Harley Goat Farm Dairy

We toured and had dinner at the only working dairy in San Mateo County tonight, Harley Goat Farm in Pescadero, on the coast 30ish minutes south of San Francisco.

I didn't bring my camera, but I had my iPhone...







There's a wonderful story about how the woman who founded it got into this business without ever planning to. This property was a semi-cooperative cattle dairy until, I've already forgotten, the 1950s?, when it went bankrupt after the arrival of factory milk farming in California in the 1930s. (The buildings are over 100 years old.) A couple bought the disused property to raise a family, later met some woman from the Santa Cruz mountains with a herd of goats that needed pasture. One thing led to another and now Harley is an award-winning cheese-maker. They've garnered foodie accolades and lots of attention and plan a major expansion next year. See? Life can be wonderful! ;)

We learned a lot about goat husbandry too, and got a very frank presentation about the realities of farm life. A couple factoids: If you keep goats in a small area, they will eat vegetation to the ground. But if you pasture them in a big area, they just nibble foliage tips. The pasture was only seeded once, 20 years ago.

Some pictures.







The goats loved Guy. Well, they're very social and enjoy human contact.



We wore funny hats to tour the dairy.





Curds and whey.



The goats are milked twice daily, each yielding half a gallon each time. Apparently, the milking is a relief to them and they look forward to it eagerly. They queue up for it once the gates to the milking palace are opened. We had to get out of their way.








The goats have llama guards. Dolly Llama and Fernando Llama.



Dinner is served upstairs, in the former barn.



We had four-course hors d'oeuvres plus soup before sitting down to fish, ravioli, and duck (all sourced locally, of course), and it topped off with a fresh warm ricotta dessert. Bring your own wine. We drank the sparkling water they provided and enjoyed conversation with couples from the Mission, San Jose, and Palo Alto.



Strangely, I was less interested in taking pictures once the food came out.



It's hard to get a spot at the dinner table. They do one dinner a month and fill up immediately. But I gather you can take tour easily enough. I highly recommend it.

Tropical Topics: the Kauai Marriott

Here's another blog post from our trip to Kauai. United cancelled our flight home due to mechanical troubles and put us up for a night at the Marriott in Lihue. This has happened to Guy before, so he knew to hurry to the ticket counter right away once the flight was cancelled to be sure we got a room at the best hotel. Well, who's to say we got the best hotel; we didn't take a passenger census the next day. It was definitely nicer than where we usually stay. We'll leave it at that.

The Marriott has a lovely a resort garden.

















The koi pond was jam packed, but none of my pictures of the koi came out. Here's a bird instead.



Ixora coccinnea is the tropical equivalent of bedding azalea. Although, I suppose it makes more sense to use Ixora coccinnea in Hawaiian landscaping than it does to use azaleas in many places where you commonly find them used here. Like the Getty in Los Angeles.



The view from our room on the 11th floor, facing west.



They didn't even bother to put rooms on both sides of the building.

Looking south.



Along the north end of the lagoon.



Sort of looking around the corner.



Looking down.







The beach here is mellow. No rocks or coral, and no riptides. It was windy the whole week we were in Kauai, so the water in Kapa'a was rough. It was nice to have another day to swim in mellow water. No rocks or coral means no fish to snorkel with, but the water itself was worth it.