Cakes And Ale: Water To Wine In The Redwood Empire

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? 

I spent Christmas last week with some of my closest friends who live in Western Sonoma County, California, in the southernmost reaches of what locals call the Redwood Empire. When I lived there eight years ago, the rainy season, which runs from November through April, was particularly wet. Certainly stands to reason you'd get a lot of rain in a temperate rain forest less than ten miles east of the Pacific Ocean. This time eight years ago, it had been raining very hard almost every minute of the day for a week. There were intermittent power outages and reports of flooding near Guerneville. Satellite signals were impossible to connect to, and there's still not that much cell phone coverage out in those remote hills.

But this year? A bright and sunny Christmas Day. We've had a couple of days of rain since I moved back to Northern California in mid-October. Friends tell me that San Francisco had 2 inches of rain before my return, so maybe that's around 3" for all of 2013?

One of my friends in the Redwood Empire told me his cisterns were only 1/4 full. Another one relies on well water from a particular corner of his land, a well that's been there decades, in a spot that is close to a neighbor's land. Or, rather, a former neighbor's land, who had just up and sold his acreage to some folks who are looking to use the land for vineyards. Quite a natural spot it is, with a large south-facing field ("perfect for Pinot Noir") already cleared, and mostly used in recent times for grazing a small herd of sheep. Among other things, one of my friend's main concerns is whether the new tenant might affect his water supply. Sometimes the most critical person in the food chain can be the plumber fixing one's cistern or well, as this piece details here.

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Vallejo Farmer's Market, November 2013; photo by Jeffrey Jackson

Welcome to my new culinary blog where I'll be posting photos of delicious food, restaurant reviews, shots from Farmer's Markets and grocery stores,  articles about cooking, gardening, deep sustainability and quite a bit more.