Good point.
I don’t see Frog Hollow up here (Solano County), not that I blame them. if you mosey a bit further east on the 80, try Brazelton Ranch , and others in Vacaville .
Brazelton-Story (246.3 KB)
Haha, I don’t recognize him, but … I should ask around haha. Though… haven’t I seen some of these in the parks and stuff? Could’ve sworn they were around the bay area.
Oh and superbly random, but I was in a Sacramento farmer’s market three weeks back or so and at one particular stall they had paw paws on sale.
I couldn’t figure out what they were initially (thought they were some really soft pears) and good lord I had no idea how you pick them, but the ones I got were on the small side. Waited till they were soft and they smelled really tropical. It tasted… kinda like a banana? Honestly not a huge fan, but very similar to the custard apple as they’re in the same family.
I really should explore this… Andy’s Orchard though…
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Oh wow! I’ve always wanted to taste pawpaws. I associate them with East coast or the South and didn’t think they grew west of the Rockies. Cool! I’ll keep my eyes out at farmers’ markets.
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Yeah I never seen them before but this one farm had them. … I really should pay attention to their name, but they have a giant 49ers flag in the background when I visited the Sacramento market.
I just saw this fb post:
Andy’s Orchard actually has paw paws!
Maybe not the best fruit to grow in SF proper haha.
But frankly, its an interesting fruit, just don’t quite like that soft texture.
I just opened a book Jane Pettigrew’s World of Tea and they mentioned that California has 2 tea gardens. Imperial Tea Court Tea Garden in Yolo County and Golden Feather Tea in Concow. Anyone try tea in those places?
Oh didn’t realize it was the one in the Ferry Building haha
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I have not tried the tea garden, but Yolo County things to grow, eat, and drink, often means UC Davis, and UC Davis and agriculture is often good. I hope to check it out!
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Yeah! Have you ever visited the meat lab at UC Davis?
Has some good stuff though not USDA prime grade I don’t recall. Some cuts were kinda odd, I recall getting some huge ny steaks for unknown reasons. But yeah, UCD leads some great agricultural research in NorCal. Its existence was basically due to the start/split from Berkeley as a farm school. Its fun reading about the reaches of the university. There’s a lot of strawberry research done at Davis last I was reading among other things.
I’m not sure if anyone here has visited, but if you come to Davis during the picnic day celebration, they often give little plants out and such. Strawberries and tomatoes are the norm, but I also recall getting watercress one year.
Hell, Martin Yan went to Davis haha… has to amount for something right?
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I have visited UCD many times. But not the meat lab. Adding it to bucket list.
Yes, about Martin Yan, but UC Davis has so much to be proud of.
Also we have the Bay Area specialty pepper farm- Happy Quail Farms- smack in the middle of East Palo Alto, right behind the buddhist temple Chua Giac Minh and IKEA. I also bought wild strawberries from them years ago.
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Yes! I want to visit Happy Quail!
And Artisan Seeds , and BERKELEY TIE-DYE tomato from Wild Boar, and all it’s offspring ! Wild Boar used to be in Solano County. Just sayin’.
Note, Martin Yan tells some rather erm… dirtier jokes if you ever seen him at Picnic day. Hilarious and unexpected.
But wow, those are some fascinating tomatoes; they have some crazy tomato colors @_@ Wow! There’s this blue berry looking tomato somewhere linked in.
Super random, but has anyone seen an Ashmead’s Kernel apple in CA? I recall Dave Arnold raving about that apple having great juice.
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I’ve been to the Berkeley Imperial Tea Court a couple of times, really enjoyed it.
Do you know if they ever served their own teas from their own plantations? That would be pretty neat!
And scratch that @sck on yang mei found in the parks. Those are actually the Arbutus unedo or the strawberry plant that’s usually around the bay area.
And something not quite local,
Some really funny flattened looking Florida pomelos were being sold in the Chinese grocery store in Milbrae. Think its Sun’s Market.
And for some other random things I never knew was grown in California:
Some coffee beans from SoCal
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I looked around on imperialtea.com, and it looks like (article) Mr Fong’s first tea farm got destroyed by fires in 2017, and Golden Feather tea, another small tea farm, got mostly destroyed by the 2018 Camp Fire.
Oh no! That’s terrible 
Ugh, this super breeze these past few nights don’t help with the future outlook either
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