Kathy and I attended the annual Blossom Festival at Frog Hollow Farm, our local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) depot. Al Courchesne, aka Farmer Al, proprietor of said farm, took us on a tour of his fruit ranch. This is a unique CSA, in that Frog Hollow selections comprise fruit only. At the event, we heard from an attendee whose shipments from another “CSA” often included unseasonal fruit from South America. Contradiction in terms, huh? It was a really nice afternoon spent outside among the groves of pear, apple and peach trees in full delicate blossom, and citrus trees, some laden with fruit. Mid-March, no less! (See photo.)
Years ago, in Seattle, Kath and I attended a Tilth Fair, giving the love to organic gardening and sustainability. We purchased a “Mason bee” condo; then got worried when we saw a million flies buzzing around it. Turns out that those “flies’ were Mason bees, one of nature’s great tiny pollinators. We bought another wooden block last fall at the Brentwood Farmer’s Market, and we think we might have a few tenants already here at the Oakley homestead.
The Blossom Festival here included a couple of great talks by Frog Hollow’s resident beekeeper, as well as a researcher from UC Berkeley involved in one of the foremost bee research projects in the nation. Who’d a thunk that there are over 4,000 species of bees in the country, and that Cali has more than half of them? Farmer Al, with his organic acreage, has partnered with the university to allow plantings of hedgerows and other apiarian attractions at the farm to provide a working research environment for the UC project, while maybe getting a little bee labor out in the orchards to boot.
Hey, gotta tell you that I have the coolest neighbor. On the west side, that is; east side, not so much. East side is the bank VP (who we suspect has his big house up for a short-sale) who tried to play Mayor McCheese when I had beef with his eastern neighbor about noise. It got ugly fast: The noisy folks invoked the “I can do what I want until 10 p.m.” rule; Mayor McCheese (who lives right next door to their bass-heavy car sound sytems) comes out to mediate, and tries to play peacemaker. Dude is no United Nations secretary-general: Within minutes, four households are arguing with each other across the street. McCheese is the same dude who dropped in on Christmas Eve 2009 to introduce himself four months after we’d moved in, then proceeded to drain us of three magnums of Washington state red wine. He’s definitely more Boutros Boutros-Gallo than –Ghali.
But about the good neighbor: Syed is the coolest! Imagine having your house key with a neighbor: That is so 1960s, and in a good way. Syed is a retired restaurateur and “Mad(vertising) Man.” He’s also a self-taught fine-cabinetmaker whose work is exquisite. He calls me “Uncle Tony,” because when Syed or his girlfriend Karen can not get home, I will let his chickens out for feed and exercise. Yep, he keeps hens. We get eggs. I am Uncle Tony.
We’re starting to get down to the last few bottles of our Oakley-area CoCo stash. Last year, when this whole blog idea started, Kath was able to find a 2005 Trinitas Zin from the Spinelli/Live Oak property. Over the ensuing months, we’ve since learned where the Spinelli Vineyard is here in Oakley; we learned that this vintage was one of the last made by Matt Cline, before he and his wife, Erin, sold their ownership interest in Trinitas to their partners; and we learned that Matt and Erin went on to form 3 wine company in Clarksburg, which continues to use fruit from, among other Oakley sources, the Spinelli site.
The 2005 Trinitas Zinfandel Spinelli Live Oak exhibits a nice, rich plum color. It’s got a big smoky nose of lavender and dried blueberries, a flavor that continues on the palate. And for a wine with almost six years of age on it, flavors of clove and cedar wood can be detected behind a band of surprisingly prominent tannic fur.
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