Rancho Notso Grande

Long hauls are tough with a 2-year-old on board, so we like to break up the drive wherever we can. On the way from Soledad Canyon to Yosemite Lakes, we found another Harvest Host for an overnight stop near Hanford, CA.

Rancho Notso Grande is an orchard and berry farm with a roadside farm stand and a steady stream of boondocking visitors. The owner took us on his golf cart for a tour of the farm and a sampling of his wares. It was too early in the season for pick-your-own berries, but he offered an assortment of wines, jams, vinegar, and meat from lamb raised on the farm. We got a pack of lamb rib chops, some raspberry-jalapeño jam and a bottle of berry wine.

We spent some time letting Ben explore the orchard and various berry patches before cooking up the lamb chops for dinner. After dinner, Ben played in a weird little stick teepee that the owner said was built by previous guests and continually added to by others. It looked like something from the Blair Witch Project, but Ben couldn’t leave it alone. We added a few more sticks from the orchard to shore-up the teepee and then called it a night.