Farmers Market Chatter

[Kaiya at farmer's market next to 4-5 yr old girl holding a head of fennel]

Kaiya [yells and pointing]: Fennel!

Girl [smiling and nodding]: My parents used to grow fennel in our garden.

Kaiya [matter of factly]: My dada does grow fennel in our garden!

[Anthony smiling and all sorts of amused.]

Drive Less Challenge Is On!

For the next 2 weeks (Thurs, 4/22 through Wed, 5/6), we will be participating in the Drive Less Challenge, sponsored by the cities of Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Burlingame. It's an opportunity for people to win prizes and engage in friendly competition around walking, biking, and taking public transit more - and driving less.

Although we already walk/bike/train to lots of places (work, garden, to restaurants on Castro St), it's an opportunity to think about other opportunities to travel in an eco-friendly manner. The biggest opportunities might be biking to Kaiya to daycare (2 miles roundtrip everyday) and other errands around town (Whole Foods, etc.).

We Can Save Deer Hollow Farm!

We went to a farm tour at Deer Hollow Farm today. Located in the Rancho San Antonio Preserve in the Cupertino/Los Altos/Palo Alto foothills, it is a wonderful little educational farm with animals and a small garden. We pet the sheep and goats, fed the chickens and ducks, saw the baby pigs sleeping, stared at the big cows, and wandered around the garden full of fennel, leeks, radishes and carrots.

Unfortunately, Deer Hollow Farm is facing potential drastic funding cuts from the City of Mountain View. We hope that as many supporters of the farm as possible can contact the city to express their support and keep the farm open!

Inspirational Story - New Roots Community Farm

This is a quick, inspiring read in the LA Times about New Roots Community Farm - community gardening, sustainable food, immigrants from war-torn countries building community and gaining access to healthy food.

Too Many (Good) Choices

So much cool stuff going on next Saturday, April 17, and not enough time to do it all!

First, we really want to go to the Deer Hollow Farm tour. Deer Hollow is an educational working farm at Rancho San Antonio Park park in the Los Altos/Mountain View/Palo Alto foothills. It would be a great way to see, pet and learn about the pigs, cows, goats and other animals on the farm. Here are pics from their last farm tour in March.

We also just learned that Morris Grassfed Beef is having a Field Day that same day - and a BBQ and picnic with delicious grass fed beef and learning about more about the ranch sounds great.

Our neighbors are having a birthday party for their 2 yr old daughter, Fausta, at Foothills Park in Palo Alto, which sounds like a great place for a fun kiddie birthday party.

Hidden Villa is hosting a mozzarella and chevre making class in the afternoon from 4-6pm!

And Pie Ranch has their 3rd Saturday of the month volunteer work day and barnyard dance.

What to do?