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.

Even now, in early August, the morning air carries a chill more familiar to spring than high summer heat. Tomato vines hesitated. Peaches took their time. Only this week did the real warmth arrive—sunlight pressing into the ground, drawing out ripeness at last. In my family, this is jam season.

Oysters were a growth process for me. I’ve never been much for foods that require time to “learn to enjoy,” but summer parties on Nantucket often include bountiful trays of oysters and chilled shrimp, and nothing else. And if the evening stretches into a string of gatherings, there is often little else to eat. One night a friend laughed and said, “You’re really missing out on something delicious.”

This summer has been a season of light and abundance, a time when the land seems to glow from within. From the golden haze over vineyard rows to the bustle of the Saturday Farmers’ Market, I’ve been behind the camera capturing the faces, fields and kitchens that tell Healdsburg’s story...

The philosophy here is simple, though the execution is anything but. NewTree Ranch operates on permaculture principles and biodynamic practices, supported by renowned consultant Harold Hoven. Over the past decade, the land has been transformed.

"This is my 20th year photographing harvest—since 2005—and I still love this time," writes Liza Gershman. "I’ve spent nights with vineyard crews lit only by headlamps and moonlight, capturing the exact moment the fruit leaves the vine. My favorite moment is when the deepest darkness turns into light and the sky opens up. I rarely see sunrise outside of harvest. There’s a reverence to it. A rhythm. A knowing..."

"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..."

My family’s tradition is the bûche de Noël. A Christmas log. It arrives on an antique silver platter, dusted lightly with powdered sugar for snow, as if it has just been lifted from the forest floor.