How to open a wine bottle with a rock

What happens when a bunch of amazing women who are thought leaders in the food/farming movement get together for a weekend on a cattle ranch? For those who came from the coast and the Bay Area, we strip off our fog-proof layers and introduce the Potter Valley sun to our flesh. The inlanders greet us with and ATV loaded with ice chests and lead us to the river.

Where we float on innertubes like kids, drink chilled wine, apply precautionary amounts of sunscreen to the places we can’t reach, and do what women do best: we bob around in the current, naturally flowing in and out of conversation with old friends and new faces as our bodies languidly salute the afternoon sun.

We discuss things like the feasibility of a meat processing plant in Mendocino County, how to follow your passion for food systems change and also pay the bills, and setting boundaries with men – and baby piglets (which actually have quite a lot in common).

The best way to summarize the amazing weekend we had is with this video. For nothing demonstrates the creative resourcefulness of a bunch of Type A food visionaries who are not waiting for a better world. We are picking up whatever tools we’ve got to make it happen, right now. Everyone has something to offer and we are all indispensable. In this case we would have been lost without Katherine’s primitive bottle busting know-how when we realized we’d brought everything but a wine opener…

We were invited to Magruder Ranch for a retreat with a group of women who work in food and ag as farmers or ranchers or media people, advocates and organizers. Basically, it was a locavore’s dream. We were surrounded by our people, filled with vibrant enthusiasm for creating a new agriculture future. Most of all, it was a chance to connect with other womenfolk, talk about life and work and health and joy and how to balance it all. And, of course we ate a TON of incredible food.

… including TWO different kinds of local popsicles. Farmer Kyle made us these peach, mint & redwood tip delights!

Eaten on the patio of Black Oak Coffee Roasters, where Gowan had a LOCAL LATTE, made with Lover’s Lane Honey and bee pollen. We were pretty much brimming with happy.

And then we picked up berry-apple pops at Gowan’s Oak Tree farmstand on the way home. What a weekend, what a life. Thank you women, for a wonderful, heart-bursting getaway of goodness. We returned to the coast with toasted skin, renewed smiles, and sticky popsicle fingers. It’s so good to know that there are friends and colleagues out there, all over the state, country and the world who are working toward a food world that truly feeds people. But, it’s even better when we actually get to hang out together, gather around the cutting board and the stove and share a glass of wine. These comings-together are just as important as the work we are all doing; that truly is what it’s all about.