Enjoy your weekend by visiting area farms

Farmers around Sonoma County Saturday and Sunday are inviting visitors to take tours, taste produce and see life on the farm.

The annual Weekend on the Farm Trails allows city folk the chance to pick their own apples, see farm animals and peer inside a beehive.

"We're really trying to connect people to where their food comes from," said Cheryl Loraditch, owner of Bear Foot Honey in Santa Rosa. She will help interested visitors don protective gear and view some of her 30 beehives located off Highway 12 in Rincon Valley.

More than three dozen farms and restaurants around the county will take part in the weekend event. They include vegetable and pumpkin farms, a dairy, olive farms, wineries and ranches with sheep, horses, goats, chickens and ducks.

For many farmers, it is one of the few times when they open their operations to the public.

"It gives them sort of a once-a-year opportunity for them to share their passion with other people," said Lynda Browning, executive director of the non-profit Farm Trails, the events' sponsor.

Farm Trails has been promoting the county's farms since 1973. Weekend on the Farm Trails has been happening off and on since at least 2000, Browning said.

Participants include Gabriel Farm near Sebastopol, where visitors can pick their own apples for purchase and also sample Asian pears and other items.

The public also can tour the operations of the French Garden Restaurant's farm near Sebastopol, Oak Hill Farm near Glen Ellen and Canvas Ranch near Petaluma. Olive oil lovers can enjoy samples at McEvoy Ranch near Petaluma, Dry Creek Olive Company near Healdsburg and Terra Bella Vista Olive Oil Company. outside Santa Rosa.

Among the farmers taking part is Christine Cole of Full House Farm near Sebastopol.

This weekend Cole will be giving tours of her gardens and the land that supports her chickens, goats and sheep.

She also will demonstrate her work with horses and talk about ways to bring farm life into life in the suburbs. City dwellers, she said, can grow vegetables in garden containers, shop at farm markets and at times keep a pair of chickens to supply fresh eggs.

Visitors also will "get delicious taste treats of the goat products we make," she said, including blueberry frozen yogurt, vanilla iced milk and goat cheese.

The Farm Trails Web site, www.farmtrails.org, has a list of the participating farms and a map to show locations.

Loraditch, who was a mortgage underwriter before returning to beekeeping, said the event helps farmers market their products.

"Farmers are really not very good promoters of ourselves," she said."Farm Trails is a really good organization for people such as myself."