Grow
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Jardín del Pueblo: The People’s Garden – Farmworker families grow food for themselves and those in need.
Pants freshly stained with grape juice after a long night harvesting a nearby vineyard, a worker arrives to a farm just outside Healdsburg. After an exhausting shift, he should be heading straight for a shaded hammock for some much-deserved rest. Instead, he walks between towering banana plants and a greenhouse strung with drying hibiscus flowers…
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Secret Garden at Garden Valley Ranch
Garden Valley Ranch is Petaluma’s own version of a secret garden, offering visitors an enchanted escape from the bustle of daily life, perfect for anyone longing to stop and smell the roses–literally. As a working cut-flower farm, Garden Valley Ranch offers both beautiful blooms and immersive experiences. Beyond being a gorgeous wedding venue and go-to…
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Take Flight: Winged Wonders at Sonoma Botanical Gardens.
Created by Boston-based duo Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein, aka The Myth Makers, these huge avian sculptures—some soaring up to 20 feet tall—are crafted entirely from natural materials. Expect to spot an enormous Acorn Woodpecker among the oaks, a giant Anna’s Hummingbird, and a larger-than-life Western Meadowlark and California Quail keeping watch over the trails.…
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Grow Local – Grazing for Good
PHOTOS BY PAIGE GREEN With a knife sheathed in her belt on one side and a bright orange mallet on the other, Paigelynn Trotter traverses a steep hillside with a baby strapped to her back, and a livestock guardian dog at her side. She’s studying how 140 goats just grazed down the spring forage where…
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Grow Local – Zero Foodprint Steps Up
What if part of the solution to climate change was just dining out at our favorite restaurants? Could it be that easy? It might be if the folks at Zero Foodprint have anything to do with it. Through small donations from local food systems, the Healdsburg-based Zero Foodprint (ZFP) funds grants that enable farms and…
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Grow Local – Stay Gold
One might not describe an apple as “attitudinal.” But Brooke Hazen of Gold Ridge Organic Farms does. In part, he’s referring to the flavor expression of hard-to-find apples like the Pitmaston Pineapple, Strawberry Parfait, Cinnamon Spice, and Winter Banana—all heirloom varieties which, Hazen affirms, taste like their namesakes. A “attitudinal” heirloom of note for him…
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Grow Local – Hardcore
PHOTOS BY PAIGE GREEN It was a bittersweet milestone for Manzana. Just two years after reaching its centennial, the North Bay’s last remaining apple cannery announced they’re relocating to Washington. It’s said that the only constant is change. And that old facility along Atascadero Creek, with its big metal tanks, loading docks, and piles of…
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Grow Local – Perennial Harvest
PHOTOS BY PAIGE GREEN The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC) has been making legendary salad mix from their deep-rooted, biointensive gardens for decades. But you might not know that back in the 1980s, a Bay Area produce distributor sent a spy to OAEC to discover and replicate the exclusive salad mix recipe. Instead, the…
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Grow Local – The Future of Farming, Part 2
SEE PART 1 IN VOL. 11 – ISSUE 2 – MAR/APR PHOTOS BY PAIGE GREEN Twenty years ago Wayne James harvested garlic with a pickaxe. Today, on the exact same plot of land, all that’s required is a light tug and those bulbs slide right out from soft, dark earth. That’s because Wayne, together with…
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Grow Local – The Future of Farming, Part 1
PHOTOS: PAIGE GREEN Small-scale farmers are inherently resourceful. They have to be. Often operating on a shoestring budget, they make the most of what they have: stacking functions, repurposing materials, taking a tool designed for one task and, after a bit of welding and duct tape, jury-rigging it until it can accomplish a dozen different…