TAKE NOTE: CHESTNUTS, ALONG WITH CHANTERELLES AND QUINCE, WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE SANTA ROSA ORIGINAL CERTIFIED FARMERS MARKET, THIS WEDNESDAY FROM 8:30 A.M. TO NOON.
“The chestnuts were a little late this year,” Jim McCrumb of Sonoma Coast Organic Produce says, explaining that the burs–those nearly-impossible-to-crack cupules, each of which can hold up to 7 chestnuts, that protect the nuts from squirrels and other critters–need rain to pop open.
Jim McCrumb and his partner Dave Passmore show up with their harvest of chestnuts sometime in October; this year, they came for the first time on the last weekend of the month. You’ll find them through Thanksgiving, unless enough chestnuts remain after the holiday, in which case they’ll be around for a few more weeks.
The chestnuts are sorted and priced by size; smaller ones are, obviously, more work and cost less than the larger, meatier nuts.
Chestnuts are nearing the end of their season but will be available this Wednesday.
McCrumb and Passmore have been farming on Creighton Ridge, about ten miles northwest of Cazadero, for 34 years. Retired now from forestry work, they farm chestnuts, Concord grapes and three types of figs and gather the golden chanterelles that they’ll bring to the market sometime in November. Currently, they have just chestnuts and quince but figs will be ready any time, provided the rain doesn’t split them open, as will grapes and the chanterelles.
McCrumb does some general maintenance and they also raise lambs and sell them directly from the farm. Their eighteen ewes produced just 15 lambs this year, only six of which survived.
“We have two llamas,” McCrumb explains, “but they are not as good at protecting the sheep from mountain lions and coyotes as Piper was.” Piper, also a llama, passed away a while ago.
They keep the female lambs and sell the males. They are sold out for the year.
McCrumb and Passmore are popular with both customers and vendors at the two farmers markets they attend. They are quite colorful in their own way, looking as much like roadies for, say, ZZ Top, as farmers. They have a charming, rustic warmth that is evident the moment you engage them in conversation. If there is something you don’t understand about chestnuts, don’t just walk away–ask!
Chanterelles from Sonoma Coast Organic Produce
Sonoma Coast Organic Produce, founded in the late 1970s by Jim McCrumb and Dave Passmore, attends the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market, located at 50 Mark West Springs Rd., on Saturdays and on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the Sebastopol Farmers Market, located at the corner of McKinley and Petaluma Avenues, on Sundays.
