Left Coast Cowboys

Photo by Flickrite Kelly Sue DeConnick

If you are familiar with this San Francisco favorite, you know there is no definitive recipe other than starting with the catch of the day — whatever that may be. And tomatoes. Then you could add sausage. Or not. And serve it on rice. Or spaghetti. Or as a soup. In other words, Cioppino is a grab-bag, just like this post. I’m hoping, if I throw in all the bits and pieces, nuggets and chunks I’ve been collecting over the past few days, it will all turn out beautiful and tasty. We’ll see.

First up: I’m having a blast with the Wine Country Wildflowers field guide I told you about in yesterday’s post. That’s the one that wisely categorizes things by color. I see a blue flower and I just flip to the blue chapter and scan through the glossy pictures until I find a match. The book also wisely puts the common name in big bold letters and the Latin names in little subordinate italics. Don’t get me wrong, I love Latin. Took years of it. But it just seems to take the fun out of flowers. Say I told you I had some nice stands of Liliacae, Mimmulus guttatus and Cynoglossum grande. You might yawn. If I told you they were Diogenes Lantern, Sticky Monkey Flower and Hound’s Tongue. Well, now you’ve got the picture.

Behold the Hound's Tongue. Named, I'm assuming, for the leaves.

See the resemblance?

Yes, I’m forming a Chapter of The Campaign for Real Plant Names. And I’m appointing myself President. Consider Henderson’s Shooting Star. I don’t know who Henderson is, but I love his flower. Apparently so did California Natives. They roasted the leaves and roots for dinner.

My wildflower book calls this "a perky little charmer". Its other name is just as descriptive: Mosquito Bills.

Thus ends the teaching portion of our program and we move to the question period. Where I ask the questions and, hopefully, you give me answers. You’ve probably guessed that the topic is going to be my misadventures with vegetables. So Question One: how do you tell when carrots are ready for harvest? Do I dig them up to check? If they aren’t ready, do I replant them? How do carrots feel about this?

I uncovered a little bit just for a peek. They aren't very orange. Not ready?

Similar question with Fava Beans, which I’m growing, not for beans, but as a nitrogen fixer and green manure. All my gardening books say they’ve “fixed” when the nodules on the roots turn pink. So, I pulled one up. Not ready.

I quickly replanted it, but I think my Fava will like this as little as the carrot did. There must be a better way.

Next question: how does anyone grow bulbs outdoors? Mine are dug up and chomped down by varmints as soon as I put them in the ground. That’s with a fenced raised bed covered with netting. And two terriers on patrol.

The remains of the feast.

Okay, bored with showing my ignorance. How about a quick check of this week’s highlights at Two Terrier Vineyards?

John the Baptist found the tracks of a Bobcat and a baby Bobcat. So I guess Bob the Bobcat will have to be rechristened Roberta. I rushed to take a picture of the track, but two terriers stomped all over the site before I could focus.

Cats walk with retracted claws. So I think this is the right print. It was the only one without toenail marks.

The Barn Swallows are getting set to build nests in the eaves of the barn. One little bird dude decided there was an evil interloper living in my wing mirrors.

I had to park 100 yards away before this little guy decided we were out of his personal space.

On a culinary note, I finally tried the American Bison meat that Sonoma Market has been pushing. Yeah, yeah, lower cholesterol, less fat. But what got me to buy was their great new slogan. And I’m always a sucker for a good tagline.

Buffalo: The Meat Americans were meant to eat.

The verdict: delicious! Especially when served with Sonoma produce (obviously not my own.)

So that’s it. Everything’s in the pot and hopefully coalesced into some sort of post.

Now be vewy, vewy quiet. We're hunting varmints.

Nobody is ever going to mistake me for African-American, but I’m an unrepentant history buff and a trivia queen. So when a month is announced that celebrates history — especially history that hasn’t always traditionally been in the curriculum (trivia by another name?), you know I’m going to be all over it like a cheap suit. Besides: Black History, White History, Green History, Purple History. If it happened in this country, it’s all American History. Therefore I’m claiming it.

The Two Terriers Twist? I’m seeking out what I think are the lesser known figures in the hopes that I’ll amaze you with little-known facts. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe the figures I highlight here are all well known and it’s been too many years since I was in High School. But maybe I’ll introduce you to some unsung heroes of American history.

Our first contestant:

Henry Ossian Flipper, First Black Graduate of West Point, Civil Engineer, Author

Born into slavery, Henry Ossian Flipper was appointed to the West Point Class of 1877 by his Atlanta Congressman. He endured four years of  ”silent treatment” where his fellow cadets refused to speak to him, look at him or acknowledge his existence. He graduated with distinction and served with honor until racism and a trumped up court martial stripped him of military status. Afterwards, he distinguished himself as a civil engineer, in the Spanish-American War and as assistant and advisor to the US Secretary of the Interior in 1921. He never stopped fighting to clear his name. In 1976, his descendants petitioned successfully to have his dismissal reversed and an honorable discharge dated retroactively to 1882. West Point now awards the annual Henry O. Flipper Award to graduating cadets at the Academy who “exhibit leadership, self-discipline, and perseverance in the face of unusual difficulties.” Read more about him through his autobiographies: The Colored Cadet at West Point and  Negro Frontiersman: The Western Memoirs of Henry O. Flipper.

Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., Tuskegee Airman, First African-American General in the US Air Force.

You get a two-fer with our next contestant. Son of the first African-American general in the United States Army, Benjamin O. Davis Jr. began his air career as a barnstorming teen pilot, eventually as a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen and finally as the first African-American General of the Air Force. A member of the West Point Class of 1936, Davis suffered the same silent treatment as Ossian Flipper. During a distinguished and decorated military career through two wars, he was tapped by President Harry Truman to draft and help implement the full integration of the Armed Services in the Fifties. See him played by Andre Braugher in the movie The Tuskegee Airmen.

Now for some of the ladies:

Madam CJ Walker. Businesswoman, entrepreneur, philanthropist.

The Guinness Book of Records cites Walker as the first female who became a millionaire by her own achievements. Not the first African-American female. The first female. The first of her family to be born into freedom, she eventually developed her own line of cosmetics and haircare products formulated for African-American skin and hair. More than for amassing a fortune, Madam Walker should be remembered for the economic opportunities she created for thousands. Her agents, mostly black women, could earn from $5 to $15 per day in an era when unskilled white laborers were making about $11 per week — a fact in which she took great pride. She retired to an Italianate Villa in New York, designed by architect Vertner Tandy, the first registered black architect in the state. There she, and later her daughter, supported artists, musicians and playwrights including many members of the Harlem Renaissance. Her biography has been written by her great-great granddaughter. I’m nominating Oprah to play her in the movie version.

Mary Ellen Pleasant. Entrepreneur, Abolitionist. "The Mother of Civil Rights in California."

Our next contestant: hero, villain, groundbreaker or voodoo priestess? Her life is a mystery — partially of her own making. At various points, she claimed to be the daughter of a Voodoo priestess and the youngest son of a Governor of Virginia as well as  a relative of  and practitioner under famed New Orleans Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau. What is known is that she showed up in San Francisco during the Gold Rush and quickly amassed a fortune from boarding houses, catering companies and wise investments with insider trading tips from wealthy clients. Although she, at first passed for White, she didn’t conceal her race from fellow African-Americans and was adept at finding many of them jobs and political appointments. She was also active in the Abolitionist Movement, was a great friend of John Brown and was thought to have financed his attack on Harper’s Ferry. After the Civil War, she officially changed her legal status to Negro, took her rights battles to the courts, including integrating cable and street cars. Her Civil Rights work was unmatched until the 1960s and one of her victories was cited and upheld as late as the 1980s. A series of lawsuits with various relatives of her partners in the late 1800s unleashed a storm of smears and scandals making her the most talked about woman in the San Francisco tabloids. Newly dubbed “Mammy” Pleasant, she was variously accused of being a baby stealer, a baby eater, a multiple murderess, a madam, an embezzler and a thief. She’s buried in a Napa cemetery, but not under an epitaph she was said to have preferred: “A Friend to John Brown.” There is precious little information about her, but this filmaker seems determined to set the record straight.

And could we close without mentioning cowboys?

Nat Love AKA Deadwood Dick, one of the most famous Black Cowboys

How about the fact that some historians estimate that at least one quarter of all working cowboys were Black? Although racial discrimination certainly existed, there was a rough sort of frontier equality in parts of the West. There were relatively few people, much danger, lots of work  to be done and not a lot of social structures. Apparently cowboy crews were a pretty mixed lot of Whites, Blacks, Mexicans and sometimes Native Americans forced by necessity to rub shoulders. (Sort of makes you wonder about the John Wayne/Roy Rogers image of cowboy life many of us grew up with.) African-American cowboys, sometimes brought as slaves or sometimes escaped from slavery, became ranch hands, cowboys, even gunslingers, rustlers, dance hall girls and Gold Rush miners. There are lots of sources but check out The Oakland Black Cowboy Association for a start.

Bill Pickett, Rodeo Champion, Star of Wild West Shows, First Black Cowboy Movie Star

Addendum: One of my readers, Maybelline in Bakersfield, suggested I add Bill Pickett to the list. Pickett was a famous rodeo star who appeared with Buffalo Bill, Will Rogers, Tom Mix and others in rodeos and Wild West shows. He often traded on his Native American blood (Cherokee) to get himself admitted to rodeos that barred African Americans (he billed himself as Commanche.) You think cowboys are tough? Bill Pickett took that to the tenth power. He invented a form of steer wrestling called “Bulldogging.” Pickett’s method included biting a cow on the lip and then falling backwards. This technique eventually fell out of favor for more traditional steer wrestling and riding — and no doubt because PETA would have had something to say about tough ol’ Bill Pickett. But you might want to catch the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, the nation’s only all Black touring rodeo. They’re touring this summer, including Oakland, Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Phoenix, Washington DC and Atlanta.

So that’s the contribution from Two Terrier Vineyards. Did we introduce you to anyone new? Got someone else to nominate? We’d like to hear from you. But remember our motto over here:

It doesn't matter if you're Black or White. Doesn't matter if you're Black AND White. It's all History and it's all good.

When we first bought this land, we had nothing but a tent cabin to sleep in. Every night we used to hear the coyotes howling. However, we only saw one once. He was large as a German Shepherd, glossy and completely unconcerned as the dogs jumped up and down on the tent cabin bed barking at him. He threw them a disdainful glance and loped past us down the path. We haven’t seen or heard one since. Until, John the Baptist and Louis told me recently that they’d seen two large adult coyotes and two, maybe three, younger ones playing in the brush around the barn. We laughed and dubbed them Wiley, Wilma and the Kids.

Now the large male seems to have staked out the barn and pasture as his territory. I’ve seen him twice in this past week. Which given the nature of coyotes, probably means he’s been lurking around here all the time. Both times he’s been strolling along the dirt road from our back gate up to the vineyards. I’ve had more time to observe him than you usually get with coyote. He’s not the scrawny coyotes that I used to see raiding garbage cans in LA. Or the skittery little coyotes you sometimes see in the southern deserts of California. And, believe me, this is no buffoonish Wile E. Coyote. From his glossy pelt, bushy tail and loose-limbed lope to his arrogant glances, it’s clear, this is Coyote, with a capital C, the Trickster God of Native American legend.

One depiction of Coyote as a Man-Animal-God. Source: Wikipedia.

Coyote features in a lot of Native American myths, sometimes as a man-coyote God and sometimes even as the Creator. The local tribes that would have lived around Sonoma, the Pomo and the Miwok, especially revered Coyote and had numerous legends about him as Creator. In Miwok tradition, Coyote Man comes into the West with his son, Red-Tailed Hawk, and makes the the Pomo people from mud and the Miwok people out of sticks. In other legends, Coyote and Silver Fox sing the world into being. Pomo mythology has Coyote and Lizard creating the tribe on the shores of Upper Lake (just up the Silverado Trail in Lake County) from  sticks. Another local tribe, the Ohlone, have Coyote fathering the tribe after Eagle carries him to Mount Diablo (the tallest mountain in the Bay Area). Probably most of us are familiar with the Coyote myth from the Navaho detective books of Tony Hillerman that mix tribal lore with modern day police work on the Navajo reservation. There Coyote plays his more traditional role as Trickster, who sometimes helps man by fooling monsters that would hurt the tribe and at other times shows up man’s own foolishness with his pranks.

Here's the road to the vineyards that Coyote has claimed as his own, now looking appropriately mythological.

The bottom line: Native Americans knew their coyotes. Coyotes weren’t the biggest predators on the block (especially back in the day when there were wolves, Grizzlies and a lot more Mountain Lions.) But you could easily argue that they were the smartest. One of the blogs in my blogroll is The Daily Coyote, the diary of a woman who has been raising Charlie, an orphaned coyote pup. She reports that Charlie, now a teenager, can open kitchen cabinets, walk as silently as a cat, and figure out any gate she puts in. Add to this native intelligence, the arrogance that our coyote seems to have. Other than our resident Mountain Lion (who only seems to make cameo appearances since he has a huge State Park to roam around in), coyotes would be the biggest predators around here.

And our coyote’s done what even Pitbulls in San Francisco have not been able to do: he’s intimidated Oscar, who like his namesake Oscar de la Hoya, is usually unaware that he is not the biggest dog on the block. This morning, as Coyote loped by, Oscar jumped up on the dining table (because standing on a table makes you look REALLY BIG) and barked furiously. But he certainly wasn’t going to run after Coyote, who never broke stride, even as he gave Oscar a contemptuous glance over his shoulder.

Here's a dramatic recreation of Oscar barking at Coyote through the window from the table.

Lucy, on the other hand, is petrified.

She's spending her indoor time hiding behind the bathtub.

And outdoors, she's still always seeking protective cover.

As for little Oscar, he’s been busy marking all the territory around the barn with his own special brand of Oscar essence. He’s not ready to take Coyote on. In fact, I think there is a bit of hero worship happening. After all, here’s a pointy faced, prick eared canine who is obviously in charge.

So here's Oscar, in a Native American patterned chair, practicing his best Coyote look.

So this post was supposed to be about the lovely walk from the barn to the crush pad that I’ll be taking three times a day now that we’ve had a first harvest and I need to do thrice daily punch downs and readings. I was going to amaze you with beautiful photographs of woodlands, flowers and vistas. You would almost be able to smell the fragrance of Sonoma in Autumn. See what I mean in the photo above of the road past the vineyards? Gorgeous.

Then Oscar came along for the walk. And like most terriers, he can be a game changer.

But first let’s set the scene. One of the best parts of the walk is the Insectarium. This is an extensive planting, all along the upper vineyard, of native plants that attract beneficial birds and bees. As in those good guys who pollinate the grapes or eat all the nasty vine-eating bugs . The trick is to arrange for year-round color (or a year-round buffet if you are looking at it from the insect/bird point of view). Not as easy as you would think in a place where the fierce summer sun burns everything to a crisp by July. But our landscape expert has managed to find a great collection of natives that are indeed providing color all year.

Look at these pretty plants! I love the way some of them bend over like a flower waterfall.

How about this one that just burst into bloom?

I even know the name of this one. It's Echinacea.

The interesting thing about our native plants is that they don’t have sweet, flowery smells like those you’d associate with flowers growing in more temperate and rainy climates. Here in semi-arid Sonoma, our flowers and plants have sort of a peppery, spicy smell.

But wait, what’s that whiff I’m getting? It’s not peppery or spicy. It’s distinctly rotten and horrible. And it’s coming from the area of our harvested lavender.

It's Oscar holding some large, furry, decidedly dead thing.

It's the head and full backbone of a baby deer. And Oscar is not going to share with Lucy.

But he will share with me. At least he'll share the aroma of his "kill", as he waits patiently for me to open the gates.

Behold the Mighty Hunter. Or is it The Day of the Jackal?

Quick. Think nice thoughts. Don't think about Bambi. Hey, look at the view!

Take some readings. Think wine. Think nice thoughts.

Then walk back to the barn through the flowers. Behind a terrier. And the wafting smell of carrion.

The harvest has finally begun. And as it happened last year, the Cinsault was the first of our varietals to ripen. Which is a good thing since we’ve planted very little of it. It’s a gentle beginning before the tons of Mourvedre, Grenache and Cabernet get going. Further good news is that we kind of know what we’re doing by this point. Or, at the least, we have better equipment. So up at the crack of dawn Sunday for the harvest. Just us two. And some terriers for comic relief.

A bit of background: Cinsault (pronounced San-So) is a traditional Rhone blending grape. I have seen one or two single varietal Cinsaults around Sonoma, but mostly, since it’s pretty sweet, it’s used to give a little balance to a Rhone blend that is mostly Grenache, Mourvedre, Syrah and/or Merlot. The predominate nose is supposed to be strawberry. I can tell you that was NOT the dominant aroma of last year’s Cinsault. But hey, the vines weren’t mature yet and we didn’t really know what we were doing. We have higher hopes for this year’s harvest.

Unlike the tiny tanniny berries on Cabernet vines, Cinsault bunches are big, fat and sassy. With an almost sweet flavor right off the vine.

Andy cuts with the traditional mini-sythe grape cutter.

I have a different weapon of choice: kitchen shears. Yes, in the field, I can cut a bunch of grapes or bone a chicken. Julia Child would be proud.

Meanwhile, once at the crush pad:

Here's our entire Cinsault harvest. About 400 pounds. Which is chicken shit in grape harvesting terms.

So the bins are dropped off at the top of the crush pad. I sit on the concrete ledge here and drop the grapes, bunch by bunch, into the crusher/destemmer that you can just glimpse below. Andy then pours the crushed grapes into the big white primary fermentation vats, in the right of the picture.

So this whole dropping grapes thing. Well, it's like picking 400 lbs of grapes all over again.

400 lbs. of grapes is a lot. Especially twice in a morning.

Terriers are no help at all.

Once you have the crushed/destemmed grapes in a primary fermentation vat, it's called a "must". And you stir it. You'll keep stirring it up three times a day for about a week.

After this point, Dr. Frankenwine retreated to his lab to do very complex things like testing acidity and calculating how much yeast and tartaric acid to add to the whole mix. It’s all a little beyond me, so that bit will have to wait until I can get the Mad Scientist to sit down and explain everything. Meanwhile, I discovered something alarming: a mouse invasion (the crush pad is outdoors after all.) Recently the mice had built a nest on the engine of the crusher/destemmer and one poor guy had crawled into an empty vat and died. Yes, all of these things were cleaned and disinfected before the crush! Although I’m told the French would just shrug and say “Eet ees thee terroir.” But this is America. So Andy devised an elaborate plastic and duct tape mouse barrier to go underneath the vat cover.

Take that Trixie and Dixie, Stuart Little and Tom and Jerry. No meeses in our wine.

Time for clean up. This is where terriers come into their own. HOSE PATROL!

Oh, and all those stems that were separated from the grapes? Those go over the side of the hill for the deer. They love them!

Deer don't want no Cinsault. Just give them the stems!

More pictures of the Cinsault 2009 Harvest and Crush here.