Meet the author

Aug. 2 Discussion with Peter Coyote, 7:30 p.m., The Battery social club, 717 Battery St., S.F. (members only) Aug. 20 Book signing, 6 p.m., Root Stock gift shop, 22 Main St., Winters

coyotes, which was a joke. We never shot a coyote with a BB gun! We never wore bike helmets or used car seats in the cars, and we drank out of the hose and never worried about the water, and picked the tomatoes and the fruit right off the trees and the vines and ate them. It was just a totally different world. It was really simple. And the world moves so fast now, and it’s just — I don’t know. I’m so glad I grew up like that, and have that memory. Q: How did farm life shape you as a person? A: It certainly taught me about Lorraine Rominger’s memoir, “The Rangity Tango Kids,” recalls her childhood on a farm in Winters (Yolo County).

hard work and discipline and responsibility and pulling your fair share. I drove a tractor; I drove a cultivator. I got partially scalped when my hair caught in the motor of a hay swather, which is like a big lawnmower that cuts alfalfa. And my family was really steeped in tradition. We went to church every Sunday. We had a certain kind of

celebration on everybody’s birthday. Every year we butchered pigs. And every year we had the Rominger mud bowl — we played football the day after Christmas. We canned jams and jellies certain times of the year. We made butter, we made cheese. We made sausage. It was just, on the farm, certain things you did every year, at a