Weekend Hippie: Sustainable and Simple Living

Local Larder: Where My Food Comes From ...

Uber Local: My mom's famous Apricot Jam, from my sister's apricots.  

Stephanie's eggs. Her flocks puts out beaufiul pieces of art.

You pick apricots and plums. Living vicariously.

Backyard Gardens: Everything's Coming Up!

 

In Support of Poultry: Organic Pasture Farmer

                                                                                                                                                                         Photo By Paul Wellman
In Support of Poultry

Katherine Anderson, organic pasture farmer; Blue Oak Ranch, Goleta

Featured Recipe: Brined Grilled Petit Poussins

A visit to Katherine Anderson’s Blue Oak Ranch is a lesson in dating. Her heritage turkeys took to me with a peck, a cluck, and a flirty strut. If I turned left, there they were. If I walked right, ditto. “They are full of energy at this age,” says Anderson of her flock, a form of Thanksgiving payday; she raises and processes each just in time for the holiday.

Anderson’s Blue Oak Ranch provides a local—and organic—alternative to factory-grown turkeys and chickens sold in super markets. Her six acres in the foothills of Goleta provide amble natural grazing for her chickens, turkeys, and goats. They roam freely or in moveable pens that allow constant access to fresh greens and fresh air—something industrial-raised chickens never see. She tends to her flock daily, moving the pens to a new patch of pasture, administering a high dose of tender loving care (instead of antibiotics) and tucking them in at night before she leaves for the day. 

Katie Rose Cannery: Pick, Wash, Cut, Cook, Can. Repeat.

                                                                                                                                                                                              Photo By Paul Wellman

Pick, Wash, Cut, Cook, Can. Repeat.

Katie Rose Isaacson, jam maker; Katie Rose Cannery, Lompoc

Featured Recipe: Apple Lemon Jam

After a lifetime of watching her mother make jams, chutneys, and pickles, Katie Rose Isaacson finally canned her first plums. That was a little more than a year ago, and now her Katie Rose Cannery is a fledgling adventure in preservation: that of both her family’s ranch history and delicious jams, fruit butters, jellies, and syrups. “As a child, I was often handed a wooden spoon and told to keep the jam from burning,” says Isaacson. “I’d stand on a chair, stirring bubbling pots of jam while my mother continued to peel and chop fruit.”

Today, her collection of old family recipes and her commitment to heirloom fruit is the foundation for her success. In summer and fall, she stocks up on ingredients from her grandparents’ ranch in the San Julian Valley. “I race the birds to save every last apple, plum, and persimmon,” she says. Katie Rose Cannery is steeped in tradition, and Isaacson’s core values include keeping it local. She sources organic sugar and jars through Isla Vista Food Co-Op and buys organic lemons from Calimoya in Goleta.

But most importantly, it’s her commitment to community that drives her passion for canning and preserving. “Around the holidays in our little valley, jars of jam appear on a doorstep or windowsill, each an original recipe from a neighbor who picked the fruit from their own tree and stood over a hot stove,” says Isaacson. “This is the craft and tradition that I want to bring to my customers.”