Valley Center, CA: Casa Bella Farm

Back to work!

Here we are, settled again after a long journey driving from coast to coast! After putting on nearly 2,500 miles since Florida and traveling for four weeks, we were really ready to put the van in park for a few weeks (the Zinger let out a long sighhhhh). Once we left San Diego, we drove an hour north to the beautiful town of Valley Center, former home of John Wayne, Fred Astaire, and many other olden tyme Hollywood celebrities. We are staying with a wonderful couple, Joel and Prima Zarza and are helping them continue their plans of creating a farm on their 14 acre property. 

Casa Bella Farm is a land and home within a gated community. The houses are large, the views incredible, and the pools vanishing (literally, they have a vanishing edge saltwater pool with a slide and hot tub)! 

In the last 10 years, the Zarza's have landscaped and added to their property in small increments. For example, there is a guava grove with 150 guava trees, the beginnings ("model") of a vineyard with six grape vines, 5 raised beds for vegetables, banana trees, blackberry bushes, blueberry bushes, dragonfruit, and and all sorts of other exotic fruits we've never heard of before. They hope to be able to become a "farm stay" in the future. The only hurdle that presents itself currently is the zoning of a large part of the property. If they are able to change the zoning of that parcel, they are looking into implementing a large vineyard which would allow them to truly become a "farm" and start hosting "farm stays."  It's really exciting stuff!

Lucky the dog, Prima and Kim, and the garden beds.

We have been here for pretty much 2 weeks and find there are just not enough hours in the day to do all the things we want/need (like keep up with the blog). The first couple of days it was raining and in the upper 40's but it has warmed up to VT summer temps (or hotter); today was 89 and sunny! Here's a list of some of the things we have been doing:

1. Constructed 2 barn owl boxes- hopefully they'll entice some barn owls to move in and hunt down all the troublesome gophers on the property.

2. Visited Mountain Meadow Mushrooms, a local mushroom farm that gives the community access to free compost.  It's AMAZING compost as the mushrooms are grown in manure and sawdust and the compost is a mixture of that and some mushrooms that didn't make the cut. We've been twice and each time loaded up 6 garbage bins full of the compost to bring back to Casa Bella!  It stinks like the dickens but helps make great soil!

3. Planted blueberry bushes and 10 fruit trees (bing cherry, apricot, pear, orange and a few 'mystery' trees that lost their tags).  Also planted 5 raised beds with vegetables (tomatoes, basil, beans, peas, peppers, eggplant, cumbers, lettuce, zucchini, strawberries, and radishes). One of the raised beds needed to be filled with topsoil and compost and lined with chicken wire to keep the gophers out so we helped with that too!

4. Harvested rocks (straight out of the ground!) for landscaping around trees and for rock walls.  Prima and Joel's hilly property has no shortage of rocks which is a blessing and a curse.  It's hard digging but all those rocks come in handy for decorating!

5. Cleaned up the grape vine area- we weeded around the base of the plants, added compost, and then mulched the walkways.  It's looking fancy!

6. Learned A TON about drip irrigation. We call Joel the irrigation master because he is basically the Mr. Miyagi of irrigation systems! He's taught us how to install new lines, connect PVC lines, and put the system on an automatic timer.

7. Tried our hand at pruning trees: apricot, guava, and a few other types.  They have so many fruit trees!

It's not ALL work though. We do get to enjoy ourselves (doing work is actually fun for us if you can imagine) and enjoy the company of Joel and Prima! Prima is an amazing cook and with her Philippino heritage comes some delicious foods. At first, they warned us of the tastes and then soon realized we will try and eat almost anything!  We even had fish served the traditional way, heads and all!  After learning we have never had Vietnamese food or fish tacos, they brought us out to try both... we are spoiled WWOOF'ers, that's for sure! Also, don't forget about the vanishing edge saltwater pool: It reached 72 degrees while we were here. They even brought us to their friend Doug's farm and he had a couple of French WWOOF'ers. It was fun to walk around his property and see all of the projects he had going on. 

Casa Bella is also only a 20 minute drive from some awesome hiking! We made it to Hellhole Canyon Preserve (it's a lot nicer than it sounds) and did a scenic 4 mile hike.

On the way to the preserve we got lost (well WE didn't, our GPS did) and ended up at a property where we found another start-up farm. We spent about an hour and a half talking with Jane at that farm (currently in the process of naming it- thinking of 'Heavenly Hills' as that would go well near Hellhole Canyon) about the WWOOF program and touring her farm and happily holding baby goats! Jane, if you're reading this, keep up the good work! 

This past weekend we headed back to San Diego for some St. Patty's day fun but that'll be for another blog post.  Hopefully soon, keep those fingers crossed Internet!