What a delightful day! After breakfast, we left the house with a picnic lunch and headed north west. The day was beautiful, low to mid 60s. Once we arrived in Point Reyes Station the guys went for coffee; Francine and I headed out for a walk to "discover" the town. Essentially, the economy is driven by agriculture and tourism, both of which we saw evidence of in our walk in this west Marin County town. After meeting Peter and Bill talking to a fellow about his Austin Healey, we found the car and continued on our journey.
We began to meander along Tomales Bay headed toward Marshall and the Hog Island Oyster Co. Stunning coastline ringed by green hills! At Hog Island, we retrieved our picnic baskets which contained crusty bread, 2 kinds of cheeses, Genoa salami, roasted peppers and white wine. To this we added fresh oysters which Peter and Bill shucked at the table! What a lunch! Too bad it was too windy to light the candle Francine had brought. Talk about ambiance!
We continued our drive through green lush hills and dairy farms on the twisty, curvy road in west Marin. There were beautiful yellow California poppies growing wild at the side of road. We were looking for the Ramini Water Buffalo Farm that Francine had heard of and had called to inquire if we could visit. We DID have Mr Pizza with us and they DO make mozzarella di bufala at this farm!!
At 1:45 we finally found the Ramini Mozzarella LLC (googling it!). We met Audrey (née Hitchcock) Ramini, wife of the founder and she enchanted us. What charisma! Her husband Craig started to build his dream, a water buffalo farm and making mozzarella, in 2009, after a successful career in the business world. They bought a total of 40 water buffalo, named them after rock stars and began their business. Unfortunately, a little more than a year ago, Craig died from an incurable cancer. Audrey decided to continue his dream and the farm/cheese business is now a "one woman show." She sells only locally because of logistics but it seems her cheese is in high demand!
Curiously enough, she has roots on Cape Cod: Fancy's Farm in Orleans, an uncle Bill Hitchcock who carved many of the wooden signs still seen today and a bee farm on Nantucket owned by her Dave Hitchcock. She also lives in Tuburon! And I later discovered that Craig grew up in Wehnam and his father was a doctor at Beverly Hospital. Maybe Amy knew him!!
On the way home, we stopped at Rachel's for a short visit. Returning home, we had a caprese salad using Ramini mozzarella, then played a game of Hand and Foot; allow me to gloat.....the women were impressively victorious! After a short visit to see Jason and his fairly new home, we went to Paxtis for pizza. Home, chat, then to bed!
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