Serious Pruning

We got a lot of work done at the farm over the last few days, and as always, we had lots of fun while we were at it. Buddy got serious about clearing the thicket behind the beer garden. He got out all the dead lilac, yanked out privets, and generally beat this area into submission. It looks much nicer now. Rick C and I helped by moving some of the bulbs around.

Then on Thursday, we started in on the fruit trees. Rick starts with hand tools.

Rick is getting the lower bits from the regular ladder. When Bill got back in town, he kindly brought over his pole ladder and electric chainsaw on a pole.

Even though it's just post solstice, we still have lots of food available in the garden. The broccoli is fully ripe.

And the greens, which interestingly are mostly purple, are providing tangy leaves daily.

There was a lovely pink sunset with a quarter moon.

And we lit a fire to warm ourselves and burn up the dead twigs.

Then yesterday, we got after the trees again. With the power tool and bigger ladder, we were able to remove the tallest sprires from the plums. Here Rick is on the pole ladder.

Catherine and Rick came over as we were getting the last bit away from the neighbors' yard.

We cleaned up our mess and set out a lovely picnic. We had multiple cheeses, crackers, homemade rolls and pumpkin bars, tinned oysters, ham, apples, and of course, some mustard from the garden to spice it up.

Bill and Laura came by too. Here we are, all bundled up, enjoying the sunny, if cold, weather. And it wasn't really ALL that cold. It got up to at least 59 degrees, with blue skies and bright sunshine.

After the farm we went to see Titus and Jane, and we helped them finish the last bits of a puzzle with Keith and Noel.

Rene's Farm

Yesterday Rick C and I went and looked at Rene's farm space. He has HUGE tracts of land! We offered to help prepare and farm the area with him. There is a ton of space there, with plenty of sun and irrigation water available. We could put in a nice corn and/or potato patch on half of it and still leave half for Rene and Cindy's general vegetable garden. I'm a dunce and didn't take a single picture, but it's a lovely space and we're very excited about getting to help farm it.

BTW, it was funny as hell seeing Rick C fold himself into my tiny car. He had the seat all the way back and he still had his knees bumping his chin. Good thing I had the top down or he wouldn't have fit at all.

I'm also looking at my back yard and thinking we could take out ALL that back lawn and make it garden space. It also has full sun and plenty of irrigation available. I'll need help getting the area spaded up (hint hint) because it's full of bermuda grass.

The hard freeze really nuked my citrus. The lime tree is totally dead. This is no great loss because it hasn't fruited since my neighbors threw a tree on our house and crushed most of it.

But the really sad part is that we lost the lemon crop. We may get a few, and we could probably juice them, but I think most of the crop is a loss. Here you can see the brown spots that indicate the freeze ruined the fruit and it's starting to rot. It's a real shame but fortunately we weren't dependent on the crop for anything except enjoyment.

Winter Solstice

The Winter Solstice passed yesterday, so the days will start getting longer. Yay! Since it's the Solstice, I reveiwed some Solstice traditions from many cultures. Check it out on Wikipedia.

It was pretty gloomy yesterday, but I went to the farm yesterday. Just as I arrived, Bill called. He got off work early and came over for a bit. He had some trouble opening his beer cork though....

We didn't do much besides drink beer. I did pick a few greens.

And a lovely big cabbage. I made half of this big boy into egg rolls, and the other half will be a colcannon torte.

This is just the heart of the cabbage after most of the outer leaves have been picked off. And it's still as tall as my tall mug, and very solid inside.

This isn't really farm news, but I made this scarf for Laura. It was a hit and I'm making more. Actually, this IS farm news because I've been knitting over at the farm when it's too cold and gloomy to farm.

Also, Sierra Nevada came out with growlers! Now we can have breakfast at the pub, and fill our growler for taking over to the farm.

I think it's time to do something with our mannequin.

Some Rain

Well we got some rain this week and everything got a good soaking. That warmed up the temperatures a little. A bunch of semi-ripe grapefruits fell off my little tree, but the lemons seem ok.

I've been thinking about chickens. Here is a link to a site showing different breeds. Now, we need to confine ourselves to breeds Wilburs is likely to stock, because we can't order them unless we need tons. Everyone should check this link and see what they think we should pick. I think we should focus on the best layers, since we won't be eating our hens.

Brush Clearing

Yesterday, Buddy and I only intended to drink beer on the last sunny day before the rains. But then he started talking about what branches we'd cut to open up the thicket behind the table, and pretty soon I grabbed some cutters and we started in on it. There was a whole dead tree in there! We pruned back the climbing rose.

And pulled out a lot of weeds. I lit a fire so we could burn the dead stuff up as it came out.

Here you can see how much it opened up. We had to restring the lights to the new perimeter.

Weather Note

It's 1 pm, full sun, and it's still 33 degrees! All my hoses are broken, /cry. I'm SO not going outside. I'm pretty sure the best use of my time will be to research seed catalogs....

Broccoli

We harvested the first broccoli. I tried to share it but Rick and Buddy made me take it. Honestly, they didn't have to twist my arm very hard. It's a lovely huge broccoli head, and the recent hard frosts have brought out the sweetness. Here it is in all its glory just before I sliced off its head!

And here it is on the cutting board, prior to being cooked. Notice the lovely variation of purple and green on the florettes. This baby was too special for any one cooking technique, so Rick and I had it three ways: First we ate it raw, with Marie's blue cheese dressing. Then we ate some lightly steamed, just for a minute or two, then tossed with plenty of butter. Finally we had some tossed with olive oil and roasted at 350 for about 20 minutes, just until it was crispy and browned. Sheydra turned me on to this method, and it was delicious. In fact, the broccoli was delicious all three ways, and distinctly different tasting in the different preparations. However, the steamed version was sublime. The short cooking brought out a nutty sweetness that was unsurpassed. My only regret is that we didn't plant more broccoli, but this whole year is a test.

I did make it over to the farm yesterday, and it wasn't too bad while the sun was up. Buddy came out for a bit, and I jokingly called Rick C, knowing he's never come out in this cold weather. I told him Buddy said he was too much of a pussy to come out in the cold, and that I was gonna harvest that broccoli and keep it all if he didn't come over. I don't know if it was the taunt, the threat, or just the wonderfulness of farming, but he DID come over for a bit. He pointed out that the cauliflowers were starting to form heads.

We continued the discussion of what did and didn't work the best in the summer garden. Rick C. really liked the Biker Billy jalapenos, which were huge, with nice thick walls. He wants to focus on growing those and pickling them. I felt I had good success with the homemade tabasco sauce, so I'm gonna hold out for adding a few serranos to the mix to round out the jalapeno flavor. We agree that a few tomatoes is fine, and when we want to make big piles of sauce, we can get a few flats of toms from the farmer's market. Corn is a good crop because the freshness matters so much. I want to do the three sisters technique, growing beans and squash with the corn. Rick C didn't think the melons were much success, and I have to reluctantly agree. They take up a ton of space for what they produce. We'd do much better planting potatoes.

As far as spring gardening goes, it's peas all peas! We'll plant every spare inch in peas. I'll buy the innoculant to get the beneficial bacteria well established, and the peas will fix nitrogen in the soil. Besides, peas! Rick C is all for snow peas, but I'm gonna insist on a row or two of real shelling peas.

One idea we came up was planting the peas in pairs of fairly close rows, using the small fencing we have. Then when the peas are down, we plant potatoes in between the paired rows of fencing, allowing us to pile straw over them.

The two most important projects for over the winter are pruning the trees and building the chicken coop. Chickens give a ridiculously high return on investment, both of money and time, and are an important component in an organic garden because you can raise them primarily on waste products, they are fantastic at bug control, and they provide high-nitrogen manure.

Freeze!

It's really cold! It's been getting down into the 20s at night. We've had hard, hard frosts the last two nights, with snow in Sacto and SF. It would snow here except there's been no precipitation. Speaking of which, where is our predicted rain? It's cold and clear. Right now all my hoses are frozen, and the citrus trees look a little bedraggled. The croquet gnome shows that the fountain is frozen solid--at 2 pm. It's the hottest part of the day, and the temperature has risen to a balmy 42 degrees.... brrrrrrrr!

I haven't been to the farm in several days, so we'll have to see how the crops are faring. Since it's too cold to go outside much, I'm doing a lot of baking. Here are the raw materials for more pumpkin bars. The pecans are from Bill's yard, and I've shelled them all out. They're roasting at this very moment. I cooked up the pumpkins yesterday, and I'll be putting this batch into the oven very soon.

Garlic

Rick C had planted some garlic in his yard, and it didn't really get enough sun, so he sort of forgot about it. Checking that area recently, he noticed that some heads had survived and begun to sprout. So he dug them up and brought them to the farm. We decided to till up this spot, in row 6, where the peppers had been pulled out. The green you see is borage seedlings. I moved some of them, and we just tilled in the rest.

Here Rick runs the tiller over the space.

Now it's all tilled up and ready to plant.

We put in the first bunch, and Rick said he had more, so he went back and dug up the rest.

Rick feels triumphant.

Rick and Rick even made me get in the picture. This whole fat row is stuffed with garlic starts. We're gonna have lots of nice garlic.

This broccoli is almost ready. Isn't it gorgeous? I wish we'd planted more.

The mustard patch is thriving too, and I picked some for our dinner tonight.

The beer garden looks lovely in the afternoon light, with the last leaves still on the trees.

Yeah, it's winter

Although it's been an amazingly gorgeous fall, with excellent leaf color and crisp sunny days, we're now edging into wintery weather. We had rain off and on all last week, and didn't spend much time at the farm except on Tuesday night, when we gathered around the fire pit. On Thurs. I took some plastic over to the farm so Rick C could tack it up to protect our stucco, but since I had the guy installing a new water heater, I couldn't stick around. I did snag another napa cabbage that looked ripe, and found that a mole had eaten that one's root also! We'll just have to watch, and harvest them when they start to open up a little. I made a slaw out of the cabbage.

I did take a couple pics last Tuesday before it got dark, which is by 5 pm nowadays. The broccoli is coming along nicely, although we could have planted MUCH more. The heads are about as big as my palm now.

This is the bok choi tat soi, which I thought would be the baby bok choi, but looks more like it will be the kind where you just harvest the leaves. Nonetheless, it will be tasty, and there's lots of it sprouting.

And the naked ladies are shooting up everywhere.

Mud

Despite dire forcasts of rain, and other than a few late night sprinkles, last week was absolutely gorgeous fall weather. The trees are in full color all over town. Just the drive from our house to the farm is stunning. Still it's been cold, and we've had frosts.

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Weather Note

By mid November, we're having serious frosts. Forget planting anything, and plan to pull up any summer crops that are still straggling along. However, August was none too soon to have put in the winter crops, which are just where they should be: ripening up as the weather turns cold.

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But, when the sun was out at midday, it was lovely. So we got going on the mudding. Rick and Rick met on Saturday morning to go buy mud. Here they are mixing the stucco in the wheelbarrow.

Rick checks out the first section.

They keep going.

Clear up to the top. You can't really tell in this photo, but they took turns having one person on the ladder, and one person handing up new trowels-full of mud.

I declined to help move mud, although the guys very thoughtfully offered me the opportunity. Instead, I ripped out the peppers. We had mostly harvested them by now anyway, and the frost caused significant damage, making it clear that it was time to take them out. This is where some of them used to be. I still have more to rip out.

The last dregs still make quite a haul. I don't think we'll plant quite so many next year, although we have some definite favorites, and not-so-favorites. For the record, next year, we'll do plenty of those fine fat jalapenos (Biker Bobs), and not a one of those lemon peppers, which sounded great and looked pretty, but fell down on taste. We all have soooooooo many peppers stored away, either dried, canned, or frozen in puree. It's true that we use a lot, but we have... abundance. I took some across the street and dusted off my Spanish enough to ask "Quieren jalapenos?"

By this time, the guys had finished the first layer of stucco. There are three separate coats. This first base coat is to squish between the lathes, and generally provide a base surface for the next coat. Then there will be a middle coat and a finish coat.

After they got the first coat on, we ran off to play croquet, where Rick C won again! A three-peat, yikes! Catherine showed up just as we were leaving, and she hung out and arranged for Ed to get the wood that's too big for our firepit. Then there was Titus's party over at Lori's where we also got to see the amazing fish murals. Oon Sunday, not particularly early, we came back for more punishment. Here the guys put on the second coat.

We decided that was enough for now. It's dark before 5 pm now, so weeknights aren't much use for farming. We can hang out around the fire, but... all in all, we'll probably be focusing most of our energies on the weekends. I did manage to roast the remaining jalapenos and serranos, and string the last of the Thai red peppers. Buddy's been checking on the watering, and watered everything down thoroughly on Sunday, because it's stayed surprisingly dry. But once again, the forecast calls for rain later this week.

Camera Test

With the weather being cooler, and dark coming so soon, we hadn't been to the farm in a couple of days. Fortunately Buddy looks after things, making sure stuff is watered. But yesterday was a glorious fall day, so we went out for a bit. I wanted to test the camera in my phone. I don't think the pictures are as good as the ones I get with the real camera, but lets see how they look in the blog.

Buddy and I surveyed the garden, and he found a ripe tomato! In mid-November...

The oranges are showing the first blush of color

The broccoli is still forming heads, but it needs more time.

We noticed that one of the napa cabbages was looking different from the others. We thought it had just ripened fully, but when we inspected it....

We found that our mole had eaten the entire root! The cabbage was loose in the ground and starting to wilt a little. Here is the evidence.

We figure the cabbage is still good, so the we and the mole each got our share. And you can't really tell here, but the onions have perked up, and this last section is just starting to show some sprouts.

And... I actually played FarmVille at the Farm... is that funny or what?