Connecting our community to local small organic & natural farms and ranches in the Central Valley of California, providing information on events, health, the benefits of organics & the farmers who feed us!
The Pick & Gather, will be hosted by our local farmers Cindy Lashbrook and Bill Thompson, Community Alliance of Family Farmers, local organizations and sponsors.
This beautifuldiversified organic ranch fronts the Merced River and will offer ourcommunity a hands-on interactive connection to the land. A fun and educational day, learning the importance farm life, natural habitat, our precious regional eco-system and the value of a sustainable land.
This spring event on the farm will feature a U-Pick of Organic Blueberries & Cherries !
* Workshops * Local Artisans * Farmers Market * Local Foods * Music * Children Activities * Farm Tours * Wagon Rides * River Fair * Bird Watching * Petting Zoo * Fishing Lessons * Wine Tasting * Over-night Camping * Sunday Morning Breakfast
Saturday Admission:
Adults ~ $10.00 / Children ~ & 5.00
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“Taste of the Valley” ~ $20.00
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Sunday Admission:Adults ~ $5.00 / Children Free*
Sunday Breakfast:
Adults ~ $6.00/Children (12 & under) $4.00
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Saturday Night Dry Camping ~ $ 10.00
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All Tickets can be purchased at the gate!
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Give us a shout out if you are interested in sponsorship, vendor space, or volunteering!
Lorina is the most cheerful & creative gardener we know!
This Sunday, May 18th, she will be doing an herb presentation on the patio at Hula’s burger joint, on hwy 120 at David Ave. in Escalon from 10:30 am ~ 1:30 pm.
Keep your ears and eyes open… Lorina’s Edible Garden has a lot of fun things going on this year at her farm. The farm will be open seasonally offering summer and fall events, gardening classes & demonstrations for students and clubs. She has a great line up of herbs and seeds in her nursery and will also come to you with her expertise to help you get your garden started!
Lorina is planing to start a small scale CSA project and looking for interested people and families who would like to plant a garden and enjoy the harvest. Awesome… you all know how I feel about the CSA, don’t miss this opportunity for fresh home grown eats!
To chat with Lorina or receive her fun newsletter check out her darling site lorinasediblegarden.com.
It was our first fair display with hopes to make some sort of educational impact on the benefits of organics in this small community. Our display was set up on an old chuck wagon in the entrance to TheHenry Miller Petting Zoo. We showcased pictures from a few of our farm and ranch visits, literature on organics and a CSA box. Kat has been running and organizing this zoo for many years and decided Local Choices should make an appearance since this years theme was
“Celebrating Our Farmers”, so to the fair we went!
As Kat managed her zoo, I manned our space greeting and handing out cards to any one who would stop to view. Believe it or not it was mostly children, they gravitated to our basket of beautiful fresh produce like bees to a cherry tree, having questions such as…. Is this real? what is this? can I have some? Their curiosity was endearing, as they tasted (some for the first time) strawberries, snow peas and sweet peas. Adults of course were more interested in information on the CSA memberships, our photos, who we are and what exactly is this blog about.
It was a fun and profound experience for me. I left that fair with a good feeling of teaching young & old their local healthy food options and knowing we did make an educational impact, not only about organics but the importance of our Local Choices mission… supporting our local small farms.
This by far has been the most amazing farm visit we have had,
who knew…
our organic dairy and chicken farm visit would end with a safari!
Lloyd and Babette Pareira along with their children Jared, Regan, Isabella and Gianna maintain an organic dairy, organic pasture chickens and exotic animals from around the world in Snelling, California.
As we begin our tour we are surprised with a greeting from the family pet camel. Charliebegins to stroll our way and as the kids feed him a handful of grain, one by one miniatures start to show up, a donkey, a pig, a goat, a sheep and the list goes on!
After all the miniature introductions, we move past the organic grass fed dairy cattle and the clucking of chickens start to fill the air. Babette tells us how she started this organic chicken operation with Red Sexlinks, then eventually adding Leghorn chickens to the flock. They roost and lay their many eggs in a mobile chicken house that is moved every 4 days from pasture to pasture allowing them a natural grass and bug diet. They are supplemented with an organic mash from Black Rock Milling and have unlimited access to fresh pond water.
These chickens are not bothered as Babette and the girls carefully move them out of the way to collect eggs, putting them in a wire basket. The high quality large fresh eggs are sold toDean & Delucain Sacramento, theCulinary Institute in Napa, locally at The Vineyard Farmer’s Market in Fresno, also providing to a new restaurant in Oakdale, The Local Harvest.
Our last stop you have to see to believe. Beautiful exotic animals roaming freely in a pasture thick with trees and a year around running creek. Lloyd’s father began this collection with the American and Water Buffalo, over the years the family has added Ostrich, a Llama named Fancy Pants, a very gigantic Gir, a heard of Watusi & Long Horns, Highlanders, a Belted Gallaway, Yaks and a few off springs here and there.
What an extraordinary experience, we would like to thank the Pareira family for their time, hospitality and personal tour of their beautiful Ranch!
The Pareira’s can be reached at (209) 722-1149 or ovdairy@elite.net.
Emily Lindsey grew up on a farm in Merced California with dedicated parents Stewart and Susanne Sorensen raising grass fed sheep. She participated in 4-H and FFA for many years showing and breeding, improving the quality of their flock over the years. After graduating from the University of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Emily and her husband Robert returned to Merced, to continue the family tradition of breeding sheep. They are the next generation along with their children Steven and Morgan and have focused their efforts on raising pure bred Romney Sheep.
The Romney traces it beginnings to the marshy area of Kent in England. Known for their delicate taste, this high quality lean meat is fine, tender, low in fat, high in beta carotene and antioxidants. For century’s it has been the the main meat in the Mediterranean Diet along with fish. Romneys produce a strong-wooled heavey fleece ideal for hand-spinners and weavers. Lanolin is also derived from sheeps wool and can be used as a topical ointment.
Our tour of the Sorensen Farm began with an introduction to Melek,the family Anatolian Shepherd Dog. This intelligent breed originates from Anatolia (central Turkey), bred for guarding flocks of sheep. Melek takes her responsibility very seriously, spending all her time with her sheep protecting them from wild dogs, coyotes and other predators.
As we walked out to the pasture with the sheep, Melek and the family, the pride and commitment they have in natural farming is evident. The grass is green and rich in nutrients. The sheep are healthy animals that are occasionally supplemented with organic feed when needed and never forced to lamb out of season. Their belief is all natural all the time… because they wanted good clean lamb for themselves, their friends and to supply their local community and restaurants such as Cafe Sol in Merced.
We had a great time learning about Romney sheep, Melek and the entire family. They are gracious and willing to share their knowledge and passion with anyone who is interested in learning, so visit Merced County Fair, the theme this year is “Rock the Flock” and Emily will be providing shearing demonstrations at the Old MacDonalds Farm.
Sorensen Farm is another example of what true farming is all about. Loving what they do, doing it for the right reasons and sharing good clean healthy food with their community….
If you’ve ever driven through the San Joaquin Valley in September, you’re familiar with the grids of lint-strewn cotton fields that blur by for hours. You might even have pondered the wisdom of planting such a thirsty crop as cotton on a million acres — an area larger than Yosemite National Park — in a state dealing with a water crisis. Then again, you might ask a similar question about the half-million acres of rice, a grain adapted to the monsoons of Asia, in the Sacramento Valley.
Cheap irrigation water is part of the equation, but there is another common denominator. It’s a massive federal legislation package passed every five years known as the farm bill, which House and Senate members are scrambling to reauthorize by Friday’s deadline.
Over the last decade, the farm bill has allowed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to shower tens of billions of dollars in subsidies on the nation’s cotton and rice farmers (along with corn, soybean, wheat, sugar and milk producers). These subsidies flow whether growers need them or not. They flow even as they damage the environment and our nutritional well-being. They flow, all the while enabling the biggest farms to consolidate into megafarms. Continue Reading »
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