spring lambs

I’m working on a newspaper article about organic, farmstead sheep cheese. Here are a few of my favorite shots …

baa baa baby sheep

Tiffany and Andrew

Shot at the Old School House and accompanying fields and ranches nearby, in the late afternoon.

If buildings could talk, the Tassajara School House would tell of children reciting lessons, ciphering and singing in a classic one-room school. Students from Tassajara Valley ranches attended this school from 1889 to 1946.

Students from first to eighth grade walked, rode horses and took buggies to get to school. In 1889 Richard D. Williams was the teacher and 41 students attended that August. Roger Podva (born in 1884) began school in 1890 and said there were 42-75 students at the school when he attended, sitting two to a desk. They learned mental arithmetic, reading, geography, spelling and writing. A picture of George Washington hung on the wall.

Today the School House sits in rural, restored splendor on its original site at 1650 Finley Road in Contra Costa County’s Tassajara Valley. A belfry with bell, old outhouses, a restored stable, picnic tables and a new redwood water tower complete the picture.

Adopt-A-Ewe

For $500 you can adopt one of Rebecca King’s pasture fed sheep and in return be invited to Open Houses at the farm; receive twice a month cheese CSA boxes & your choice of either Lamb Meat or a Wool Comforter.
Click Here to Contact Farmer Becky

Take a little naps where the roots all twist

Peach Season. Time to Celebrate and let the juice run down your face.

Movin’ to the country,
gonna eat a lot of peaches
Movin’ to the country,
Gonna eat me a lot of peaches
Movin’ to the country,
gonna eat a lot of peaches
Movin’ to the country,
gonna eat a lot of peaches

Peaches come from a can,
they were put there by a man
In a factory downtown
If I had my little way,
I’d eat peaches every day
Sun-soakin’ bulges in the shade

Take a little naps where the roots all twist
Squished a rotten peach in my fist
And dreamed about you, woman,
I poked my finger down inside
Make a little room for it to hide
Nature’s candy in my hand or can or a pie

Millions of peaches, peaches for me
Millions of peaches, peaches for free

Look out!

this little piggy went weee weeee (all the way home)

-Monkey Flower Ranch, late afternoon
(Royal Oaks, Calif.)

(your giving) keeps lifting me higher and higher

My friend Wynene and I took some photos for City Slicker Farm here in Oakland a few weeks ago. As usual,  I loaded my photos into my Flikr account and tagged them up and rubbed them down (oh noooo). They started tractioning emails and interest. You can find them here, on the Awesome Pickle and soon they will flood the East Bay in a CIty Slicker produced brochure.

Mutual giving: I get to practice taking photos & they get some visual imagery to load into their marketing arsenal.

I’m also in the midst of writing an article for Edible East Bay about food stamp gardens due at the end of May. So community gardens, giving, sharing and hard-working people are a common theme right now. A perfect beautious theme, if you ask me.