There’s a baaaaaaaad-ass antidote to the heat wave that’s been stalking Santa Cruz: sheep’s milk popsicles by Garden Variety Cheese, available at Downtown Santa Cruz Farmers Market 1-6pm Wednesdays.
GVC owner-operator Rebecca King reports the pops have gone from nice treat to non-negotiable necessity.
Flavors include strawberry, vanilla-maple and orange.
Those are on offer alongside year-round cheeses like the mild, buttery and fruity Black Eyed Susan and seasonal cheeses like a young, sharp Tomme-style sheep cheese that’s washed with juice from Santa Cruz Cider Company, which brings post-press apple pulp to King’s pigs.
Local cheese is on my mind after something unprecedented happened last month: I tapped out on great cheese. Such was the intensity, diversity, depth and deliciousness of the goods on hand at the ninth annual San Francisco Cheese Festival at the Ferry Building Marketplace.
The event didn’t include any Santa Cruz makers, but it did flex a lot of incredible producers with Surf City presences at places like Shopper’s Corner, Staff of Life and New Leaf (see below)—Cypress Grove, Stepladder Creamery, Clover Sonoma, Cowgirl Creamery, Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co. among them.
It did remind me that Garden Variety Cheese is the rare area purveyor. (Schoch Cheese of Salinas would be another.)
Next week marks Garden Variety’s Fall Open House (1481 San Miguel Canyon Rd., Royal Oaks) noon-4pm Saturday, Oct. 19.
The interactive afternoon (free, $10 parking) includes tours of the milking parlor and creamery, cheese tasting, sandwiches, salads and snacks for sale featuring their Monkeyflower Ranch meats and GV cheeses, plus beer and wine, and BYO picnicking is also welcome. (Meat, cheese, yogurt and eggs will also be on sale, so a cooler is advisable.) Pop-up tie-dye T-shirt action too, with logo shirts for $25, tie-dye ink included. gardenvarietycheese.com
GREEN GROWTH
New Leaf Community Markets’ downtown Santa Cruz location closes Oct. 15, after nearly two decades at 1134 Pacific Ave. The plan from there is to reopen in a larger space at Gateway Plaza on River Street in 2025. The new location will allow NLCM—which first hatched in 1985 as Westside Community Market, a modest natural foods shop—to offer a wider range of prepared foods, organic products, and bigger produce, meat, and seafood sections. Meanwhile, the New Leaf branch in Capitola will be moving to a larger location in the King’s Plaza Shopping Center on 41st Avenue, in the former Lucky Supermarket.
SPEED SLICES
Open Farm Tours, a Community Alliance with Family Farmers collaboration, swoops through 13 organic family-owned farms this weekend, Oct. 12-13, with activities like apple juicing, olive curing and U-picks, openfarmtours.com…More openness awaits: The Arts Council Santa Cruz County Open Studios Art Tour taps painters, sculptors, ceramicists, photographers, printmakers, glass blowers, jewelry designers and more—18 artistic mediums—and 300-plus artists for self-guided visits Oct. 12-13 (for South County artists, SC Yacht Harbor and below) and Oct. 19-20 (all county), santacruzopenstudios.com…UC Santa Cruz Farm’s 2024 Harvest Festival plugs in live music, an apple pie bake-off, kids’ activities, a pumpkin patch, delicious food, and more 11:30am-2pm Oct. 19 ($5, free/under 12 and students with ID), calendar.ucsc.edu/event/harvest-festival…El Pájaro Community Development Corporation (El Pájaro CDC, 412 E. Riverside Drive, Watsonville) celebrates its 45th Anniversary with a Tacos & Tapas Fundraising Party, 6-9pm Oct. 17 ($75), with an insane lineup of businesses prepping food to go with local beer, wine and cider, elpajarocdc.org.
