Meet Your Meat: Berkeley Edition

Relax, this is not a PETA expose on factory farms! Besides the fact that it's Berkeley and that's just not how Berkeley rolls, this post is about a children's farm.




Deep in the heart of Berkeley, well actually fairly far up into the winding hills, is Tilden Park. And, at the North-East end of Tilden Park can be found a nature center, a series of pretty nice hiking and walking trails, and most importantly for today, a working farm. Yes, a working farm lies just a few minutes from Shattuck Avenue, and it may just be one of my favorite things about the East Bay.




On the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend my mother and I enjoyed a lovely breakfast at La Note. Unfortunately, all of the arty photos of La Note's lovely back garden, which is straight from Provence, landed on my mother's camera, but I will briefly gush over their merguez sausage. It was a spicy, salty, delicious break from the usual breakfast sausage and it couldn't have been a more perfect side for Sunday brunch. I have also been craving their bowl o' latte pretty much daily ever since. Afterwards, we took a jaunt around the bookstore and the art supply store, and we headed up to the farm.



Little Farm is aimed at children and families, you can feed the animals, pet the cows (and the pigs if you can bribe them to venture close enough to the fence), and go nose to nose with rabbits, goats, sheep, and fowl. As I happen to 1) basically be a kid in a grown-up's body, and 2) relish any opportunity to interact with all things agricultural, I think it's completely worthwhile to take a trip out, even as a supposed adult. (The farm is also surrounded by a fair amount of thistle so watch your step, those leaves are sharp!)





When we went the piglets were only 3-weeks old and awfully cute, and the goats and cows were remarkably friendly, but even if you're not into adorable farm animals, (sorry, I have to slip in some moralizing, it's a post about food and Berkeley) it never hurts to remember that your breakfast of eggs, sausage, and buttered toast owes a heck of a lot to animals just like these.