Posts Tagged ‘Agritourism’

Exploring Northern California’s hills and valleys by bus is only the beginning. We take participants right to the source of our local food chain: the farms and vineyards.  Our bus goes behind the gates and beyond the tractors to meet local farmers & vintners. Learn where their farm story began, how they see our local agriculture growing, and their role as a provider to our local communities and restaurants. We literally go from the farm to fork in our bus adventure.

Take advantage of our special farm and wine bus tour day this upcoming May 19th with discount savings on tour tickets.  For this date only, we are offering a special ticket price of $54 per adult ticket – a $15 savings per ticket!  Use promo code: FRESH to receive discount:  http://www.zerve.com/LocalRoots/Sierra

Our Sierra Foothill Farm & Wine Tour focuses on the Placer County area on the Sunday, May 19th bus tour route. We showcase Placer Grown farms and vineyards along a beautiful planned tour route.

Though subject to change, you can expect:

• Transportation from a central meeting location in our 14 passenger executive bus
• A 4 hour bus tour with 5 to 6 different stops
• A trained local guide ready to showcase farms, orchards, & vineyards
• An opportunity to shop at each stop
• A catered, 4 course gourmet lunch
• Local Roots Food Tours reusable shopping bag

Typical stops will be to a indoor farmers market/bakery, a local olive oil mandarin farm, 1 or 2 fresh berry patches/farms, 1 organic produce farm, 1 flower farm and 1 local vineyard with wine tastings. Shopping will be allowed on all stops and is highly encouraged!  Our bus tour is fully guided by our locally trained hosts who will delight you with stories and fun facts about the region. Each participant will be treated to a gourmet lunch, along with complimentary beverages.

Come along and enjoy the beauty of the rolling Sierra’s along with bountiful farms, spring flowers and delicious bites of our local bounty.  It will be a day you will always remember and the opportunity to connect to our local farmers and vintners.  Don’t forget to bring your cameras -  there will be some wonderful photo ops!   For further questions about our farm & wine tours please give us a call:  1-800-407-8918  or contact us via our email:  info@localrootsfoodtours.com

We tour all around different cities looking for what might be a winner and hot topic to talk about with our food tour participants.  Trying to stay ahead of the kitchen mallet as to what is trending compared to what is here to stay in the culinary arena has its perks and challenges.  Local Roots Food Tours has compiled their top finds on what you might experience in 2013 while on your “foodie adventures.”

Top 10 Culinary Trends For 2013:
1.  Chef’s behind closed curtains is a thing of the past.  2013 will continue to bring celebrity (as well as local chefs) front and center hosting special themed culinary events, symposiums and contribute to hands-on cooking classes.  No more hiding behind the frying pan – their talents and passion will continue to be exposed with many culinary events.  We are looking forward to seeing more of our local executive chefs come out and support Sacramento’s Farm to Fork Capital of America efforts by offering some pretty awesome cooking events in and out of their kitchens in 2013.

2.  Restaurant gardens – Whether it be in back alley gutters or a transformed back lot, gardens are popping up all over the nation.  Chefs cite many logical reasons why restaurant gardens are a good idea: cost, convenience, control, sustainability. The concept of in-house farming is hardly new and the trend has hit far and wide—there are countless restaurants tilling their own soil and planting the seeds for vegetables that will eventually appear on a customer’s plate.  A small farm adjacent to an eating establishment keeps that path from farm to table about as short as it can get.  One example we love is share is Mineral Restaurant in Murphys, CA.  Executive Chef Steve Rinauro and partner/co-owner Maya Rinauro have been busy planting, weeding, watering and harvesting their restaurant garden in 2012.  Their farm to table philosophy is lived vivaciously every day in their vegetarian menu.  For those restaurants who don’t have the option of a garden out their back door, buying plots of land in local farms creates a great option.  One local farm in Sacramento, Feeding Crane Farms offers such plots to local Sacramento chefs…..the next best thing to offer local farm ingredients.

3. Nordic food is out – Peruvian and Korean food is in for 2013.
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Many might wonder what actually defines; “Agritourism” Is it a trend or just a catch phrase that is becoming more and more prevalent in agricultural communities? Agritourism is widespread in America. Agritourists can choose from a wide range of activities that include picking fruits and vegetables, riding horses, tasting honey, learning about wine and cheesemaking, or shopping in farm gift shops and farm stands for local and regional produce or hand-crafted gifts. People have become more interested in how their food is produced. They want to meet farmers and processors and talk with them about what goes into food production. For many people who visit farms, especially children, the visit marks the first time they see the source of their food, be it a dairy cow, an ear of corn growing in a field, or an apple they can pick right off a tree.

Northern California is growing their Agritourism and several tour companies offer great options in the form of tours and events in which participants are taken directly to the farms, the cheesemakers, the winemakers and bakers. So many options to choose from……are you ready to go?

1. Local Roots Farm & Wine Tours in Sacramento Valley
http://www.localrootsfoodtours.com 1-800-407-8918
Sierra Foothills Farm & Wine Bus Tours take participants on a 4 hour bus journey through the beautiful hills and valleys of Placer County visiting local olive groves, mandarin orchards, organic farms, beautiful vineyards and an indoor produce market and bakery. The opportunity to meet passionate farmers and vintners on each tour stop. Tours include a gourmet lunch which includes farm to fork ingredients from placer county farms and wine tasting at local vineyard. Tours are offered Saturdays and Sundays year round. Custom group tours for private parties are offered 7 days a week.

2. Ag Venture Tours in Salinas Valley
http://www.agventuretours.com 831-761-8463
Van tours planned around the Monterey Bay Region stopping at several chosen organic farms in the prosperous Salinas Valley. Different tour options. Advanced ticketing required.

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The weather outside might look frightful, but the opportunity to explore is more than delightful with events being offered all around our communities. 

December is filled with many chances to go out and explore our hills, valleys and peaks.  Northern California is blessed with farms, vineyards, and the chance to shop locally.   Get out your calendars and plan for a few weekend road trips this December….it’s time to get up and get active!

5 Ways to Explore your Own Backyard:

1.  Twin Peaks Orchards Fruit Tasting Open House – Placer County  http://www.twinpeaksent.com/events.htm

Sunday, December 2nd -  11am – 3pm  Free admission.   Fruit tastings, u-pick mandarins & persimmons, brick-oven pizza, shopping, farmers market, hay rides, and so much more!  Fun for the entire family!

2.  Holidays in the Hills Toy Drive – Placer County Wine Trail http://www.placerwine.com/events.htm

December 8th & 9th:  11am – 5pm;  17 Participating Wineries – Free Tastings with Unwrapped Toy Donation.   Live music, food, Christmas shopping, carolers, chocolate tastings, vineyard tours…..lots of fun in beautiful settings.

Download – Holidays in the Hills Wine Trail Map

Download – Holidays in the Hills Activities List
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When you hear the term; “Culinary Tourism”, do you automatically think about cooking classes or busloads of hungry individuals being taken from one winemaker to the next all in a days’ time?  Luckily, today we are talking about a much broader scope.  You don’t have to be wealthy or retired to enjoy culinary delights and highlights while traveling, or better yet, even in your own town.

Click here to read more about culinary tourism in Sacramento

The heat has dissipated, the crops are being harvested and the crisp air leads foodies out and about exploring festivals and great food events in the Sacramento Region.  We have found several festivals and food entertainment to go check out.  Go Explore your bountiful Northern California food friendly region!
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Come out and visit your local farms and you will be able to buy some seasonal products from them. Featured farms are Steamboat Acres-Oganic pears, Fra…ncis Ranch- Organic Vegitables, Double M Farms-Free Range eggs, U-pick pears, Giacoma- Natural Honey, eggs, R. Kelley Farms- U-pick vegitables, Maggi’s Farm-pears, Ceccarelle Hood Ranch-pears

The mission of the Sacramento River Delta Grown Agri-Tourism Association is to promote agricultural sustainability and profitability of local farmers in the Sacramento River Delta area through agri-tourism and agri-education by providing public accessibility to local farms while enhancing the public’s awareness of production agriculture and the enjoyment of the rural farming experience.

Every summer, Outstanding in the Field hit the road to bring farm to table cooking back to the source.  Their mission is to re-connect diners to the land and the origins of their food, and to honor the local farmers and food artisans who cultivate it.  Owner Denevan and his crew of cooks, servers and coordinators travel all across America and beyond.  They host alfresco dinners at long tables in the middle of farm lands; whether it be a cornfield, pasture or vineyard, they set up a creative long table, chairs and all place settings.  Uniqueness at its finest!  Outstanding in the Field is a roving culinary adventure – literally a restaurant without walls.

Chefs from nearby restaurants in the area they are offering the dinners create dishes from local ingredients.  Just picked berries, organic greens, free-range meats and local wines just to get you started.  Wherever the location, the consistent theme of each dinner is to honor the people whose good work brings nourishment to the table.  It takes a lot of ingredients to make a farm dinner. Some of the more important ingredients are people.  Farmers work hard throughout the growing season, reap the harvest and take it to market for all of us to enjoy. Food artisans and chefs transform the harvest with creativity, respect for ingredients, attention to craft and a desire to give nourishment.  These are the people that make it all possible. These are the wonderful people who have dedicated their lives to work that benefits us all.  They grow, nurture, create, ferment, chop, boil, bake and plant their way into our lives.

The purpose of Outstanding in the Field events is to recognize these contributions to the table.  As the sun sets, guests grab plates, sit down and meet their table-mates.  While consuming their five-course meal with a local wine pairing the guests will be educated on where the food comes from and a chance to chat with new friends until the rooster crows!  This year Outstanding in the Field is putting on dinners in 30 states plus Canada and Europe.  For tickets, visit http://www.outstandinginthefield.com

Back by popular demand, the second annual Tour De Cluck: A Bicycle Chicken Coop Crawl offers the chicken lovers and chicken curious among us another opportunity to visit a variety of our fantastic Davis, CA community’s chicken coops. Saturday, May 14th!  This bicycle paean to poultry will benefit Davis Farm to School’s work to support local food in a healthy school environment.

The coops featured will be presented as a self-guided tour in neighborhood clusters (coop loops!) all with nearby access to Davis’s extensive network of bike paths and bike lanes. Timed to coincide with “May is Bike Month”, our cycling coop visitors will find roving bicycle support and some limited emergency repairs provided by “Davis Bicycles!”, so dust off that bike and ride!

In addition to the egg-cellent Chicken Coop Crawl, The Tour de Cluck will feature presentations by backyard poultry experts to inform your chicken decisions, from breed selection and feeding options to coop design and construction! Also returning, the hugely popular Tour de Cluck Art Exhibit and Silent Auction! Here you will find the chicken and farm-related art and other tantalizing items of your poultry and local agriculture dreams. In addition, it’s never too early to begin practicing your cluck, bawk and cockle-doodle-do for the Kick-off Clucking Exhibition. We suggest you begin forming your flock now.

For questions, comments or further information, contact info@tourdecluck.org or visit www.tourdecluck.org