​We've consistently maintained that the best way to understand where your food comes from and to know what it is you are eating is to get to know your local farmers. Making that connection isn't difficult -- head to your local market and say hi, ask questions, develop relationships -- but it does require a little personal investment of time and interest. In our "there's an app for that" world, expediency often wins out over meaningful humantistic connections. So the California Agricultural Communications Coalition has come to your rescue with knowacaliforniafarmer.com, a website that allows you to forgoe the gooey mess of developing relationships and ostensibly get a better understanding of California farmers via a slew of catalogued video interviews.

It's a great idea, one we've been wanting for some time -- more on this in a minute -- to help us better put faces to fields. But it doesn't take much to sense the marketing machine churning in the background.

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LA Farm Girl/Judi Gerber

Iceland poppies for sale last year at the Tom T. Ishibashi farm stand in Torrance.

​Writing about the closure of a farm within city limits has echoes of microfiche readings from the 1920s when L.A. invented the suburbia that swallowed up our giant orange groves. One farm -- the Tom T. Ishibashi Farm in Torrance -- had managed to survive the evolution from rural to urban until now, and has the sad distinction of being the last in a long string of farms in an urban area that have ceased to be.

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Jgarbee

Pupusas + a portable griddle

​Tired of ho-hum sack lunches? Time to talk to Sotera Jaime about her work-week pupusa plan of action. The cherubic abuela of Jaime Farms knows when to pull out that trusty electric burner at the office.

Jaime makes sporadic appearances at her family's vegetable stand at the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers Market, where she is known for spooning out make-ahead dishes like puerco con chile negro, which she reheats for stand workers and friends. But she also knows there isn't always time for a long pre-lunch simmer on weeknights.

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Felicia Friesema

Small farm avocado orchard in Ventura County

​The hustle and crowds of your local markets -- not to mention the hurly-burly nature of weigh-and-pay customer service -- can sometimes prohibit friendly catch-up and Q&A with your favorite local farmers. Touching base with them at the California Small Farms Conference (CSFC) Tasting Reception on March 4 at the Valencia Hyatt probably will be only a little less crowded, but it will at least be flavored with the seasonally driven cuisine of Paul Osher (Bean and Thyme), Adrien Nieto (Master Chef, season 2) and Tim Kilcoyne (Sidecar Restaurant).

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J.Garbee

Kinny Jung At Work With His Hellfighters Hard Hat

​Sure, your local farmer's market is a great place to find produce. But it can also be a great place to find a circa 1968 hard hat from the John Wayne movie Hellfighters. "Yeah, I collect quirky things," said Kinny Jung, whom you'll often find working behind Weiser Farms' stand at the Wednesday and Saturday Santa Monica Farmers Markets (Arizona Street) wearing the aluminum hat.

Hey, if we had a hat with John Wayne creds, we'd wear it to work, too. "I've also got rusty metal bedsprings from Prince's [1980 album] Bedsprings, barnyard art like rusty old wood chairs... lots of rusty metal things," he continues. More on that rust obsession in a bit. First, Jung's mashed potato tips.

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flickr user thomitheos

An Apple-Filled Backyard

​Most farmers market discoveries tend to involve a new way cook those black trumpet mushrooms or choose a Crenshaw melon. But some days, you just get lucky. Or perhaps it was our discussion with a few farmers about spaders (a device that tills the soil) that got us to this gem: Trees of Antiquity nursery in Paso Robles.

If like us, you've never heard of Trees of Antiquity, you've probably unknowingly picked up a pint of their Misty Southern Highbush blueberries or had a Chojuro 1889 Asian pear salad for lunch somewhere. The organic nursery, originally known as Sonoma Antique Apple Nursery (they still sell more than 100 varieties of apple seedlings), supplies numerous farmers with seedlings for heirloom fruit trees and bushes. Lucky for us, their seedlings are also available retail, and January happens to be the beginning of the nursery's seedling shipping season.

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jgarbee

Pears At The Santa Monica Farmers Market

​Unless you happen to man a soda stand at Disneyland, the side effects of 2012 being a leap year probably aren't tops on your back-to-work frustration list (For the Mickey Mouse lollipop obsessed: The theme park is staying open 24 hours on February 29). And for many farmers who sell their produce at area markets, February 29, which falls on a Wednesday, actually comes with a bonus -- an extra day of kale sales.

But as we learned while exchanging New Year's well wishes at the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers Market, leap year also has some bitter green side effects this year. "Oh, no, Mark, I just realized that 2012 is a leap year," Maryann Carpenter of Coastal Organics announced gravely to her son, Mark. Carpenter was thinking ahead to next Christmas and New Year's Day. Due to the leap year, they both fall on a Tuesday.

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backwardsbeekeepers.com

Backyard Bee Supporters

​It's great DYI canning and preserving is back in full force, but this year we've been more focused on the original preservers: honeybees. And so in honor of the humble bees and beekeepers who have served us so dutifully -- in countless cups of tea, in baked goods, drizzled on just about everything -- we offer our reflections on The Year in Honey.

Why honey? Much as we love the tart bite of just-made jam, we appreciate honey's maturity. And we're enamored by the thousands of bees, and thousands of hours, that go into making that jar. It's also been a roller-coaster year for honey. And besides, The Year in Honey sounds like something from Chinese astrology. In Zodiac terms, 2011 was technically the year of the rabbit.

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Beekeeper Brent Edelen

grampashoney.com

​Brent Edelen, a sixth generation raw honey producer in Alamosa, Colorado, makes some of the best honeys we've ever tasted. Like grass-fed beef, you can literally taste the terroir in the honey that Edelen makes under the Grampa's Gourmet label.

In part, that's because right about now he's packing up his beloved bees and driving them to warmer climates. In New Mexico, they'll feast on tamarisk blossoms; in Texas, mesquite blossoms when he can find them.

For longer treks -- like this Spring, when he'll cart the bees to California -- Edelen flies his bees on a prop plane. Not a bad ride: You can follow Edelen's grungy motel room and mesquite blossom reflections as he treks across states with his bees on his blog.

There is more to the story, of course, as Edelen subscribes to the raw side of the honey equation, among other things. Turn the page.

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jgarbee

Bill Spencer Checking On His Tomatoes and Jalapeños

​We could simply say that Bill Spencer is not the type to take the air-drying easy route to preserving the organic tomatoes and jalapeños that he and his wife, Barbara, grow on their Paso Robles farm all summer. And that they're fantastic, particularly those chipotles that the Spencers added to Windrose Farm's Wednesday Santa Monica lineup this fall. All true.

But we know that Bill would be disappointed if we didn't tell it like it really is. "People ask us why we don't sun-dry our tomatoes and jalapeños," he says, tossing almond wood branches into the brick smoker's giant side fire box (more of a fire "hut" than a box). "I tell them that with our variant temperatures here on the farm, all we'd do is grow maggots."

Hey, whatever drives Bill to spend so much time on these little gems. He makes some of the best smoked tomatoes we've ever tasted and even better meaty chipotles. What makes them so good?

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