#i may write a part two about sunday bc farmer's market was rad and pottery has become my new obsession lol
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a11eya · 7 days ago
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birthday post!! warning, yapping ahead!!!
saturday morning was overcast, misty. quiet. the roads leading into town were winding, lined by unfamiliar trees. the sun burned off the mist, revealing clear blue skies, and i branched off onto a different road which brought me to the ranch.
the ranch had chickens and turkeys, baby donkeys and full grown pigs. alpacas and a cow! but everywhere i looked were ponies and horses. some stabled, some tied to a hitching post, some being trained in a corral.
the horse i rode that day is a former competition rodeo ropes horse named walt! he's fifteen, all white. there was one other rider there aside from our guide, and that rider's horse's name is marley. she used to jump hoops!
single file, with our guide in front, marley in the middle, and me and walt last, we set out on an hour-long trail through the bed of a former river. it's overgrown now with greenery, shrubs and small trees. the dirt trails were still littered with rocks, big and small, and poor marley must have slipped on them at least five times.
walt was very patient with me. the goodest, bestest boy. i know a little of the basics. a good seat requires balance, good posture. makes it easier for the horse to carry you. how to handle the reins for steering, how to urge the horse to go and or ask it to stop. i've ridden horses before, but you can count the number of times on two hands. so walt was patient. despite the fact i had to adjust my seat a couple times, despite the fact that he was last in a single file line with the longest legs of the three horses.
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if you've never ridden a horse, there's an initial discomfort to overcome. straddling the horse's back, adjusting to its gait. paying attention to the road ahead of you. but once you get situated, that all fades to the background.
the rustling of small animals in the brush, the birds flitting back and forth. i heard the screech of some kind of hawk overhead, in a sky whose blue stretched far, uninterrupted by even a single cloud. the dust the horses kicked up as they walked, their snorts as they cleared their noses, the thud of their hooves against the ground.
we finished up around 11:30 AM. though i'd planned to have lunch after riding, i found i wasn't hungry just yet. so i set off to the olive grove where the olive oil tasting was happening.
the grove was out on the other end of town, out where there were more ranches and farms growing food. i passed an orange orchard that, spoilers, i ended up buying clementines from at the farmer's market i went to on sunday (more on that later, maybe).
at the entrance of the grove, there was a building, the tasting room, where containers of olive oil and balsamic vinegar lined one wall. you're given a wooden tray with circular indentations in it, deep enough to allow a small disposable cup (think—the kind you put pump condiments like ketchup for fries out into at restaurants) to sit in. next to each indentation is a label engraved into the wood to delineate between the oils and vinegar. you're also given a small loaf of sourdough baguette to rip apart into dippable pieces to taste with.
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you make your way along the line of containers, filling your small cups yourself. they had a selection of extra virgin olive oils, infused olive oils, and interesting balsamic vinegars.
outside, they had picnic tables and hammocks under a small canopy of trees where you could sit and take your time tasting. i tried the olive oils first.
for the most part, the olive oil i've had has been cooking olive oil. the big containers you can get at costco, or at the grocery store. i've had good olive oil only a few times, back when i was in italy a couple years ago and wasn't in the headspace to really appreciate it. so i didn't really know what to expect from this tasting experience.
my brother-in-law asked me what i was surprised by from this experience, or something i learned from it. and it sounds so pretentious, but. i told him it's that you can really taste the notes in each olive oil, the ones that're mentioned in their descriptions. even just in the uninfused olive oils. the mild, buttery flavor of a more mellow oil and the spicy, almost peppery flavor of a more intense one. the way that a balsamic vinegar tones down or complements an olive oil when tried together.
they had a delicious garlic infused olive oil, a white truffle olive oil. a rosemary one, a lemon one. aside from their traditional balsamic vinegar, they had a peach one, a fig one, an expresso one, a cinnamon pear one. apparently, you can make a great lemon cake with the lemon-infused olive oil, or a bubbly, carbonated drink with the peach balsamic vinegar.
i ended up going home with an extra virgin olive oil made with olives from their heritage grove (peppery, spicy), the white truffle infused oil, and their traditional balsamic vinegar. i got my sister and brother-in-law an extra virgin olive oil that's smoother, milder, fruitier, and the peach balsamic vinegar—super sweet.
finally, i went for lunch. nothing too interesting to note.
following lunch, i headed over to an outdoor bookstore! it was lovely, exposed to the sky, greenery and plants everywhere. i ended up buying a book on art—The Artist's Palette by Alexandra Loske. it takes 50 artists from the 16th century until now and dives deep into one of their paintings and its color palette, the techniques used to create the painting.
i happened to pick it up because it caught my eye, and upon flipping through it, it fell open to the section on Artemisa Gentileschi. during my undergrad, i took a class on art history to fulfill some requirement, and in that class i wrote a paper on artemisa. she achieved a hell of a lot as an artist during a time when women weren't given opportunities to achieve, particularly in male-dominated circles. if you're curious, one of her most notable works is Judith Slaying Holofernes (warning for violence/blood/death). she's stuck with me, even after all these years, and the book opening to her section felt a little like fate.
after the bookstore, i headed to a wine tasting. i'm not a big alcohol person, and even less so now that i'm out of my 20s, but the area is known for things like their food, their olives, their wine.
my server was super sweet. she gave me a glass of rose on the house, and i didn't even tell her it was my birthday. i ordered a tasting menu of four white wines, and i sat at my table people-watching as i sipped.
it was still a little early for dinner, so i took a walk through downtown and came across a very busy park, despite the chill and setting sun. kids were running around, crawling all over the slides and monkey bars. people were walking their dogs. so i sat on a bench for a while and just let my mind empty as the blue sky flared in yellows and pinks and purples.
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