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Follow the foragers: A chefs’ tour of Yolo County farms The sun glares through the window of our pickup truck bouncing down a Yolo County access road, the summer heat shimmering up from the pavement. Farms of every variety stretch to the horizon, from rows of almond, olive and fruit trees to seas of sunflowers, tangles of vegetable gardens and the occasional vineyard. Amid this cornucopia of produce, chef Avery Struthers, riding in the backseat, has an idea. Cole Ogando, owner of Preserve restaurant in nearby Winters, doing the driving, nods. When I opened up Preserve with my wife, Sara, in 2011, the name wasn’t just about my grandmother’s recipe for jalapeño jelly, it was about preserving a way of life here, preserving the knowledge and the skills for us and for our kids. The center is a farming education and incubation program, providing land and knowledge for startups like Green Almond. Ogando, Struthers and I joined them picking peppers, tasting them as we went, sort of like Laverne and Shirley pulling beers off the assembly line. Co-owner Lola Quasebarth, who studied sustainable agriculture at UC Davis, said growing food is her passion, “and it has to be, for the time we spend out here crawling around.” “It’s good for us to get out here, talk to the farmers, walk the fields,” says Ogando. The Center for Land-Based Learning’s fields for educating and incubating aspiring farmers. Home of Preserve supplier Green Almond Farm. What I’m trying to do here is something sustainable from a human perspective, from an ecosystem perspective, and yeah, economically as well — there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to make a decent middle-class living as a farmer. After a modest 2½-acre land purchase, and six years with “a lot of trial and error and maxing out five credit cards,” Hay now has a working, profitable business supplying Bay Area restaurants and farmers’ markets with organic produce. Certified organic farm with produce available at Bay Area farmers’ markets at Grand Lake in Oakland (Saturday), Stonestown Galleria in San Francisco (Sunday) and Civic Center San Rafael (Thursday). The small, cracked wooden sign nailed to a roadside tree simply reads “Quail.” Pulling up to a reconstructed 1926 classic Spanish Mission-style mansion, we see another small sign: a coat of arms painted on the front of the house with a quail within an upside-down horseshoe. Brent Wolfe is indeed the king of quail. Since 1983, he has been raising quail, now supplying his large, tender birds to restaurants like Chez Panisse, Cotogna and Oliveto and a flock of other restaurants. “I’m no scientist,” he says as we walk past a dozen quail enclosures. A couple thousand birds kick up dust and peck at seeds in a long warehouse-style barn. The members of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation may have gained fame for their Cache Creek Casino, but they’re also in the olive oil business. If anyone has claim to longtime roots in Yolo County, it’s this American Indian tribe. The Seka (“blue”) Hills Olive Mill grows their product on 82 of the 14,000 acres of land the tribe owns, using the latest sustainable farming practices. The production rooms feature industrial-size pressing machines, and centrifuges connect via shining pipes to three-story-tall steel tanks storing some of the 50,000 gallons of olive oil Seka Hills produces annually. In the front of the Seka Hills building, a stylish tasting room welcomes guests for samples of olive oils, honeys, wines and a series of events. The chefs at Preserve use Seka Hills’ olive oils to accent dishes and salads, an important part of the restaurant’s flavor profile. At the end of a long, hot day touring farms, there’s nothing quite like a cool adult beverage. The family-owned Berryessa Brewing Co.