Pens to Pasture ~ Mariquita Farm

Do you peruse the newsletter delivered with your weekly CSA share or subscribe to the e-mail list of your favorite farmers at your local market? I do, and I savor them. So many of my friends and family also love the stories their farmers share...it seemed like a good time to share these stories more widely. Farming provides abundant fodder for writing and consumers provide a natural audience...and hence the perfect environment for brief, well-articulated pieces highlighting the thoughts and daily life of farmers. At Pens to Pastures: Fodder from the Field we celebrate the agricultural life, the hard work of farmers and the grace and openness with which they share it all through writing. Dig in, enjoy and be sure to share the writings of your farmers by sending an e-mail here.

Mariquita Farm + The Ladybug Letter
Watsonville, CA
www.mariquita.com & www.ladybugletter.com


Not one, but two kind folks suggested The Ladybug Letter as the weekly fodder for Pens to Pasture. Only in California can a farmer celebrate the holiday season with a prickly pear cactus tree and a delicious recipe for its fruit. The Ladybug Letter is an "open letter from Mariquita Farm to everyone with a curiosity about the people, practices, and politics of farming" shared with readers through a blog and broadcast way beyond the bounds of their (separate) weekly newsletter to CSA members. Just one glance and I was hooked. Beyond the meltingly beautiful and smooth writing of the Ladybug Letter, Mariquita farm also prints a weekly newsletter to CSA members, all of which can also be found online as well. It must also be said that this farm offers customers an opportunity to purchase Mystery Boxes during the winter months...a clever name for a winter produce box with no specific contents listed before purchase (I love this idea)!

Mariquita Farm is a small family farm near Watsonville, CA, producing CSA shares and restaurant produce for the Bay Area. Yes, we are talking about California, which means unlike the last Pens to Pasture feature from frosty Minnesota, there is no need to keep livestock water from freezing or pile too much wood for the stove (although some may be in order), but there is still a recognized respite from the peak season. And of course, the common thread of seed catalog searching, which is not overlooked here either.

It's silly for me to re-post blog pieces that you can simply click to, so savor these first few words and click your way over to the Ladybug Letter for more.

"Some people might say that Manzanita isn’t a very traditional choice for a Yule tree but community consensus over tradition isn’t one of our strong points here in California; Me, I like the outstretched arms of a cactus tree to hold up my string of lights."

from The Ladybug Letter 12.15.2011