Today my wife and I took the day off and headed up to Sebastopol, which is one of our favorite towns to visit within a couple of hours' drive from our house. Located in Sonoma County, it's part of Wine Country, and is a small, unpretentious town with good people and an agrarian feel. Having grown up in Oklahoma and Texas, it reminds me of what I liked about those areas combined with what I like about coastal-adjacent Northern California.
We started with a stroll down Florence Avenue to view its "Junk Art" installations. They are all the work of a local artist who lives on the street. The Avenue runs three blocks, and, every few houses, there is another fun sculpture made from found parts. Here are a few examples, along with a sign from an adjacent street that gave me a good chuckle:
Afterwards, we headed to an area called....
Yup! The Barlow. That's me standing in the middle of the (thankfully not busy) street holding my Rosewood Hartshead Barlow in my hand. At my feet is Tucker, our ~1 y.o. Border Collie mix who came along on our adventure.
The Barlow describes itself as "a 12-acre Bay Area outdoor market district in Sebastopol, California featuring local food, wine, beer, spirits and crafts made onsite by Sonoma County artisans" and that's pretty accurate. We grabbed tacos from one vendor and headed to the Crooked Goat Brewery tap room to eat and enjoy a pint at one of their outdoor picnic tables:
That ginormous taco featured a single, handmade black tortilla and was just too unwieldy to eat with my hands. So, the Hartshead was pressed into its first field service:
Aside: it hadn't occurred to me before, but another benefit of having a very sharp knife is that it makes it easy to slice through food without having to put a lot of downward pressure that could cut through a compostable food container and into the lovely wooden picnic table below.
After lunch, we visited a cheese maker that specialized in making English-style cheddar in California. I thought y'all might enjoy the logo:
The cheese was quite good, so we brought a wedge home with us. I'm sure you can guess what I used to cut off a sample as soon as we got home:
Afterwards, we made one more stop at another brewery to fill a growler. I'll show a shot of the trappings in the Beverages and Blades thread later.
All in all, we had a great time and it was fun to take my Hartshead Barlow to see The (Sebastopol) Barlow.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
I'm not really sure how to bring it back pointy again? 
I looked in our index for a time but most likely didn't look long enough.
after some choice words and pacing the floor, I got down to business with a magnifying glass and had a closer look.
then I took it to a Spyderco Medium flat stone and then fine, finishing with some very very fine sandpaper its good as new sort of
