Bounty of the Land

Bounty of the Land. Forest Home Farms Historic Park. At Forest Home Farms, much of the food was home grown. The Boones grew vegetables for their own use and raised cattle on a leased ranch in Livermore which they brought to the meat house, in front of you, for processing. This structure was constructed with walls that were one foot thick and filled with redwood sawdust as insulation to help keep out the heat. It has three rooms – meat was brought in, portioned and wrapped, placed in a cooling compartment, and then stored., ”…Mom and Dad would cut [the animal] up… [and] hang it in the little hanging shed out north of the main house for a couple of weeks. Then [they] would bring it into the meat house and cut it up and wrap it.” , - Phil Munson, son of Floyd Munson, foreman during the 1940s, Farm families preserved foods by drying, canning, and pickling. Ruth Quayle Boone remembers, “For four years we had a fruit stand out front. We sold pickles, jams, and salted almonds. We made jams with quince, honey, orange and grapefruit marmalade… There were figs. There was a Forest Home label.”, When the farm was busy during harvest, the cooking never stopped. Patricia Durkee, who visited the farm as a child remembers, “this could mean cooking breakfasts and dinner (except they called it supper) for 12 to 14 hungry hard working farm hands. There was a special dining room on the back of the house off the kitchen for the crew that came along with the harvester in late summer. A Chinese cook served lunch to them from a rolling chuck wagon that followed along behind the noisy, dusty harvester.”, Forest Home Farm Historic Park is on the National Register of Historic Places and the California Register of Historical Resources, The City of San Ramon encourages our residents to enjoy this beautiful park in celebration of our historic past. By acquiring, protecting and maintaining this valuable parkland, the City of San Ramon is preserving for current and future generations natural places where people and other living things can thrive.