Go for Goat! (On the California Cheese Trail: Two Rock Valley Goat Cheese)

I felt as though we were in an estranged place and time. A place perhaps forgotten by the reach of development I thought was inescapable; a time departed from the lure of a life the speed of a bullet train. I feel the clock slow. I rolled down a window and I breathe, my mundane worries quickly vanishing, carried away by the whipping wind like a weightless dandelion. I inhale and more than just clean air fills my lungs – I also breathe in the technicolor of the bright sunshine, blue skies, wild flowers, and free roaming cows. I am having a storybook moment, I guess. We drove through endless country roads where it is lush in every periphery filled with grazing spotted milk cows and sheep. Spring is definitely making a big presence here. The rolling hills are carpeted with thick grass in the most vivid green as if in a dream, and in some spots, with yellow mustard wildflowers, uncontrollable and free. I recall a similar experience on the road, only it was in Bouillon.

I was already captivated and little did I know that the stories told by people here who have built lives and livelihood, raised children and animals, would be just as riveting. It was such a noble way of life, and in a lot of ways, enviable.

I am on the furtive California Cheese Trail. I came here for stories of food. But what I got was a lot more. I got stories of passion.

SAY CHEESE!
Even to West Coasters as myself, the California Cheese Trail remains obscured, and I would argue that we should keep it that way. The trail spans Sonoma and Marin Counties in California, north of San Francisco.  This area is already made famous by its fantastic wine, but to also lay claim to some great, boutique cheese?  Remind me why I don't live here again.  The trail map could be downloaded here, and there is also an app available for both Apple and Android devices.  While some of the cheesemakers are open to the public, some are only available for tours/tastings by appointment only.

Right around March, there is also a festival for serious cheese nerds.  There are guided tours, workshops, tastings, and classes.  The 2014 annual event was last weekend, but you can pin this page for the 2015 schedule.

We were on the trail to meet two cheesemakers that day: Don and Bonnie of Two Rock Valley Goat Cheese and Craig Ramini of Ramini Mozzarella.  We were just whale-watching that morning at Bodega Head and would be wine tasting the next day, so an afternoon was all we had.  But carpe diem, we did!  We allowed two hours per cheesemaker and that was plenty for each place to leave an impression.

GO FOR GOAT


Bonnie meets us at the barn door.  "I've been expecting you."  She has a kind face and a nonna quality about her.  I thaw out instantly.  We entered the barn where she keeps the kids and some mothering ones, and instantly, the chorus of bleeping goats welcome her.  And us.  I didn't realize goats had that much personality!  They were like puppies clamoring to be petted!

She started the goat farm with just two goats as pets for grandkids.  Years later, it ballooned to over one hundred fifty.  They are already an organic cow milk dairy (supplying Organic Valley) so it was not too much of a transition to start milking the goats.  

Outside, there were more goats and it was interesting to see how some goats were more personable than others. There is one particular “show” goat who enjoyed the limelight too much that she started bleating relentlessly when she realized there was a tour happening without her.  She had wanted to be part of the action and she let everyone know.

And what to do with all that goat’s milk? Well, make cheese, of course.

Mass produced goat cheese has a distinct flavor. It is musky and some people would describe a tangible and unique bitterness to say, chevre and gruyere. As our tour wrapped to the pens outside, we smelled that familiar goat cheese smell.  It turns out that that musky scent emanates from the stud.  The trick to making cheese without this taste is for the milking goats to be separated from the studs.  It works pretty well because all the cheeses we tried (except for the goat’s brie, which is a young cheese) had none of that musky flavor.

Meanwhile, Bonnie steps inside the house to fetch her husband, Don DeBernardi, the cheesemaker, who has spent time with family ties in the Alps to learn the art of making goat cheese.  He had a couple of temperature controlled trailers in the property where the wheels of cheese are being aged. Due to sanitation reasons, we couldn’t go inside, but he would bring the special ones out and you could tell, this is a man proud of this cheese.

And one could see – no, TASTE, why.  We tried four different kinds – each one older than the last.  In the US, it is illegal to sell “raw”cheese products so cheese has to be aged at least three months.  The older a cheese is, the harder it gets.  So a three-month old would be softer and suppler with more of a tang. A nine-month old cheese would be harder, the flavor subtler.  This would be your grating cheeses. 

I say this without being patronizing, but each cheese we tried was excellent.  I’ve never had brie as fresh as this one in my life before and it made all the difference.  In the small sun-filled tasting room at DeBernardi, with two DeBernardis, one the lactose-intolerant goat-lover, the other, the passionate cheesemaker, the world melts, like the most perfect grilled cheese.

This is it.  We've found gold.  

Two Rock Valley Goat Cheese is located at 7955 Valley Ford Road, Petaluma, CA. Check them out on Facebook here.  Some of their cheeses are available at Whole Foods. Don DeBernardi is also a mainstay at the local farmer's markets.

Gardening in Raised Beds and Self-Water Containers

It's amazing how in such a small space, I could grow an inordinate amount of food.  Because I live in the high desert, it's almost imperative to use either raised beds or containers for gardening because our soil is predominantly clay, the type not suitable for gardening.

My garden set up right now is one 48" x 48" raised bed by Greenland Gardener and two self-watering planters.  I love the raised bed because of the sheer volume of food I yield from such a small space.  This Greenland Gardener bed is on its second year and despite the extreme temperatures here in the desert (including snow and deep freezes in December), it is holding up very well.  I wrote a review of this raised bed last season which you can find here.

See this small raised bed?

This is its realized potential...  It bursts with color and FOOD!

On the other hand, I also love the self-watering containers because here in the desert, it can get very frustrating knowing the right amount of watering required by your plants.  Self-watering containers, as its name suggests, regulates soil moisture by itself.  You just need to make sure the reservoir at the bottom is always full.  Self-watering containers when done right, could yield high volumes, although you can't plant too much on them since they tend to be small.  They also run expensive so when I see one on sale, I grab it!  Shown below is a City Pickers container I grabbed on sale and here's a review I wrote of the Grow Box.

This jalapeno plant on the City Pickers container kept growing and growing and producing and producing.  It was also the hottest jalapenos I've ever had and to be honest, I ended up giving away most of them because they were fatally hot.  

The other container had a melange of herbs, and in the spring, some lettuce that supplied us with salads all season-long.

I have not added any more beds or containers this year.  I can't wait to find out what this year would yield!

How to Start an Edible Garden

The east and midwest have been hammered by snowstorm after snowstorm this winter, it seems like.  Meanwhile, in the high sierras of Northern Nevada, we've had a lackluster winter.  Spare for a couple significant storms I could count with one hand, we've pretty much had spring since December.  For folks who've invested in a ski season pass such as myself, that is just not thrilling.  That means less than stellar ROI.

On the upside, spring is here early and to an edible gardener like myself, that means I can start growing food again! Lemons, lemonade, right?

I'm giddy for this growing season especially since last year was so successful!  And you must know that I live in the high desert where there is a lot of things working against me.  But my garden was so abundant the entire growing season I also keep some of my co-workers supplied with a little bit of my organic produce grown from one raised bed and two small self-watering containers.  

If you have thought about growing your garden, the season is NOW!  The big question I get from people is always, "HOW?"  Here's a cheat sheet that I made that simplifies how you can start growing your own edible garden. 

I care about food and I encourage everyone to grow their own.  If you have some growing questions, post below and I could try to help.

Happy Spring and let's get growing!  

Growing Pains: Lessons from the Garden #2

If your biggest problem is a cutworm (or a couple of them), then be thankful.  There are worse things in life.  It could be much, much worse. 

My strawberry patch has not been the most maintenance-free.  A few weeks ago, I discovered that aphids partied on the stems of my growing strawberry plants.  Since, I have tried the very sophisticated water hose blast method and it seemed to work.  I followed up with a foliar application of insect frass, but it rained that evening, so there goes that.  I just have to do a repeat this weekend. 

Anyway, before leaving for a camping trip, I noticed some new damage on leaves of a few plants that look like pacman munch bites.  There has been some major snackage.  It's not the signature of aphids and it can't possibly be slugs because it's too dry here. 

With a headlamp and The Dutch within a shrieking distance, I went out and sleuthed.  I found the culprit!  Big, fat cutworms.  The best way of getting rid of them is picking them and eliminating them to your discretion.  They are nocturnes so hunt for them at night, as late as possible.

I am not completely convinced that we have controlled the cutworms altogether.  But before I get consumed by it all, I remind myself to keep things in perspective.  Nothing, I mean, NOTHING, is worth any bad vibes.  Life is way too short for that. 

Gardening, as with anything in life, is not in a sealed vacuum.  Things are bound to go wrong just as they are bound to go right.  It will be utter foolishness to think it could only be the former without the latter.   

And on we go.

Hope for the Black Thumb

I was cleaning up some old files in my computer and found a draft of an unposted blog entry dated June 2011.  Retrospection is an awesome thing, especially when things come into full circle!

*****

They said that a rose bush is an uber sturdy plant. They're invincible.  It would be impossible to kill one.

Oh really?

I killed two already.

Short of saying hello to them once in a while, I have not done anything to them. I am one of those who let the drip system run its course. I’m clueless about deadheading, hence, the two surviving rosebushes in the front yard are growing vertically and oddly.
However, apparently, I’m good with lavenders. Or just lucky?

Because summer is here and there is nothing more I want right now than to grow a mini-lavender farm in the backyard, and perhaps a small herb garden, I am propelled to banish the idea that I am impossible in the garden and just go for it. I have mowed the lawn one and a half times now in my whole life, so that must be as good a start as any! Just the thought of making a vegetable pasta dish from scratch with hand plucked tomatoes and basil from the backyard makes me want to madly rush to Home Depot right now and load the trunk with soil and seeds and a gardening tool set in a cutesy bag.

*****

Fast forward to the present, two years later, and look what I have growing in the backyard now! It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Greenland Gardener Raised Bed Garden Kit]

Swiss chard, winterbor kale, and broccoli

It's starting to warm up so there will be a lot of kale meals this weekend before they get pulled out and  replaced with summer veggies - tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers.

Radish sown from seed.

Spinach sown from seed after a few days of rain 

Broccoli in the foreground and swiss chard in the background.  No broccoli florets yet...

[The Grow Box Self-Watering Container]

..and subsequently ended up at the dinner table.

Lettuce growing in the desert - who knew?

Pea tendrils are so mysterious to me..

Peas are cold-lovers.  I was ready to give up on this since I planted too late and now it's getting too warm.  But look what I found today!  I might harvest ONE pea this season!

I am stalling a little bit on what to plant in the Grow Box for summer.  I already transplanted some thyme I've grown from seed and I'm thinking basil and green beans.  Yes, that's it!

[Strawberry/Etc. Bed]

Yes, they're coming!  

Mesclun salad mix and the remaining lettuce (which will be salad dinner this week).

More strawberries, green onions and garlic.  Garlic must be the EASIEST thing to grow.  Separate garlic cloves (yes, the kind you buy at the store) chuck garlic cloves in rich soil about 2" deep and wait.  You can't go wrong.  

[Indoors]

The most economical way of growing your own vegetable garden is to start what you can from seed.  Depending on where you live, hot-loving plants like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, beans, basil need to be started indoors way in advance.  In areas where the growing period is short (period where temperatures dip in the 40's) such as Northern Nevada, your plants will be ready to go in the ground around May 15th if you started sowing indoors around March.

Future firestarters - Peppers!

Marigolds grown in a plastic container of store-bought veggies. 

This makings of Jack-and-the-Beanstalk beans

Ben and Jerry's hot pepper flavor!

Parsley reaching for the sunshine

Cucumber AND lemon cucumber  

Lavender, in my experience, is one of the hardest things to grow from seed.  My germination rate has been 4% (i.e. one out of 25), whereas everything else I've sown otherwise has been either 100% or 98%.  So that makes this one a rockstar!

Genovese basil - so many culinary possibilities!

The summer superstars and future caprese - beefsteak and cherry tomatoes!  

The biggest surprise is that the hard work you put into growing your own food is really all worthwhile when you chomp your meal and notice the staggering difference of fresh, quality, homegrown food as opposed to something that's been refrigerated and has traveled a thousand miles to get to your dinner table.  It eliminates so much waste, too.  How many times have you bought a lettuce head and only ended up eating a portion of it while the rest went bad in the fridge? Isn't it a waste to buy a bunch of herbs when you only need a few sprigs so you end up tossing the rest after it goes bad a few days later?

Sometimes, the case for gardening is pure reason and oftentimes, too simple.  If you have space and some time, isn't it the most obvious thing to do?  I am stoked about this yard-ening business (apparently) and if I'm using my own experiences growing things to give this little food revolution movement a little momentum, then it's just a bonus!

Happy summer!

Dirty Talk

"You are what you eat" doesn't just apply to humans.  "Garbage in, garbage out" doesn't just apply to accounting.  It also applies to.. yes.. you guessed it.. plants!  I never realized that there is such a science behind soil and securing that there are enough nutrients in it for your plants to feed on.  It is not such an ethereal concept though so I thought I'd give it a shot.

So me and my empirical self drove 45 miles to Minden, NV to Full Circle Compost just to haul dirt.  Oh yes, I did.  

I will not go to great lengths about the science behind soil.  I'll leave that to the experts at Full Circle Compost.  But here's my case for sourcing from them when I can just easily drive to Home Depot to get soil.

1. I grew a container garden last year from soil bought from Home Depot and from a local nursery.  While they all claimed to be "organic", none of them just cut it.  My plants never really looked healthy and the yield was mediocre, at best.  Well, I'm shooting for stellar.  If the results are not proportionate to the increase in my water bill, then clearly, it's not worth my time.
2. Full Circle Compost is a local company and know our local growing conditions inside out.  They know how to work with our local growing environment isntead of against it.
3. And since they're local, they're very accessible. I spoke with Craig Witt, owner of Full Circle Compost and sh*tologist extraordinaire, on the phone and he nearly talked my ear off (it's a good thing, really!) about the perfect blends suitable for the area, testing done on their soil and plants grown in them, how to use their products, etc.  He is a great resource not just for information about their products but for gardening in the Northern Nevada area in general.  Would you have the same direct access to the corporate bigwigs that manufacture your "compost" sold at your big box store?
4. Craig Witt is a farmer himself and if you have any doubts, check out http://www.fullcirclecompost.com/assets/Love_Apple/index.htm.  He grew 100 lbs. of tomatoes in ONE plant.  I want THAT!

Here are my picks:

Full Circle Garden Soil 

This is a blend of Nevada native soil mixed with their product called Soil Essence Elite Garden Boost (see below description for more details) in the appropriate, proven proportion.  I have a 16 square foot garden bed with half of this stuff and so far, the veggies I've planted in them look happy and healthy.  I also like that this soil doesn't dry out too fast.  I picked up 7 bags (I think they're 5 gallon bags) for $3.25/bag.  This soil is very dense so if you're picking up more than half a cubic yard, take a truck.  This stuff's heavy.  Also, this is not available in Reno.  You gotta drive down to Minden.  It's a pretty drive. :)

Full Circle Potting Mix

Half of the my 16 square foot bed, I filled with Potting Mix, which is Full Circle Compost's closest take on "Mel's Mix" of 1/3 compost, 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat moss.  Square Foot Gardening is gardening method invented by Mel Bartholomew and now has a MASSIVE following because of its results.  It basically employs a simple but effective methodology of making efficient use of space.  More on Square Foot Gardening here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Lu-7FIj_g.  It's too early to tell which whether there will be a variance in results, but I am super curious who will win in Garden Soil v. Potting Mix showdown. (Gosh.  I sound like such a geek.)  This is a bit more expensive than the Garden Soil.  I paid $4.75/bag for 7 bags.  

Full Circle Soil Essence Elite Garden Boost

If you cannot drive to Minden, then at least get this the Soil Essence Elite Garden Boost which is sold at Whole Foods and Great Basin Food Coop for $9.99.  If you have ever heard of John Kohler of http://www.youtube.com/user/growingyourgreens, he swears by azomite or "rock dust" which enriches your soil with trace minerals that are required for optimal plant growth.  Soil Essence has rock dust, trace minerals, micorrhizae (fungi which helps your roots absorb minerals better) AND worm compost, which is another power ingredient for your soil.  You can use this to top off whatever soil you are growing in and supposedly 1 bag is enough for a 16 square foot bed.  

Full Circle Worm Wine

I just started using this today on my plants and I'm very curious if it would make any noticeable differences right away.  It's very concentrated and one small jar needs to be dilutes for 5 gallons of water (or 1 ounce per gallon of water).  I use it to spray on the leaves and per the folks at Full Circle, application once every two weeks is all you need.  One pint bought onsite at Full Circle ran $5 but I've seen it retail for $9.99 at Whole Foods, but I think it's a bigger jar.  

As you can tell, this experiment just barely started so I don't have any results to prove anything yet.  But even still, I'd rather give my business to a local Nevada company than to some unknown corporation on the other side of the country without any experience growing anything in the high desert.  Even for that alone, I think I'm still ahead.

Thank you for doing the dirty job, Full Circle Compost (so I don't have to)!

Here is Full Circle Compost's contact information:

Website:  http://www.fullcirclecompost.com/index.php

Physical Address:

3190 Highway 395
Minden, Nevada 89423

Telephone:

775-267-5305 or
775-267-5355