Road trip! Part 4

So I must confess: none of the pictures were taken by me. I never actually get around to taking pictures. But Aunt Judy does. So all of the pictures on the road trip blogs? They came from her. And on Thursday, I went to visit Chaffin Family Orchards in Oroville, CA, by myself. So there are no original pictures of it. Instead I used some of their pictures from their website. Like this one:

This is Table Mountain, and the orchard is just below it. According to Chris Kerston, the farm manager and my tour guide, California is made up of micro climates. Table Mountain is hugely important to them. Why? The rock face soaks up all the heat of the sun during the day, and then that heat rolls into their orchard, helping their citrus, olives, and stone fruits grow. They don't have any hard frosts because of this. It's so cool! It really does seem to be true that in California, you can grow anything.

And they do grow lots of things! Oranges, grapefruits, peaches, apricots, plums, avocados, mission olives, persimmons, cherries, lemons, figs, mandarins (seedless clementines), nectarines, pomegranates. WOW. And the thing is, there really aren't any bugs in California, at least not when you compare with the southeast. Chris mentioned a few bugs they had to protect the olives from, but I really haven't seen bugs or flies since I've been out here.

So the fun thing about their orchard is that they're super smart. Instead of mowing underneath the trees with machines or using pesticides, they let the animals graze everywhere. I'd much rather listen to a goat nosh on some blackberries than put up with a huge mower struggling through the groves. And it makes so much sense! You feed the animals the stuff you don't want there anyway, and they produce eggs or milk or meat. And then from weeds, you get profit, happy land, and happy animals. Awesome.

Another sweet thing is that there are really awesome dogs with the animals. The Great Pyrenees dogs are trained- not by a farmer, but by an older dog- to bond with and protect the animals. Common predators around Chaffin Family Orchards include hawks, bobcats, mountain lions, and bears. Once the dog is trained, he stays with one kind of animal. So Tyler, in the picture to the left, is a goat dog. There are chicken dogs, cattle dogs, etc. For a girl like me who really doesn't like dogs or pets, they're actually pretty cool. Especially since they don't yap. I don't like yapping.

Until I visited this farm, I never knew there were so many varieties of chicken. Of course, there are Rhode Island Reds and Cornish hens, but there are also Speckled Sussex (absolutely gorgeous, really), Buff Orpington,Transylvanian Naked Neck, Australorp, and more varieties I can't even remember. They even have roosters! I didn't know why you'd have a rooster around laying hens since you don't want those eggs fertilized, but having a rooster around calms the hens down. Apparently all that estrogen can get a little overbearing.

After the tour, I got to help Julie out with her chores. Julie lives in Chico and works as a nurse. She plans to move to Missouri, Tennessee, or somewhere around these parts in early spring to continue learning about farming and then start her own farm. We fed and watered the chickens, including the broilers (Cornish Cross Hens), older laying hens (Rhode Island Reds), and younger layers (mix of breeds). If you've never been around chickens, I must tell you that they will eat anything. ANYTHING. If you stand around too long, they will peck you. If a tree drops a lot of fruit, it will disappear. If they get irritated, they will eat their own eggs and peck at each other. If you work with chickens, keep your cell phones close. Goats are nothing compared to these birds. But really, they're pretty great. And they mutter. You gotta love the early morning mutter.

At the end of the day, I left with a bag of mandarins, persimmons that I had picked- both fuyu and hachiya- and 2 thick, beautiful NY strip steaks. Yup, steak! I haven't eaten a steak in... years. I don't know how many years, but quite a few. It just so happens that Matthew, my cousin I'm visiting, is a trained chef. So I took those babies back to his place, and we had a Saturday morning steak breakfast. It was awesome. The NY strip tasted so good that partway through it, I stopped to fry an egg, sunnyside up, to go along with it. It was amazing. I'm happy to have eaten and be eating beef again.

I'm so thankful and glad that I got to visit Chaffin! I knew I respected their methods beforehand, but to see it all in person and experience it was really swell. And I never expected this, but I think I might actually be able to work with animals in a similar context. If there's any manner of farming that I'm interested in, it's homesteading: raising vegetables, fruits, and animals for you and your family/friends. Small to medium amounts, not hundreds of acres to large scale sales. Homesteading seems very whole and nourishing. Whatever I end up doing, I don't want it to be just another form of rat race, which is what commercial farming of any stripe- organic, biodynamic, or conventional- can turn into. And despite myself... I kinda like goats. They're cute.

Road trip! Part 3

So it turned out that Matthew had to work on Wednesday, and we had to come up with a plan B. Aunt Judy found a beautiful place to visit: Big Basin Redwoods State Park. It's absolutely gorgeous! California has lots of beautiful country in it: desert, mountains, forests, ocean. So Aunt Judy & I trekked up the mountains and got a closer look.

It was a long and curvy ride to the top, and Judy wasn't sure she would make it. It was amazing to see so many mailboxes and houses and to encounter traffic. I could live there, sure, but it's surprising to see how many people actually do live there, to wonder how they earn money and how often they have to drive up and down and up and down...

The park ranger gave us the skinny on the trails. Judy decided to do the leisurely, scenic loop, and I took on a more challenging course. It was wonderful to be back in the forest- I think it's where I'm most at home. The air smelled wonderfully sweet and clear, and the lush greenness of the woods feels so supportive and adventurous all at once!

We only had a little time in the since I took forever getting ready to leave the house (yes, it's a theme) and Aunt Judy wanted to leave at 4:00 so we wouldn't have to drive down the mountain in the dark. So I found my trail and bolted, drinking in the beauty and making the most of a mountain-top workout. Part of me wanted to keep moving quickly, and part of me wanted to be still and soak it all in. But the brisk pace won out due to the lack of aerobic activity, and on I went. I saw no banana slugs, California's famed critter. But I did see acre upon acre of trees and foliage, and I doubt I will ever tire of it.

As I neared the parking lot, I heard Judy chatting with someone; she always finds a buddy or some people to chat with. I smiled and kept shaking my tailfeathers as I power walked the scenic loop. These redwoods aren't the huge ones farther north that you can drive your car through, but they are BIG. You can stand inside of them and peek out.

I've always felt there's more magic in forests. The plains and the oceans are beautiful, and I enjoy themboth, but for me, forests eclipse other natural wonders. There's a large part of me that really believes I could wake the trees like Lucy in The Chronicles of Narnia. Hopefully someday I will end up a wild, mountain woman. But for the moment, I had to hike back down and navigate the curvy mountain roads once more (woohoo!).

Judy did not die on the ride down the mountain. We were glad.

Road trip! Part 1

I wasn't sure it would actually happen, and now it is: the California road trip. Woohoo!

Before I went off to the farm, I realized that I wanted to go on a road trip. And lo and behold, probably less than a week later, my aunt Judy called me to ask if I wanted to drive out to California with her to visit my cousin Matthew. Hot dog! I thought. It's perfect! And so here I am, at Matthew's apartment in San Jose, California. I drove 2,360 out of 2,753 miles, and visited 5 new-to-me states: Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. I thought I would share some fun tidbits from the trip thus far.

• Kansas. It cost us $2.50 to drive across Kansas. Not bad for a toll, but... it's Kansas. It's just not worth it.

• The Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah are flippin awesome! This is the site where the world land speed records have been set- 600.607 mph, I believe. It's a huge expanse of white that leads up to big rolling brown mountains. The salt itself is crunchy and grippy to walk on. I wish I'd had a bike so I could have ridden across the salt and explored the mountains.

• Beachaven Winery in Clarksville. No, it's nothing new to me. Yes, I still dig their wine. Yes, I bought a bottle of champagne.

• Wyoming is gorgeous. Vast expanses, beautiful skies, green mountains, and wind turbines. Also 75 mph speed limits and 0 cops. 80 mph is fast enough for me.

• New Belgium Brewing Co. in Ft. Collins, CO. Holy goodness, that's an AWESOME place! We did a beer tour there and got to taste lots of brewed goodness and see fun stuff (I highly recommend the Abbey... yum!). They have a really great twisty slide inside, and I got to slide down it on the tour. I could have slid down it for at least 30 minutes, but I held back for the good of the group. Annie, our tour guide, was from Knoxville, so we chatted and hung out a little during the last two beer samplings, and then she gave me 20% off the beer I bought. We also got to eat some chocolate and write postcards that they provided. How awesome is that?? Please, for your own sake, visit them.

• While in Ft. Collins, we hung out and chatted with Saja, an old friend of mine I hadn't seen in 10 years. She went to visit friends out there and never came back to TN. She's got a pretty sweet house in Old Town, complete with a music studio. Saja plays clawhammer banjo and is in a band called Storm Mountain. It was great to see her again!
  

• Driving across Nevada gets a little monotonous. The northern portion of the state is wide, and it all looks very brown. And scrubby. And then there's more brown and scrubby. Everywhere. I won't speak of Kansas; I think I've blocked it from my mind.

• Donner's Pass is a pretty sweet drive. It's the section of I-80 in northern California, right after you leave Nevada. I wished I'd been able to drive it in a BMW instead of a minivan, but that may have just earned me a speeding ticket. Once we passed from Nevada into California, the terrain changed pretty quickly to really tall mountains with lots of evergreen trees. The actual road is really rough and very windy and fun.

• When we did get into California, there was an agricultural checkpoint. I wondered if I had magically been to Canada and back without knowing it. It turns out they're attempting to control the spread of some bugs that are found on produce east of the Rockies, so they confiscated some of our apples. For real. I had 2 apples left from Reid's Orchard, and that man did not take them. Oh no, he did not. That would not have been acceptable. I made him take the red delicious apples from the grocery store.
  

• California traffic is crazy. My experience has been that it's either very fast or a dead halt, and people change lanes really quickly. Normally, when there are loads of cars on the road, I like to take my time and make sure I'm not going to run into anyone, but these drivers are all about speediness. I kinda like it. It feels like I'm in a video game.

• Orange trees. Lemon trees. Lime trees. Pomegranate trees. They're everywhere here- it blows my mind. I walked down the street the other day and picked a pomegranate. I picked a few lemons and limes today at Everett Ridge Winery. It's hard to process. I think tomorrow I will walk around and ask people if I can harvest fruit from trees in their yard. I may get a little hardcore and take a wooden crate to put all of the harvest in. I may make several trips. I have no shame. Thank you, farm-worker worldview.

• Despite the Mormon thing, Utah was pretty cool. I kind of have a thing about Mormonism. It just seems odd. I am suspicious. I was suspicious of Utah. But the salt was fun.

• It's been a new experience to be west of the Mississippi. I can handle cold out here a lot better just because it's not nearly as humid. I've worn denim skirts a few days. It's pretty awesome.

Lots of fun adventures on the road! While we were navigating Sacramento and San Francisco, the right side of the lower half of my body was burning a little, so I'm really glad to be out of the car for a while. But we got here, and I'm really glad. Stay tuned for more!