Testimonials
Los Angeles Magazine
September 2008
Most recently Flora Bella's delicious arugula received a write up in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, (September 2008). Writer Lora Zarubin wrote, "I'm in love with the arugula from James Birch's Flora Bella Farm at the Santa Monica and Hollywood markets. His crop of the leafy green stands alone--it's hearty and has great texture and the most unique flavor. When I asked why his arugula is so good, James said it's 'the water, which is coming off the Sierra, and its first stop is my farm'".
www.thekitchn.com
One hundred percent of Americans eat food, but less than 2% of Americans actually grow or raise food. Farming as the primary source of income has decreased so rapidly over the last century that unless you've deliberately visited a farm as an "agro-tourist" you might be missing out on the most delicious food stories - not the ones about cooking, but the ones about growing. Field Notes is a chance to hear from the people who knew your food before your oven did. Meet James Birch of Flora Bella Farms and say hello to his bears...
My farm is up next to the Sequoia National Park near the Sierras. The farm is Flora Bella Farm. Because of the location bears come to our farm every summer to eat the fruit off our trees. This last summer I had one bear would eat 100 watermelons a day. I thought that was a lot until he brought a friend with him. Every night 100 watermelons. Then he moved on to plums and nectarines and peaches and all the tree fruit.
Now, we were in a drought this last summer. We've got a stream that comes off the river and feeds water to the pond. It's our reservoir. We use the pond for our irrigation. In my 25 years on the farm our pond has never dried up. Never. The water comes from the snow in the mountains and at 20,000 feet the snow stays up there even through the summer, but we only had a snow pack of 20% and I ran out of water by July. The snow just melted too quickly. The water in the pond got down to a foot.
So the fish in the pond started to die and the bears smelled it and they came down and feasted for about a week. I'd try to scare them away, shoo them off, but I'd never do anything to harm the bears. They were here before I was. I always try to plant a little extra. I figure they are going to get about 20% of whatever I plant. I mean, if you have a bear eating 100 watermelons a night, how much do have to plant?
This winter is the third year we've had rabbits. I have to say we did go out to shoot a few to eat. A friend of mine came over last night to get one. They will attack the plants at the earliest stage. Usually the coyotes and hawks keep them in check. Not sure why they're not now.
But I don't think we'll have a bear problem this year, we've had plenty of rain and the snow is sticking in the mountains. The snow is already at 150%. Our reservoir should be back up, no more dying fish this year.
James Birch has been farming at Flora Bella Farms since 1988. He sells his produce at the Santa Monica and Hollywood Farmers' Markets in Los Angeles, California. He calculates that since he began making the 400-mile round trip visits to Los Angeles he's roughly traveled to the moon.
L.A. Times
article by Russ Parsons on June 13, 2007
Fresh garbanzo beans: Those big bound bushels at James Birch’s Flora Bella Farm stand may look at first glance like giant bundles of hip-high weeds, but check closely and you’ll see little green pods. They’re fresh garbanzo beans, and they are amazing. Dried garbanzos are so dense they need to be soaked overnight and then cooked for hours before they become creamy. Fresh garbanzos take only a brief simmer. Almost as good, you can pop them out of the husk and eat them raw – they are a little crunchy, but the flavor is bright green. Birch also recommends cooking them the way a couple of customers from India suggested: on the grill. Throw the whole bundle on the fire and when the flames die down, pick out the garbanzos and pop them in your mouth.
www.foodandwine.com
Green Goddess by Kate Krader
Alice Waters calls her one of the most eco-conscious young chefs in the country. She's also one of the most talented. Meet Suzanne Goin of L.A.'s Lucques.
Hollywood is more likely to conjure up images of what's fake than what's organic, but not at chef Suzanne Goin's sensational new French-California restaurant, Lucques (pronounced luke). Alice Waters, the godmother of the good-food, good-earth connection, rates Goin as one of the most eco-conscious chefs in the country, which only makes Goin try harder. "Alice inspires you to call up the city of Los Angeles and fight about recycling," she says, "even when every ounce of your energy is directed toward getting dinner out."
Goin, 32, grew up in Southern California in a food-obsessed family that planned vacations around restaurants they wanted to visit. She started cooking as a teenager, thanks in part to her mother: "Mom wanted to hang out with the guests at her dinner parties, so she got me to cater and my sister to waitress," she recalls. It was after college, when Goin moved to Berkeley to work for Waters at Chez Panisse, that she got turned on to environmental issues. "My first job was on the pasta-and-lettuce shift," she says. "At most restaurants, you call up a company and ask for 10 pounds of mesclun mix. At Chez Panisse, you get trays and trays of picked-that-morning lettuces that you mix yourself." After two years in Berkeley, Goin went to work in France and realized how much she had learned. "It was the antithesis of Chez Panisse--they'd vacuum-pack foods," she says. "And they'd import produce from Spain instead of buying at the market right outside the restaurant."
Now that she has her own restaurant, Goin follows the rules she learned from Waters. For one thing, she makes a serious effort to minimize waste in her kitchen. Goin won't buy plastic containers to use for storage, for instance, and instead reuses mustard tubs. She returns all the boxes, about 10 a day, that she receives from farmers. She also keeps a bucket for leftover grease, which a local company makes into soap.
Goin, who uses organic ingredients for 80 percent of her dishes, is a regular at the local farmers' market. "It's like a party where people can choose from produce that's in season," she says. One of her favorite growers, James Birch of Flora Bella Farm in the Sierra foothills, often brings organic potatoes, greens and citrus fruits directly to her door and leaves with her compost. Goin uses his produce, as well as ingredients such as line-caught fish, hormone-free meat and artisanal cheeses, in the recipes that follow. They include a sumptuous beet and walnut salad (instead of tossing out the beet greens, Goin adds them to the dish), a delicious organic chicken roasted with mustard and bread crumbs, and a wonderful warm potato salad with Fontina cheese and organic vegetables.
Goin is confident that over time she will make Lucques even more environmentally correct. "At first, I had to focus on putting food on the plate and finding a dishwasher who would show up," she says. "Now I can concentrate on making that call about recycling. Getting to the Chez Panisse dream world takes time, but I'm working on it."