Meet Manfred Warmuth. Manfred is the kind of guy who calls to bring over ice-cream, and then shows up with cream, fruit, and a thermos of liquid nitrogen to flash-freeze it all. Manfred will show you how to shell soybeans using an electric drill and an empty 2 liter bottle of soda. Open Manfred's pantry (if you dare!) and inside you will find a fermentation workshop. Just take a walk around Manfred's farm, and you will find yourself among dozens of experiments.

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Here's a recipe to help you test your 'buy local' skills. We were able to buy at the farmers' market, grow, or raise pretty much everything (except the pineapple and mango, but both can be substituted or omitted). It's a 'one dish' meal, perfect for a crowd (most of it can be made well ahead of time), and really fun to make! And if that doesn't convince you, they are delicious and nutritious!

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We now have three backyard chickens here at home.  Until very recently, we had four. Pipi (pronounced pee-pee) is no longer with us, and good riddance! You might think of us as cold-hearted and uncaring for saying so, but we are really just bad farmers. We didn't choose for Pipi to leave us, she did. She is a murderess chicken, and slightly neurotic. Sure, she's an A-class layer, and her eggs are tasty and purdy, red-shelled and freckled, with a deep golden yolk. She's a great looking, healthy Rhode Island Red hen with a beautiful full comb and rusty-colored feathers. But, she's mean! Pipi was attacking our dear Prima, our golden chicken, aiming for the back of her neck and out for the kill. Our peaceful little team of chickens was in a state of terror, so the terrorist, Pipi, had to go.

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Sunday is my new favorite day!  We wake up, put on our best clothes (in Santa Cruz this means a pair of jeans with flip-flops and a clean t-shirt with or without sleeves), grab our cloth bags, and walk down the street to our local farmers' market. The coastal fog is usually lifting by the time we get there, and we are welcomed by familiar faces (like Ilya and Ilya, the uncle/nephew team of Russian crepe-makers) and the rhythm of the band (like the folksy C-Monkeys). I buy my 'Shake It Baby' peach iced tea and a spinach and tomato crepe, and settle down for a yummy breakfast. After we sample the fruit harvest and some fresh heirloom tomatoes, we buy the majority of our weekly groceries, all locally grown, baked, or caught by family farms, local bakers, and fishermen. This is our Sunday morning ritual, and a big part of our spiritual life. It's like going to church, but it feels a lot more light-hearted.
 

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Well, maybe a few of you folks are wondering what happened to the dashing duo, Guillermo and Amber. Did they arrive in Austin safely?  Have they made it back to California? Were they happy with their trip? Did they learn anything new from it? Has anything spectacular happened since then? The answers are...

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Our final farm visit for this round of Bike2Barn occurred in Lincoln, NM at Laughing Sheep Farms. Sally, third generation owner, has a successful country store, restaurant, and farm, all using farm-raised and grass-fed beef, elk, buffalo, lamb, and pork meats. In fact, Guillermo and I were treated to a delightful lunch of homemade cottage cheese (creamy and smooth), gourmet lamb and beef burgers served on homemade hatch chile buns, grilled cantaloupe, potato salad and coleslaw, and cranberry/apple iced tea (hungry yet?).

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The Dragoon Mountains, in Southern Arizona, is home to Stronghold Cattle Company, owned by Kevin Dumais. The Dragoon Mountain Ranch is at a 5000 foot elevation, located on 57,000 acres of pristine pastures, knobby hills, and rocky outcroppings. Cochise, the famed Chiricahua Apache Chief, and approximately 1000 of his people lived for 15 years in the natural fortress of the Dragoon Mountains, protected by 2 days of visibility. Eventually Cochise and his people were starved out by the US Army, and forced to sign a treaty for survival. As part of negotiations they were told that they could keep the land surrounding the Dragoon Mountains, but were instead shipped to Florida.

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The desert of Arizona has a jewel, an animal utopia named HoofsnHorns. It is a sanctuary, right outside of Tucson, for animals who have been abandoned in the desert, are in need of some serious TLC, or who were headed to the slaughterhouse. Their savior is a woman named Shelby, the animal rescuer, and she loves each and every one of her many animals as if they were her own children. To read more about the farm, please visit our album and enjoy the captions. To help Shelby and her cause, join a cow share program, adopt an animal, and visit her website.

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Where do I even begin? I guess the beginning is always a good place...

We drove down, down, down the Vallecito Mountains, entering the hot, dry weather of the Anza-Borrego desert. The ride was spectacular, with amazing vistas on the way down the windy, curvy one-lane road. If we could have talked to each other about it on the road, we would have commented on the lunar landscape, the changing temperature, the vastness of the Salton Sea, the sweat rolling down our backs. Instead, we looked ahead, and I daydreamed away to the tune of whatever was playing on my IPod.

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What luck we had! We called Helene and Robert Beck, searching intently for their farm, Beck Grove, at which we intended to drop in on an unannounced visit, and caught them just as they were leaving for a movie. One of the first things out of Helene's mouth was: "Where are you?, What are you doing tonight??".  My immediate thought was: "Could she be offering us a place to stay? Oh, please, oh, please."

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