ST. PETER’S CHRISTMAS

Christmas concert returns to St. Peter’s Chapel on Sunday, Dec. 19, 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 per person and may be purchased by calling Mare Island Museum with a credit card at (707) 557-4646. Please leave message and call will be returned.

Tickets may be purchased in person at Visit Vallejo at the Ferry Building on Mare Island Way and at Vallejo Museum, 734 Marin St. St. Peter’s has had a Christmas concert annually for 25 years, taking a break in 2020 due to COVID. The chapel is not handicap accessible.

SOLANO LAND TRUST

Working in partnership with the Solano Land Trust, Edward Kenneth Schroeder Jr. and Cheryl L. Schroeder, have preserved their organic almond and walnut farm in the Dixon Ridge area of Solano County through a conservation easement.

“We congratulate the Schroeder Family and the Solano Land Trust for closing the Schroeder Farm North easement and protecting the land forever,” said Lynn von Koch-Liebert, Executive Director of the California Strategic Growth Council (SGC). “We are thrilled that SGC’s Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program can support this investment that will benefit the community while providing numerous environmental benefits.”

When the Schroeders — who go by Ken and Cherie — finalized the easement, they were two weeks into the first remodel of their home in thirty years. Amid the indoor disruption, they enjoyed the peace of mind a completed conservation easement affords.

“Ken didn’t want to be the one in the family to lose the property,” Cherie says. “He didn’t want to be the last generation. That property will be available for agriculture and farming in perpetuity. I can tell him: `You’ll be the one that saved it. You’re the one that’s kept it in the family.’ So it’s not going to be on our time — or his time.”

Located south of Putah Creek and north of I-80, the property consists of approximately 79 acres. The land is part of what remains from a six-hundred acre spread that had been in the family since Ken’s great-grandfather, Joachim Schroeder, migrated to California from Germany in 1865.

“The Schroeders are some of the original farmers and settlers of this community,” Cherie says. “So it makes sense to keep our land in agriculture.”

The Schroeders had already protected a similarly sized portion of their farm by conservation agreement with Solano Land Trust in 2019. The new agreement, finalized Friday September 20th, 2021, dedicates more land to permanent agricultural use