news story / By North Coast Journal Staff

Best Of Humboldt — Staff Picks

Skip the gift room filled with jars of local jams, hot sauce, mustard, etc. At The Loleta Cheese Factory, it’s all about the cheese cooler — a refrigerated trough packed with multi-colored bricks of pure cheese goodness. Smoked salmon cheddar, roasted garlic Monterey jack, habañero white cheddar, herb & spice Havarti … nearly 40 different varieties, most offered in sample-sized cubes just waiting to be impaled on a toothpick and consumed.

While savoring a curd, peak through the window at the huge industrial vats beyond, where you’ll often find a factory employee churning 1,750 gallons of whole milk at a time, yielding about a ton of cheese per batch. Bring a pocket knife, buy some crackers and a block of your favorite queso and head on out to the flower garden patio for some creamy, pasteurized joy. (252 Loleta Drive, Loleta)

— Ryan Burns

BEST PLACE TO BUY A PEACH JUST MOMENTS FROM THE TREE

You could say the people in Hoopa, Willow Creek and Orleans are out there cultivating Summertime just for their fogbound neighbors. And they all have something fab to offer — heck, as far as wine goes, we’ve got a veritable Napa-north sprouting in our rugged Humboldt backwoods.

But the ones who win our hearts are those lovely elderhippies and their offspring at Trinity River Produce, the O’Gormans, whose 25 acres wander the riverbank, pretty and productive as can be. Tom O’Gorman started the farm, at 2443 Hwy 96 in Willow Creek, in 1971 when he was 21, says his daughter Molly, who with her sister Susan and their mom, Kay, help run the place. “The property was his aunt and uncles’ and he dropped out of college to come take care of them and the land,” says Molly. A fog refugee — or anyone, really — can stop, buy some glowing orbs of goodness and wander around the parklike acreage soaking up the good sun’s warmth.

— Heidi Walters

BEST ALL-LOCAL FOOD CONCOCTION TO TAKE TO A POTLUCK

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