April 5, 2012
Exactly one week ago on March 26, about 150 people descended onto the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin (just north of SF) for an OPENharvest food and art collective event. The Headlands hosted OPENharvest in a former gymnasium nestled within two hills. The space was filled with stories, artifacts and projections collected during […]
March 23, 2012
Remember when Yoko and I went to Japan last year with the OPEN crew? God, it seems like forever ago. We had so many rad, eye-opening opportunities, like rice harvesting in Niigata, visiting farms in Nagano and organizing a line of pop-ups on a busy street in Shibuya. Wow! Yoko and I will be reuniting […]
December 2, 2011
By Sasha Wizansky On October 27, a crew from OPENharvest woke up at 5am and headed up into the mountains, into Nagano prefecture, for a series of farm and producer visits. As usual we made a few pitstops along the way. Tal, head roaster of Four Barrel Coffee, experienced his first highway rest stop breakfast: […]
November 10, 2011
This is a short video by Tokyo-based photographer Nahoko Morimoto, which marvelously captures Yoko and my trip to Japan with the OPENharvest team. We spent three jam-packed weeks visiting farms, markets, taking brewery/distillery tours, and eating + drinking our way through Japan–all culminating in a huge event at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. I’m […]
November 9, 2011
Frostopia Farm. Saitama, Japan. Photo by Kelly Ishikawa, a San Francisco-based photographer and the co-owner of The Perish Trust.
October 27, 2011
The OPENharvest group visited the Hachisu residence in Kodama-gun in Saitama Prefecture. We enjoyed a Japanese farm food meal which included fresh edamame, natto, fall vegetable soup, ohitashi (blanched spinach) and mochi. After the meal, Harigaya-san and his troupe performed a shishimai (lion dance).
October 25, 2011
Last Wednesday, I went with the OPENharvest group to a rice farm in Uonuma, Niigata. We harvested one paddy of rice from cutting the rice plants to hanging them to dry on a rack. Rice farmer Satoshi Imai gave me the run down on why his rice is special and how he envisions the future […]
October 24, 2011
At 5am on a Thursday morning, groggy and jetlagged, 20 of us OPENharvest participants, with Food Light Project members piled into three vans headed for Niigata prefecture. As we drove through the quiet morning streets of Tokyo, we eagerly anticipated the adventures ahead. Three hours and several rest stops later, we made it to Uonuma, […]
September 22, 2011
PREFACE OPENeducation: Napa Valley Bee Company +++ My A-HA! moment during OPENeducation in Berkeley was when Bob Cannard asked me “Who was the last person that made noodles in your family?” When I became red-faced and unable to answer the question, he followed up with another: “Isn’t it time that you started taking up noodle-making […]
September 20, 2011
OPENeducation was a daytime event at the Berkeley Art Museum, and part of the Chez Panisse 40th Anniversary weekend. The event gathered 15 or so organizations creating an outdoor classroom, with kids and adults doing the educating, learning and eating. There was a lot to experience at the event. I surveyed the whole area with […]