Farm + Market

Healdsburg is full of food secrets. Someone knows who has the best mulberries (the word on the street is Preston and Millbrook Farms). Someone else swears by the broccoli at Noble Goat. There’s a bee person everyone keeps telling me I have to meet—and a seed guy, too.

"Every year on the Thursday before Memorial Day, the streets of Healdsburg fill with music and marching bands, vintage tractors and streamers, and the laughter of the Twilight Parade," writes Liza Gershman in her bi-weekly "Harvest" column. "This is the rhythm of small-town summer: unhurried, joyful, deeply familiar..."

We're looking for dishes that reflect local flavor and personal history. Maybe it’s your famous strawberry tart. Your go-to pea risotto. The green garlic pasta you only make in May. You don’t have to be a professional chef. Just use at least one ingredient from the Healdsburg Certified Farmers’ Market, and let the season be your muse.

"There’s a rhythm to it all: the harvest, the heat, the soft plunk of fruit into baskets and the bubbling whisper of molten strawberries on the stove, " writes columnist Liza Gershman. She goes on explain that the gift of the 'Farm + Market: Healdsburg' book she's working on is in the people she's meeting, the friends reconnected with, and the beauty of walking through gardens, farms, ranches..."

At the Healdsburg Certified Farmers’ Market, strawberries are reaching their peak sweetness, their scent lingering in the air before they are even visible in the stalls. Spring onions and green garlic are tender, fava beans are shelled by the pound and sugar snap peas—the kind of bright green that seems to be omnipresent in my life lately—offer that crisp, wet-mouth crunch that makes them an irresistible snack...

'There’s a magic hour on Saturday mornings when the sun hasn’t quite burned through the morning mist and the scent of basil floats on the breeze. It’s in that moment—coffee in one hand, tote bag in the other—that Healdsburg wakes up..." Meet our new columnist, Liza Gershman.