Napping in the yard on a nice summer day.

The last major post was from Amory, Ginger and Jesse’s house in Oakland, just off of Telegraph Ave. A lot of good times have been had in the two weeks since then. Rachel and I spent some quality time with the Eiseman family, my cousins, in Burlingame, a suburb south of the City, ending the first era of our bay area stay. It was time for us to head back north to the Wedding of the Century, of Mickey Murch and Bronwen Halsey, friends from Reed, in Bolinas. We car-pooled to Bolinas, that secret Marin Co. beatnik hideaway, with Norah (of big pink house fame), the (un)official wedding photographer, leaving the bikes behind at a friend’s house in SF. We arrived Wednesday evening to help prepare for the Saturday wedding, a task made larger by the continuing necessity to do farm work too. The place was already full of people and excitement, and the intensity only continued to increase as each day passed and more and more people arrived. One night there were 25 people; the next night 30; the next 100. Dinner on Saturday was for 300 or more. Rachel and I made ourselves instrumental in the preparation of food and the picking of vegetables, preferring that to the endless awkward free time of introducing oneself to hundreds of unknown fellow visitors. On Friday night, we helped make pizzas and grilled oyster after oyster, serving them up with butter and lemon.

On Saturday, we were nominated as ushers. We leaped to the Bolinas town Free Bin to find clothes befitting of such an honored position. The photo at left shows us in those fine habiliments. The ceremony itself was a classic, yet personalized affair that took place on the tidal salt flat of the Bolinas lagoon. In fact, the theme of the wedding, as conceived by Mickey and Bronwen, was “salt”; salt preserves; salt endures; salt is vital to life; salt is relatively abundant and tastes good on just about everything. A true permaculture theme! After the wedding, we took it upon ourselves to stay on at the farm until the following Wednesday to help the family catch up on farm work as the clean-up progressed and the guests slowly trickled out. We took the bus back to the city that night to stay with friends, preparing ourselves and our bicycles to regain the road the next morning. And regain it we did… at around noon. That morning I had discovered that sometime on the bus ride to the city or on the 26-block walk to Will and Rosanna’s house, I had lost my shoes, trusty companions for almost three years. How, you may ask, did I lose my shoes while walking? The simple answer is that I was wearing my sandals, while the shoes were supposed to have been tied onto my pack by their laces. Anyways, the first order of the day was for me to get new shoes. Luckily, a bargain basement sporting goods store presented itself in the neighborhood. Out of cosmic coincidence, I ended up doing exactly what I did three years ago: buying Vasque trail runners because they were on sale and the cheapest, most comfortable shoes in the store. So I now have a new pair of the same old shoe, this time in grey instead of bright red. A good shoe. That was Thursday. We were in Davenport, on the coast by Friday, noon. There we found Swanton Berry Farms, and their amazing farm stand. The first indication of its greatness: the free jam tasting advertised 100 yards in advance.

The next notice: a sign advertising a 10% discount for bike-tourers! 10% off of a free jam tasting is like extra-free, or a credit of 10 cents or something. The first thing I saw when I opened the door to their unassuming little tasting shack was the self-serve fair trade coffee, tea and organic strawberry-apple cider, only $1 a cup, with 50 cent refills. Now that is reasonable, folks, even to me, a person famously lacking reasonability. We bought a cup of each, dutifully getting our 10 cent discount. And the pay-station was an “honor-till” where you pay and make change yourself on the honor system…that’s basically free, right? Then we noted the jam tasting table…the vessel for the jam: animal crackers! I swooned. But there’s more. We noted the living room like atmosphere, with tables, games, music, etc. We read up about the strawberry industry on the placards on the walls. All of Swanton Berry Farms berries are organic, and picked by workers who are members of the United Farm Workers union. We’re talking Cesar Chavez, and his boulevards. We’re talking the end of the short handled hoe, and of DDT in the fields. So, leftist that I am, I was moved to eloquence: “Kid, this place is hella sick!” I pronounced. On the way out: a hand-painted sign with a bicycle reminding drivers to share the road. Propaganda though it all may or may not be, SBF is a model for humanity, without a doubt. Long story short, we made it to Santa Cruz later in the day, where we took a break from biking to ride uphill in the afternoon heat to find the Alan Chadwick garden, a treasure tucked away in the sprawl of that enormous UCSC campus.

Chadwick was a disciple of biodynamics guru Rudolf Steiner. In America, he designed gardens at Green Gulch Zen Center, UCSC and a number of other places. His namesake garden in Santa Cruz was a teaching facility in the growing and testing of semi-dwarf fruit trees–mainly apples–and vegetables, polycultured in close-quarters on a hillside. We walked around that jungle of plants for half an hour, tasting ground fall apples and examining varieties.
From there we rode on to Aptos to meet up with some friends of friends and to stay for the night. The crew we stayed with consisted of an older couple who owned the 10 hillside acres outside of town, a few long-time residents, and a bunch of young art students working on video-media production. At the same time, they were getting the family placed whipped into proper shape as a permaculture-style homestead. They had milk goats and gardens. They had just begun an outdoor kitchen terrace with a cob oven. I saw evidence of chinampa-style terraces on the hillside, a technique by which flat land for gardens, trails, or erosion control is created on a hillside utilizing piles of brush. The brush is shored up on the downhilll side with large stakes. Eventually dirt finds its way onto the brush pile, creating a flat, albeit spongy, terrace where once there was a hill. And permaculture gadflies, take notice: They had just finished hosting a 6-weekend permaculture workshop, taught by no other than Larry Santoyo, the George Carlin, Sheriff’s deputy, of permaculture design and instruction.

We left the next morning. Since then, we’ve been relaxing once again, this time in the comforts of the Coulon-Edwards farmstead of Watsonville…that is the Icelandic horse farm and apple orchard belonging to my first cousin, once removed, Annette and her husband Bruce. We’ve been treated with the utmost of luxury here, including to ice cream on the order of cardamom, pistachio, ginger, green tea and lychee in downtown Santa Cruz. Watsonville is the strawberry capital of California, for those you keeping tabs, so we’ve been learning gobs about commercial strawberry production just being here, soaking in the atmosphere, or the fumigants. For a dose of a more sustainable agriculture, Annette took us to the UCSC organic farm at the heart of the campus. There, they’ve got almost 25 acres of vegetables, fruit trees and flowers, along with the biggest avocado tree I’ve seen. We hungrily (our main adverbial state) ate apples, oranges, raspberries and sungold tomatoes off the vine and off the ground in our allotted 45 minute visit (that’s how much we could afford at the meter. Get this: the UCSC Farm parking “lot” has meters at the rate of $1.50 an hour, proving only what the US government has already proved time and again…that there’s more money in “law enforcement” than in sustainable agriculture.) Well, we seem to be headed out for real tomorrow morning, for Castroville, Artichoke capital of the USA; Monterrey-Jack, cheese capital of the central coast; and Carmel, Caramel capital of Apple County. Stop on by the blog again sometime, where we’re talking about fruits, vegetables, bicycles, acronyms, and other bad jokes all the time.

Check out NEW PHOTOS here!

Last time we updated we were about to depart the strange luxury of Thea’s house in Santa Rosa, once more to ride the roads. It weren’t long, however, that we were back in the cradling arms of civilized humans. We spent a day riding from the hubub of Santa Rosa through the cool mists of coastal Sonoma and Marin counties, passing Tomales Bay and Pt. Reyes National Seashore, to Bolinas. Before we arrived there, we explored a recreated Coast Miwok village named Kule Loklo, located in the Point Reyes Park at Bear Valley, just south of Point Reyes Station and Olema.
From the Rt. 1, we rode on the west side of the Bolinas Lagoon, arriving at Gospel Flat Farm, the Murch family homestead and farmstand. The Murchs are in a state of busy excitement and preparation from the upcoming wedding of son Mickey, an old friend from Reed, to Bronwen, also a friend from Portland–next week! The soon-to-be-weds live the fast-paced lives of parents of a todler, baby Arlo, as well as as farmers and artists. When we arrived, Mickey, cousin Sam and dad Don were cleaning 38 hens they had just killed, many of which are likely to be roasted this coming weekend in the big stone oven.
Emmett, Rachel and I have come to agree that the Murch family and their way of life is truly a model for humanity. If you don’t know why, you need only pay them a visit to find out. The next day we spent the morning on the harvest crew, bringing in chard, kale, green beans, leeks, onions, celery and parsley. After lunch we went out to the Regenerative Design Institute, just outside of town. RDI is a permaculture education center, being developed on a similar scale and appearance as Bullock Farm. The homestead hosts innumerable classes in nature awareness, leadership, ecology and regenerative permaculture design under the super vision of local guru Penny Livingston-Stark. Dropping in without notice, we easily fell in with the intern crew, got a brief tour and walked ourselves around, barely concealing that we were really just looking for ripe fruit to gnosh on, as per our usual. Not much luck, fruit-wise, in that sunless, godless coastal Cali climate, where the fruit takes 2 or 3 years to ripen (not really, but yeah). Have I mentioned fruit to you before? Praise Jah, we sure do love fruit and search it out wherever we go. That night was Don’s birthday, so we feasted opulently and sloppily on stone-oven-roasted-home-raised pork haunch, fresh-baked bread, taters, carrots, fennel and onions, and cake and ice cream. The best part was that the ‘kids’ (that is, Mickey, Sam, Phoebe, Bronwen, Rachel, Emmett and I) did most of the cooking (and indeed, most of the rearing of the foods) for papa Don’s birthday. We also did a significant chunk of the eating. We left Bolinas leisurely the next morning, headed for Green Gulch Zen Center and Farm in Muir Beach, and a ‘Muir’ 12 miles south , climbing over one Scotland-like coastal ridge in the fog, our one and only worry being that we be there by the time lunch was served at 1. At Green Gulch we met up with Nora Harrington, long lost friend from Orcas/Waldron and friend of Emmett from the Bainbridge Highschool days. Nora was doing the meditation study program and working in the flower and herb garden. As her assistants for the afternoon we were assigned the lucky task of dead-heading the lavender that bordered the long main pathway up to the campus. Never ones to waste an opportunity, we collected all of our trimmings and bundled them to be given away to passersby in the big city, the spicy aroma of that Mediterranean herb spreading through the underground train, Market Street, Embarcadero, the Mission and China Town. The next day, we worked a few hours in their big farm fields, harvesting produce for the Saturday Market. Emmett and I picked purslane and nettles, of all things, an assignment that produced many ponderings about what was a weed and what was a crop. We then opted to ride on south through Marin City, Sausalito’s waterfront houseboat district (we never found the cookies, nor the sauce after which Sausalito is said to be named), Golden Gate Rec. Area, and up onto and over that famous bridge.
On weekdays the bike and pedestrian traffic share the southbound sidewalk, while on weekends, they share the northbound side. Crossing the 1.7 miles of said golden gate bridge, with bikes and trailer and multi-dimensional tourist and bicycle tetris, was thus an incredible zoo that took upwards of 20 minutes. From there we cruised in through golden gate park, passing Hippie Hill and down the famous Haight street to Ezra’s apartment in the Army Building at Valencia and Cesar Chavez. Our oddventures and ramblings in the Bay Area have been numerous, but a few are worth noting: riding the freight elevator up and down to and from Ezra’s apartment; riding down Grant street through China Town, the wrong direction, and buying a roast duck out of the window of a restaurant impulsively; taking fully loaded bikes and trailer up and down the escalators to the BART (Bicycles Are Routinely Thwarted); Riding up the Berkeley hills to wander the Native Plants Botanical Garden, eating everything that looked remotely edible; being welcomed warmly by Pete and his great housemates Ian, Katie and Elka at their big house in Oakland; finding and eating more free food than is possibly consumable by three persons (almost) at Food Not Bombs in People’s Park, in the USDA experiment station’s organic community garden, at the Long Haul Infoshop, and more riding out to the ocean beach in San Fran, the concrete sea wall a sunset possibly the warmest microclimate in the whole city; finally, eating one last burrito with Emmett and Rachel at the infamous Taqueria Cancun in the Mission, before he headed back north for good and she jetted off to Virginia for the wedding of two old friends. More has happened since then here in the East Bay, but it has involved only me, Judson J. S. Daffern, and no other, and is therefore not worth reporting at this time. Maybe more from Telegraph Ave. later. Tomorrow I’ll be supping with my cousins in the Eiseman family down south of here. Rachel returns from Virginia on tuesday. We’ll head back North for the event of the century on Saturday, at which Bronwen and Mickey will be betrothed, the cake will be a Julia Cattrall creation, the wine will flow like wine, the meat like meat, and many (300+) will share the intoxication of love, life and lickor. Don’t forget to look at all the new pictures in the Northern California Section of our Picassa Web album.

When we left Arcata, we went out on the Lost Coast of Humboldt county, that remote, hilly, 100 miles of coastal area served only by the narrow, winding, and absurdly steep Mattole Road. Someone said that you can judge a people by the water they drink. On the lost coast we were told repeatedly that the water was undrinkable. We found that the people there in that tinhorn, backwater kingdom were as weird as the flavors in the aquifer. Our first night out on the LC was cool and foggy, but we slept with the luxuriant warmth of fire all night long. A Local had guided us to a natural gas seep in a small clearing in the woods. When we found it, it was already burning, banishing our fears of a cold and cheerless night. We used it to cook our dinner and breakfast and dry our clothes. We’ve sworn not to divulge its location, but there are pictures of it in the album. We spent another night on the lost coast outside of the town of Honeydew, before tackling the long haul climb back over the ridge to Garberville. Once again it was hot and parched. We alighted at a community-based organic farm down by the Eel River, working late into the evening weeding and setting fence wire in exchange for vegetables and a place to camp. We bathed in the Eel as the sun set, cooking pasta on the rocket stove and eating in complete darkness. Heading southwest, we summited the infamous Leggett hill before noon–a two stage climb with a long, winding section on the 101 through redwood groves and up one hot ridge followed by a sort break before an intense and long uphill section on route 1 that crested the second ridge and swooped down to the Mendocino coast. We rode on to the coastal town of Fort Bragg that day, enjoying beer and pizza as a reward for our climbs. The coast was socked in with fog, breezy and cool. At points, the fog verged on rain. Early evening in FB was as cold as I’ve been on the trip. That’s the California Coast: 45 degrees and foggy in July! In the parking lot we found Joey, Aaron, Hank and Dot, a family of Humboldt-Mendo locals who offered us a place to stay at their impressive and undeveloped ocean-front, 25-acre parcel of land. Hanging out late into the morning with them was a very welcome break from our big-hill routine of the past several days. We decided to opt out of the coastal grind and headed back inland at Albion, riding up the rolling, redwood shaded Navarro River canyon into the wide-open, sunny Anderson valley. In the hills above Boonville, we visited Emerald Earth, an intentional community devoted to natural building and serious intentional community building. They are enmeshed in the complex heritage of west coast permaculture: Michael Smith, co-founder of Cob Cottage Company with Ianto Evans has also been an energizing force in developing Emerald Earth. Ianto was himself a co-founder of Aprovecho Learning and Research center in Oregon. There has been significant cross-pollination between Emerald Earth, Aprovecho, Cob Cottage, Mountain Homestead, Heartwood Institute, and Bullock Homestead in the years since they all formed. After our half-day visit and walk-about at EE, we set up camp at a small organic market garden in Yorkville, digging potatoes until dark in exchange for dinner and a place to camp. We finally sat down to the hearty and long awaited meal at 10:30 PM, getting in a few hours of sleep before an early breakfast and departure. We practically cruised the rest of the way into Santa Rosa. Emmett found a freshly roadkilled fawn on the side of the road, so we took a half hour break for him to butcher it up for transport. In Cloverdale, just inside the Sonoma line, we began to find citrus on the trees. The California Dream! We harvested arm loads of grapefruit and oranges before heading in through the wine country of Geyserville, Healdsburg and Windsor. We found our long lost friend Thea, fellow intern at Bullock Farm in 2007, living on the edge of the big California city of Santa Rosa in a crazy house that looks like a barn. That was two days ago. We’ve spent our time here recuperating, eating lots, reading, making phone calls, and doing all that other stuff that we must periodically do to maintain our sanity: showers, laundry, food, decisions, bike maintenance. Yesterday we rode the “seven” (more like 13) miles out to Sebastopol to see the Gold Ridge farm of famed horticulturist of days past, Luther Burbank, (or what’s left of it). He was said to have introduced the Himalayan Blackberry to North America, among a plethora of interesting and delectable fruits and nuts. For all you permaculturists out there: check out the Chinese Quince (Psuedocydonia)–apparently the fruits get huge. We’re about to leave Santa Rosa, after two pleasant days visiting with Thea and her boyfriend Mark. We’ll be heading south through Marin County on the coast route towards Point Reyes and Bolinas where we’ll meet up with old Reed College friend Mickey at his family’s Gospel Flat Farm. Following that, we will visit Penny Livingston-Stark’s Regenerative Design Institute and the Larner Seeds company, God willing, all in Bolinas. We’ll also be visiting a friend at Green Gulch Zen Center in Stinson Beach, and a number of people and places in Berkeley, Oakland and San Fran. Look for more updates from the big city.

Earlier this week we rode much of the Klamath River along California HWY 96 from where the river is crossed by the I-5 in Siskiyou Co. all the way down to Weitchpec. Our first day out of Ashland I suffered 3 flat tires. We spent that first night on the Klamath at an old mining claim camp site right on the river. Our next day was scorching hot, so we stopped around 11 at the Seiad Valley store. Emmett noticed that the little cafe there was advertising a “Famous Pancake Challenge.” Always one to push the barriers of decency and edibility, he couldn’t resist asking “what the heck?” Soon as you know it, he was snared in the pancake challenge: eat five enormous flap jacks, and get the food for free, not to mention the pride and fame of being one of less than twenty fools to have accomplished the feat. 15 minutes into the challenge, he wisely admitted defeat rather than die at the hands of the griddle cakes. Rachel and I tried to help finish off the cakes, but were little help. In the end, three of us ate about 3.5 of the 5 cakes. Can you believe it?! Three ravenous long-haul bikers conquered by a stack of pancakes. You may think us pathetic, but I invite you to view the pictures before you make your final judgment. It was a good five pounds of cake. Long story short, we rolled into our long-awaited destination that night: Marc and Corinna Robbi’s permaculture homestead and business, Rolling River Nursery. There is so much that is remarkable about the Robbi family and their land that it is daunting to begin to describe it. Their steeply sloping 10 or 15 acres in the Klamath canyon is Marc’s third homestead since he was in his twenties. He and Corinna and their three kids Zea, Lucius and Baby Chubbs, along with interns Justin and Karice, grow peaches, apples, plums, pears, nectarines, apricots, cherries, loquats, persimmons, figs, almonds, chestnuts, walnuts, lemons, oranges, mandarins, pomegranate, grapes, kiwi, olives, pistachio, avocado, and all kinds of other vegetables, berries and such–all in far northern California, Humboldt County! They’ve also got goats for milk and meat that they graze under the fruit trees. The comically steep hill between their house and the river was a jungle of these fruit trees, aromatic herbs, vegetables and all manner of dog, cat and fowl. Life creeps forth from every crevice at the Robbi homestead, in all off its obscene abundance. Our first night there we feasted on goat meat and goat cheese pizza. We worked hard in the morning, picking loquats and peaches, (and then gorging ourselves on the thirds). We weeded a number of garden beds before lunch. After lunch as the heat cranked up, the order of the day was swimming. Doing as the locals do in the summer, the whole family sought out the “Grubstake” swimming hole up on the Salmon River out of Somes Bar. Lord! It was the biggest swimming hole Rachel and I had ever swum. We all spent the rest of the afternoon in the cool Salmon waters. The best part about life in the Banana belt of California is that you don’t have to work in the afternoon. Everyone turns their attention to the serious work of getting down to the river. The next morning we pushed our loaded bicycles up the steep gravel driveway to the 96 and set our sights on the Coast.
Now here we are, about to leave old Arcata town. We’ve spent a delicious two days at the Rickard homestead of Fickle Hill road, home of Nancy, Paul, Oliver, Heather, and of course Beth Hazel. Yesterday we refreshed our muscles, spirits and bicycles in Arcata Town, getting the stuff we needed to fix our steeds after almost 900 miles of riding, eating enormous burritos from a truck downtown and buying the beer necessary for two days in port. Later we cooked dinner for the fam in true HBS style: beet salad, red lentil daal and buffalo-chantarelle biryani, topped off by about 17 flavors of ice cream. Today we went to the beach at Orick, to Trinidad Head and the Lady Bird Johnson Redwood Grove. We finally had the fourth of July that we missed earlier. Paul and Nancy Rickard grilled up some dogs and burgers for us and we settled in to our deck chairs with some chips, beer and watermelon. Jah Bless America. Our legs are rested; our bikes are back in shape. Actually Emmett’s bike now has a strange new shape. You’ll have to see it in future pictures.
We came in to Arcata two nights ago, riding the 81 miles from the scorching heat of the Klamath to the cool night fog of the plaza. We had spent some of the hotter hours of the day lounging in the shade of a tree in interior Willow Creek before mounting the final effort to the coast at around 5pm. 4 hours and two 2,300+ foot climbs later, we were in the plaza with the drunks and heads. It wasn’t five minutes before we were offered a hemp necklace for sale. No joke. Nancy spared us the final slog through the Humboldt fog and picked up our whole circus downtown and hauled it 5 miles and 1,200 vertical feet uphill to their stead. Tomorrow we’ll head into town for the famous and well funded Arcata farmers’ market and a stop at the coop for squirrel food, before we set out for the Lost Coast.
Its about time for me to sign off for the night. Writing is getting to be about as hard as riding these days. Check out our updated photo collection to see all the sights.