February 22, 2008

News for 2008

We realize that we have not posted to our blog in ages and wanted to let all of our dedicated customers know that we are going to update our blog in March and start posting to it regularly. We get a lot of requests for information about our hikes and we will start posting that information right here in just a few weeks, so be sure to visit this blog frequently starting in mid- to late-March. We promise it will be worth your while!

Posted by juniperridge at 1:57 PM

November 5, 2006

Down on the Ranch

The Juniper Ridge crew at the Varian Family's V6 ranch

For the past two summers, we’ve harvested Juniper at Jack and Zee Varian’s stunningly gorgeous, 25,000 acre ranch in central California. But I can never figure out why Jack wants anything to do with us. Whenever we show up, he spends half his time helping us with our various car-related troubles, digging us out of the sand, opening gate locks we can’t figure out how to open etc.… In short, while we may we look nice people, we’re clueless big city types, and Jack probably cringes and buries his head in his hands every time we cross the county line. On our last trip, I drove our harvesting truck into a sandy wash and got stuck. While I was spinning my tires, Jack walked up, looked at the sickly, plaintive smile on my face, and said, without a hint of irritation as if it was in his plans all along, “I’ll go get my tractor.” When I asked him later if he was sick of us yet, he laughed and told me about a San Francisco friend who comes down to hunt on his ranch, and how he used to always get his car stuck, but eventually learned how to drive around the ranch. We’ll get it down, too, Jack, really we will!



Me and my rancher hero, Jack Varian


In his spare time when he’s not busy bailing us out, Jack runs the big V6 Ranch, taking care of sick livestock, managing rangeland, buying cattle and generally doing the million and one things it takes to run a ranch. Jack has so many skills and interests, I can’t begin to fit them all in here—he is an architect and carpenter (he built his own house and half the buildings in the neighboring town of Parkfield), an incredibly talented iron sculptor (check out Parkfield’s amazing antique boiler fountains), an activist in preserving local range land from L.A.’s creeping sprawl (he sold the development rights to his ranch to an open land trust and was instrumental in getting the neighboring 80,000-acre Hearst Ranch to do the same) and ecological steward who likes to quote Aldo Leopold and prioritizes the long-term health of his land over short-term profits. He has a gentle, engaging way about him that has thoroughly charmed all of us so much so that we cultishly talk about him all the time (“Remember when Jack was telling us about how to spot a sick cow?”). He’s also 72 years old and not only harvests Juniper with us for fun, but when we start fading in the heat of the day, he just seems to get stronger. He’s such a great worker, I wish I could hire him, but I guess he’s already got a full-time job—one that he’s very, very good at. Thanks for the great times Jack, and keep up the good work!

For more information on the V6 Ranch, Parkfield and the various Varian family enterprises such as the Parkfield Bluegrass Festival and Rodeo, go to www.parkfield.com. If you make it down to Parkfield for the Bluegrass Festival, look for the Juniper Ridge crew as we are planning our annual trip to coincide with it.



Jane harvesting Juniper Boughs - note that she is trimming around the outside of the tree. The tree itself in unharmed and responds well to the pruning by putting on new growth the following year.



Here's how we get the juniper boughs to the harvesting truck - we clip onto the tarps and drag it to the truck. Juniper harvesting must be really boring because for some reason it always seems like fun when we get to drag a full tarp back to the truck.



Once we've dragged the Juniper boughs to the truck, we throw the Juniper into the back of the truck.



Vicki demonstrating an alternate technique for getting the boughs into the truck



Hall stares moodily into the eyes of his lover, Juniper



Speaking of lovers, Reese and Jane glowing for the camera



Celebrating at the end of the harvest - we've got a full truck of Juniper, and we're heading home! Thanks to Vicki, Jane and Reese for a great harvesting trip - I had so much fun with all of you!

Posted by juniperridge at 11:20 AM | Comments (1)

October 5, 2006

Black Sage Harvest

While White Sage may be the paparazzi-stalked superstar of wild sages since everyone from Tulsa to Timbuktu seems to know about and want White Sage, Black Sage is its quiet country cousin and one of my favorite of the native sages of the West. Black sage grows on steep hillsides and coastal bluffs in California's gorgeous Big Sur/central coastal region. In my most humble and extraordinarily informed opinion, it is superior to White Sage for pure olafactory pleasure (geez that was a convoluted way to say that it smells great). See our new Big Sur Sage sachet to enjoy the smell of the Big Sur coast in your home. Here are some pictures from the Black Sage harvest ...

Posted by juniperridge at 10:35 AM | Comments (1)

November 24, 2005

Last Wildcrafting Trip of the Season

Here we are harvesting juniper early in the morning - this is extremely hot country, even in the late Fall, so the best time to pick is from 6am to noon or so.



Art photo and cover of this year's spring catalog - Erica harvesting early in the morning with the sun behind her.



Hauling the Juniper back to the truck



Coulter pines grow to enormous proportions and are armed and dangerous - look at the spikes on that sucker.



Laurel and Dara spreading out a tarp on a hillside - we harvest the juniper onto these tarps and then drag them down the hillside to load the juniper into the truck - see next picture too ...



Here's me, Dara and Laurel harvesting the Juniper onto the tarp



Making our way back to the truck at the end of the day



My star soapmaking assistant Lorenzo hauling a full load back to the truck.

The trees had tons of juniper berries this year because of the heavy rains.



Endless hills of golden, wild oats



Here I am with an armload of Juniper



Watching the sunset after a hard day of harvesting juniper.



Here's the Juniper Ridge crew at the end of the Day - from left me (Hall Newbegin), your favorite SF Farmers Market salesperson Dara Merin, shipping manager Laurel Frank and Erica Schuckman.

Posted by juniperridge at 5:01 PM | Comments (4)

August 20, 2005

White Sage Harvest

Here it is, for all of you White Wage fetishists - the biggest White Sage patch in the world! I've driven the White Sage country from very northern and of its range in the Santa Lucias to the southern end in Mexico, and there's nothing like this spot anywhere. Look at the size of those plants - look how many there are, all those bronze stalks in the background are white sage, and it goes on for miles!



Ok now it's time for a quick lesson on White Sage. Some people think White Sage or "sacred sage" grows throughout the West in states like Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Wyoming etc ... those people are wrong. White Sage (botanical name Salvia apiana) is only found in Southwestern California and just over the border into Northwestern Baja, Mexico. That's it - honest, you can look it up in any book on native plants of the West. I understand why people might be confused about this though, because every new age store and trading post in western tourist towns from Jackson, Wyoming to Taos, New Mexcico sells White Sage smudges. And while many folks believe that Native Americans burned White Sage in the pre-columbian days, there is no historical record of Native Americans outside of Southwestern California ever having used White Sage prior to the past 30 years. As far as I have been able to determine from interviewing people who have been in the White Sage business for a long time, the White Sage phenomenon was started by a couple of enterprising Native Americans in the 1970's who promoted White Sage for its spiritually purifying effects on the Pow Wow circuit. White Sage's popularity spread from there into the new age circuit in the 80's and beyond into the larger bohemian/organic Whole Foods world and its present mammoth popularity in the 90's. And I wouldn't go on in excrutiatingly boring detail about this if it weren't for the fact that there are is a large popultion of turquoise jewelry wearing white folks who who will beat you over the head vigorously with their medicine sticks if you try to tell them that White Sage doesn't anywhere near Sedona. This isn't to say that White Sage doesn't have special purifying effects that its promoters say it does. I just don't get why White Sage is put up on this untouchable pedestal by people who wouldn't know the plant if it crawled into bed with them after a night of carousing ... oh man, look at me - I'm totally ranting, I'm frothing at the mouth and drooling all over my keyboard. This blogging thing is so cathartic, I can just sort of yap off and say whatever I want, and instead of just my wife, 3 month old baby and dog having to hear about it, you do too - welcome to my world! Woo-ha-ha-ha (evil Count Dracula laugh)



The world of White Sage harvesters is clausterphobically small - there are about 4 of us who supply 95%+ of the White Sage you see on the market, and all of us are getting the White Sage from the same area which includes the big patch plus a few other areas within a 50 mile radius of the big patch. That's right, that smudge stick you bought in the Wild Oats in Santa Fe, or the one you got from the nice old Native American at the farmers market in Billings, MT; or the cool Hippie store on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley - they all came from here.



Now for the bad news - see those shiny big machines off in the distance? Those are bulldozers, and this entire patch of miles of White Sage is slated to be bulldozed to make way for a huge ex-urban development. Just as White Sage's popularity is taking off, the big patch where everyone harvests their white sage is disappearing into the sea of costcos and taco bells. This is not to say that there isn't plenty of White Sage still out there - but most of it grows on steep hillsides in the mountains and is much more difficult to harvest, so when this patch goes under and all of that harvesting pressure disperses across the remaining, smaller stands of White Sage, it is going to put an enormous amount of harvesting pressure on those remaining stands.



The good news is that White Sage can easily be harvested sustainably if the harvesters aren't too greedy. So what is left can be harvested indefinitely without substantial impact to the plants if it is done properly. Here's my friend and co-harvester Kevin "Vanna White" Rowell attractively modeling a bundle of properly harvested white sage clusters. If you harvest from the soft part of the stem up (in other words short stemmed clusters) rather than farther down where its more woody (long stemmed sage clusters or "wands"), the sage plants respond to the pruning vigorously producing two clusters the following year on the pruned stem. If you harvest farther down the stem into the woody area (these are typically sold as long "wands"), the stem won't put on any new growth the following year.

A big pile of properly harvested White Sage clusters!

Posted by juniperridge at 2:31 PM | Comments (14)

May 17, 2005

Wildcrafting Season Begins!

Here are some pictures from our recent juniper harvesting trip - wildflowers are out in force this Spring folks!

Juniper country in the California's southern Diablo mountains - notice how thick the Juniper is in the hills. In this dry country, even oaks are hardpressed to eke out a living and are few and far between. Juniper, on the other hand is fat and happy with the meager winter rains. In these dry foothills Junipers are often the only trees for miles until you get up into the higher, cooler terrain where you start seeing Oaks, Coulter Pines, Buckeye, Moutain Laurel etc ...

This is what most people think wildcrafting is - sitting in the sun and flowers. It's really not like that - it's hard work! But I guess these pictures aren't going to help to dispel that myth, since they mostly feature us sitting around enjoying the incredibly beautiful day.

Here I am actually doing some work - we harvested about 1500 lbs of Juniper on this day, or about enough for 4000 bars of soap. We only harvest about 5% or so of a tree's foliage, and the pruning stimulates new growth so the trees will quickly put on new growth where they were trimmed.

Nice view huh?

One last picture of me next to a cool looking bonzai juniper jutting out of rock. Older California Junipers such as this one have great twisted, tangled branches.

Posted by juniperridge at 3:08 AM | Comments (7)