Jessica was going to write this Slow Food Nation Monday blog, but she had a delayed flight back to SF after doing a little summering in Michigan (which she’d like you to know is the “cherry pie capital of the world”). So I’m here—a bit last minute—to give yet another little shout out to SF-based Alemany Farm. The bounty of the farm is gracing one of our August covers right now. (We did two covers this month because we’re crazy like that.) You can read about Alemany Farm farmer Jason Mark in this issue and you can even see me doing a little video tour.


John Lee prepares to shoot some of Alemany Farm's lettuces.

Above is a snapshot of photographer John Lee preparing our photo shoot. If my last Slow Food blog was about ‘from the earth to the (restaurant) table,’ this is an example of ‘from the earth to the camera.’ In a day when most photographers work digitally (meaning there’s a laptop at the shoot and you get to see the images as you produce them), John decided to go old-school and shoot this cover with film. So this is a ‘slow photo’ too.

For the image, we took an old board and did some different still lifes: First with beautiful lettuces, roots on and all (which is what you see here), and then I took a handful of the farm’s carrots that I pulled from the ground, making sure the dirty was still clinging to them, plus yellow wax beans and summer squash, and arranged them simply and graphically. The latter is what made the cover and I have to say—rather immodestly—I think it’s really beautiful.


The August issue cover.

On Sunday, August 31 and Monday, September 1, Alemany Farm is pairing up with Laïola restaurant as part of Slow Food Nation’s very cool series of Slow Dinners. Click here to read more or call Laïola to make reservations (415-346-5641). Better yet, sign up to volunteer at Alemany Farm. After a day of hardwork, volunteers are sent home with some of the farm’s produce, which is pretty great payback.