the place

first impressions:

I drove into town (Petaluma)  yesterday and one of the first things I saw was the community seed bank.  It lives in an big, beautiful Victorian-era bank in the heart of downtown.  Looking in, I could see rows and rows of seed displays and plenty of people browsing.  Hay trucks drive through town, but so do new Corvettes.  There are old grain silos on the edge of town, but also new lofts.  It is a lovely mix of industry, blue collar folks and good ol' California money.  Everyone seems to get along, and everyone smiles and says hello.

The air is warm.  I hiked up to the top of the Helen Putnam regional park to watch a nice sunset.  Solitude is easy to come by, even here, even in close proximity to San Francisco.  I can see the Bay from the top of the hills here.  It seems so close, but still feels far away.  Today I browsed the Farmers' Market and was pleased to see lots of small, Sonoma County farms represented.  So often I find that these markets are just places for big farms to extend their hold, displacing small local farmers by offering lower prices.  Your food should be expensive.  It isn't easy to grow good food without pesticides.  And here, it seems that good local food is in abundance.