There are seven quarts of raw milk on my kitchen table, courtesy of Claravale Farm in Paicines, CA (via Whole Foods).

Tonight I stumbled upon this amazing butter at Real Foods on Polk Street. I can’t wait to try it. The fine-print reads:

This butter, with fragrant and delicate flavor, is produced with pasteurized creams from the milk collected from Parma and Reggio Emilia family owned farms in the area of production of Parmigiano Reggiano. Its quality is without equal because the milk used is strictly selected according to the extraordinary rules imposed on production of the famous Parmigiano Reggiano.

During our last cheese school class, Alpine Cheese and Alsace Wine, Wil Edwards, one of the instructors, talked about having worked at Harley Farms for a number of years, a goat dairy located an hour south of San Francisco. He mentioned they do tours, and given Stephanie’s affection for goats (as well as cheesemaking), I knew we had to go.

I checked out their website, and discovered they were hosting several prix fixe, five-course dinners on the farm, complete with a tour and cheesemaking demonstration. My jaw dropped! I made reservations immediately, for dinner last night, which we learned was their first ever seasonal dinner available to the public.

After the tour everyone gathered above the barn around a long handmade table and chairs set for 20 people, family-style. For the next several hours we enjoyed lively conversation inevitably centered around food, cheesemaking, community-supported agriculture (CSA), cooking, beekeeping, etc. Meanwhile we were treated to an amazing dinner prepared with ingredients procured from farms within a 30 mile radius of Pescadero.

There was bread and goat butter on the table, which we enjoyed with our first course, steamed artichokes with garlic aioli. The second course was an amazing homemade ravioli stuffed with ricotta and topped with chevre, basil, and brown butter. (I need to cook with brown butter more.) That was followed by a beet and citrus salad with mixed greens. The main course was rack of lamb with potatoes and asparagus. Dessert was the ricotta we’d “made” earlier, with strawberries and honey.

We had arrived that afternoon at 4pm, after leaving San Francisco at 2:30pm—it was pretty much the only activity we’d planned for the day—and when we got back to our car it was past 9:30pm. Thus we began the slow drive home through the fog along the coast, with full, happy bellies.

We opened our first jar of jam for breakfast this morning, and made butter with some leftover cream we had in the fridge.

Stephanie and I woke up early on Saturday morning to drive out to Capay Valley for Farm Fresh To You‘s spring farm tour and strawberry picking. I went by myself last year, my first tour of the farm, and had an absolute ball. Nothing compares to eating warm strawberries right off the stem. This year I had a mission: pick as many strawberries as I could, and use them to make homemade jam, something I’ve never done.

Last night I read up on how to make jam, and then this morning I went out to Rainbow Grocery to pick up 12 one pint canning jars, canning tongs, a canning funnel, sugar, and pectin, the fruit-based gelling agent. We then set to work stemming and washing the strawberries, mashing them, cooking them, and finally canning them. All told we made seven pints, three with very mashed strawberries, and four with less mashed strawberries, plus lemon juice and vanilla sugar.