Chestnut Ridge Ranch

The coastal mountains of Northern California are steep. The rivers are small, but they carve quickly through the tumbled strata that have been shoved onto the continental plate as it has overridden the Faralon plate. The Anderson Valley is home to the Navarro River, once, long ago, a source of redwood for San Francisco, to the south. Then, when most of the trees were gone, the loggers gave way to sheep farmers in the hills, and to orchardists in the bottom lands. Apples were big here, once. Then the California wine boom, and now the valley floor is chock-a-block with vinyards, and tasting rooms, and bed&breakfast places, and the inevitable summer traffic which all this engenders.

And in the hills? Those, too, are slowly succumbing to various kinds of development. Chestnut Ridge Ranch is one, the dream child of Tom and Pam, former urbanists who sought escape, and found it on a mountain top, along with the several hundred chestnut trees they brought in, hoping it mignt one day support them with income from the sale of local, organically grown chestnuts, at a time when the American Chestnut had been all but wiped out by the Asian chestnut blight, and most chestnuts were being imported from Italy.

It hasn't achieved self support yet. Tom and Pam still have some outside income. There have been inevitable issues, but it is getting there. And meanwhile, the views...better you should experience them for yourself, someday, as neither words nor pictures can do them justice.

The chestnuts are dropping now. Picking them up is not easy on the back, but what really good things are ever altogether easy?