The crew took a trip to Davis Farms this afternoon. Contrary to popular opinion, this is not actually in Davis. It’s actually out the Jackson Road, aka Highway 16, just after the hamlet of Sloughhouse. We got a large quantity of punkins: four bigguns and one littlun for $18. According to the gent who took our money, “Up in Apple Hill, they’re selling this ‘un right here for twenty bucks!” He also told us that he had 8 children, 26 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren; on Saturday he was going to hit 79 years. Very excellent.

The pumpkins were great. The corn maze was frustrating. The 70-cent pomegranate I ate whilst the rest were navigating said corn maze was just mind-bending. The new asphalt on Highway 16 is pretty darn impressive too, to say nothing of the myriad signs proclaiming the new housing development springing up out there. Horse properties, new homes from $140,000, you name it, they want to sell it to you.

I’m scared about what’s going to happen once all this stuff gets built.

It was tough enough trying to merge back onto 16 West at 4:30, with all the folks coming back from wine-tasting in Amador County–love those Zinfandels. What’s going to happen once all those beige things go up in Sunrise Douglas? It’s bad enough with reports of midnight bulldozings of vernal pools, groundwater plumes left over from big biz, and the smells from the local rendering plant. There are so many obstacles to building homes there, and yet somehow, the developers have managed to make it happen.

By the way, how cool is it that there is a trade publication called “Render Magazine”? Why don’t the junior high kids selling subscriptions ever have *that* on their forms?

Anyway, the whole Sunrise-Douglas thing is another Natoms, only much farther from a source of water, albeit less noisy but more smelly. I do have a friend who moved there recently from midtown, trading his 2/1 high-water on a long letter-street lot for a 4/2 behemoth on a larger lot. More space, I suppose…but a lot less walking to the supermarket.