June and July: In the afternoons, on Saturdays when we only had to do stable chores, or on Sundays when we had no work at all, we sometimes biked into Sebastopol, the closest town to Duckworth Farm. It’s a pretty special place, even by Northern Californian standards.
It’s a place where old hippies and retired professors from Berkley (two things generally don’t exclude each other) live. The small streets are lined by quaint low buildings with herb pharmacies, mate cafés and bookstores selling crystals and books about meditation. For America, it’s an uncommonly walkable town, where you actually see people strolling around as if walking was a worthwhile activity in itself.
Shanley, one of the other wwoofers, said that Sebastopol felt European. Her being American and me European, I don’t fully agree with her, but I definitely see her point. It did have that kind of small town charm, with the town square with the fountain in the middle, all the trees lining the streets and the small scale-edness that you rarely get in the land of Walmart and McDonald’s.
And the politics also made Sebastopol special. The local government has a Green Party majority, something that is extremely rare in the US. And as if to make it clear to everyone just how alternative Sebastopol is, they still have a Occupy Sebastopol tent in one corner of the town square. Here, people in dreadlocks and tie dyed t-shirts gather on the weekends to discuss and play guitar.
Even the free newspapers in the coffee shops were different, with names like Upbeat Times, Positive News and Bohemian. It felt refreshing and nice for a change.
On Sundays, they had a Farmer’s Market where farmers sold the very locally produced plums and strawberries, blackberries, carrots and olive oil. But you could also find shirts with screen prints and artisan jewlery, Indian food and home-made, organic popsicles, and in the middle of the town square, a band played some kind of country blues. I think Abbie and Sandra, my fellow wwoofers, enjoyed the market as much as me.
Yeah, Sebastopol is a really special place. I liked it alot.
Katja Malmborg 