The Cove Cafe garden at Camp Reynolds is growing strong. With the rain finally subsiding we were able to get tomatoes, basil, squash, cucumbers and peppers in the ground. Our enclosed garden space behind the bake house at Camp Reynolds supplies the cafe with organic produce for the summer. Check out the special board for specials from the garden.

The Cove Cafe garden at Camp Reynolds got off to a slow start because of all the rain early in the season but we are back on track. This year we are growing lots of things for our Cove Salad: tomatoes, green onions, cucumbers and of course lots and lots of organic lettuces.

The cheese selection at Cowgirl Creamery is a treat on any occasion and now a selection of local organic cheese can be part of  your next special event on Angel Island. The Angel Island Company has recently taken all of the special event menus “up a notch or two” and the Cowgirl Creamery cheese platter  is part of our renewed focus on locally produced food. Cowgirl Creamery has been producing cheese from organic cow’s milk from Strauss dairy in Point Reyes California since 1997.  We always include tasty spreads and dips along with organic olive oil crackers. Think you can’t get great food on an island—think again! The Angel Island Company special event menus feature the best of the bay area and made from scratch items featuring produce from our very own organic garden. Have a party on an island and let us do the cooking!

Angel Island is a place of so much history and beauty and one of the things that’s always intrigued me is the garden plots on Angel Island that were used by Alcatraz prison as a source of fresh produce, since there was insufficient soils on Alcatraz for any sort of agriculture.   The first “Alcatraz Garden” was located at the present site of Camp Reynolds. In later years Alcatraz Gardens moved to the south side of Angel Island, where military prisoners from Alcatraz were brought over by steamer to work in the gardens. In 1876 the cultivated area was described as being twelve acres in size and “roughly fenced”. It was worked by a detail of four men. In the dry season water was furnished by a damned pond in one of the ravines above the garden site. These gardens not only furnished fresh produced for Alcatraz but vegetables were also sold to other military installations around the bay and on occasion to markets in San Francisco. The gardens remained in production until Alcatraz became a federal penitentiary in 1934. Potatoes, Green Beans, Tomatoes, Onions, Lettuc, Carrots, Beets and wild flowers are some of the crops known to have been grown on the island. This year the cafe began working an abandoned garden plot at Camp Reynolds, planting and cultivating the original Alcatraz Garden crops. The garden is 100 percent organic andwith a little help from Teddy Giacommini’s awesome organic cow poop our garden is thriving. We hope to be able to harvest our first salad crop in a month or so. Look for it on the special board in the cafe.