Kali Shiloh, Author at The Six Fifty

Data driven: How a Menlo Park teen champion is turning NASCAR into a science

In the midst of a racing renaissance, Jesse Love has learned to blend man, machine and his Silicon Valley roots.

The cheapest real estate on the Peninsula is at your neighborhood’s community garden

A cluster of tomatoes in Gene and Joyce Cavanaugh’s garden in the Willowgates Community Garden, in Mountain View. (Photo by Magali Gauthier) Locals brave secret alleyways, stolen locks and seven-year waitlists for these high-demand garden plots. In a quietly gentrifying neighborhood a mile from Facebook’s headquarters, where property values are soaring under the watchful eye of developers, there’s an untouchable quarter-acre lot being rented for $1 per year. Not visible from the street, ...

Ticking mite bomb: Inside the civil war between the Peninsula’s beekeepers

Burlingame beekeeper Bob Silverstein checks a frame from one of his hives. (Photo by Philip Wartena) Varroa mites are a tiny apocalypse annihilating bee hives and dividing an otherwise cooperative community. Story by Kali Shiloh // Photos by Philip Wartena Sometimes Bob Silverstein rolls his bees in sugar. It’s the gentler approach to removing the parasites that often infest his hives. When he aims for accuracy though, he can’t be gentle: he grabs a metal measuring cup ...

Meet the future farmers of…Silicon Valley? These 4-H kids are raising livestock in their backyards

Juggling homework and husbandry in the nation’s tech capital Kaitlyn Lynch of the 4H club and her pig Hank Williams Jr., prepare for the Hog Showmanship event at the San Mateo Fair on May 11th, 2018. (Photo by Adam Pardee) At a glance, it can look like militarized motherhood: a hangar of young recruits in starched, white uniforms, emerald neckerchiefs, and matching felt berets patrolling the aisles with thin, whip-like sticks at the ready. ...

Sharing the kids: How Harley Farms became California’s most popular goat farm

Dee Harley turned a “derelict mess” into a thriving Peninsula tourist destination. Now if she can just keep the masses out of her kitchen. “I think as human beings, we’re always gonna like baby animals, we’re always gonna like animals, and we’re always gonna want to relate — that animal made this, and now I’m eating it. And that’s what people can get here.” (Photo by Philip Wartena) In the 108-year-old hayloft at Harley Farms Goat ...

In the age of the rescue dog, the Bay Area’s most prestigious purebred show still matters

Local champions on the care and criticism of a canine crucible: the Golden Gate Kennel Club Dog Show “You don’t have to show dogs to love them, but I think you have to love dogs to show them,” says breeder-owner-handler Pat Trotter, a Golden Gate Kennel Club maven who’s also been to Westminster 11 times. (Photo courtesy of the Golden Gate Kennel Club) The semen is always cold. It has to be. At home ...