It must be spring

It must be spring, 'cause compost and seeds are flying off the shelves around here. I'm glad people are liking our seed selection... as you can see from previous postings, I spent a ton of time choosing which varieties to stock. There are some unusual things that seem especially popular: strawberry spinach, some cool red carrots, and our midget melons especially.

I've been working madly on our new store website. We'll be selling books on-line, hopefully by the end of the week. Also, we're getting ready for our spring round of tabeling and outside events. I'll be in downtown Oakland tomorrow, Berkeley Earth Day on Saturday, and the Living More with Less conference the next Saturday. In the meantime, we're hosting our very own Prof. Raquel Rivera-Pinderhughes here on Wednesday the 27th. Why our very own? She's on our board, was my undergraduate academic advisor, and as a grad student I worked as her research assistant (just before I came to the Ecology Center).

Anyway, I hope to see you at any or all of these events. Be sure to tell me if you've seen this! Someone asked me the other day... "oh yeah, you're the one that does that blog right?". It was my first in person indication that there are really people out there!

thanks,
js

Letters to the Valley: A Harvest of Memories

This new little book by David Mas Masumoto is a treasure of family, community, agricultural, American, and global insights. It's short, I read it in one morning, with sun beaming down and a hot cup of tea in my hand. It was perfect for this books style.

Slow, lush prose, beautifully accented with illustrations by Doug Hansen. It's a testament to good food, carefully grown: to family farmers, organic farmers and central valley agriculture, but it's also a deeply moving statement about community and family. The letters range from discussions about old time peach varieties, to farmworkers, to Masumoto's Japanese-American family's experiences of WWII: both from internment camps and from the battlefield.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
js