I just heard a guy interviewing a local gleaner, a woman who picks up fennel bulbs out in the fields of Castroville. I know there are people (including myself) who forage for various items in the woods and lots around here. But I know little about gleaners, although, of course, this is the perfect area for that activity.
According to the California Story Fund:
“Unlike in Europe, where gleaning is considered a right, gleaning in California requires the cooperation of field owners. While illegal gleaning occurs, most of the gleaning in Salinas Valley is done in cooperation with large growers, who also distribute over 10 million pounds of surplus crops to food banks and other programs.
The gleaners come from communities throughout Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. Some work with church groups, some work with labor groups, some are high school students, some are elders, some speak only Spanish.”
The National Steinbeck Center in Salinas is having an event today, “The Gleaners: A Harvest of Stories,” 2–4 pm. I’m going. See you there?
(Via an article by Kimber Solana in the Salinas Californian, Nov. 10), for unspecified reasons the Cava family will not be able to put on the Thanksgiving feed that they have held for 18 years. Jose Castaneda and Jamieko Lane will take over and do the honors this year.
Michelle of Green Kitchen has been out hunting and came up with a bunch of beautiful locally plucked Boletus. I have to admit that I’m of those scaredy-pants who is afraid to forage for mushrooms because of potential poisoning. I get my foraging high from hunting for New Zealand Spinach (hint: it’s near water), or finding the perfect tamale at the farmers market.
Fishwise.org/blog just noted this, originally reported by Sebastian Boyd of Bloomberg.com: we may see an increase in sea lion deaths, and a decrease in “foraging fish stocks” (anchovies and sardines) due to El Niño.
“It’s almost like El Nino conditions but too early,” Joe Cordero, a biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Long Beach, California, said in an Aug. 27 telephone interview. “If the El Nino continues to develop it’s going to get much, much worse.”
These horses live next to the Mexican rodeo grounds, just down the road from me. The horse in the top photograph was scratching his nose on a piece of barbed wire wrapped around a fencepost.
My mother let me take horseback riding lessons for a year when I was a kid. And that’s the limit of what I know about horses. So, coming from a suburb to live in Elkhorn–where there are many horses and riders, and where residents look forward to rodeo season in the summer–has been a big change for me.
One summer day, as I was driving down the road toward my new home, I passed a man on horseback, dressed like a vaquero. Let me clarify: he was not dressed like the “Marlboro Man,” and clearly had no aspirations to do so.
He was dark, had a full mustache, and sat tall and proud astride his beautiful horse. His clothing seemed to be a mix of Spanish and Mexican cowboy styles. I can’t remember exactly the details, but I do recall a wide-brimmed hat, short jacket, spurs, and a lot of silver. I started to feel a little out of place. “Well, Toto,” I might’ve said to my dog, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas.”
Since then, I’ve seen a lot of other vaquero types, and some of them do dress like the conventional Anglo cowboy, but most wear jeans and baseball caps. They occasionally dress as vaqueros for the rodeo.
When this region was Alta California, governed first from Spain, and then Mexico (this was before the Gold Rush, when the Anglos from the east began claiming the land as their own), the first cowboys actually were the vaqueros. Most of them migrated to south and central California (and generally the southwest) from northern Mexico. The huge ranchos of the Californios, awarded to them as the original Spanish land grants, dominated the area. They raised cattle, and traded hides with the ships that sailed into the port of Monterey (Monte Rey, or King’s Mountain).
Perhaps that’s why, when I had that first glimpse of the tall, dark vaquero riding his horse toward me down Castroville Blvd., I felt as though I were seeing a ghost.
A slide show of the last Californios, by William S. Dean.
See also the award-winning dvd, “Los Californios de Monterey: Pioneers of Alta California 1769-1848,” produced and directed by David A. Anaya.
At home in Elkhorn during the first rainstorm of the season.
Yesterday while in Santa Cruz, I stopped at the Westside farmer’s market. I wanted to pick up some ardi gasna (ewe cheese) from Rebecca King’s Monkeyflower Ranch, which is in Royal Oaks, bordering Elkhorn. I also wanted to try out the Apple-a-Day sauerkraut from Farmhouse Culture.
The market was jumpin,’ despite the fact that the weather was cool and overcast. The musicians were playing, and vendors were giving out free samples of homegrown food, so I was in heaven. I’d been following Ms. King’s chronicle of setting up her sheep dairy on the Ardi Gasna blog, and was now curious to sample its products.
Lovely Rebecca King somehow looks exactly like the perfect person to manage a sheep dairy: knowledgeable, healthy, and enthusiastic about her “Garden Variety Cheese” products. I picked up a wedge each of Moonflower and Black-eyed Susan.
At the Farmhouse Culture stand, I learned that the Apple-a-Day kraut was sold out, which was not surprising. But they were giving a good deal on their “Summer Love Sauerkraut.” I was a little hesitant about the ingredients. Besides cabbage, it contained zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, tarragon, sonoma sea salt, and — lavender. Lavender? With cabbage?
Well, I tried a taste, and found the lavender to be very subtle — just an echo, but a pleasant one. And on the whole the kraut was mild, fresh, and lemony. I also like the fact that their kraut is pro-biotic, containing beneficial bacteria that promotes digestion. I had just recovered from a bout of food poisoning a couple days before this tasting, and had no problem at all digesting the Farmhouse Culture sauerkraut.
Later, I prepared a plate with some homemade wholewheat soda bread, the Summer Love kraut, and the two ardi gasna cheeses, which were both aged at 4 months. The Moonflower was buttery-smooth and nutty. The Black-eyed Susan has a tangy, rich flavor, a little fruity. I’m hooked. To find out where to purchase Garden Variety Cheese, check out Rebecca’s Market Update.
I began writing about the three communities a few months ago, and discovered in the process that I enjoy documenting the life of the communities around me. So I decided to post Part 1 of “Documentarian” (revised), which was originally posted in another blog:
After a pretty rough day at work, I find it oddly comforting to document my surroundings. I was thinking, today, of the two communities nearest to my house; these two places provide my basic provisions.
The first is Castroville, also known as the “Artichoke Center of the World,” and the place where one Norma Jean (yes, Marilyn) first won fame as the — you guessed it — artichoke festival queen. Local hype makes much of these two facts about the town. One fact it doesn’t mention: Castroville is the site of probably the only cooperatively gay/straight bar in town (and in the Monterey Bay Area, for that matter). Initially named after Norma Jean, it is now known as Franco’s. It’s also the site of the Islamic Center of Castroville.
This is Castroville’s main street. There’s not much going on in Castroville at 6:30 in the evening—at least, so it seems; I may be wrong about that, however. In town, I purchase things like toilet paper, dish soap, and dog biscuits; I go to Ace Hardware for tools. The first time I went in there, to replace a missing screw for the kitchen table I had just bought, the teenaged clerk walked out to my car to get a look at the table, to make sure the screw fit. When was the last time a clerk volunteered that kind of service for you in the city or suburbs?
Most of the population of Castroville is Mexican. They work in the fields, and they own many of the stores, beauty shops, garages and gas stations. I had my first taste of freshly squeezed betabel y naranja (beet and orange) juice at the Michoacan Meat Market here in town. YUM!
The other nearby community that I frequent is Moss Landing Harbor, about 5 miles north of Castroville. Local hype makes much of the seafood, antiques and fishing excursions in the area, and the fact that the Marine Research Labs are located here. I go to the Harbor to buy seafood, because it’s good and fresh. You can get it right off the boat — the Tina Louise, which is painted bright pink.
When I visited Moss Landing years ago, the Harbor was full of run-down, rotting warehouses, along with a handful of struggling antique stores. It was also notable for a certain bar (now gone) that was patronized by local motocycle clubs like the Hell’s Angels and the Flying Coffins. Now, the Marine Labs, affiliated with UCSC and Stanford, and MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) have lent an air of busyness and importance to the place.
I think it’s safe to say that most of the people who live at the Harbor are more or less Anglo, although I have heard that there is a small population of Vietnamese here, who run some of the fishing boats. Moss Landing is a working harbor, with all of the stink and noise of same.
The power plant is located on the other side of Hwy. 1 from the harbor. It uses seawater for “cooling purposes” and discharges the heated water into the Bay. It is northern California’s largest non-nuclear electricity facility.
The MBARI website says this about Moss Landing and Monterey Bay: “Monterey Bay is one of the most biologically diverse bodies of water in the world. The Monterey Canyon, which bisects Monterey Bay, is one of the deepest underwater canyons along the continental United States.”
