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Community Corner

Barn Dance and Dinner to Help Small Farmers Worldwide

No better place for a barn dance than a real barn, at the Green String Farm for tonight's benefit dinner and dance for Heifer Sonoma.

Looking for a  casual evening of fun, food and frolic - for a good cause? You probably can't do better than , held tonight at the on Adobe Rd. at Frates Rd.

Food will be chili, cornbread and salad, with cookies for dessert. Beer, wine, apple juice and sodas will also be available to quench your thirst. Since it's a barn dance, there will be music too in the form of Contra dancing - a traditional New England social style called by singer-songwriter Celia Ramsay along with accompanying musicians. Dancing is optional, but hard to resist once the music starts playing.

Ticket sales have been slow, and Linda McDee of Heifer Sonoma reminds Petaluma that tickets will be available at the door for $30 - $20 of which is tax-deductible, as a donation to Heifer International.

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"A lot of events have attendance really down this year," she said. "But as bad off as some of us feel we are, compare that to the rest of the world. We're sitting pretty."

Heifer International, which started in 1944, is a global nonprofit that provides livestock and other agricultural goods and training to help communities become self-sustainable. In the classic example, they'll provide a single heifer - a pregnant female cow - to a family and train them to manage its care, with the condition that the calf when born is passed along to another family, which in turn is then trained, and promises to pass along that calf's first born.

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Other livestock is also part of the Heifer plan, such as pigs and goats, as well as trees, seeds and other agricultural goods. With its almost biblical "pass-it-forward" philosophy, Heifer International has proven its concept of helping people help themselves to obtain sustainable sources of food and income.

There will be a presentation about Heifer International's work to end world hunger and poverty while caring for the earth.

"It's a really fun event," McDee emphasized, and if it's as fun as , it will be good times for a good cause.

Kids 12 and older with parents are welcome. It's wheelchair accessible, and starts at 5 p.m.

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