Heed the Call of the Pumpkin: Great Bay Area Pumpkin Farms

Few people can resist the delights offered by a pumpkin farm. They’re wonderful places for urban and suburban families to slow down just enough to feel the turning of the year and maybe try some harvest or other activities from times past. And, of course, there are the pumpkins themselves — jolly orbs that lay in profusion among pastures until you, the visitor, pick the most perfect among them to take home.

With Halloween almost upon us, most pumpkin farms have gone into high gear, with lots of activities over longer hours, and a host of pumpkins still available for the picking. Included in this listing are working farms and special pumpkin patches in the North, East and South Bays.

North Bay

Peterson’s Pumpkins and Dried Flowers, Petaluma

This working farm opens to the public for Halloween. Families may visit on weekends or after 2 on weekdays. In addition to two large, natural pumpkin fields, Peterson’s has lots of animals to feed and pet, including chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, cows, ponies, rabbits, pigs, calves, and a very big but gentle bull known as Wooly Monster. There are also fresh vegetables, flowers, free-range eggs, and an observational bee hive, all in a very intimate farm setting.

See the Peterson’s web site for directions and more information.

Peter Pumpkin Patch, Petaluma

This large, beautifully situated pumpkin farm in the Chileno Valley is also the home of Spring Hill Jersey Cheese. Visitors can milk a cow or dig for potatoes in a potato field, in addition to buying some of the best homemade ice cream around (pumpkin and vanilla) and specialty  farmstead cheeses.

See the Peter Pumpkin Patch web site for directions and more information.

Adobe Pumpkin and Flower Farm

This 30-acre farm has thousands of pumpkins and gourds for the picking, along with U-cut zinnias and sunflowers, and vegetables. Adobe also has a great corn maze, a hay ride, a haunted barn, a jump house, animals, crafts, and food and live entertainment on weekends.

See the Adobe Farms web site for directions and more information.

Nicasio Valley Farms, Nicasio

Along with a large, picturesque pumpkin field, Nicasio Valley Farms offers U-pick strawberries, lots of gourds, and a farmstand featuring a complete array of fresh organic vegetables, as well as eggs, breads and cheeses. There is a hay ride, a hay maze and a jump house.

Call Nicasio Valley Farms at (415) 662-9100 for directions and more information.

East Bay

Smith Family Farm, Brentwood

Smith Family Farm has been in the same family for three generations and offers lots of great old-time activities on its large farm. There’s a leisurely tractor-pulled hay ride out to the pumpkin field, a corn maze, a hay maze, displays of antique farm equipment, live entertainment in a barn, a host of animals, and lots of fresh U-pick produce. The farm offers lots of places to picnic and play in a large, varied ranch setting.

See the Smith Valley Farm web site for directions and more information.

Clayton Valley Pumpkin Farm, Clayton

Clayton Valley Pumpkin Farm, at the base of Mount Diablo, features a large variety of pumpkins and squash in all shapes and even colors. This working farm offers lots of fun activities for all ages, including a trackless train, a playland featuring old-fashioned games, and plenty of farm animals. The farm represents a part of the area’s rural past that is largely disappearing.

See the Clayton Valley Farm web site for directions and more information.

Joan’s Farm and Pumpkin Patch, Livermore

This large, pretty working farm offers a taste of the Old West: There’s an Old West town, gold panning, antique farm equipment, a museum, and more. There’s also a large corn maze, hay rides, farm animals, and a farmstand with fresh produce for sale.

See the Joan’s Farm web site for directions and more information.

South Bay

Half Moon Bay bills itself as the “Pumpkin Capitol of the World” for good reason. Many people know about its yearly Art and Pumpkin Festival, which occurs each year in mid-October. Less well-known is the bounty of area farms, many of which have been in families for generations, along Highways 1 and 92.

Farmer John’s Pumpkin Farm, Half Moon Bay

This delightful pumpkin patch offers an extremely large variety of pumpkins, all grown on-site. This working farm also features a hay pyramid, scarecrows, play areas, a Native American tipi, cornrows, U-pick sunflowers, and an antique John Deere tractor. The farm is wheelchair-accessible.

See the Farmer John’s Pumpkin Farm web site for directions and more information.

Arata’s Pumpkin Farm, Half Moon Bay

Open since 1932, Arata’s is one of the oldest working pumpkin farms in the Bay Area. In addition to pumpkins, enjoy pony rides, animals, a hay ride, and a huge hay maze — clearly a labor of love — constructed out of 10,000 bales of hay.

See the Arata’s Pumpkin Farm web site for directions and more information.

Little Creek Ranch Pumpkin Farm, Half Moon Bay

Just up the road from Arata’s, Little Creek is a delightful family farm and pumpkin patch suitable for very young children. Pumpkins lay far apart on flat ground, so there are no vines to trip over. The entire pumpkin area is surrounded by low hay bales. There is a play structure and pony rides, along with other animals.

Call Little Creek Ranch at  (650) 726-2765 for directions and more information.

Pastorino Farms, Half Moon Bay

Pastorino Farms dates from the 30s and is known today for its huge assortment of pumpkins, along with its big orange-and-black decorated barn. Pastorino offers train rides around a small track, a jump house, pony rides, and a petting zoo. Hand-made signs that identify the many different types of pumpkins, some of them quite unusual. Also nice is the farm’s large selection of Halloween decorations and kitchen wares.

See the Pastorino Farms web site for directions and more information.

Lemos Farm, Half Moon Bay

A working farm since 1942, this popular, charming spot offers lots of activities for all ages, especially young children. In addition to a good selection of pumpkins, Lemos Farm features pony rides, hay rides, a hay maze, a train for small children, a toddler-oriented play zone, haunted houses for older and younger children, and animals you can feed and pet. Lemos Farm retains a great deal of charm from the South Bay’s rural past.

See the Lemos Farm web site for directions and more information.

Have fun!

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

Sonoma County Farm Trails Weekend

As if we needed another excuse to get out and enjoy early Fall, September 26-27 is Weekend Along Farm Trails in Sonoma.

Sonoma County Farm Trails is a wonderful group. For 36 years, it has supported sustainable agriculture and provided education and tons of fun, with maps to and information about participating farms that are open to visitors. My family has visited farms for years, in all seasons — picking berries, apples, pumpkins, and zinnias; buying fresh vegetables, honey and eggs; feeding llamas, rabbits, chickens and cows; even making butter and milking cows, the last of which visitors can do at McClelland’s Dairy in Petaluma. Wineries, plant nurseries and restaurants are also on the tour.

We saw this newborn calf on one of our farm visits:

It’s just enjoyable to drive along the farm roads from one farm to another. Often, farms are closed to visitors during a typical day, or are only open by appointment. So it’s especially fun when they throw the gates open on Farm Trails Weekend, and you can really go into the many different farms and experience feeding animals, learning about the harvest, meeting farmers, participating in chores, and otherwise enjoying a taste of farm life. You can even get a jump on selecting a pumpkin. Some farms offer hay rides and other activities.

See the Weekend Along Farm Trails site to map your route and plan your visit. You’ll probably want to visit farms that are clustered in one or two areas and plan about an hour per farm visit, or 3-5 farms in a day. Have fun!

(If your area has a similar farm day, let us know.)

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

Be a Farmer for a Day at McClelland’s Dairy in Petaluma

When Anna was small, she used to love both to go for drives and to look at cows. The 45-minute drive from our house to McClelland’s Dairy in Petaluma also happened to provide the perfect mid-day nap time. So it was that we took plenty of drives to McClelland’s, to watch the cows being milked in the dairy barn.

Now you can do this, too, even without the nap.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a farmer, or if you just want to spend the day on a pretty farm, enjoying farm life,  McClelland’s Dairy in Petaluma is offering families and others that chance, with a special day filled with activities at their family dairy farm.

Participants will start with morning chores — feeding the baby calves from bottles in the nursery, mixing grain for the “mama” cows, and then milking cows, with one-on-one instruction from the farmers. You can sign up for a guided tour, where you’ll learn the history of the multi-generation family farm as well as more about the nursery and cow-milking barn. You can also experience making your own butter from milk.

There are lunches for sale, or bring your own and picnic at the farm.

McClelland’s “From She to Thee Farm Days” will take place Sat.-Sun., September 5-6 and September 26-27.

For more info about events, pricing, and the farm, see: The McClelland’s Dairy Farm web site.

Photo by Keith Weller

The Roses of Sonoma

A little while back, I visited Sonoma, CA, with my Beloved* and spent some time in the rose garden in the town’s central Plaza. (*Rose gardens bring out romantic nomenclature.) There’s an amazing variety of roses, and I had fun trying to capture the range of their beauty. Here are a few:

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

Cheese of the Week: Pug’s Leap Pavé & Petit Marcel Goat Cheeses

I recently had the privilege of visiting Raymond & Co. Cheesemongers in Glen Ellen, CA, and partaking in a little tasting. Yum! Everything they offered was tantalizing and top-of-the-cheese-game, including two farmstead goat cheeses, the Pavé and the Petit Marcel, from the relatively new Pug’s Leap Farm in Healdsburg.

(In the photo, the Pavé is topmost, and the Petit Marcel is at the bottom.)

Pug’s Leap, founded by ex-San Franciscans Eric Smith and Pascal Destandau, is notably dedicated to Slow Food and sustainable practices. They have stated that “buying locally brings health, economic, environmental, and social benefits to the community.” Their single goat herd of Saanens, Toggenbergs, Sables, and some cross-breeds, is fed organic feed. Their cheese production is relatively small-scale and done largely by hand. The farm is solar-powered.

The Pavé is unusually dry in texture, especially for a goat cheese. It’s extremely flavorful — tangy, with strong goat tones and smells, earthy, ashen and mushroomy. The complicated flavors linger nicely on the taste buds.

The wrinkled rind is wonderfully bloomy and the cheese nearest the rind has a great gooey texture. The processes used at Pug’s Leap greatly influence the Pavé’s taste. For one, the fresh curd is treated gently, to produce a rind with external mold, which in turn influences the taste of the ripening cheese. To create the especially dry texture, the whey is expelled.

The Petit Marcel is another winner. It also has a great goat flavor and an even more pungent goat nose (which I like). It’s also dry in texture, though less so than the Pavé . The younger Petit Marcel is sweeter and milkier than the Pavé. The taste, while great, is ultimately less complex, less special, than the Pavé.

As for pairing, both cheeses are wonderfully versatile. Grapes, peaches and cherries are some fruits that work with them. Almonds make a nice accompaniment. The stronger Pavé can take Cabernet and other red wines. I’d stick with a fruitier Syrah or Pinot, or a Chardonnay for the Petit Marcel.

Either way, get yourself a little goat round and enjoy!

Photo by Susan Sachs Lipman

Cheese of the Week: Juniper Grove Tumalo Tomme Goat Cheese

The world’s longest lasting cheese course (lucky us!) continues with a Tumelo Tomme Goat’s Milk cheese (also known as Tumelo Classico) from Juniper Grove Farm in Redmond, Oregon. This is a lovely cheese, with a firmer texture than you might ordinarily find in a goat cheese, which results in something like a goat gouda. It’s a solid, pleasing cheese, with a lot of body in the mouth.

The goat aspect takes a moment to hit you and, when it does, it is equally pleasant and on the mild side. (The Haystack Mountain Queso de Mano, which was on the same plate, is bolder.) There are nutty and sweet, even caramel-like notes, along with an earthy, slightly mushroom-y taste.

Redmond Grove Farm’s owner/cheesemaker, Pierre Kolisch, studied cheesemaking in Normandy with master cheesemaker Francois Durand, and cites European “tomme” cheeses as an influence. (“Tomme” loosely means small cheese from partial milkings, with the “tomme” and “toma” names in particular use in the French and Italian Alps.)

Tumalo is a raw-milk cheese, made from milk from Redmond Grove’s herd of goats, which feed on alfalfa year-round on beautiful land east of Oregon’s Cascade Mountain range. (Indeed, Tumalo bears the name of a local village.) Kolisch employs traditional farmstead methods in his cheesemaking, such as separating curds from whey, and then brining, stacking and hand-turning the washed-rind cheese, as it ages on pine planks in a dry, cool environment for three months.

The result is this nice, lovingly made goat cheese.

The Tomalo Tomme works well with crackers, grapes, apricots, or a fruity red wine, such as Pinot Noir or Merlot.

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

Cheese of the Week: Fiscalini Farms Bandage Wrapped Cheddar

Moving further along our superb Girl and the Fig cheese course, in order of distinctiveness (to me), we find the Fiscalini Farms Bandage Wrapped Cheddar. This was my husband’s very favorite cheese on the plate.

It is, indeed, a special cheese. It has a wonderfully strong, complex taste that features a mix of salty and sweet flavors. There are hints of grass and nuts, along with a pleasing buttery quality.

Far from the gummy, uninteresting, mass-produced cheddars that can give this cheese a bad name, the Fiscalini is dry and on the crumbly side, without sacrificing any creaminess of texture. It’s aged 18 months, using unpasteurized milk from the Fiscalini Farmstead cows and traditional methods that include bandage-wrapping the wheels in cheesecloth. The cheesecloth lets the cheese breathe as it ages and lends it a nice porous rind.

The Fiscalini Cheese Company, in the California Central Valley town of Modesto, has been operating since 1914. Their current cheesemaker, Jorge “Mariano” Gonzalez, studied at Montgomery Farms in England and perfected his methods at Shelburne Farms in Vermont. His bandage-wrapped cheddars consistently win awards, competing with such cheddar stalwarts as Neal’s Yard Dairy in England.

Cheddar doesn’t boast the same name-protection as some other European cheeses, which can only call themselves by certain names if they come from specific geographic areas. As such, cheddar is produced in many parts of the world. The first cheddars were created in Medieval times, in the village of Somerset, England, and it is the “Somerset model” that some use to determine a true traditional farmstead cheddar.

Randolph Hodgson, the proprietor of Neal’s Yard Dairy, has worked with the Slow Food Movement to develop standards for artisan Somerset cheddar. These include using unpasteurized milk from a farm’s own herd, employing traditional “cheddaring” methods, like stacking and turning the curd by hand, and aging at least 11 months. Aside from geographic considerations, Fiscalini fits the bill, and is the only American farm to do so. (Shelburne Farms makes a clothbound cheddar, but it is in extremely limited production.)

After enjoying this tangy cheese, it will be harder for me to take the cheddars for granted. Pair the complex Fiscalini with a hearty ale or a fruity wine, and crisp apple slices. Due to quality and price, I’d make it a nibbly cheese, rather than a cooking cheese. And I’d certainly give it its rightful place on the cheese board.

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

Cheese of the Week: Haystack Mountain Queso de Mano Goat Cheese

Continuing down our Girl and the Fig cheese plate, I really enjoyed the Queso de Mano goat cheese, from Jim Schott’s award-winning Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy in Niwot, Colorado. This is a superb raw-milk cheese — it has a wonderful, prominent, goat taste that is slightly sweet, and carries with it an undertone of nuttiness, as well as a hint of its farmstead grass and herbs. All that makes it terrifically complex and interesting, especially if you love goat-milk cheeses, as I do.

The Queso de Mano also manages to combine a firm texture with a velvety mouth feel. The cheese is aged four months and has a natural washed rind. It would be great with toasted almonds, fresh cherries or apricots, and a good fruity red wine.

For a long time, Haystack Mountain was the last remaining dairy in Boulder County. Sadly, local and other business expenses forced the company to sell its goats to the State Prison in Canon City, Colorado, which has operated an inmate-run dairy for 70 years. The upshot, though, is that the company is still producing and distributing its fabulous cheese from its headquarters in Longmont, Colorado, inmates at Canon City are doing fruitful work and learning a skill, and the Nubian, LaMancha, Sanaan and Nubian Cross goats are continuing to thrive and produce the milk that goes into Haystack Mountain’s cheeses.

The Queso de Mano is the second cheese from the right:

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

Cheese of the Week: Bohemian Creamery Bo Poisse

I recently ducked into the fantastic Girl and the Fig restaurant in Sonoma and shared a wonderful cheese course with My Man. Of the six cheeses, the Bo Poisse, from Lisa Gottreich and Miriam Block’s new Bohemian Creamery in Bodega, was the absolute standout. The first thing that hits you about Bo Poisse is its sweet, pungent smell. When you bite into it, you find a delightfully creamy, almost wet cheese that tastes of mushroom, cream, a slight bit of ash. This is followed up by a lusty, tangy finish that brings with it more than a hint of a barnyard on a hot afternoon.

This cheese totally commits — As such it’s not for everyone. I loved it.

Bohemian Creamery is a small-batch, artisanal producer. They handcraft each round on their seven-acre farm, much of the milk coming from their own goats. The cows-milk Bo Poisse is made with milk from neighboring Jerseys. The washed-rind cheese is created using an Epoisse recipe. The French village of Epoisses is known for its pungent, soft, washed-rind cheeses. Napoleon was supposedly a fan, as was early epicurean/writer Brillat-Savarin, who called it “the king of all cheeses”.

The restaurant’s bubbly, sweet Fig Royale proved a nice companion to the complex cheese. I could see Medjool dates working with it, as well. Though my husband had other favorites on the cheese board (that’s what makes the world go ’round, plus more Bo Poisse for me), I can’t wait to have this cheese again, and I wish Bohemian Creamery great cheese-wheel-shaped success.

Look for my other reviews from this tasting, as we work our way down the cheese plate, bit by bit.

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman