May 15-28
By Eliza
We decided that it would be better to tell about all the farms we stayed at during this period of time, since we stayed at each of these places for only a couple days. So, without further ado…
Beef Farm May 15-16
Among the rolling, golden hills of an oak savanna black and white cows grazed contentedly, while calves chased and frolicked in the evening light. A peaceful scene. While here we attempted to go to the county fair of Angel Camp. It must be very popular, because the line of cars on the road was quite long and therefore we decided to go to Angel Camp Museum instead. It was interesting. Part of the museum was about the gold miners that came to this area during the 49ers period, while another part was dedicated to wagons, saddles, horseshoes and such. One thing we noticed right away about this town was the odd fact that it seemed to celebrate frogs and Mark Twain, as if they were somehow connected. We later realized that Mark Twain recorded one of his first short stories about a frog here. It made him famous!
Cherry Orchard May 17-18
These cherries were THE BEST!! The cherries are already harvested, so the owner granted us permission to stroll through the rows and pick all the leftovers. So we did! Surprisingly, there were a LOT of cherries left on the stems! We stuffed our faces! Mom ate so many that she couldn’t sleep very well that night, due to all the sugars in the cherries! A lot of us exclaimed “This is the BEST Harvest Host I’ve ever been to!”
Lucero Organic Farm May 18-19
This Harvest Host had not one dog, not two, but three dogs to Simeon and Lev’s great delight! These folks have been farming organically since the ’50s! We bought sweet strawberries, blueberries, apricots, crunchy carrots, wonderful cauliflower, and some sort of plum fruit! YUM!
Roots and Shoots Farm May 20-21
We loved this stay! Miss Gwen, our host, was very sweet! She lives by herself in a barn she’s converting into a house. She has also started a small vineyard and has some berry plants, and even a fig tree! She invited us over for supper one night and we tried out her pizza oven. It was a whole process, our dough was too wet and VERY sticky. We kinda made a mess in her kitchen! It was quite hot during our stay so Miss Gwen filled up two stock tanks and we sat and splashed in there most of the afternoon! On our way here we stopped at a Lego store because Simeon and Lev had some Lego gift cards that they wanted to use up. It was challenging finding the perfect Lego set! Even dad had some fun there! He bought a whole box of parts and built a castle from scratch, even while cooking supper!!
Martha’s Gardens May 22-23
At this Harvest Host there were about ten different gardens. The Topiary Garden, Succulent Garden, Wildflower Field, Fragrant Garden, and even some handsome chickens! Lovely gardens! We got to go to a nearby bike park twice.
Chico Rice Farm May 24-25
This was a very interesting experience! We were invited to stay by a bunch of colossal silos in the middle of many rice patties. The foreman gave us a nice tour of the operation. We got to see the ginormous tractors and the mills they use for their rice. There are a few different stages to a rice plant’s life.
- The field is leveled with a GPS laser contraption attached to some sort of leveling machine.
- A tractor makes rows for the rice.
- An airplane flies over the rice patties and seeds the rice.
- The fields are flooded with water.
- The fields dry up and the rice plants become a vibrant green color.
- The rice keeps on growing and growing, getting taller and taller.
- In the fall the rice becomes golden brown.
- The rice is harvested, milled, and packaged.
- The rice is cooked and on your plate ready to eat!
We tried Chico’s brown rice and it was exceptional. Sweet, nutty, and not bitter or dull! We learned that when your brown rice has a not-so-very-nice flavor it is because the bran and germ, which are still in the brown rice, can become rancid of it is stored for a long period of time. However, in the case of white rice the bran and germ are removed so it can last longer. The rice from this farm was freshly milled and tasted wonderful!
While here we visited a U-pick Boysenberry farm. The owner was the granddaughter of the man who invented this wonderful combination of raspberries and blackberries. The berries tasted a bit like raspberries with a hint of sweetness, but they looked like blackberries. Unfortunately for us, these good-tasting berries do not grow in Minnesota.
We ate half a watermelon from the store. Note about the watermelon: We all agree this was the worst watermelon we’ve EVER tasted. I won’t even describe for you how watery and garlic-y it was (yes, garlic-y)! We made watermelon sculptures instead:) [note from Dad, I think the cutting board caused the garlic flavor]
Train Mountain May 26-28
This was also a unique stay. It was a mini railroad with many little trains, sometimes 300, that “members” own and actually ride around on these miniature trains! There are also different types of full-sized train cars you can tour. We visited a couple snow plow train cars, a New York passenger car with some rooms even containing a bed and a toilet, and other miscellaneous cars. While were were here we went to Crater Lake National Park. The Lake was incredible!! It was so much BLUE! In the morning it was foggy and drippy, but then, twords the afternoon the sky cleared up and the sun came out. Then the lake gets extra blue! This lake is the deepest in the US. It’s 1,949 feet deep! This is how the lake was formed: The crater used to be Mt. Mazama, a volcano. One day about 7,700 years ago it erupted. The mountain was shook to its foundation and collapsed, forming a big crater. During the eruption every living thing within 30 miles of Mt. Mazama died. Slowly over the years the crater filled up with melted snow and rain. There are no rivers or streams that flow into this lake, It is just rain and snow. This park gets about 40 feet of snow annually! That’s about 1 1/2 inches every day for a whole year! Dad, Sim, Abe and I went on a longer hike to a lookout point. We saw a marmot poking out of it’s burrow in the snow. It looked very cuddly! Some of the drifts of snow on the sides of the road were over 5 feet tall! It was weird to see so much snow on the ground and wear hats and wool socks again. On part of a hike we did around the rim we were in an evergreen forest. It smelled WONDERFUL! On one part of the trail there was a hill of snow, so us kids sat on our bums and slid down the snow! Its was cold and wet but very fun!
I think I’ll let dad do a bit of writing here because, after all, he is an engineer that works with railroad tracks (and a bunch of other stuff)! [Dad here. Train mountain has 34 miles of 7.5 inch gauge track. The scale is generally one foot on the full size train is 1.6 inches on the smaller train, but some equipment is modeled at 1.5 inches to the foot, or 2.5 inches to the foot for narrow gauge. It was raining much of the time we were at Train Mountain so we didn’t see many members running trains but we were able to get on a 30 minute tour ride (video clip here). We suffered a derailment of 2 cars when a big pinecone jammed a switch. It was easily resolved. I got to wear the hat Eliza made for me. We did enjoy the trains, perhaps a future hobby?]
And that, my friends, concludes our stays at these nice Harvest Hosts.
USon8wheels - a travel blog 