It's been a breathtaking week at Echo valley farm. The nights specifically with a moon so big and bright you'd think it was Alaska in the summertime. I look out on the nighttime fields to find the vegetable rows glowing and the fruit trees iridescent reflecting the soft moonlight clear as day.
Before I recount this story let me give some background: this is an adventure post (although I'll weave in food somehow), this area is on mountain lion alert (didn't get the memo until recently), we don't have cell phones (they don't work out here), and we were only going to be gone a little while ...
It has really been a storybook week with temperatures in the high 60's during the day and moonbeams ablazing at night. My boyfriend comes to celebrate Valentine's day and I have made promises of wood-oven cooked local salmon, fresh baked bread, nettle pesto pizza, local beer made from Echo Valley Farm hops, fire in the hearth, hot tubbing, and long trail runs. Fun!
We like to run together. We like to run about 10 to 12 miles at least. Anything less just feels like a warm-up. We spend the morn testing my new pumpkin butter-rosemary bread while sipping strong hot coffee and staring out onto the farm from the porch of my cabin. It's a misty magical foggy morning. The sun has disappeared. But it's still warm and pleasant.
The new adorable mini cow (Bambi) is moo-ing to us, the goats are bleating, the chickens are clucking, and one dozen baby ducklings arrive in the mail. The farm is just too cute for words.
We stuff ourselves and around 3:30 P.M. decide that we should work off our gluttony with a run. I've found a few short trail loops around here that I supplement with a little roadside action. But I have it on good word there's a nice wide trail just a half mile away I have yet to try out.
Loma Mar is a special part of the Bay Area. It's half way between Santa Cruz and San Francisco, fifteen minutes inland from the Pacific ocean and Pescadero (which is the closest town). It's at the base of the Santa Cruz mountain range which is basically one enormous wild preserve with a few mountain towns scattered throughout.
Loma Mar is slightly off the grid surrounded with magnificent old growth redwood forests (some of the last remaining) and some State Parks that are mostly empty. And Loma Martians like it like that. I've seen the "Don't Tread On Me" flag flying proud around these parts. Don't get me wrong, people are super friendly around here and I absolutely think this is heaven on earth, but at the same time it's pretty common to not know all your neighbors – jes' like anywhere I s'pose.
