The Saturday Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market has a new vendor that I am very excited about. Marin Roots Farm is one of my favorite farm booths whenever I attend the San Rafael Civic Center market and I was really pleased to see them show up at the FPFM a few weeks ago. "How long have you been here?" I asked the farmer, Jesse Kuhn, thinking that I'd been missing them for weeks. "About 6 hours," he replied.

The Marin Roots Farm booth is a thing of beauty. The farm specializes in lettuces, leafy greens and root vegetables. It's typical to find many varieties of lettuces and there is no other booth in the market where I have to ask "what's this?" as often as at Marin Roots Farm. Which is a good thing -- it's fun to take home a bag of new greens to try. Because of Marin Roots Farm, I have started to use chickweed, a nutty green that I often toss into a dish raw or put on a sandwich, and ancho cress, a spicy green that can be eaten raw.

Marin Roots Farm is a 10-acre certified organic farm west of Petaluma. The farmer, Jesse Kuhn, leases a piece of land on a 250-acre dairy farm. His farm is located between several large farming operations -- backs up to a 1100-acre cattle ranch. Marin Roots Farm is a relatively young farm, as it's been in existence for four years. Kuhn didn't have to put the farm through a transitional phase (required when transitioning conventionally-worked land to organic) which can take up to three years. Because the land before Kuhn arrived was pretty pristine, and it was allowed to move through organic certification quickly.

Kuhn knew that he was interested in farming and went to school for it and spent some time working on other farms. He leased the Petaluma property because of the size, the quality of the land, and its proximity to a good water source. The hardest part about starting up the farm, he said, was the unknown of giving up his full-time landscaping job and leaping to a job without guaranteed income. Fortunately, a USDA loan came through "just when I needed it most." He currently has 5 people working with him in the field, and a couple of people working at farmers' markets.

Kuhn has just leased an additional piece of land near Tomales, and is growing garlic, shallots and onion to begin with.

Kuhn is excited to be at the Ferry Plaza Market and said that it was "instantly our best market." Aside from finding Marin Roots products at the farmers' market, you can also eat their vegetables around the city at restaurants including Foreign Cinema, Market Bar, 1550 Hyde, Zuni Cafe, and Greens.

You can find the Marin Roots Farm booth in the front portion of the Ferry Building, on the south side near the (secret) Blue Bottle Coffee booth that is located in the arcade.

Huckleberry Potatoes, Little Organic Farm

Open many books about fresh vegetables and you will find a section in which the author laments about the commonality of the term "new potatoes." We've all seen new potatoes referred to on menus and in supermarkets across the country, but the truth is that what we find are rarely true new potatoes.

"Real new potatoes are harvested from the plant's trailing underground roots while the plant is still growing. They tend to be small and their skins are thin and flaky. They are prized for their fine, delicate flavor, so if you find them -- usually when the first early summer crop is still weeks from harvest ... nab them. I've never seen them sold anywhere but at the farmers' markets and roadside stands, but they may start appearing in specialty markets."

-- Jeff Cox, The Organic Cook's Bible

I smiled this week as I read in the CUESA Newsletter that Little Organic Farm would be returning to the market for a new season. Dave Little farms in Marin County and brings some of the best potatoes you'll ever have to our Bay Area Farmers' Markets. I buy his potatoes from the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market or the Sunday San Rafael market.

Dave Little in his field, Tomales, Ca

"This year's crop looks really good. The taste is going to be very good, though the drier spring may mean lower yields," says Dave Little about his potatoes. Little Organic Farm practices dry farming, a method of growing in which the farmer plants in wet soil and then does not typically add additional water to the crop as it grows. When potatoes are grown this way, the resultant product is a potato that is high in sugar content and wonderfully flavored. The potatoes have a lower water content and therefore a higher concentration of potato flavor. The trade-off is a very low crop yield. "Farmers who water their crops get a yield of 30,000 to 40,000 pounds of potatoes per acre. We're lucky to get 10,000 pounds," said Dave Little in a phone interview.

Bay Area chefs also love the flavor of Little's potatoes. Range, MarketBar, and Greens are among restaurants that buy Little Organic Farm potatoes for their menus.

All of this potato goodness is made even better when you can buy new potatoes that have been freshly dug. The potatoes that Little had at the market this weekend had been hand dug on Friday and obviously had never been put into storage. If you get a chance to taste them, you will quickly understand why these potatoes are so prized among those of us who seek out new potatoes.

Warm Potato Salad with Bacon

To celebrate the new potato harvest and in honor of the Fourth of July, I made a warm potato salad with bacon that was inspired by a recipe in this month's Gourmet magazine. The recipe seems to be very forgiving to changes. First of all, use your judgment with their suggested cooking time. I found 30 minutes to be too long, and pulled the potatoes out after about 20 minutes. While I followed the general idea of the recipe, I added shallots into the vinegar and tossed them with the warm potatoes because I didn't have chives. Then to add a bit of green in at the end, I chopped up some Ancho Cress -- a spicy green that I picked up this weekend from Marin Roots Farm.

The result was delicious, and a great way to show off the amazing flavor of new potatoes.