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A grassroots recovery is under way at the farm, thanks to all of you

Posted by Alexis on 31 October 2009, 3:43 pm

sff_1134Green grass! The grass has been moving up along the hill and olive orchard for a week, like a slow-growing beard, and today it covers the whole farm.

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October has definitely been a time of new beginnings here at Soul Food Farm. To start with, the air is fresh and cool and the mornings have a lovely mist hanging low on the ground.  The sun shines and encourages those new seeds and grasses to keep growing taller, new types of bugs have moved in, and the pastured chickens are feasting.  They’re also living in new chicken houses built by volunteers who came to Soul Food Farm to help out and HELP they did. Continue reading ‘A grassroots recovery is under way at the farm, thanks to all of you’ »

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First a fire, now a flood … what a year

Posted by Morgan on 14 October 2009, 10:46 am

SFFflood-2Yesterday the huge storm ravaged the farm. We had no clue what we were in for.

Luckily, since the fire we have learned to make immediate decisions. We saved a lot more birds than we thought. Wind and rain can kill a wet chicken within hours if they do not find shelter. We spent the day moving them from the open and airy summer villas to the winter huts. The weather was so severe that the summer homes were drenched and flooded. The creek overflowed and fields flooded, and we had the longest shower of our lives, being outside all day. It’s surprising none of us caught a cold.

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Soul Food Farm video: Rising from the ash

Posted by Bonnie on 2 October 2009, 12:05 am

At the chicken house building workday a few weekends ago, filmmaker Thomas Richardson interviewed Alexis and shot this 8-minute video about the farm’s fire and the rebuilding efforts. The physical structures are, of course, the easier things to replace. The 30 acres of singed pasture will take a season to recover (while temporary replacement ones get seeded and irrigated); the two weeks of lost income from 1,000 meat birds are the main hurdles.

Filed under community, fire, video.
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Soul Food Farm fundraising auction now live for bidding!

Posted by Bonnie on 30 September 2009, 11:59 pm

Oct. 10: The auction is closed. I will notify winners shortly by email. Thank you to everyone for their support!

Continue reading ‘Soul Food Farm fundraising auction now live for bidding!’ »

Filed under community, farming, fundraiser, misc, restaurants.
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Café Rouge benefit dinner *canceled* :-(

Posted by Bonnie on 25 September 2009, 10:54 am

Sept 30 Update: We have just heard that the Cafe Rouge benefit dinner has been canceled, due to unforeseen circumstances and slow ticket sales. This is very disappointing — the menu looked great, and we had high hopes for raising funds from it.

To receive a refund for this event, contact 1-800-838-3006 or e-mail at Support@BrownPaperTickets.com before OCT. 8 and BrownPaperTickets.com will then provide you with instructions for receiving your refund.

Berkeley’s Café Rouge (1782 4th St.), whose butcher shop has carried Soul Food Farm eggs for years, is hosting a prix fixe family-style dinner ($50 including wine) on Monday Oct. 5, from 6-9:30pm, to raise funds for Soul Food Farm.

The dinner is shaping up to be an over-the-top fantastic meal, with the best area farms donating the ingredients: vegetables from Full Belly Farms, and meats from Devil’s Gulch Ranch and Red Hill Farms. Cafe Rouge’s Marsha McBride and Rick DeBeaord and Christopher Lee (of the recently closed Eccolo) have created this  inspired menu:

Soul Food Farm Benefit Dinner at Cafe Rouge

Schiacciatta with Vegetables a’la Grecque – grape-studded focaccia served with pickled vegetables
Breaded and Deep Fried Farm Egg with Mixed Chicories and Romano Beans
Chris’s Fish Soup
Mixed Grill Platter of Locally Raised Meat and Poultry
Fresh Shell Bean Ragout
Roasted Late Summer Vegetables
Roasted Figs with Honey Ice Cream
Homemade Cookies

Filed under community, fundraiser, restaurants.
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Tons of prizes for Soul Food Farm raffle

Posted by Bonnie on 23 September 2009, 5:17 pm

Online ticket sales ended at 5:30 p.m. today.  They can also be bought in person at the Pizzaiolo event, Oct 11 1-5 pm.

The Soul Food Farm Raffle will be held live at the party at Pizzaiolo on Sunday, Oct. 11, admission is $14 and includes one entry in the raffle. Bidding has started on the separate silent auction connected to the event; winners will also be announced at Pizzaiolo.

You do not have to be present to win a raffle prize; all winners will be notified by email.* Raffle tickets are $5 each, or five for $20. Everyone who has donated money to Soul Food Farm already via PayPal will get one raffle ticket as a thank-you.**

Raffle prizes

A list of all the cool raffle prizes we’ve been offered follows. I think we have enough now — thanks everybody! Your generosity is truly breath-taking.

  • A16 restaurant: $150 gift certificate and signed A16 cookbook
  • Adesso Wine Bar: $75 gift certificate
  • Bar Jules: $100 gift certificate
  • Bici: One free bike tuneup
  • Blue Bottle Coffee: $25 gift certificate good at any location or cart
  • Boulette’s Larder: $50 gift certificate
  • Camino restaurant: Gift certificate
  • Novella Carpenter: Signed copy of her hilarious and inspiring Oakland memoir, Farm City
  • Cafe Gratitude: $100 gift certificate
  • Chez Panisse: Signed copies of hardvocer Chez Panisse Desserts with illustrations by Wayne Thiebaud, signed (by Lindsey Shere) hardcover Baker’s Dozen cookbook, and two signed books by Charles Shere, Roman Letters and Mostly Spain cookbooks
  • Chronicle Books cookbooks gift pack
  • CUESA: Ferry Plaza Farmers Market tote bag with cookbooks and market goodies
  • Delfina: $75 gift certificate
  • Dopo restaurant: $75 gift certificate
  • Dona Tomas: Gift certificate & signed cookbook
  • Flatland Flower Farm: A flat (16 plants) of herb and vegetable starts
  • The Gardener: $50 gift certificate
  • Gialina Pizzeria: Gift certificate
  • Gioia Pizza: Two $25 gift certificates
  • Ici Ice Cream: Two $25 gift certificates
  • Kermit Lynch: 2 magnums of Domaine Les Palliéres Gigondas 2004 and 2005 (separate items)
  • Let’s Be Frank: Party pack of dogs, wrappers, sauce and sauerkraut
  • Manicaretti Foods gourmet treats gift basket
  • Massa Organics whole-grain brown rice, 20-lb bag, and 2 jars of crunchy almond butter ($60 value)
  • Meatpaper: Magazine subscription, Meatpaper tote bag
  • NOPA: $100 gift certificate
  • McQuade’s Celtic Chutneys: Gift basket of locally made chutneys with Havens Bouriquot and Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam cheese
  • Oliveto: Gift certificate
  • Omnivore Books: $25 gift certificate
  • The Palms: Two pairs of two tickets to any concert at the hall in Winters, CA
  • Pascal French Oven in Danville: $25 gift certificate
  • Piccino Cafe: $100 gift certificate
  • Lori Podraza of Goulash Designs: Retro handmade bag and retro handmade apron (separate items)
  • Ritual Roasters: Two 12 oz bags of coffee, a mug, and a certificate for 2 free drinks
  • Rancho Gordo: Two gift boxes of farmer Steve Sando’s signed cookbook, Heirloom Beans, and beans
  • SPQR: $100 gift certificate
  • Summer Kitchen Bake Shop: Three of gratin dinners and membership in our Supper Club, which allows guests 10% off all food and drinks including lunch and dinner and 10% off Wine at Vintage Berkeley on College. $75 value
  • Tartine bakery: Two $50 gift certificates (separate) and signed Tartine cookbook
  • Tartine Bar: $75 gift certificate
  • Terzo restaurant: $100 gift certificate
  • Yes We Can: 1 case canned dry-farmed and San Marzano tomatoes
  • Zuzu Napa: $100 gift certificate

Thank you to all of these generous individuals and businesses!

*If you win a raffle item but don’t live here, we will not be able to ship it; you can opt to donate your prize to a Bay Area friend or let us draw another entrant.

**I will mine the PayPal donation log to get names and email addresses to enter you; ‘fraid I can’t do so with check donations. If you donated by check and want to be entered into the raffle, email me.

Filed under fire, fundraiser, misc.
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Oct. 11 Pizzaiolo party info and tickets now available

Posted by Bonnie on 23 September 2009, 4:17 pm

It’s official! We’re having a fundraising party for Soul Food Farm at Pizzaiolo in Oakland on October 11 from 1-5 pm. [TICKETS]

Several restaurants like Il Cane Rosso are holding fundraisers, but we also wanted to do something  affordable for all the other generous but cash-strapped fans of Soul Food Farm, like the kitchen crews of various restaurants.

Baby chicks at Soul Food Farm

Baby chicks at Soul Food Farm

The Soul Food Farm party at Pizzaiolo will feature:

  • special guests Alexis and Eric Koefoed, Soul Food farmers, and five Soul Food baby chicks that are going to be auctioned off for would-be backyard poultry farmers. (Mixed breeds, including with the Aracanas that lay the green/blue eggs)
  • free wine & beer donated by Folio, Cakebread, Verge, Kendric Vineyards, Larkmead and others
  • hors d’ouevre and sweets made by chefs and cooks from Chez Panisse, Pizzaiolo, Lalime’s, Oliveto, Bar Tartine, Bakesale Betty, Ici Ice Cream, and other volunteers using produce donated by Full Belly Farm, meats from Devil’s Gulch Ranch, Becker Lane Pork and Prather Ranch, and cured meats and patés from Fatted Calf and Salumaio Christopher Lee
  • a live raffle drawing for some really great stuff (see list and buy tickets here)
  • announcement of the winners of the Soul Food Farm online auction
  • live Brazilian and folk music by Felipe Ferraz (Guitar, Voice), JoAnne Craig-Ferraz (Voice), Marty Holland (6-String Bass), and Andrew Epstein (Percussion)

Tickets are just $14,* which also gets you one free entry into the raffle drawing (buy more of the $5 tickets here). It’s our way of saying thanks to everyone, while hopefully raising a little more cash to meet the $25K target we need by November to get the farm safely back on its feet. We’re expecting it to sell out fast, so don’t wait too long!

Go to Brown Paper Tickets >>

Want to help cook, pour wine, or wrangle chicks at the event? Email me.

*Those donating items to the raffle and auction, and/or who worked at the farm last weekend, will be offered a complimentary ticket to the event. Email to come with instructions on how to claim yours, or email me.

Filed under community, fire, fundraiser, restaurants.
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Four new chicken houses built by SFF volunteers!

Posted by Bonnie on 20 September 2009, 11:36 pm

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soulfoodfarm-3301About two dozen people got up at the crack of dawn yesterday and today and made the trip up to Soul Food Farm to wield screwguns, nailguns, and plain old hammers in the hot sun. They had heard about the farm’s fire on Facebook, various San Francisco blogs, Twitter, and Slow Food’s newsletter; some were neighbors in surrounding Vacaville. Saturday’s crew of semi-professionals blew through the work so fast that Eric decided to go for four chicken houses instead of the two they needed immediately, to replace the two destroyed in the fire. Six hundred baby chicks arrive at Soul Food every week and these 32-by-12 foot hoop houses — with doors that lower into ramps so the chicks can go outside during the day and be closed up tight against predators at night — are their homes until they move into the teenager meat-bird corrals after a couple of weeks.

We built the components to erect all four houses. This represents a HUGE savings of time and labor for Eric and the farm. Sunday’s crew took the 32 blanks that Saturday’s team had started and added the doors (with hinges and latches) and the end pieces, headers, etc. Then we loaded up the components for one whole house, took it into the front pasture and put it together so that one was ready to go for the baby chicks arriving this week (once the hoop struts arrive and the plastic roof can be put on).

And while all THAT was happening, a whole other crew of folks were gathering and washing eggs (in the automatic egg washer and by hand), getting the laying houses ready to withstand the coming heat wave ( with big water troughs and fans), scrubbing just about every water can and chicken feeder on the property, and even shredding dried lavender for a little side project Alexis is working on with pet beds. Meanwhile, master blacksmith Jefferson Mack, who met Alexis at an 18 Reasons farmer-dinner a few months ago, turned what was once the information booth for Slow Food Nation last year that Alexis bought several months ago into a workable and exquisite office for Alexis. Jefferson and his two lovely kids campe out overnight to finish this huge pro-bono welding job in a mere two days. Amazing.

A big thank you to all our worker bees before I crash for the night:

Saturday’s team: Contractor Joe and Erica Howard, Chris Bjuhr, Paul Fielding, Hannah and Super Kirsty, Bart Nagel, Levy, and Kelly and the Nutrition Shoppe folks (who donated and delivered lunch for us hungry workers)
Sunday: Cameron and Anita (check out the full Flickr slide show), Arthur Perley (of Slow Food Berkeley and Vino), Bart, Elanor, Sandy and D (who both came last weekend too!), Molly (who saw the workdays on a friend’s Facebook page and came), Karimah and Ed, Nanda, and sweet Sara the neighbor who made a pasta salad for everybody.
Hope I haven’t left anybody out. You guys were amazing. Our hearts are full.

Lots more pictures after the jump! (Click image to enlarge; photos by Bart, Anita, Elanor, and Bonnie)

Continue reading ‘Four new chicken houses built by SFF volunteers!’ »

Filed under community, fire.
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Raffle tickets post moved

Posted by Bonnie on 18 September 2009, 10:01 pm

Moved Sept. 23 to http://soulfoodfarm.com/blog/2009/09/raffle for various reasons.

Filed under community, fire, fundraiser.
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Daniel Patterson’s Il Cane Rosso to hold fundraiser Oct. 11

Posted by Bonnie on 18 September 2009, 8:57 pm

Soul Food Farm supporter and star chef Daniel Patterson is holding a fundraiser to benefit the farm at his restaurant Il Cane Rosso, cohosted by his other restaurant, Coi, on Sunday, Oct. 11.

There will be two seatings: the first at 5:30-6 p.m., followed by one at 7:30-8 p.m. The cost of the three-course menu (served family-style), will be $50 per person, including wine but exclusive of tax and gratuity. For reservations, call (415) 391-7599.

All proceeds will go to benefit Soul Food Farm, which is really generous and much appreciated.

About Cane Rosso: Created by partners Patterson and chef Lauren Kiino, with Doug Borkowski as chef, this casual, quick-serve rotisserie and sandwich shop was inspired by the small, family-run food stores of Southern Italy. Both Soul Food Farm eggs and chicken are regularly featured on its menu, as is produce from other Bay Area farms such as Star Route, Dirty Girl, Mariquita and County Line farms and dairy and cheese from Bellwether and Straus.

Filed under community, fundraiser, restaurants.
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