Left Coast Cowboys

Kermit the Frog had it right. It’s not easy being Green. It’s even harder being Native. Tell it to Sitting Bull. That doesn’t stop us from fighting the good fight here at Two Terrier Vineyards. We are blessed with a unique piece of land. Unique mostly because it was neglected for probably hundreds of years. While we have evidence — grinding stones and arrowheads — to proved that Miwok and other local Indians used this as thruway, it seems most later inhabitants left it alone. There is some ancient barbed wire on the outer perimeter of our land that would indicate the sometime presence of cattle, but the oldest Sonoma residents I’ve spoken with all say this particular plot was always “the back of beyond”. What is truly unique about our little 40 acres of Heaven is that it seems to be a bit of an ecological anomaly. We’re too far East for Giant Pacific Salamanders and too hot for Redwoods, but we seem to have both in abundance. John the Baptist was telling me that naturalists say the Giant Pacific Salamander is so reclusive that it’s a coup to find one after a week of searching. John and Louis have seen up to fifteen in a day in our creek. I’ve even found one at the exact moment that I actually had a camera handy with the right lens attached. I can’t tell you what a “blue moon” moment that is. So we must have a unique Giant Pacific Salamander refuge going on here.

A Pacific Giant Salamander caught swimming in our seasonal creek. Apparently, one of many.

A few of our Redwoods. Or perhaps Ents from Lord of the Rings.

Those Redwoods, of course, frequent visitors to this site will know are special treasures here. They shouldn’t actually be this far into the hot climes of Sonoma County. Yet here they are in a little gully leading to our seasonal creek. Several good stands of them that are estimated to be over 500 years old.

Which is what brings me to the subject of mustard. When you have a unique environment such as ours, you can’t imagine how hard it is to keep it pure. Our “landscaping” efforts (and the quotation marks around landscaping are meant to be completely ironic) have been confined to restoring native habitat. With a few notable misteps.

Here's the offending Mustard. (Terrier shown for scale.)

That would be the Mustard. It’s everywhere. It’s the look of off-season wine country. A plant that fixes nitrogen in fallow vineyards, then gets plowed in  as green manure. It was actually brought here by the Spanish Conquistadors in the 1500s. But it’s not Native.

And that makes it beneath contempt for our Native Storm Troopers, John the Baptist and Louis. Think of them as the Native Americans who took over Alcatraz in the late 60s.

I try to talk to them about the heritage of mustard in California Wine Country and they are having none of it. They are Ghost Dancers. Bring back the old ways. When I pass John and Louis on the property I can hear the hiss through clenched teeth: “Mustard. SSS. Damn. Mustard.” See, what we should have planted are Lupines. Apparently, they fix nitrogen just as efficiently. But they are Native. And Natives are as vulnerable as the Sioux were to Smallpox and Measles. You let those infected interlopers in and it’s all over.

Baby Lupines. John the Baptist and Louis say that's what I should have planted in the vineyards.

So it doesn’t matter how traditional Mustard has become. Your protestations that it’s pretty will never drown out the hissing of John and Louis, “Mustard! Damn Mustard!”

That means an emergency call to our Vineyard Manager. If there is anything that should be in ironic quotation marks, it’s Vineyard Manager. Disabuse yourself of any notion of an effete guy in a a beret. Our Vineyard Manager is named Clarence. He wears overalls and a cowboy hat. He’s a farmer. But he’s Old Skool Sonoma. And that means a guy who plants Mustard in the fallow season. So I’ve got to call him up and tell him Crazy Horse’s Love Children have told me that Mustard must die. Or at least be cut down and plowed under before it can seed.

I can imagine how Clarence is going to laugh at this one. It’s  going to be like the second war on the frontier. But my money’s on John and Louis.

I think we are looking at revisionist history here. This will be the stand-off where the Native Americans win.

Addendum: Don’t know a California Native from a hole in the ground? John the Baptist is recommending this book:

John and his wife, who know the author, swear by this book.

Best thing about it? It categorizes plants by something we amateurs can all get behind: color!

Why don't horticulturists realize that this is the easiest way for us amateurs to spot plants?

I don’t shop. I hate shopping, especially for clothes. I force myself to shop for clothes once every two years whether I need it or not. But I confine myself to no more than three stores and no more than three hours. (Usually Talbots, REI and Target can fill all my needs.) But I do buy books. Lots of books. I buy books on-line. I never pass up a used book store. I’ll buy books at yard sales if I happen to be passing one. My friends know they can always dump books at my house.

So you’d think I’d be the last person in the word to get a Kindle. That’s the device that lets you download books instantly and read them in electronic versions. Where’s the fun in that? No searching through dusty shelves. No flyleaves or book jackets to read. No fourth hand volumes to discover with cryptic or even embarrassing inscriptions on the first page. But my husband, who is an unrepentant gadget buyer, got me one for Christmas. So I have to make a commitment to it.

Keeping an open mind and repressing all Luddite tendencies, I can see the value of it, even in my life. Every area of my home is filled with books. Overflowing with books. Weighed down with books. I’m not just talking living space. Garage, corners, under the bed. Stuffed with books. And the place in Sonoma? That’s starting to get filled up with books. This is despite dedicated twice monthly clear-outs where I truck cartons of books off to used book stores and Goodwill.

The floor to ceiling shelves in the library are looking clean now after a massive clear-out. Give me a few weeks. They'll be overflowing again.

Despite how I feel about books made of paper and cardboard, there is much to recommend the Kindle. Just think of the carbon savings. Instead of trees being cut down, presses being run, delivery trucks hauling the finished product out to distribution centers and then the FedEx delivery to my home, the Kindle zaps down a book in what seems to be less than a minute. I’m told, if you want to download the complete works of Shakespeare, you can do that. (But you might have to drink a latte while you wait.)

My first Kindle downloads. Plenty of "easy reading" and marginal books. Little bit of Dominick Dunne, some Vanity Fair collected essays and the latest from Julie Powell of Julie and Julia fame. Trust me, this last one isn't even worth the electronic fonts it's printed with.

Then there is the downside. Not all books can be savored on a small screen in Arial. Anyone who’s ever been in design or publishing knows that there is a great art to the typesetting of a book. The font you’d use for Middlemarch is not the font you’d want to see in A Farewell to Arms. George Eliot would need a font that was classic, refined and British. Hemingway, something simple, unadorned, masculine. Would it be the same to read both books in the same font — which in the case of the Kindle seems to be a font that is particularly readable in electronic format?Worse yet, the Kindle lets you change the font. If there were ever a skill that should not be trusted to the untrained, it’s typography. Trust me on this.

Can you believe I have a floor to ceiling shelf area just for cookbooks? I'm truly addicted. Yes, my name is Lisa and I'm a bookaholic.

However it turns out, I don’t have to face the horrifying prospect of War and Peace rendered in Helvetica. Those are NOT the kind of books you’ll download to a Kindle. Buy the classics in satisfying leather-bound volumes. Preferably from an eccentric overstuffed local used book store. And don’t even think about cookbooks — even though the Kindle store has pages of them available for download. Cookbooks are best when they border on Gastroporn with large seductive pictures of glistening meat and silken creme brulees. (Besides, are you going to prop your Kindle up in the kitchen and splatter butter and stock on it?) Travel guides? Also a big Kindle Nix. Travel books need to be stuffed in your pocket, pages folded down, notes scribble in the margins, then passed on to your friend when she decides to follow your recent footsteps.

Here, I’ve discovered, are the books you’ll download to a Kindle:

Political Books. Especially books on recent events or by figures who are on the back end of their fifteen minutes of fame. (Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue, anyone?) Even the best written political books have the shelf life of whipcream in an 80 degree room. I know, I’ve bought hundreds right when they hit the store and were hot, read them immediately, tried to sell them back to the used bookstore within the week, only to be told that they are “past their peak of interest”.

Guilty Pleasure Books. You know what I’m talking about: bodice busters, romance novels, hot-for-one-second books like The Nanny Diaries. Okay, I’ll confess my latest: The Sookie Stackhouse Novels that the HBO series True Blood is based on. There are at least eleven of them. Do you know how many humiliating trips to the bookstore that represents? It almost guarantees you have to buy a weightier book, say a political book, to hide it under as you exit the store. But what’s downloaded to the Kindle stays in the Kindle. When you read electronically, no one knows you’ve bought a Nora Roberts.

Low-Commitment Books. These are the kind of books that, on a whim or in an airport bookstore, you think maybe, perhaps you might want to read. Then you buy them, skim through a few chapters, fall asleep on the plane, wake up and can’t even imagine passing the book on to a friend. Trust me, I’ve left loads of these books on the the beach or on the seats of airplanes and shuttles. I just downloaded Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck. I suspect it’s going to be that kind of book. But instead of a stealth divestiture, I just zap it off the Kindle with one finger. Poof. Gone.

Magazines and Newspapers. Did you know the Kindle did this? I didn’t and it’s genius. No fussing with seventeen sections of the New York Times while trying to make an airline connection. Zap. On the Kindle. Kindle in your carry-on.

With the Kindle, I have Jules Verne in my pocket. Except that the Kindle is too big to fit in a pocket. And Jules Verne is best enjoyed as an audiobook on an iPod. Trust me on this.

But the best thing about the Kindle? Once I’ve done a few thousand more runs to the used bookstore and Goodwill to unload all the marginal books that I would have Kindled, had I had a Kindle, can you imagine what my bookshelves will look like? Wall to wall in leather-bound classics, particularly cherished college text books, large color-plated art books, photography monographs, companion books to Ken Burns series. My impressive books will be freed from rubbing shoulders with the riffraff. My bookshelves will now be an exclusive club where Tolstoy sips tea with Jane Austen. And the jokey books, the trashy novels, the books with the lifespan of a fruit fly? Those books will hang out in the Kindle ghetto, taking illegal substances, breaking pharmacy windows, generally getting up to no good.

But they’ll be there when I want to go slumming.

Whole Foods has taken a lot of heat recently — mostly due to CEO John MacKey’s Wall Street Journal Op-Ed piece on the Health Care debate. What sparked a lot of criticism was his somewhat clueless opinion that if people would only eat organic food, they wouldn’t need expensive health care. Aside from the fact that this doesn’t take into account accidents, hereditary diseases or the unluck of the draw that is most cancers that can strike even the healthiest, his comments, to anyone who’s ever priced groceries in Whole Foods, was laughably naive.

Even national chains like Aveda couldn't stay in business once our anchor store closed in a snit.

Even the Middle Class gasp when shopping at Whole Paycheck. And if you’ve ever read any of Michael Pollan’s books, you’ll know that American Farm Policy, which heavily subsidizes large agri-business, stacks the deck against the producers of good, nutritious food. Growing corn for high-fructose corn syrup, genetically modified soybeans or operating a huge warehoused beef or chicken factory? The playing field is specially leveled for you. Small farmer growing sustainable, responsibly grown produce? Good luck. The red tape alone might be enough to drive you out of business. One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the recent documentary, Food Inc., was of a Hispanic family that was barely covering their bills with three jobs between the two adults. They knew about good nutrition. They weren’t clueless. But they were shown trying to stretch their tiny food budget to cover healthy food. Couldn’t do it. Finally, they resorted to McDonald’s. The mother, with tears in her eyes, said she felt she was being a bad mother to succumb to Micky D’s, but some weeks it was the only way they could afford enough food for a meal for four.

Our new Whole Foods has a nice meat counter. But my local independent butcher will still get my roast orders. I bet Drewes Market can still do a better job sourcing local specialty meat, like game.

But, I’m here to tell you, that, at least in my neighborhood, I think Whole Foods has gotten it right. A little background: it’s probably naive to think that a purveyer of organic foods would have a stronger social conscience than another retailer, but call me naive. Call my whole neighborhood naive. That’s why it hurt so much when we were royally screwed over by The Real Foods store when the chain was taken over by the Utah corporation Neutraceutical International. When Neutracuetical took over, they promptly fired all the employees in a union busting move (I’m calling it a union-busting move because that’s what the courts deemed that it was. The former employees won the case.) In a snit, Neutracuetical boarded up the store, let it become a magnet for graffiti, and refused to talk to neighborhood leaders or our City Supervisor. They also refused offers to buy the building by some very interested parties. Our neighborhood is pretty small and it’s not on the way to anything famous in San Francisco, so we don’t get much outside traffic. Our little neighborhood is filled with small mom and pop shops that have relied on a large “anchor” store to bring in the outside traffic that keeps our retail strip viable. Many merchants reported their business dropped off as much as 40% once Real Foods closed. After five years, our high street was looking like a ghost town. Even the Aveda outlet and GNC, national chains, couldn’t stay in business.

Then Whole Foods negotiated to buy the sadly outdated Bell Market that had been across from Real Foods. Bell had just never kept step with the times. In a neighborhood of crunchy granola activists and increasing gentrification, it was still selling buckets of lard, the cheapest canned goods and wilted produce. From the start Whole Foods reached out to the neighborhood. They sent representatives to City Council meetings and community meetings. They always had time for our District Supervisor. As the neighborhood became more desperate and more and more stores on the street closed, they accelerated their opening plans.

The day before they opened, they had a little party with live music and free food in their parking lot. It was unadvertised and was clearly for the locals. Today at opening day, they had masses of smiling aproned workers walking through the store with clipboards ready to answer any questions customers had. (Contrast that with the parking attendants who were running their small lot like a Police State. That’s okay if it brings more foot and bike traffic down past the other local shops.)

Walking in today, I was stunned to see that most of the promises they’d made to the neighborhood about the store, which I’d read skeptically in our local rag, had been kept. My complaint about Whole Foods has been that they have a lot of organic produce that is shipped up from Chile and other places. At that carbon cost, it’s better to eat conventionally grown as long as it’s local. Whole Foods also, at least in their bigger stores, seem to pay only lip service to local sourcing. They show lovely pictures of local farmers, but if you read the small print on the bins, you see that most of the stuff doesn’t even come from California. And most is out of season.

Well, not in my store. As I strolled through, I noticed every bin and produce rack had large signs telling you the origins of the food: Petaluma, Marin, Monterrey. The most long travelled items were from Washington State and Bakersfield. Well, that’s still pretty local. Maybe the difference is that our store is about half the square footage of a normal Whole Foods. They don’t have the room for six large tables of oranges. There is just one table. And it’s showcasing California grown.

Another big difference, I’m hypothesizing, is the local Whole Foods team. Apparently, they were a pretty autonomous group that was responsible for getting this store up and running and integrating it into the neighborhood. I’m sure there are corporate perameters they must follow, but is it a coincidence that so many local suggestions for the store were realized? I think not. Which is a good reminder that a company isn’t just the CEO. It’s also dedicated field people and local branches. Judging from this case, when those people are given enough latitude and autonomy, they’ll do the right thing for the neighborhood they’re in.

Yes, there are several local merchants who are worried. There’s a wonderful cheesemonger, The Cheese Shop, down the road. They don’t need to worry. Whole Foods has the popular basics covered, but for those exotic cheeses and a greater variety, I’ll still stop there. The local butcher shop, Drewes Market, will still get my orders for sausage, holiday roasts and game — all of which they source from Marin and Sonoma. I was disappointed to see that Whole Foods was running a coffee stand in the store, something they had hinted they wouldn’t do out of respect for our local coffee shops. But I popped into Bernies and they said they’d been mobbed. With the increased traffic coming to the neighborhood, they felt there was enough business to go around.

Bernie's has better coffee than Whole Foods, plus Wi-Fi and places to sit. They aren't worried.

So kudos to the local team that put together this Whole Foods. It’s not the whole answer. If you are really concerned about supporting sustainable agriculture, you’ll still go to the farmer’s market and to places like Drewes Market. But, let’s be realistic, not everyone has the time every day to make that trip. And Farmer’s Markets don’t always run year round, even in California. So my Whole Foods will now be part of the mix when I’m not in Sonoma.

It’s always when you veer off on an alternate route that roadtrip adventures happen. This one started with another trip to Santa Cruz Hydroponics, which I’ve now decided is the BEST source for vegetable starts, seeds and organic growing materials in the Bay Area. Last month, I chronicled my last trip down and up the Cabrillo Highway. This time, I decided, at least on the way back, I’d strike out to uncharted territory. First order of business: preparing for a place we in the Bay Area affectionately call “Sanity Cruz” (as if we in San Francisco don’t also have a franchise on “thinking different”.) The iPod was loaded with a soundtrack of Sixties music, heavy on Joplin and the Dead. Since I was overdue for a leg wax, batik and sandals would be all I’d need to blend in.  Actually not. Without a tattoo — especially one with some Zen, Hindu or African significance — dreadlocks and REAL hippie garb, I stuck out at my first coffee shop visit like a stockbroker at a Phish concert. My faux hippie garb — with skirt from REI and sandals from Minnetonka — didn’t really have that hippie street cred.

On the way back from Santa Cruz, and trying to figure out where the hell I am when the mountains are blocking GPS reception. I think Bigfoot is just around the corner.

Luckily Santa Cruz Hydroponics didn’t mind. If you’re talking plants, these guys are the most enthusiastic and helpful folks you’ll ever experience in a retail setting. In fact, it’s hard to leave the store without more advice and product than you actually paid for. These guys may have a business, but they are really on an Eco-Evangelical Mission. Loaded with vegetable starts, seeds, and all the details of the amazing Seedsavers and the so-called “Doomsday Seed Vault” in Norway, I was ready to head back up North.  

Anther quick reconnoiter at an Internet cafe and my iPhone told me another route back from Santa Cruz was up through the mountains and over to Santa Clara, where I could actually check another California Mission off my list. Since I hadn’t set out planning this foray into the mountains, I didn’t have a sight list. It was only when I looked at the GPS map, that I realized I’d be going through the tiny former logging town of Boulder Creek. Back in the 80s, I was friendly with a woman who belonged to a commune/ashram/cult/something-or-other up in Boulder Creek. Shortly after I met her, she moved to the City and just commuted to the ashram, which I vaguely remembered was called something like The University of the Trees. I’m very fuzzy on the details except I remember they had an English guru who had gone to India with the Beatles and they had some sort of business venture growing spirulina. It’s amazing how much you can NOT find out when you want to avoid topics. But bottom line, I’d never been to Boulder Creek. So what the hell? Could be interesting. I imagined a tiny town caught in a Sixties time warp with saffron robed converts dancing down the street to the sound of sitars.  

Boulder Creek is all about the logging these days. Notice that Lumberjack Days are coming up!

If there is a commune in Boulder Creek these days, it's for lumberjacks. Or Big Foot.

About five miles out of Santa Cruz, it became clear I might be in for a different experience. As I wound up Route 9, the scenery appeared less like Sgt. Pepper and more like Deliverance. Clearly, what small centers of habitation I passed up there were old logging towns. And, judging from the number of ATVs, chain saws and log splitting stumps I saw outside cabins, cutting down wood was still a major pastime. I couldn’t imagine The University of the Trees would have made many converts up here. But I’m making it sound as if there WERE actual towns. If you’d told me Bigfoot and his family ranged between Ben Lomond and Boulder Creek, I’d believe you.     Well, let me just say that Big Foot would find more to like about Boulder Creek than would John, George or the Maharashi Mahesh Yogi. It’s definitely more logging town than commune. And in spite of patrolling up and down the only street a few times, I never did find the sign to The University of the Trees.

Climbing out of the Big Basin, took me to the barely marked Sempervirens Point, from which, some friendly bikers told me, I could see all the way to Monterey Bay.

Once I reached the crest of the mountain above the Big Basin it was downhill and back into civilization with a quick look-through at the impossibly cute town of Saratoga and off to Santa Clara and another Mission. Turns out the Mission Santa Clara de Asis is on the grounds of Santa Clara University, which may be one of the most beautiful colleges in America. In fact, all  five of the Mission sites are there since this Mission was rebuilt and rebuilt after fires, earthquakes and other disasters. Today, a faithful replica of the fifth iteration, rebuilt in 1929, serves as the campus church. However, there are still remnants of the original adobe Padres’ quarters and the gardens are beautiful. There is a nice symmetry to the fact that the current site hosts a Catholic college. Although the Franciscans were not as devoted to intellectual pursuits as the Jesuits who now run Santa Clara University, I think the good brothers would be pleased with what’s going on around their Mission. Even the ubiquitous iPods.  

Santa Clara University campus with a portion of the old Padres' living quarters in the quadrangle.

Looking out past 200 year old vines to the Padres old courtyard.

At the base of this cross is a piece of the True Cross. No, not THAT True Cross, but the original cross the Padres erected when they founded Mission Santa Clara.

Studying must be very easy on this beautiful campus. Especially with the spring flowers in bloom.

You’ve heard that today is Earth Hour. All across the world, from Antarctica to Egypt, cities and people committed to turning off their lights for one hour starting at 8:30PM their time. I watched on the Internet as Big Ben dimmed. But things are very different in the big city. All those people with flashlights and battery powered lanterns and candles actually light up a lot.

Here in Sonoma, out in the country, when you turn out the lights. Well, the lights go out. In a big way. Especially when the moon is just a sliver as it was tonight.

A glass of Scotch and a natural beeswax candle for light.

Andy and I were walking around with those miner’s head light things and lighting candles, but it was still pretty spooky with coyotes howling and all the tree frogs chirping. Not to mention the unidentified growls. Mountain Lions? Big Foot? Chupacabra?

Andy and Oscar are not looking happy about all the animal sounds closing in now that it's pitch black.

Now Andy's checking his watch to see how much longer he has to put up with this.

We've already got no TV, just well water and no heat but a woodstove, so with the lights out, we were pretty far off the grid.

It didn’t take long before Andy was lobbying for Earth Minute. Needless to say, we didn’t last the whole hour. But we’re pretty far off the grid here, so we figured that was acceptable.

Happy Earth Hour, everyone!