Cattle Call
Cow town? Not true, but the label still works
By Gabrielle Myers
November 2025
When I moved to Sacramento, people called it a cow town.
Coming from back east, I had no idea what this meant. I imagined feedlots filled with cattle, their feet kicking up dust. But the city, lush with fruit trees and palms, ringed by farms, divided by two major rivers, has no cows.
After almost 12 years in Midtown, I still don’t know what cow town means, other than a reference to put down the city and tie it to its agricultural roots.
I’ve seen cows on my way into town and enjoyed tender and marbled grilled rib-eyes, T-bones and tri-tips from cattle raised not more than 45 miles away.
I’ve sipped Zinfandels with hints of dried cherries and charred strawberries, cabernets with dark raspberry and coffee undertones, harvested, aged and bottled 20 miles from my house.
A visit to Midtown Farmers Market finds orange-reddish gypsy peppers, yellow flame and lipstick corno di toros and forest green serrano peppers, firm with emerald stems still warm from the field.
In my concrete backyard, I raised five chickens with an ex-boyfriend. We harvested egg after egg while light rail trains beeped and slowed to a stop on our street. I cooked the eggs with mustard greens, arugula and aji de amarillo peppers from our backyard aquaponics system.
Thirty-four farms grow more than 81 varieties of veggies, greens, fruits, nuts and herbs, all within 48 miles of our neighborhood food co-op.
In pastures 45 miles from Downtown, chickens raised on regenerative fields become delicious roasted dinners with nothing added but olive oil, salt and pepper.
I’ve walked down rows of olive trees flush with fruit, ready for pressing into golden oil. These trees need our heat and thrive thanks to the absence of summer rain. Winter rains deliver another food miracle—citrus from yuzu, orange, lemon, tangerine and grapefruit.
No place is perfect. I’ve seen homeless people crowded together on torn couches and tilted chairs under Highway 50. I’ve sidestepped their desperate possessions and shopping carts and the small fires unhoused people start on sidewalks.
For two weeks, with the air thick with smoke from huge regional fires, I couldn’t run or walk outside. Four portable air filters hummed in my house.
I’ve had to finish errands and exercise by 11 a.m. because the sun bakes the city to 113 degrees by 2 p.m. Six hours later, I’ve felt the Delta breeze lift the city’s heat dome, blow it to the foothills and push in clear air.
Some nights, I fall asleep to cars passing my window, people murmuring on their way back from dinner down the street and dance beats from a nightclub two blocks away.
Here’s what defines our cow town without cows:
A Midtown sycamore with twisted limbs and moonlight passing through its leaves on a Friday night.
The smell of caramelizing onions as I walk past an apartment.
Jasmine on the neighbor’s fence. The tangy scent of garden tomatoes. A plum tree leaning toward the sidewalk, its fruit waiting to be plucked.
Gabrielle Myers can be reached at gabriellemyers11@gmail.com. Her book of poetry, “Break Self: Feed,” is available for $20.99 from fishinglinepress.com. Her new book, “Points in the Network,” was published in October. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
