PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM 101 After I turn off of Highway 84 and follow the curving route to Twisted Fields, a research farm in San Gregorio, I feel like I’ve traveled back in time to California’s rural past. My car surprises little quails that grudgingly scurry out of the narrow road and into the underbrush. The feeling intensifies when I turn into a driveway lined with a riotous profusion of bright orange flowers and find an old farmhouse at its end. The picturesque property sprawls across 127 acres of steep hillsides in an abstract patchwork of fields, some prepared for planting, others hosting a verdant tangle of soil-replenishing cover crops. Flocks of heritage-breed chickens forage for insects while a herd of goats munches weeds. A couple of petite cows and an enormous pig loll around next to a barn. The one glaring incongruity in this 20th-century agricultural daydream is a 21st-century contraption that looks as if a Mars Rover had been built with a giant Erector Set. The Precision Farming Rover, a sturdy, solar-powered autonomous vehicle, is a defining feature of Twisted Fields—a place that marries time-honored sustainable farming practices with tech-driven tools. PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: TWISTED FIELDS
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