By Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

So, our feathers have been ruffled lately by a nagging fear that one of our pullets is a rooster.

That could be really, really bad news. If one of our shes is a he, we wouldn't legally be able to keep him in our particular municipality (Menlo Park, California) because roosters crow. Loudly. Often at inappropriate times of day and night.

The chicken in question is Carmelita, who you may remember as the sturdier of our two Rhode Island Reds.

I was describing her beautiful green-tinged feathers to our chicken guru, Jody Main, and Jody got really quiet.

Then, she said: "Uh-oh."

As it turns out, Rhode Island Red roosters have greenish feathers on their necks, and especially on their tails. Carmelita (above, note the neck) is developing dark feathers that flash green in sunlight.

Then Jody asked me if she was really shiny.

She is. She looks almost wet.

Apparently that too is a sign of a rooster.

It was time to consult the experts: the forums at BackyardChickens.com. They helpfully have an entire bulletin board called What Breed or Gender is This?

After an extensive perusal of photos of Rhodies at various stages of development, I think I'm prepared to say that I don't think Carmelita is having a gender-identity crisis. At this point, Carmelita and our other Rhodie, Ruby, are 16 weeks old; they were born about Aug. 22. By this point, it seems like most Rhodie roosters start developing big red combs and pronounced wattles (those red things that hang down from their cheek/neck area.) Her comb is quite petite, and her wattles, while they exist, are not very prominent.

Now, it is possible for roosters to be late-bloomers. BackyardChicken.com users report "mute roos" not revealing themselves as the non-egg-laying sex until 22 weeks, but we're hoping for the best with our suspiciously shiny Carmelita. And we're on alert for stray cock-a-doodle-doos. (Right now both Carmelita and Ruby's main vocalization has an uncanny resemblance to a creaky door. No real clucking yet, and certainly no crowing.)

Readers with chicken experience — you don't think Carmelita is really Carl, do you? Reassuring comments would be appreciated. I'm not sure what we would do with her if she's a him.

Speaking of our lovely flock, they've been braving our recent bout of relatively cold weather with fluffy aplomb. We were a little bit worried about how they'd weather our nighttime lows, which have been dipping into the 30s, but apparently our Bay Area weather just isn't that cold for a chicken.

It's also about time that we properly introduce them to the world. How about some photos?

Ruby, all grown up.

Quick facts
Name: Ruby
Breed: Rhode Island Red
Age: 16 weeks.
If she were a Spice Girl, she'd be: Ginger. Red-headed, sassy, secretly everyone's favorite.

You may remember Ruby as our delicate runt, the chicken we were most worried about. Compared to the others, she was tiny! And she spent all of her first week of life nodding off under the heat lamp, then being startled back awake. Plus, she fell victim to the dreaded "pasty butt." (You think raising a chicken is easy??)

But oh, how our lovely lady has grown. Although she doesn't cluck yet — again, the creaking door sound  — she's blossomed into a healthy adolescent. (A pullet, technically. They're not hens till they're one year old.)


Honey perches on a Mugho pine.

Quick facts
Name: Honey
Breed: Buff Orpington
Age: 17 weeks.
If she were a Spice Girl, she'd be: Sporty. Good natured, likes to jump in trees (or on your arm).

Honey is one of the flock leaders. She's not shy at all — she's the first to jump up and grab whatever offering you're bringing. And she's the one we used to let fly up on to our shoulders and laps. She doesn't mind being picked up as much as the other ones, and likes to be stroked.


Alana gives a mighty glare.

Quick facts
Name: Alana
Breed: Ameraucana
Age: 17 weeks.
If she were a Spice Girl, she'd be: Scary.

Although she used to be one of our most docile girls, willing to be cuddled and have her chest stroked until she was six weeks old, Alana has gotten quite suspicious of us these days. She will not consider being picked up, and she's one of the last to cluster around you when you bring them food. Plus, that glare!


Charlotte struts.

Quick facts
Name: Charlotte
Breed: Buff Orpington
Age: 17 weeks.
If she were a Spice Girl, she'd be: Baby Spice. Adorable, busty, sweet.

Charlotte  is slightly lighter in color and has rufflier feathers than her sister Honey. Both Orpingtons were actually named "Charlotte" for the first three weeks we had them because we couldn't tell them apart. Our eagle-eyed art director Jim McCann was the first to notice that Honey was slightly darker, although we mere mortals — who work mostly with words, not photos — couldn't tell the difference until weeks later.


Ophelia ... also gives a mighty glare.

Quick facts
Name: Ophelia (formerly, Kevin)
Breed: Ameraucana   
Age: 17 weeks.
If she were a Spice Girl, she'd be: Posh, I guess. I'm tempted to say Scary again because the Ameraucanas look so fierce, but I've kind of written myself into a corner with this Spice Girls thing.

Ophelia went from being one of our shyest chickens to one that — grudgingly — tolerates being picked up. She's a flock leader too, always ready to take a bite of quackgrass when offered.

By Erika Ehmsen, Sunset copy chief

Winemaking is a full-body experience. Sure, the nose knows a good bouquet (at least wine editor Sara Schneider’s does). And swishing and swirling wine across your palate definitely makes the mouth feel good.

But for weeks, I’ve been sporting purple tattoos from my own contact with the grapes. With all the Willy Wonka–like crushing and pressing equipment around and my purplish feet and hands, I’ve been feeling a bit like Violet Beauregarde (“Violet, you’re turning violet, Violet!”). Red wine definitely stains more than clothes.

When we brought in our quarter-ton of Syrah grapes, most of our coworkers didn’t think food editor (and One-Block Diet doyenne) Margo True and I would seriously jump in and get stomping. Neither of us had really thought through the logistics of what we’d stomp in (functional and clean but not Italian-villa-glamorous trashcans) or how we’d clean up afterward (an icy-cold jet of water from a sadistic garden hose). We just kicked off our shoes, donned shorts and grins, and clambered over the cans’ wobbly plastic sides into whole clusters of grapes piled 2 feet deep.

At first I just stood there, letting the sensations (and my feet) sink in: gently prickly stems and firm, round berries that silently popped and released cool juice as gravity pulled me into them.

Trying to wriggle my feet loose and start stomping in earnest, I lost my balance and grabbed hold of the top of the trashcan, which threatened to buckle (and since we’d borrowed most of our equipment from home winemaker Dan Brenzel, I had his teasing “You break it, you buy it” warning echoing in my head).

I realized that I was going to have to jog in place while remaining as upright as possible, which, now that I think about it, is a bit like using our gym’s stair climber without the benefit of my hands. Oof.

I tried to be methodical about stomping every berry that I could discern, but then researcher (and Team Chicken member) Elizabeth Jardina prodded, “You do realize that Margo’s lapping you, right?” and I got competitive, kicking my legs into overdrive and asking Elizabeth to dump more grapes on my feet. (I got in touch with my abs too: I couldn’t stop laughing the whole time, and I felt it the next morning.)

It was quite the workout, and I resembled a giant bouffant of cotton candy afterward, but that fuzzy stickiness came out of my fleece jacket, and the splashes of purple juice washed off my legs, leaving me with what looked like bruised soles—the trademark tattoo of pressed grape skins, coloring me like they would our wine in the weeks to come.

They got me again when we pressed our wine, taking it off its cap of skins. After many round-trips on the bucket brigade (not as messy as it sounds—we were careful not to slosh our precious Syrah), I paused for a few sips from the press’s spigot. I wanted to compare the gravity-fed “free run” wine to the “press run” that Dan had coaxed the cap into releasing; he accomplished this by using a garden hose to inflate his basket press’s hot-water-bottle-like bladder to a fairly gentle 15 psi. (Verdict: The free run was jammy boysenberry, but the press run's more vegetal quality made me pucker—we may want to add oak to that batch.)

Then photo style coordinator (and Team Wine sanitation guru) Sara Jamison and I dug into the cap, now packed tightly against the walls of the press, plopping huge handfuls into still more of Dan’s buckets so he could use our “pumice” (the pressed-dry skins and seeds and, admittedly, a few stems) to press off the red he has going in his garage.

Sara J. was smart enough to slip on gloves, but I hadn’t learned my lesson. When my bare hands emerged from scraping the last bits off the press, they were royal purple. And again remained lavender-tinged for weeks, despite quite a few scrubbings.

Ah well, que Syrah Syrah.

By Amy Machnak, Sunset food writer

After picking olives at Valencia Farms, we drove two cars packed with olive-filled crates 30 miles south to Pietra Santa Winery in Hollister. The winery, located in the La Cienega valley, looks like an Italian red-bricked castle complete with a working bell tower and flanked on each side by two imposing palm trees.

Alessio Carli, their wine and olive oil maker, graciously allowed us to use his gorgeous Italian press to crush our olives. A charismatic man from Siena, Italy, with an infectious laugh and an obvious love of his two crafts, assures us that not only is olive pressing easy, but it’s also lots of fun. Looking around you can see why he is so tranquil. The surrounding property, with its miles of birds-eye views is breathtaking.

We arrived in the late afternoon with wide smiles,  evidence of our pride of having finally made it to this point of production. Alessio and his team went right to work unloading the just-picked olives from the backs of our vehicles into giant Jacuzzi-size bins.

Using a fork lift, he weighed all of it (turns out we had 1,000 pounds!) before dumping them into a pit on the side of the winery (but not before I snagged a pound or two to brine upon our return to the office). Then the olives were taken via a conveyor belt past a fan which  blows away leaves and were washed before being moved indoors.

Next came the actually pressing, although  mutilation might be a more accurate description. Enormous granite wheels weighting a mere 7,000 pounds turned around and around, rolling over our olives, skins, pits, and flesh included, until they look like what one member of Team Olive called “chopped liver.”

Although the olives weren’t so visually appealing at that point, the aroma filling the room was wonderful and you couldn’t help but be in awe of the size of the machinery and the high-level noise it made while turning our olives into what we could only dream would be the best olive oil ever made.

The circular crushing took almost 45 minutes; then our liver-like olive mush was on its way to the centrifuge. We all watched in amazement as the mixture was separated into bright green oil and ugly brown vegetable water, as Alessio, our trusted teacher, explained the process step by step.

After about two hours, the spigot at the end of the production line started to  pour a very thin stream of months’ worth of diligence by Team Olive.

Our goal of making olive oil from our own Sunset trees had been deemed impossible, but we persevered and with the help of some local friends, we finally have our very own green-oil gold. OK, so it’s not actual gold, but it is REALLY green, and most important, heavenly delicious.

Photos by Kimberley Burch, Sunset

By Rachel Levin, Sunset associate travel editor

We rolled up the dirt driveway toward Valencia Creek—and what’s gotta be the cutest little farmhouse in all of  Aptos, a quiet town just outside of Santa Cruz.

Surrounded by blooming flowers, fields of lavender, and 1800 olive trees, out comes Chris Banthien. Finally, a smiling face to all the phone calls! Clad in overalls and a pink sweatshirt, her blond hair blowing in the slight breeze, she was a full-on farmer living the good life. My first thought: What am I doing in San Francisco? My second thought: I want to run an olive farm!

“Welcome Team Olive!” said Chris. We introduced ourselves—a copy editor, a travel editor, a photographer, and a couple of food editors—here to help pick! (And, um, because we were short on time—to also purchase 800 pounds of olives for pressing later that afternoon.)

First, she led us to a row of trees where a  professional picker was hard at work, as Valenica Creek Farms was already on Day 3 of their week-long harvest. This guy was using an olive rake, which seemed to be moving a-mile-a-minute, removing the olives from their branches while magically leaving most of the leaves undisturbed. A large net covered the ground, catching the falling fruit.  Looked easy enough.

“I thought you guys would work over here,” Chris said, pointing to a group of Ascolano trees, each barely taller than my 5 feet-two inches. “Ascolano olives are bigger; easier to pick,” she said and handed us a bunch of buckets. “Go to it.”

“Is there any sort of technique we should know about?” asked one member of Team Olive. Good question, I thought. "Nope. You just pick," replied Chris with a laugh.

And that’s what we did. Scattering ourselves among the trees—glove-free and carefree, happy for such a beautiful day away from our desks.

At times we talked. But mostly we took advantage of the silence, plucking the perfectly smooth, green olives in peace; their oils naturally moisturizing our wintry, dry hands. “This is so meditative!” said Margo True, reading my mind. Of course what was a meditative exercise, might’ve turned monotonous had we spent all day picking the 800 pounds of olives we needed.

Instead, five of us amateurs harvested 70 pounds in one hour. Not bad. Luckily, Chris and her business partner, Bruce Golino, had kindly set aside 21 additional crates of olives for us—Tuscan varietals (Maurino, Leccino, Frantoio, Pendolino, and Ascolano) picked earlier that morning.

Due to oxidation, time was of the essence. And so, with a wave — and a lovely gift from Chris: bars of soap made from olive oil and lavender—we were off, rambling down the road with 22 crates of loose olives packed into the back of our two cars. Plus one additional 35-pound crate riding shotgun on Amy Machnak’s lap.

Destination: Pietra Santa Winery to press!

Photos by Kimberley Burch, Sunset

By Lauren Swezey, Sunset special projects editor

Although I can’t speak with authority here (after all, I AM a member of Team Wine)  barley is a very important ingredient in beer brewing, since it’s the main source of sugar during the fermenting process.

Most home brewers make their beer with a store-bought barley malt extract. But for our One-Block Diet feast, we want to do as much as possible right here on campus. So we decided to grow our own barley.

Easier said than done! The first hurdle was trying to figure out what we needed. It turns out we wanted “malting barley”, not cereal barley. Then, I had to find a source that would sell small quantities of seed.

After days of clicking around online, I finally ran across a blog on a beer-making site that sent me to Howe Seeds in South Dakota. Great! All I had to do was go to the site and order the seed. Slam-dunk. But when I got to the page on barley, it said "BARLEY SEED FOR GROWING BARLEY STRAW FOR USE AS A NATURAL ALGAECIDE IN PONDS AND FOUNTAINS". Huh? I had heard that barley straw controls algae in ponds, but what did that have to do with beer?

After emailing the owner, I found out that their pond barley is a six-row variety called ‘Lacey’, which also happens to be a great one for brewing (how efficient: you can brew with the barley seed and then use the straw to clean up your pond!).

In fact, it’s a superior, high-yielding variety that was introduced in 2000 by University of Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station. It has received favorable reviews for its high malt extract, low soluble protein (high protein can cause cloudiness), and high alpha-amylase activity (an enzyme that converts starches into sugars).

The rest was easy. Ryan prepared a 5-foot-wide by 16-foot-long bed in the test garden and then planted the seed. Within days, it was up and growing.

The seedlings are about 3 inches tall now—only 30 inches to go! We’ll harvest the barley next spring, then Team Beer will have to figure out what to do with it!