Thursday, June 23, 2011

Fruit and Salsa

 By the solstice, we have ripe plums. Rick eats one of the first.
The tree is just laden.
The apricot is starting to ripen now, too. Unfortunately, these four are about the whole crop.
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What We're Eating
Salsa! Rick C. picked his first tomatoes and made salsa. He used last year's pickled peppers in it, along with homegrown onion and garlic. And on the left are kale chips, a great recipe Catherine came up with. They are salty and crispy, and very delicious.
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My new computer came! It's totally awesome.
Here it is set up. I can click a button and fling my screen wirelessly to the TV... in case the 18inch monitor isn't big enough...

The Ides of June

 By the 15th of June, the plums started to show a bit of color.
Temps are back up where you'd expect.
And as a result, Rick C harvested all his spring crops. He got a full season of cool-weather crops in this year.
Bill Beebe takes some.

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What We're Eating
Garlic scapes! These are the flower stalks that we don't want to let develop. We picked them off and chopped them up. They're like little cruchy bits of garlic flavor.
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Rick gets more work done on the east wall of the bar.

And Buddy gets more orchard area dug up.

Monday, June 13, 2011

P Q R

 It's not very exciting, but we got the compost moved around and sorted out. And to have some fun with it, we made signs to indicate which pile was in which state. P marks the pile we're building.
Q is for the pile we're adding into the working pile. It's the stuff that's waiting, or in queue.
And R is the pile that's ready to spread in the garden.
Melinda came to visit.
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Weather Notes
We're still getting a bit of cloudiness, and a very welcome breeze, but the temps are back up to what we'd expect this time of year.

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Lori and Jane check out the work on the bar's west side.
And Rick puts on the finishing touches.
I think he's happy to be done... with this side anyway.
Laura came by too, and brought this amazing wreath! It's so beautiful.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Real June

Well that's more like it! Finally we get the sort of weather we expect in early June. In fact, we better scramble around because it'll be too hot to do anything very soon.
Cindy brought Cooper over for a romp, and Jane came over too, to talk about painting the kitchen, and possible work on the 9th St. house. We sent Jane home with eggs, chard, and peas.
Catherine takes a moment to stop and smell the flowers. The star jasmine from over the fence is just heavenly.
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What We're Eating
Yeah this is weird, but strangely delicious. Rick and Catherine brought over some of their homegrown kohlrabi, and Cindy brought a pack of nori, so we ate nori-wrapped kohlrabi slices. Notice the almost ripe plum in the corner of the picture.
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This weird mushroom popped up by the edge of the rug.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Feb-June-ary

We're still waiting for summer. The rain continues, breaking records for rainfall this late in the year. Rick calls this month "Feb-June-ary" because it's more like Feb. than June. Last Wed. June 1st, it was less than 60 degrees at midday.
We've also had lots and lots of rain still. This is the new sunny. Seriously, with it "only" this cloudy, we were all excited.
Yes, it's June 1 and we're in hats and coats, huddling in the bar for shelter. Sigh. The guys look out the "rainbow door" to see if there's a rainbow.
There is!
Thursday was much nicer, although the temps all week hovered in the 50s for both highs and lows. Rick can actually huddle outside the bar in his hat and coat.
Ann and Ed stop by.
Rick C folds himself up and does a bunch of weeding. He can get closer to the ground than anyone else in this crowd!
Catherine heads out with a handful of fresh chives to put on the new potatoes that Rick C. dug up from their yard. The potatoes were showing signs of blight, so they pulled them all. It's gonna be a rough year because of all rain. That just kicks up dirt onto the leaves, and provides the best possible conditions for all sorts of blights and fungus.
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What We're Eating
Favas! Lots and lots of fava beans from Dean. I made more pita bread and we add arugula, mustard greens and chard, fresh onion, preserved lemon, and feta cheese. Omg it's good. Look at that enormous bowlful!
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Friday I worked late, and Saturday was nasty and rainy. Yesterday started out rainy, but when Rick and I finished brunch at the pub, it was sunny. We figured we better take advantage because surely this sunny moment couldn't last. We went direct from the pub, with only the growler to sustain us. But it stayed nice all day! It even got up to 74 degrees. Having worn a long-sleeve top, I was immediately too hot. I frolicked around topless when it was just me and Rick there, and later I wore a lovely towel toga.

We attacked the compost, digging out the last of our newmade stuff, and then turning the new pile into the old space. We got enough moved that Rick could fix up another panel of metal bars to protect the grapes from the composting, and to make space for the three piles we need. I didn't get any shots of this because I didn't have all my gear with me. Ok so now we had a wheelbarrow full of compost, and we needed someplace to put it. So we weeded both bean rows and the pepper row, and side dressed those rows liberally with compost.
Then I decided to finish out the tomatillo patch and get those planted. It's all weeded and mulched around. We just need to add an irrigation node.
Now it's Monday, and it's raining again. But the forecast calls for the rest of the week to be sunny, so we'll just have to wait it out. I've got apples on my apple tree.
And the beans seem to like the rain, especially the black-eyed peas and lima beans. This probably seems just like the South to them.
In other news apparently my Spidey powers are growing. There was... an incident.
One day at the farm, I failed miserably at mindfulness training. I was chatting with Buddy, and not really paying attention as I grabbed and rinsed my beer glass before filling it up with delicious Southern Hemisphere Harvest. I drank almost the whole glass, but when the level had dropped enough, I could see that there was a huge disgusting hairy spider webbed securely into the bottom of the cup. Ugh! So of course, we all immediately assumed I was now Spider-Woman. Or in my case, Spider-Crone!

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Memorial Day—in Coats

Saturday was croquet, but it rained so hard at one point that we had to take a porch break. And you know how fanatic we are about croquet in all weathers. On Sunday, we try to get a little more work done on the pad. Rick cuts and spreads the metal while Buddy supervises.
Very nice! It's about ready to pour cement into, if the weather ever allows.
Dean brought us even more fava beans, which I made into hummus.
 By Monday, we're back to doing what we do best.
 But is the weather back to normal? Not even. Notice the coats in the above photo. It barely gets up to 60 degrees by midday.
At least it wasn't windy, which was a nice change! It's been windy most days for the last 3-4 weeks, which gets really tiresome. But we felt safe burning a fire and took advantage of the opportunity to burn up some old rotten trellis wood... and stay warm!
We also proceeded with the weeding around the shed. We got the porch area all weeded up, then we spread newspaper and put down fresh chips.
I put in the zucchini starts (in a hill at 7a)

And tucked the sweet peppers in between the onion rows in row 4a.