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.

Last weekend, after picking strawberries as part of Farm Fresh to You’s spring farm tour, we headed further up CA-16 to Cache Creek Canyon Regional Park, at the north end of Capay Valley. Thanks to info gleaned from Yolohiker.org, we decided to take the Frog Pond Trail, a 5 mile loop with an elevation gain of 660 feet. It seemed like the elevation gain was all right at the beginning, and then we were cutting through tall spring grass, rolling meadows with trees, and some interesting dense brush.

Some more nice pics from our trip to the farm.

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.

Lake Mead panorama

Note to self: need to practice using Automatic Exposure (AE) lock.