in December, so this is my favorite time of year. I love the long nights custom made for knitting and fires and books and coziness. I love the weak days. I love the idea of hibernating - although this being San Diego we never hibernate. It’s still warm enough and sunny to indulge in any outdoor activity. Waterskiing, surfing, rock climbing, running can be enjoyed as easily in December as in July.
The plants are slowing down too. We are experimenting with our shoulder season. We planted some warm season crops pretty late this year. We can note the difference. Peppers that were taking off in the summer, are lacsidasical. We decided to try orange, purple, red and chocolate colored peppers. We planted them in July, babied them through August, watched over them in September, agonized over them in October and finally started picking green ones in November. They are all coloring simultaneously and the first good cold snap (we usually get it the first week of December) is going to kill our “75 Day” crop.
We’ve also got some yellow wax beans and haricot vertes that we planted in September that finally started producing. These types of beans are warm weather crops. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s not warm. We shall see how long these can handle our winter.
Of course warm is relative. We’ve got family in places where it really gets cold. My Mother-in-Law can’t come visit us in San Diego from November through March because her pipes will freeze if someone isn’t there to run the water. In places like this I don’t know what farmers do. They probably take the winter off, like you are supposed to, and cozy up to their seed catalogues and dream of the snow melting and turning the soil. Perhaps they check on their carrots and cabbages - both crops that actually get sweeter the colder it gets.
We continue refining our endless summer season. We’ve got some tomatoes and basil that we are growing in greenhouses for winter production. Robin brought me the first tomatoes yesterday - sweeter than candy.
But tomatoes feel wrong to me - delicious but wrong. I want bean and grain soups scattered with chard, crusty bread, roasted roots and fennel. I want baked potatoes melting the butter and topped with kosher salt. Pumpkin muffins dotted with pecans and golden raisins. I want pasta sauteed with olive oil, garlic and spinach.
Welcome December!