Sono-Ma and the Little Seed (Welcome Butter and Eggs Parade Friends)

"In the heart of the Earth

Buried deep so deep

A dear little seed lay fast asleep.

Wake!  said the sun with the morning light

Wake! sang the birds taking morning flight.

The little seed woke and peeked to see

What a wonderful world outside to be."

(author unkown, shared with me by Mary Bowen, Waldorf Educator)

Welcome to the growing Sono-Ma.com

Sono-ma is a growing on-line resource and community for "sharing the art of mothering in Sonoma County."  On May 13, visitors to Sono-Ma.com will find a newly imagined, fully-featured website offering a wealth of support to local, conscientious families.

You can be a part of Sono-Ma in almost any way you please. Sign up for our Newsletter service and you'll be sure to get all article posts and local updates. 

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You can show your support and read articles through Facebook, Networked Blogs, or by going right to http://www.sono-ma.com/.    Leave comments, suggest stories, and join our "Sonoma Sharing" group on Big Tent.  Share the seeds of your inspirations today!

Planting Your Organic Cilantro Seeds

Sono-Ma finds gardening to be a wonderfully fulfilling, and healthy family activity.  Get your kids outside and plant a "kitchen garden" or garden that brings food from your own tiny farm to your family table.  These organic, hand collected cilantro seeds can be planted today. Set aside some family time to tend to your new plants, and in just a few weeks you'll harvest your reward!

Local gardeners from "A Sonoma Garden" share the many useful properties of cilantro here.  This Sonoma family says cilantro is a mainstay of their cooler season garden (aka Spring and Fall), and shares how to keep your supply going by re-planting your seeds every few weeks.

In warmer weather, your cilantro plant will "bolt" or develop flowers and then seeds (shown in A Sonoma Garden's photo above.)  These seedpods are often called coriander - a key ingredient ground in many Indian curries. 

Carrie Grosvenor of How To Do Things.com also provides great details for "How To Grow and Harvest Cilantro."  She suggests planting your seeds a few inches apart and about 1/4 inch deep.  Choose an area that gets both sun and shade, and try keeping the soil moist with a layer of mulch.   Wait about 8 weeks, and your plants should be ready for harvest!  Select outer leaves first, and you may get as many as three harvests.  For more ideas and gardening tips, see Sonoma County's igrow site.


The Seed that Started Sono-Ma
Just where did Sono-Ma come from? Let's just say that the seed of the idea was planted when I first became a mother, and I began to see Sonoma County through the new lens of a parent. While I'd moved to Sonoma County in 1995, I blamed that fact on chance and circumstance, and planned to find another home where I would settle down to perhaps raise a family.

However, I started to develop a fondness for the place where I built trails in dozens of gorgeous green spaces with the teens from the Youth Volunteer Corps. I found a growing respect for the many innovative and civic minded folk who worked with me to create healthy communities through my job at the Health Department. Then we bought a house in downtown Santa Rosa, and I found I could live my whole life without driving a car. I walked to the Farmer's Market, the library, my doctors' offices, and the happening fourth street. Later, I signed up for Business School and found I could easily commute to Market Street in San Francisco to get a first rate education while enjoying the city life in weekly, bite sized durations.

It hit me... I live in the center of the best place on earth! As we all say, Sonoma County is a gorgeous green space, is home to local innovators and artisans, sports a lovely coastline, and is a hop, skip, and jump from the world class metropolitan city of San Francisco.

Becoming a mom opened my eyes to an even more powerful and unique characteristic about Sonoma County: this place is home to tons of local parents, health practitioners, and educators who are committed to raising a new generation of eco-concisous, multi-cultural, initiative-taking chidlren. From the people at the Women's Health and Birth Center, to my friend the late Reverend Coffee, to the moms I met at the Waldorf Roots and Shoots program, to the farmers who open their farms to our children, to the hundreds of mom-prenuers who are popularizing the homespun, I found a tremendous amount of local inspiration for a new way of raising families.

Sono-Ma began to grow in my mind as I saw this new way of parenting by living local, being earth-centered, living on a rhythm around the core elements of hearth and home, and nourishing families' bodies and souls... I wanted to capture and document this growing "Sono-Ma style" mothering movement, and provide resources to local moms who were also hungry for support in creating a this grounded, healthy way of raising families.

One year later, Sono-Ma is turning out to be a real community and showcase for the art of mothering in Sonoma County. Join in and share today!