Yep, spring means asparagus and rhubarb and lettuce and morel mushrooms—all good things we love, for sure. But for folks in California, spring brings yet another seasonal treat: Maker Faire Bay Area, aka “the Greatest Show and Tell on Earth.”

For those not familiar with Maker Faire, it’s sort of like heaven for do-it-yourselfers, a ginormous festival of all things sawed, hammered, pasted, programmed—and preserved. For the past four years, HOMEGROWN and our big sibling, Farm Aid, have partnered with Maker Faire to present the HOMEGROWN Village, a curated corral devoted to food making, urban homesteading, farming, gardening, harvesting, cooking, and eating. Most definitely eating.

We can’t wait to return to the San Mateo County Event Center on May 18 and 19 for the HOMEGROWN Village’s fifth year at Maker Faire, and we can’t wait to see you there. Whether you live in the Bay Area or are considering making the hike (Do it! Do it!), whet your appetite below. This year’s HOMEGROWN Village comprises four mouth-watering areas, and we’re pleased as punch to point out how many HOMEGROWN members are involved.

NEW THIS YEAR! EDIBLE MARKETPLACE
Curated by Forage Kitchen, a food-focused hacker space in San Francisco, the Edible Marketplace features small-scale food makers, including Bar Jars, Cocoa Collection SF, Happy Girl Kitchen, McVicker Pickles, Oaktown Jerk, Sweet Lauren Cakes, T-We Tea, and more. Are you hungry yet?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW THIS YEAR! FARM & FOOD FILM FEST
Once you’ve picked up a tea-and-pickle snack, head to this screening area for short films on food literacy, sustainability, soil health, farming, and feeding ourselves.

» Let’s hear it for the HOME team! HOMEGROWN member Kala Philo presents FarmShorts, a new web video initiative

» Also from the HOME front: HOMEGROWN member Kristi Stephens Adams presents selections from her documentary shorts series From the Ground Up

» Director in attendance! Don’t miss Symphony of the Soil, featuring a Q&A with filmmaker and environmentalist Deborah Koons Garcia (The Future of Food)

» The award-winning film Nourish: Food + Community traces how food connects to climate change, public health, and social justice

» Also from PBS: Food Forward, a new breed of food TV

» And from VOM Productions: Udderly Direct, a short doc on a raw milk dairy farm near Fresno

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAKER STAGE
Here’s where you can learn stuff directly from other smart folks. Think of it as a buffet for the brain.

» Hey-yo! Another HOMEGROWN member! Nicole Easterday of FarmCurious hosts not one but two talks: Making Fresh Chevre and Making & Infusing Vinegars

» And another! HOMEGROWN member Keri Keifer and her fellow Seedfolks spill the beans—er, seeds—on seed saving

» Lloyd Kahn, author and editor-in-chief of Shelter Publications (as in Tiny Homes!), gives a talk on the Half-Acre Homestead

» More! More! More! Pickling Oddities: Beyond Vinegar & Kraut, from Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It‘s Karen Solomon

» Lamb Butchering, with Berry Smith Salinas of Sonoma County’s Meat Revolution

» Waffleology: A Scientific Approach to Delicious Waffles, with Sivan Wilensky of San Francisco’s Suite Foods Bakery

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HANDS-ON HOMEGROWN WORKSHOPS
You’ve had a snack—or three. You’ve watched a film. You’ve heard a talk. Now it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get your fingernails dirty. This year’s hands-on demos include:

» Making Your Own Moldy Cheese, with San Francisco’s The Milk Maid

» Making Kimchi at Home, with Farm to Fermentation Festival’s Jennifer Harris

» Kraut-a-thon: Making Kraut at Home, with Happy Girl Kitchen

» Shrubbin’ It: Tart & Tangy Cocktail Mixers and Make Your Own Mustard, with Kelly McVicker of McVicker Pickles

» And last but (ahem) not least, Butter: Shake It! Make It! and Seedbombs: The Throwable Garden! with yours truly, HOMEGROWN.org

Have we convinced you? Good! Here’s the fine print: Maker Faire Bay Area runs Saturday, May 18 from 10 am to 8 pm and Sunday, May 19 from 10 am to 6 pm at the San Mateo County Event Center, 1346 Saratoga Drive, San Mateo, California. Admission is $10 to $35; kids 3 and under get in free—and yep, Maker Faire is absolutely kid friendly. Get tickets.

PHOTOS: (SIGNPOSTS) COURTESY OF MAKER FAIRE; (ALL OTHERS) CORNELIA

Sometimes I wonder how things would be different if I had decided to start a farm in another part of Maine, away from the coast. But then I wake up after another night of waiting for goat babes to arrive and am graced with the remnants of wintertime. I take my coffee to sip outside on a cold granite bench engraved with a memory, and there I’m calmed by the seas and the sun, which definitely has risen by now. The surf is pounding, crashing over the rocks, and I can feel the sea spray floating through the air. It’s all so soothing and beautiful.

Living in a fishing village, I am surrounded by men and women who, like me, spend their lives wading in muck—only theirs is generated by fresh catches rather than by some breed of domesticated beast. Their days are filled with backbreaking work, lifting heavy traps full of prized crustaceans rather than bales of fresh local-cut hay. They haul nets laden with fish or shrimp rather than bucketloads of grain or water. They slog around in muck boots and Grundens rather than Carhartt’s and, well, muck boots. Farmers layer their Carhartt’s over a barn sweater so full of holes you wonder how it has any warming effect left. Fishermen cover their sweaters, made of sturdy Maine-grown wool full of “grease” to shed the sea spray, under waterproof bibs.

A fisherman’s life is guided by the pounding sea and its ever-changing highs and lows. A monument in my town of Port Clyde attests to lives lost while incurring her wrath or as the result of something gone terribly wrong. Farmers, too, have endured tragic loss from accidents and hardships. Our local St. George and Oceanview Granges stand as monuments to those who have gone before us, tilling the soil, tending flocks and herds, gathering up the harvest in the fall.

The lives of farmers and fishermen are inextricably interwoven. Mother Nature plays the largest role in whether a fisherman is successful in his catches, much to the consternation of the scientists who try and sort out patterns of aquatic life. So it is with the farmer, who basically hopes and prays that this season won’t bring floods or winds or drought or bugs or fungus or disease while the Cooperative Extension Agency wrestles with Mother Nature’s latest invention.

For fishermen, inspiration comes in the form of an early morning sunrise over the bow of the boat while steaming out for the day’s catch. Likewise, the gentle stirring of warm fuzzy bodies bedded down in soft clean hay that’s brought on by the flick of a light switch nudges a farmer through one more day. Stamina to get up long before dawn’s early light, stamina to push through pain from aching muscles and tired bones, stamina to haul a trap or a net brimming with a prized catch, or buckets of water through waist-deep snow. Making a life, not just a living, in harmony with the change of seasons and taking each day as it comes, whether on dry ground or on water.

There’s a rhythm to it all. When I lived on the Chesapeake Bay, I would wake every morning at 3 a.m. when my neighbor on one side, Skipper, started his truck for the ride down to his boat, then again at 4 a.m. when Michael, the neighbor on the other side, followed. I’d lie there smiling with the day already starting in sync and then thankfully roll back over to dream of lambs and chickens and goats.

I once asked Michael what he would do if he couldn’t work the water on what had been his father’s old boat anymore. He just shook his head. As it turned out, he ended up selling the boat rather than sinking it and worked the rest of his short 46 years as a carpenter—a job that kept him firmly on the ground he had loved leaving behind every morning as a fisherman. Times have changed for fishermen and farmers both.

For me, there is a connection between the lives of those who make their living dependent on the land and those on the sea. I don’t think I could have been as happy as a farmer if my life wasn’t graced by waking to the sunrise over water. The thread of hardship, joy, and satisfaction binds farmer and fisherman together.

As the tides in the harbor rise and fall, so do the days unfold as I move from chore to chore. I am as dependent on this guarantee as I am on taking my next breath. I pick up my mail each day in my muck-covered boots at the Port Clyde Post Office, where I’m followed through the door by a fisherman fuming with the distinct odor of bait traps. It’s a blending of aromas, strengths, weaknesses, smiles, daily inspirations, and lives.

I love the strength of mountains, but I’m glad to be building this farm by the sea.

Dyan Redick describes herself as “an accidental farmer with a purpose.” Her farm, located on the St. George peninsula of Maine, is a certified Maine State Dairy offering cheeses made with milk from a registered Saanen goat herd, a seasonal farm stand full of wool from a Romney cross flock, goat milk soap, lavender, woolens, and whatever else strikes Dyan’s fancy. Bittersweet Heritage Farm is an extension of her belief that we should all gain a better understanding of our food source, our connection to where we live, and to the animals with whom we share the earth.

ALL PHOTOS: BITTERSWEET HERITAGE FARM

 

It’s no secret that us HOMEGROWN types like good food. Or that we think about it 90 percent of the time. (OK, OK: 97 percent. Maybe 98.) And while we grow some it ourselves, from Mitchell’s pallet of herbs to Anna’s loopy zucchini, most of us can’t grow it all.

Thank goodness for farmers—the folks who stay up to their elbows in soil when the rest of us wash our hands of gardening and move on to cooking dinner or folding laundry or browsing the web. These guys and gals are out there harvesting today so that we can chow down tomorrow. The only trick is knowing where to find them.

So, to help connect the dots between farmers and eaters and to get good food into all of our gullets, we’ve created the Find Good Food page on HOMEGROWN. Check it out. You’ll see our very favorite national websites for locating food and farmers and markets near you, wherever you are. And since we couldn’t dig up a list of resources at the state-by-state level, we built one. How’s that for HOMEGROWN? If you like what you see, please pass it along.

One important note: This list is a work in progress. Just like everything else on HOMEGROWN, we’re relying on you to help make it bigger. Meatier. Juicier. Got a link you think we should add? Post a comment and let us know. We’re always hungry for more.

 

PHOTOS: (FARMERS MARKET) DAVID BARROW; (MAP BACKGROUND) LESLIE J. PRICE