It's Friday. Let's go to the farmers' market. Plus, mask mandates are coming back. |
 | | Jose Gallardo, left, bagging strawberries for customers at the Saturday farmers' market in Midtown Sacramento.Shawn Hubler/The New York Times |
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Fed up with bad news, I went the other day to the farmers' market, one of my favorite places in Sacramento. Sweet cherries were in season, for now. |
"Eight weeks," Missy Gotelli told me as shoppers jostled around bins of Bings, Rainiers and Brookses from her Gotelli Farms in Lodi. "We typically start in late April and end in late June. Forty-one markets a week. In, out, done." |
Under his pop-up tent, Jose Gallardo offered Albion and Monterey strawberries, also fleeting. Each week, in the morning dark, he loads up in Watsonville and Salinas and drives some 175 miles to my local market, sleeping with his haul of berries and kale, cauliflower and broccoli in his Gallardo Organic Farms van. |
"Albion is more sweet," he instructed, holding up a deep red one. "In March, it is cold and raining and the plant is sleeping. But in June — ooh, a lot of berries. Sweetest is this color. Some people don't like the green tops, but me? I eat everything." |
 | | Gotelli Farms cherries from Lodi at the Saturday farmers' market in Midtown Sacramento.Shawn Hubler/The New York Times |
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There are some 700 certified farmers' markets in the state, so many that it is easy to forget that as recently as the mid-1970s, farmers' markets were on their way out in California. Common in the 1930s, they were all but wiped out in the 1950s and '60s by the regulations that helped make California agriculture a phenomenon worldwide. |
Sorting, packing, transportation and sales were so thoroughly geared to the mass market that it was all but impossible for farmers to bypass wholesale distributors and packing houses. Small growers were sacrificing much of their profit margins. Tree fruit was going to waste by the ton because it could not be sold unless it conformed to strict standards governing its size, color and ripeness, the better for shipping and supermarket display. |
That changed in the 1970s as small farmers, consumer activists and anti-hunger organizations lobbied to move agricultural policy, even if only a little, at the federal level and in California. The state's Direct Marketing Act of 1978 — signed by Jerry Brown, then in his first stint as governor — was a tipping point as public opinion shifted. Farmers' markets took root from San Francisco to Santa Monica. |
"It was a two-year conversation with the agriculture industry," Ann M. Evans, a former mayor of Davis who worked at the time for the Brown administration, recently told me. "Even though it sounds obvious now." |
That long conversation — and all that it altered — isn't top of mind for the crowds who flock on Saturdays to my usual midtown market, jamming the stalls and food trucks even if Covid has not passed. |
 | | Artisan bread from Camina Bakery in Chico at the Saturday farmers' market in midtown Sacramento.Shawn Hubler/The New York Times |
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They're there for the heirloom tomatoes Juan Islas hauls up from Jacobs Farm in Los Banos and for Eliana Carter's apricots and walnuts from Winters Fruit Tree. They're there for Bobby Mull's Zeal kombucha, fresh from the cooler. They're there for the artisan bread that Kenneth Curran and Tatton White bring down from their Camina Bakery in Chico — loaves so fragrant and fresh and steeped in the lineage of Northern California's artisanal food movement that I've seen people tear into them with their bare hands right there on the sidewalk. |
But the back story is there, too, humming behind the scenes like good news in a bad time: Things can change, it says, and a small change can make a big difference. |
And in the meantime, sweet cherries are in season in California, people. Get 'em while they last. |
- Summer is prime time for farmers' markets in California. Email us at CAtoday@nytimes.com with your favorite markets, vendors and agricultural memories.
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We want to hear from you. |
 | | Matt Chinworth |
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If you read one story, make it this |
"Every time I type the word 'Hollywood,' I feel a twinge of anachronism, as if I were speaking a dead language or writing about a country in the process of being erased from the map," writes my colleague A.O. Scott, The New York Times's co-chief film critic. In a timely analysis that is powerful all the way to the last line, he asks whether Americans can still unite around the movies in these divided times. |
 | | A kayaker fished in Lake Oroville last summer, when water levels were low because of drought conditions. The lake is the second largest reservoir in California, and is home to the Edward Hyatt power plant.Ethan Swope/Associated Press |
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- Hydropower: Electricity generation from California's hydropower dams could be cut in half this summer, Grist reports.
- Renewable energy: The Biden administration will halve the amount it charges companies to build wind and solar projects on federal lands, a move intended to encourage development of renewable energy.
- Reformers curbed: In a decision prompted by progressive district attorney policies, a California appeals court ruled that prosecutors must follow the state's three-strikes law, though they can still seek dismissal of strikes "in the interests of justice," The San Francisco Chronicle reports.
- Gun settlement: The California Highway Patrol has agreed to pay nearly $4 million to settle a lawsuit that blamed the agency after a patrol officer used his service firearm to kill his estranged wife, wound her lover and then kill himself in 2018, The Associated Press reports.
- Mentally ill inmates: In four years, one mentally ill prison inmate was transferred 39 times, until the pandemic hit and the movement stopped. Seven months later, he was dead, CalMatters reports.
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- Covid surging: Indoor mask mandates could return this month in Los Angeles County if hospitalizations continue to rise, The Los Angeles Times reports.
- Declared innocent: A Compton man who spent 21 years in prison for a gang murder he said he didn't commit has been declared factually innocent, The Associated Press reports.
- Saddleback succession: The Rev. Rick Warren, who ministers to a global audience of more than 40,000 people and has offered spiritual guidance to multiple American presidents, said the Rev. Andy Wood of Echo Church in San Jose will take over at Saddleback Church when he retires this fall, The Orange County Register reports.
- Basketball billionaire: LeBron James of the Lakers is officially the first active N.B.A. player to make the Forbes list of billionaires, Forbes reports.
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- Methane leaks: More than 20 oil wells have been found to be leaking methane in or near two Bakersfield neighborhoods, and more than two dozen are being tested by state and regional air regulators, The Desert Sun reports.
- God's Bath: A San Jose man who disappeared last month in a Sierra Nevada river after jumping into the Stanislaus National Forest swimming hole known as God's Bath has been found dead, Mother Lode News reports.
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- Masks return: Alameda County is again requiring masks in most indoor public settings, as rising coronavirus cases drive a concerning increase in hospitalizations, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.
- Wake and quake: A magnitude 4.1 earthquake shook the Bay Area before sunrise Thursday, rattling homes and waking many residents, SFGate reports.
- Pride compromise: A contingent of San Francisco police officers will march after all in the city's Pride parade this month, KRON reports.
- Warriors vs. Celtics: Boston stunned the Golden State Warriors, taking the opening game of the N.B.A. Finals, 120-108, with a late-breaking comeback.
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 | | Andrew Purcell for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. |
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 | | Hikers looking up at a large redwood on the James Irvine Trail in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.Zach Urness/Statesman-Journal, via Associated Press |
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"The redwood parks are like heaven on earth, but Prairie Creek is the favorite — with Fern Canyon the best feature. Just watch out for the wild Roosevelt elk that the park call home. Be respectful and keep your distance." |
Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We'll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter. |
On "The Daily," we expanded on our California Today interview this week with Dr. Garen Wintemute, a gun violence policy researcher at the University of California, Davis Medical Center, who has found that California's approach to gun laws is making more of a difference than many Americans realize. |
 | | Vice President Kamala Harris spoke alongside Miguel Cardona, the education secretary, about Corinthian Colleges student loan forgiveness on Thursday.Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images |
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And before you go, some good news |
In its largest student loan forgiveness action ever, the Education Department has said it will wipe out $5.8 billion owed by 560,000 borrowers who attended Corinthian Colleges, which was one of the nation's biggest for-profit college chains before it collapsed in 2015. |
The payout is the culmination of a decade-long legal battle by the California Department of Justice, started by Vice President Kamala Harris when she was the state's attorney general, to hold the chain accountable for predatory practices that saddled thousands of low-income students with crippling student loan debt. |
Thanks for reading. We'll be back on Monday. |
Soumya Karlamangla and Mariel Wamsley contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at CAtoday@nytimes.com. |
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