A Sunday Adventure

Corralitos, where I live and farm, isn’t on the road to anywhere, and never has been. The name is from Spanish and means “little corrals.” The soldiers of the Portola Expedition gave our community its present name when they camped here for a few days back in 1770, tired, lost, sick, and confused. At that time the land here was cloaked in a dense and primeval redwood forest, and the trees were the biggest living things any of the Spanish Soldiers had ever seen. If a redwood giant is shattered by a lightning bolt or badly burned by fire, a “fairy ring” of young redwood trees will grow up around the natal stump. When the Spanish soldiers were too exhausted to continue their journey of exploration they stopped here to recuperate. The soldiers were fearful that their pack animals would flee the camp in the night and strand them in the middle of nowhere so they stuffed the gaps between the young redwoods that made up several of the fairy rings with brush and sticks and “corralled” their livestock in the makeshift pens.

We still have redwoods here, especially in the canyons, but the old growth trees that carpeted the valley are gone. When the Spanish king granted the Amesti family a ranch here, the 14,000 acre parcel was called Rancho Corralitos. Both my home ranch and the greenhouse facility I lease are on lands that were once part of the Rancho Corralitos. When Don Amesti, the Rancho Corralitos landlord, saw fit to lease his property to some German loggers in the 1840s, our little valley became the first place in California for commercial redwood logging. Once the big trees were gone our neighborhood slipped into obscurity until 1905 when the San Francisco earthquake and fire prompted the logging of the second growth redwoods that were needed to rebuild the City.

If it was logging that brought many of the settlers here, it was farming that kept Corralitos going. At first the redwood groves were replaced by apple orchards. My family came here in the late 1800s to raise apricots. Nowadays we see more strawberries and raspberries as the orchards are replaced by more remunerative crops. . And wineries! From my kitchen window looking north I can see the vineyards on the higher slopes of the hills that see more sunshine and less of the marine fog that we have here on the flats. Maybe, in time, all of the tasting rooms that are opening up will make our community more of a destination than it has been in the recent past. For now, it is just a nice place to live and work. For culture we have a Grange Hall, a Community Center, a Cultural Center, a women’s club, and an annual pancake breakfast. We also have a weekly market; the Corralitos Farm and Garden Market, and I invite you to come down and visit us at our stall one of these Sundays.

The Corralitos Farm and Garden Market is tiny by contemporary urban standards, but it’s a very nice little scene. For a number of years now, every Sunday between 11 am and 3 pm, a collection of local growers gather behind the Corralitos Cultural Center at 127 Hames Road to offer their produce. Ken is almost always there from Bobcat Ridge Avocados, but he also brings a changing selection of other crops that he grows. We like to get his Shitake mushrooms. Bob is always there, bringing his veggies from a garden way up Eureka Canyon, where most of our surviving redwood trees still live. Our friends and neighbors, Zea and Bryan, from Fruitilicious Farm bring their fruits du jour- right now they’re into stone fruit and figs. There is usually a stall with flowers, and a surprise stall or two, offering anything from crafts to worm castings, and then there’s us.

If you have an urge to get lost in Corralitos there are some fun places to visit. The Corralitos Sausage Company, just around the corner from the Farm and Garden Market, offers a huge list of sausages made in house. It is one of those places that people come from all over to visit. Just a little further down the road is Blossom’s Farm Market, a super cute biodynamic store and cafe, offers food and medicaments and sometimes some plants for sale. And then there are the wineries. There are no crowds, no lines, and the biggest threat you’ll encounter is likely getting stuck behind a string of bicyclists or some wild turkeys crossing the road. Come visit one of these Sundays and see for yourself!

Corralitos Cultural Center 127 Hames Road, Corralitos, CA Sunday, 11AM to 3PM