Napa: A Lot of Vineyards, Not So Many Farms

I just got back from spending a couple of days up in Napa. I'm sorry I had to come home.

The rain got in the way of visiting two of the farms I was hoping to photograph, but I did get up to Long Meadow Ranch on Monday to meet the lovely Laddie Hall. Laddie had attended last autumn's Terra Madre conference in Italy, where she had been voted in by the Slow Food convivium in Napa. I met her on Monday afternoon. The rain that had been forecast didn't materialize, and I had a beautiful sunny afternoon to shoot photos.

Long Meadow Ranch, located 800 feet above the Napa valley in the Mayacamas mountains, holds a winery, a stable, hen houses, fruit, vegetables, herbs, an olive grove, and plenty of room for the 250 or so Scottish Highland cattle to forage for their food. I asked Laddie if she had grown up farming, and she said no, that she was as suburban as anyone could get. (Sing it, sister!). Her husband, Ted, had grown up on a small farm in Pennsylvania, and his mother was an organic gardener and early fan of J. I. Rodale, a fellow Pennsylvanian. (The Rodale Press published the first edition of Organic Farming and Gardening in 1942. It wasn't until 1971 that the New York Times Magazine did a cover story on the "Guru of the Organic Food Cult.")

I couldn't get up to see the cattle or the olives on this visit, but Laddie did lead us through a small tour of the hen house, filled with the oily-black Australorps hens and a rooster, as well as introducing us to the two pigs she's hosting for a student's project, the stable that housed four horses (at the time we were inside, that is), and a garden for which she apologized profusely as being overgrown and neglected. Nevertheless, some handfuls of small, sweet strawberries delighted little Nico, Steve Sando's younger son, who accompanied me that day. There were herbs in profusion that all the neglect in the world hadn't killed: thick rosemary and oregano, and even a hardy tarragon plant that hadn't died over the cold winter up on the mountain.

After Laddie had fed the chickens, I followed her down to the roadside stand on Highway 29. Rutherford Gardens will open from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m., but its 2005 opening has been pushed back to midsummer due to the unseasonal rains that have punished so many California farmers. The chickens were beautiful: the black Australorps whose feathers have an iridescent greenish tinge to them in the sunlight, and their combs are brilliant red. They lay brown eggs, Laddie told me. The rooster shown here had a particular rock star look about him...actually, more like a country-western star with a flowing mullet. Having had that image planted in my brain, it's hard to shake.

A peek into the greenhouse revealed thousands of seedlings and plants, bursting from their containers, all obviously eager for a larger spot to spread their roots. I ran my hands through the basil and began to long for summer. Laddie showed Nico how to fill the chicken feeder, and we visited the second of her chicken coops. I gotta tell you there is something heartening about a woman who owns over 600 acres of land in the Napa valley getting chicken poop all over her shoes while gathering eggs. And Laddie works the farmers markets, too.

I thought I detected the slightest hint of a Southern accent, and I was right. Like me, she'd done her best to erase it when she left the South (or Texas, if you are a purist), but Southerners generally pick up on the cadence. She really has a beautiful voice, very melodious and sweet.

She then took me out to see a space created by an ancient fig tree whose branches had rooted, like the banyan tree on the square in Lahaina on Maui. It's the kind of place imaginative children turn into a magic room, and through the "roof," you could see a tall, tall oak tree towering above.

I'll write more about Laddie and Long Meadow Ranch another time, perhaps when I next visit Napa, I can see her stand at the farmers market in St. Helena, where she sells the beef, olive oil, eggs, and other things they grow at this beautiful, organic farm. She told me her sons had vegetable gardens on the ranch, and both did 4-H. Now her son, Chris, is farming as well: last year he started 8000 heirloom tomato plants--from 30 varieties. For many years, Chris and his late brother, Tim, were the youngest members of the St. Helena farmers market, selling eggs and vegetables and learning entrepreneurship and stewardship all at once.

Thanks for visiting.

Comments

[caroline]

are there any organic produce farms in napa/sonoma
that are open to the public for
visitation?