Farm Tour

Another photo-heavy post.

Veggielution took our act on the road this morning, visiting Fat Cabbage Farm, Coastways Ranch and Pie Ranch. It was a great day, and we found real kindred spirits Coastside.

We all made it over the hill to Fat Cabbage, located just outside of Butano State Park. Brian met us there

and showed us their 2 acres of land.

Brian, Miranda and Paul do all of the work themselves. All of it. We feel incredibly blessed with Veggielution’s huge base of volunteer support. The farm is in such a beautiful setting, but there is something to be said for being in the middle of a city of a million people. Brian is really a kindred spirit, and we all want to stay in touch. He gave us many useful tips for our planting, and for packing vegetables, weeding, you name it.

Then we went to Coastways, where we were disappointed that ollalieberry season had ended last weekend. But several people picked beautiful strawberries. Swanton has taken over the running of the u-pick operations there, and there are fields and fields of strawberries.

The beds are built up very high here, making strawberry picking slightly less back-breaking that usual.

Then we went to Pie Ranch, where Jared was leading their own volunteers in hand-harvesting wheat!

Amber waves of grain! We want to grow wheat at Veggielution, harder red wheat suitable for making bread. Pie Ranch grows Sonora wheat, which is a historic variety here in California, and a softer, low-protein wheat, suitable for pie crusts and other pastries.

We cut the straw with hand sickles, tied it into sheaves with twine, then stacked them into shocks.

The farm is now home to Adelaide, a sweet Jersey cow.

We talked to Jared about their youth program, which is very similar to what we want to do. Pie Ranch has a farm stand, but the majority of the food they grow is intended for their educational component, which always includes meals gathered and cooked at the farm. I would love an outdoor kitchen like theirs. I left with a pie and 10 lbs of flour; next time I get flour, maybe it will be from wheat that I harvested.

It was a great day (although tiring) and we made some great connections.