Chocolate is at least 3000 years old, and we have the ancient Mayans to thank for it. By way of the conquistadors, that is.

There is tantalizing historical evidence showing that the Mayans were quite creative in their use of chocolate, and the flavor combinations they developed, but archeo-ethno-botany researcher Kirsten Tripplett (left) , says few details of their actual recipes have survived.

Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes was probably the first European to taste chocolate, and it was he who first exported some back to his homeland.

Dark or milk chocolate? Many people have a distinct personal preference, but Tripplett says it’s clear which type is better for us.

Communal living was a idealistic experiment for some back when the counter-culture was in full flower, and The Farm, a pioneering outpost in rural Tennessee, mostly managed to live up to those ideals.

The earliest origins of The Farm can be traced back to San Francisco at the end of the 1960s, recalls Robert Tepper, in a group that coalesced around a San Francisco State professor named Stephen Gaskin.

That memorable caravan, as seen in this photograph (© Book Publishing Company), was also the basis for the  poster promoting the gathering of former Farm residents in Santa Rosa on Saturday.  It’s natural that such an event would happen here, Tepper adds, since the North Bay was once home to so many of the founding Farmers.

Today, The Farm (seen below from the air) hosts a much smaller population, says Linda Rake, but it remains a hub of sustainable activity.

From the founding group of around 300, the population of The Farm quickly grew, in part, Linda Speel recalls, due to their open door policy toward visitors, particularly expectant couples.

It took a few years for the community to attain economic equilibrium, but Linda Rake notes that they soon began to marshal what resources they had to reach out and assist when natural disasters struck elsewhere in the hemisphere, through an organization they named Plenty.

Horror movies and popular musicals notwithstanding, carnivorous plants do not eat people, nor do they grow to tower over us. Without that far-fetched scare factor, they are strangely beautiful…and decidedly weird.

Peter D’Amato was just a boy when he first sent for a mail-order Venus Flytrap. It didn’t last long, but his interest in these strange plants did, especially after he was introduced to some that were growing in the wild not far from his home.

D’Amato’s California Carnivores nurserypropagates and breeds many of the plants they display and sell, such as sundews and pitcher plants. They need to be kept wet, he explains, but they don’t need to be fed.

Aside from the loss of habitat that threatens them, carnivorous plants are naturally long-lived.

Many of D'Amato's specimens are currently on display in San Francisco, at the exhibit called Chomp 2 at the Conservatory of Flowers.

Branding cattle may evoke images of the old west a century ago, but it’s a still-active part of agriculture in the North Bay, with a lengthy history here, too.

Just as they were a century again, brands are used today to identify the legal owners of not just cattle, but horses, mules, burros, sheep and swine.

Ernie Ongaro (right) grew up on his family’s ranch along San Anselmo Creek, and began helping with the livestock branding at the age of 10. These days, he lives and raises beef cattle southwest of Sebastopol. Over the years he’s seen many familiar local brands go inactive (but his book includes both active and inactive brands from Marin and Sonoma counties). He’s also seen the shady practice of “overbranding” employed all the way into the present day.

You can see an array of sample brands below.