Ojai Certified Organic Farmers Market, baby!
See you down at the Farmer's Market. Some of my favorites this time of year: a quart of fresh blood orange juice, some vine-ripened tomatoes, fresh watercress and cilantro, butternut squash and Vicki's soap. What's on your shopping list?
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Comments (4)
If you need some honey, go see Brian and the Ojai Valley Bee Farm. Just don't bring up ethanol.
Comment #1 Posted by: Tyler | January 20, 2007 10:37 PM
And don't miss Ivy's homemade ice-cream made from raw cream and honey. She's usually on the sidewalk on Matilija across from the market. expensive, but amazing.
Does anyone know how many booths at the Ojai Farmer's Market are actually local? from Ojai and/or Ventura County? I've also heard that some of the vendors who claim to be "no-spray" farms actually do spray. Does anyone have any information on this?
Comment #2 Posted by: Leslie Davis | January 21, 2007 10:26 AM
If anybody would like to make some ethanol I have about 12 or so bottles of old wine that I'm throwing out. Some of it may be rare vintage wine even! Since I'm not a wine connoisseur I don't know, Shoot me an e-mail from my web site if interested. Most of it is red wine from France and Germany. If you are distilling it I can give you some pointers, since I ran my old Toyota off some stuff I made from apples about 20 years ago.
Leslie, There are quite a few local farmers at the Ojai market I don't know the exact number but just ask. The apples come from Paso Robles, and one grower comes all the way from Visalia. Most growers spray water on their crops, but I'm sure you mean spray insecticides. The best way to gage that is by the type of produce you are talking about. Certain crops are more vulerable to insects and other problems. Strawberries are one of these, but even the big time strawberry growers try to minimize pesticide use. It is now standard practice to plant tall grass at the edges of the strawberries for some kind of mite. There are a couple of questionable growers at that market in my opinion, I'm not sure they even grow what they sell. But they might not be selling anymore, I'm not sure. When you see something that could not even grown around here that should be a clue. I think Ivy may be eating up all the profits since she's eating for two!
Tyler, is there a spell check on this thing? I had to look up connoisseur !
Brian
Comment #3 Posted by: Brian | January 21, 2007 06:57 PM
Brian - try Firefox 2.0 and you'll get a built-in spellcheck.
And it being winter and all, ask Ivy if she has any persimmon pumpkin pies in that cooler.
Comment #4 Posted by: Tyler | January 21, 2007 09:25 PM