Fairy-Tale Farm

Happy New Year from Fairy-Tale Farm

debbie — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 05:42:17 +0000

2011 at Fairy-Tale Farm was hard. In Spring, I had to take some time off of hosting events in order to tend to my health. Here I contemplate what to plant next.

Spring Diva

Months later, the fava beans behind the rocking chair grow into 6 foot towers. The triple compost system that Karsten built out of old wood pallets against the back fence slowly rots. Sweet peas bloom on the left next to the chicken coop. Giant red mustard continues to grow, and red lettuces snuggle in with baby carrots.

The migrating birds don't eat the red lettuces and they look pretty with the slowly growing carrots.

By early summer, sweet peas blossom on the left while red mustards bolt and shoot up yellow flowers in the background. Poppies line the path. The garden is glorious.

I grew some exotic poppies this year. I call the red and white one “poppy from outerspace”. The pink peony-like one was a volunteer. Red pom-pom type from Annie’s Annuals. Can’t wait to see what combo I get wildly this year.

I had so many sweet peas and fava beans I sold them at the Corralitos Farmer’s Market:

Fava beans and sweet pea flowers. The scent of the sweet peas is so delicious.

We also sold edible flowers. Nasturtium, borage, calendula, pansies, oxalis.

Then, I unfortunately ended up in the hospital with my sweet peas.

Trying to make the best of it at UCSF as I am here for 3 long weeks.

But in the summer I am free, and I spend hours sleeping on the porch as the garden slowly grows around me.

Fairy-Tale Farm is quiet with only the cat for company.

We get a farm dog named “Kia”. The purple, yellow, and red potatoes are dug up. Rainbow tomatoes are harvested. Pears.

The winter comes to a close and we harvest pumpkins and peas. I slowly mend, and contemplate what to do for 2012. Happy gardening, all. Stay tuned for upcoming events.

Sometimes you have to get out of the urban farm and visit cornfields up the coast for inspiration.

Fairy-Tale Farm is In the News!

debbie — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 15:37:57 +0000

From the Santa Cruz Sentinel article found at: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_16109132

Living a Fairy-Tale: Santa Cruz family ‘grows’ community at their downtown area farm

By Justine DaCosta

Posted: 09/18/2010 01:30:39 AM PDT

Saskia Wade will help set the tables at her family’s Harvest Festival. (Shmuel Thaler/Sentinel)

Nestled among multiplexes not far from downtown Santa Cruz is a garden where 10-foot-high sunflowers overlook the winding vines of pumpkins and the soft ferns of overgrown asparagus. A few chickens wander through the aisles full of tomatoes and tomatillos, part of the 50-by-50-foot garden, which is shaped like a star, a red, circular wooden platform positioned in the center.

“It’s a magical garden,” said owner Debora Wade, pointing to a giant sunflower whose head has begun splitting into two sections. “It grows weird things.”

This is Fairy-Tale Farm, a community gathering spot where monthly dinners promise plates full of fresh, locally grown food. Debora and her husband Karsten began hosting dinners in the garden a couple of years ago as a way to bring the community together. With live music and dancing, and several courses and dessert, people can come and get a real taste of what’s local. Karsten, a community organizer for a software company, was a professional chef in another life, and whips up gourmet meals that include Thai, Mediterranean and French cuisine. He enjoys cooking for people, and seeing them gather together for a meal.

“It gives us a lot to look forward to,” Karsten said. “There’s a lot more feeling of connectedness.”

The Wades have lived in their modest, yellow home, adjacent to the garden, for about eight years, but the land that’s now the garden became theirs two years ago. They had long admired the large, un-manicured backyard next door, and cringed at the idea of a multi-unit building filling the land, which had already happened to some other lots in the area across the river from downtown. When new neighbors moved in, the couple decided to take a chance. They asked if they could purchase a portion of the yard, and the answer was yes.

The Wades sold their car to help pay for the property, which was several hundred thousand dollars. It was a blank canvas, and Debora, an artist with very little gardening experience, began planting the seeds to their future. Initially, the couple thought they would grow vegetables to sell, but quickly learned that wasn’t a profitable option for them. Instead, they thought, let’s enjoy this beautiful space and share it with others.

“I almost feel guilty owning all this property in a place where so many people have nothing,” Debora said. “I don’t deserve to have so much.”

Debora and Karsten met about 12 years ago, at a time when Debora’s Crohn’s disease had forced her onto a liquid diet. Karsten, who then worked at India Joze, would make her meals. While her health has improved, there have been struggles, and the garden has always been a place of hope and healing.

“I went for so many years without being able to eat in restaurants,” Debora said. “I’m so spoiled because we eat the best of most things.”

She has to smile when she sees her daughters Malakai, 12, and Saskia, 9, helping in the garden or chasing the chickens at an event. Their chores include tending to the garden, and the youngest has even found that picking potatoes is actually great fun, telling her mother, “This is better than Disneyland!”

Michele Swanson is a regular at Fairy-Tale Farm. She said the Wades are dedicated to bringing their community closer together.

“I went to their first dinner and quickly became a fan,” Swanson said.

The dinners are a way to meet new people, and are an alternative setting to restaurants or bars.

“Everybody comes together with a sense of curiosity,” she said.

During the summer, the farm hosts soirees, where people contribute to the event by bringing art, or food, or, in the case of last summer, a goat for the children to milk. There’s also figure drawing in the garden. Fairy-Tale Farm brings together a cross-section of people who may never have otherwise met but who enjoy the same experiences.

Community support can start right at the dinner table, and for Swanson, eating outside with the people who live in her town is a way to embrace old ideals that have been lost over time. Add to that the ambiance and food, and one’s belly and soul will be well-fed.

“Being outside, with the stars above your head and a great meal under your nose,” she said. “What could be better?”

Pulling together a dinner for 30 to 40 people requires a lot of work; Fairy-Tale Farm hosted weekly dinners this summer, and Debora said she’s looking forward to being exhausted just once a month for while. But it’s all worth it, because the Wades see that they planted a seed, and from that grew a community.

“There’s magic to the Fairy-Tale Farm,” she said.

Monterey Bay Harvest – menu for 26 Sep. dinner

quaid — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 14:46:48 +0000

For our Harvest Festival and Dancing we are celebrating the harvest season in the Monterey Bay, focusing on the fruits, vegetables, and cooking styles that have influenced this region for 500 years. This menu honors the flavors and cooking styles of Italy, Spain, and Latin America as we like to do it here in the West. After all, the Monterey region is cowfolk country as well as sardine factories. (Menu is vegan unless noted.)

Appetizer

Just picked grapes – regional and Fairy-Tale Farm

Mystery Golden Delicious apples and Fresh walnuts - local harvest
Homemade compagnon bread – w/ Scarborough Fair herb butter or olive oil

Soup

Cioppino – hearty Italian stew with local harvest vegetables (please RSVP if you’d like with fish or without)
Homemade compagnon bread

Salad

Micro greens and heirloom lettuces – w/ heirloom tomatoes, flowers, and surprises, in a creamy basil vinaigrette
Multi-color potato salad – w/ fresh roasted peppers and Fairy-Tale Farm green bean pickles in an herb vinaigrette

Main

Molti Strati alla Griglia – Italian-style casserole w/ pan grilled eggplant, zucchini, onions, and cheese in a mild tomato-chili sauce (vegetarian, vegan option: please specify when RSVP’ing)
Cowfolk Beans – sprouted pinto beans w/ mild Monterey chili spices (vegan)
Monterey Romance rice – light Spantalian heavily fused with the New World (vegan)

Dessert

Pie selection: apple pie, pear pie, Arana Gulch blackberry pie, rhubarb apple pie, the neighbor’s peaches pie, gluten-free pie (please request on RSVP)
Coffee
Tea

The food sourced for this menu is, as always, as local as we can make it. We start in our own garden, then the gardens and farms of our friends, then we go to farmer’s markets, and the final ingredients at a local store, with a clear bias toward regionally sourced.

In particular, the food is supplied by our friends at City Blooms (micro greens), at least three other farms we’ll name at the dinner, Azalyne Skye Olson, Ellen Baker, and a few others we’ll discover this week.

Come dine with us and share in the Santa Cruz urban bounty!

Building a dance floor

quaid — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:11:30 +0000

We’re building a dance floor for our Harvest Festival this 26 September. I had a discussion with a musician during one of our Summertime Salons about a simple idea, and so far I like it better than anything I’ve read. Refer to the diagram when reviewing these steps:

Lay a full sized half-inch plywood sheet so the side you want to dance on is facing down.
Use a table saw to rip a single 10-foot 2×4 along the length in to half-inch shims. Each board should yield six half-inch by 10 foot shims, since you’ll lose a half-inch in saw kerf across all the rips.
Use a chop saw to cross cut the stack of shims so that you get one stack of 7 foot and one stack of 3 foot shims.
Arrange two 6-foot shims along the long edge of the plywood, centered on 3 inches in from the edge.
Arrange three 3-foot shims perpendicular to the 6-foot shims. Place two shims on either end, centered on 3 inches in from the short edge. Place the third shim in the middle, centered on 48 inches (4 feet) from the short edge.
Nail the shims to the plywood from underneath. Use 1.25 inch finishing nails and space them every six inches along the shim.
Flip the plywood over.
Use a four-in-hand rasp to slightly bevel the four edges of the top part of the plywood. The goals are to remove splinters and give a 1/16-inch bevel.
Use a medium grit sandpaper to smooth the first inch of the dance surface from the edge of the plywood. The goal is to give a smoother surface for the gaffer’s tape. (When doing many panels, a power sander is better for speed and quality.)
This one panel is now finished and ready to be danced on, or taped edge to edge (flat) with other panels to make a larger dance floor.

Dance floor diagram, version 0.1

For a 12-foot by 12-foot dance space, I’ll need four full sheets and one half sheet. For the half-sheet, I’ll either make a full-panel and let it stick out funny, or scale the measurements to a 4-by-4 square panel. I’ll cut my shims to custom lengths, too — only four of them need to be 7-foot and 3-foot. The remaining two I’ll get four 36-inch pieces for each panel, and use the remainder plus scrounge up another 36-inch 2×4 for a few more shims for the 4-by-4 panel (or make up a full panel and let it stick out.)

Harvest Festival and Dancing!

debbie — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 17:08:21 +0000

Sunday, September 26th at 5 PM we will have our next formal dinner event. Come dine on freshly picked organic produce…among the produce! Tables will be set up all over the garden. “Monterey Spantalian” menu now available. Please bring your own wine.

Come through the roses and have some appetizers.

Dinner is from 5-7 PM followed by a community dance!

Dance Around Molly a live Irish band, will be playing from 7-9 PM and we will have Linda Preston, our caller teaching us all how to line up and swirl to the music! No experience necessary, just come prepared to dance the night away.

Dinner and dancing: $40 suggested donation. If you’d like to just come for the dance and desert, only $10 suggested donation. Come at 7 PM for dancing and desert.

As always, one free slot for dishwasher, but you will work for your supper! If you’d like free dancing and desert, we could use two dishwashers, so contact us.

Children are welcome for the dancing and desert. Well behaved children are welcome for the dinner. We will have intimate tables for 4 as well as larger community tables for 8 +. Seating is first come first served, so arrive on time and grab a seat in your favorite part of the garden.

Reservations are required and must be made by September 24th. Let me know how many people are coming:

reservations@fairy-talefarm.com

Come join your host for some magic.

Fall Schedule

debbie — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:48:38 +0000

We now have our Fall schedule! We’re returning to monthly dinners, with live music and the opportunity to buy the ingredients at our farm stand afterwards. You can make your reservations any time, but seating is first come first serve, so don’t wait too long!

Come to the Inner Circle. Special seating for 8 on pink pillows. Sans bucket.

To reserve, contact us at: reservations@fairy-talefarm.com Let us know the date you’re coming, and how many people you are. There are 50 seats available per dinner. Pie party is unlimited! If you have free fruit, contact me and I will trade for dinner or pie.

Sunday September 26th Fall feast! 5 PM – 9 PM Harvest party and live Irish music with Dance Around Molly! Linda Preston, our caller, will teach you all you need to know. Children welcome for the dance. Menu to follow shortly, but it will be a multi-course meal, with vegetables plucked from the garden. $40 suggested donation. Bring your own wine or beer to share. If you’d like to come just for dessert and dancing, arrive at 7 PM and donate $10. Coffee and tea included.

Azalyne's breads and pies are sublime!

And while you are salivating looking at these beautiful raw chocolate strawberry cheesecakes and gluten free loaves, you must come to:

Sunday October 17th Gluten free extravaganza! 5 PM Azalyne Sky-Olson of “The Culture of Change” food share will be preparing a cultured, organic, Italian feast! If you haven’t been able to eat bread or pasta, have celiac or food challenges, or are just wheat intolerant, this is the dinner for you. $75 suggested donation. (This price reflects the high cost of ingredients, and the labor intensity of sprouting and culturing that Azalyne does to make her goods maximally digestible.) Menu to follow. Please bring wine to share.

Sunday November 7th Pie Party! (Update 10/28/10 Pie Party is Canceled!) Who’s down for pie? Blackberry, peach, pecan, blueberry, apple, shoefly, if it’s a pie, we’ve got it! Live music, and lots of coffee, tea and pie! $10 suggested donation for all you can eat. (But don’t be too greedy, unless you bring me fruit!) Whole pies for sale for $10 or trade, place your orders ahead of time. If you’re vegan or gluten free, contact me and I can make you a special pie. 10 AM – 3 PM

Pies, pies, and more pies.

Sunday December 5th Tapas and music! (Update 10/28/10 Tapas Party Canceled!) Join us for South American music, and a Spanish feast! $40 suggested donation. Bring wine to share. This event will be inside. But if the weather is accommodating, we’ll string lights in the trees and gather besides the fire to eat desert. 6 PM

One free slot for a dishwasher every dinner. But you will work for your supper. We need music for the pie party! Free pie for musicians.

The dinners are for adults or well behaved children. The pie party is for all ages. Let us know if you have any food restrictions, or if we can get something special for you. And lastly, tell your friends and come support our little piece of magic!

From dirt to fricassee!

Only 1 Summertime Salon Left!

debbie — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:52:59 +0000

Last Thursday, Fairy-Tale Farm had a sheep and a goat! The goat needed to be milked, so children were invited to join in, and pet the sheep.

Of course, there are always chickens to cuddle…

And crafts to behold!

You must not miss the last Farm Market.

Last week, we had a Bluegrass Band! Page Brownton and Sidetrack !

And as always, figure drawing…bring your own supplies.

So come on down and eat delicious food in a delectable setting…and buy your produce and goodies for the week. 5-9 PM Drop in any time.

Figure Drawing is from 6 – 7 PM. Contact us for our address. We hope to see you here.

Salon and market review

quaid — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:00:30 +0000

"jams and produce" by kthread (CC BY 2.0)

We tried another new idea, a distilled idea. We’ve done pop-up restaurants, pie parties, figure drawing, and workshops. We’ve long dreamed of house concerts, dance parties. We want to be a venue where people bring their goods, extra produce, music, art, and especially sense of community.

So was born the Summer Salons and Urban Farm Market.

Yesterday, coincident with the salon and market was a post on Love and Trash, “Building Genuine Community”. It’s a flattering review of the Big Picture of what we are trying to do here on our little urban farm. I’ve known the author, Father Mayhem, for many a year, he knows what he’s talking about.

This morning I woke to a wonderful blog post by Kristen Taylor (@kthread), who came with Margaret Rosas (@mrosas), Quiddities chief and fellow Santa Cruz open source geek.

Kristen did a great job of capturing how a Fairy-Tale Farm event goes. It’s the kind of story telling that we’d like to be able to do, if we weren’t so busy living the story. My heart did a leap when she said, “This has to be documented,” camera in hand. To have such an avid and piercing community person and food enthusiast show up is the kind of serendipity we keep having at each event. (I’d stopped into NextSpace for business and ran into Margaret, and at the tail end of “public media” and “the open source way” and “opensource.com” geekiness, I made sure she got one of our flyers and a reminder about the event, and she said she’d bring her friend Kristen.) This past eighteen months we’ve had the whole spectrum from new best friends to new great business relationships, all circled by the simple human love of communal effort.

We had art, glass jewelry (Saskia LOVES her new earrings), lip-smacking confections (chocolate dipped and sea salted gooey caramels! lavender cookies! flavored marshmallows! fresh strawberry lemonade!), perfect cauliflower and jasmine rice ready to eat, basil and kale and chard and peas and such freshness from an organic garden, and two square feet of homemade jams. Yeah, I’m sure I forgot something.

I was very stoked with Vishnu’s Secret playing, for so many reasons. I was at their debut in 1992, and with all the passing of years I’m still struck by the brass audacity, beauty of sound, and tearing of story. Aimee’s ethereal vocals (yeah, words lose me here) and Bob’s string virtuosity (oh, the cello!), joined these years by Trey’s equally deft hands. That’s the first time anyone has played for us in this house concert format, something we’ve long dreamed of. The fact that it came on the eighth anniversary of our moving in to this house we are dreaming in to a home … that was just a cherry on a very well iced cake.

So, what are you doing next Thursday?

Summertime Salon and Urban Farm Market

quaid — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:45:39 +0000

This Summer, beginning July 1st, we have our Summertime Salon! Every Thursday evening, from 5-9 PM, we have a wonderful dinner from the garden, figure drawing with a live model, Music jams, a nap corner, and various kid-friendly activities! You can figure draw for an hour, then join in with the musicians and sing a few songs. Or just eat pie.

Music over here (bring your instrument, and just play with whoever shows up)
Art/figure drawing over there (to make this free, I need free models! Sign up now for summer. You don’t have to be nude, come in costume if you’d like. I have a few easels, but bring your own art supplies and extra easel if you have one.)
Collage on that table (bring your own supplies, especially magazines to cut!)
Games on this table (bring a game you want to play)
Kids craft table (anything from feather hair clips to nosegays. Craft from the garden.)
Or just chase the chickens

We have coffee, tea, a delicious vegetarian dish from the garden, and pie for sale. Menu is dependent on what’s fresh from the garden. Pie is seasonal fruit. Sometimes we have biscuits and fresh jam.

Urban Farm Market: Now every Thursday of the month bring your excess produce, flowers, honey, homemade cheese, art, jewelry, sweet treats, etc. to our Urban Farm Market tables to sell or trade with the other vendors. Our intention is to grow a farmer’s market for the DIY community who don’t make enough to sell at the Farmer’s Market. This could also be a great time to barter. Just bring your goods and a fair price for them, and we can begin the underground market! If this is popular, we could do it every week, and into the Fall. It’s proving popular, so we’re extending the Urban Farm Market to every week.

You don’t have to RSVP to come play. Please let us know if you’d like to sell at the market, though, or if you’re interested in becoming a figure model. Tell all your friends, and come hang out into the night with us and dust off your talents! May your community, artistic, and creative dreams come true.

Flowers for India Joze

quaid — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:13:36 +0000

Recently we had the great pleasure of supplying flowers for India Joze’ flower festival. Pictures of these flowers are below.

Held 16 May at Joze’ new restaurant location, the scene I saw at the Flower Festival was the evolved artistic food expression I’ve come to know from Master Chef Jozseph Schultz. You can look at their pictures (Facebook pictures and event page) via the India Joze Facebook page. What I captured here are shots of our flower delivery. (These pictures are available under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 Unported.)

Nasturtiums, rose petals, borage, lemon petals, and edible pea flowers.

The bags all hold nasturtiums, which are prolific two times per year in Santa Cruz. They have a nice spicy/sweet bite and stand up well in salads or stuffed. For our events, we like to stuff them with homemade hung yougurt, honey, and pistachios.

The main box of rose petals holds a striped pink on light-ping, small white climbers in the green tub, and the red-maroon wild climbers that only have five petals a flower.

Nasturtiums are thankfully fairly easy and rewarding to pick, giving an easy field effect.

In the center of the streaked roses is a whole rose to show it's glory. The blue borage flowers are the most time consuming and difficult to pick, but they are very rewarding. They can be laid out flat and dusted with sugar to make crystalized borage flowers for desserts.