Fall Equinox

It's officially fall, so we're getting the last gasp of hot summer weather. Still, it cools off at night, which is really pleasant. This is some of Chico's most perfect weather: hot enough at midday to make you seek shade, swimming, and cold beer, but cool and pleasant enough in the evening to encourage lingering outdoors past sunset. The sun sets noticibly earlier, and it's definitely time to start the rest of the fall crops. We put the chickens on a row where the beans had quit producing and let them do the work.

Meanwhile, I picked a bunch of San Marzanos, and tried oven drying them this time. This worked much better than our sun-drying technique. Turns out, you are supposed to take the tomatoes indoors at night! Lol... we don't HAVE an indoors at the farm. The oven method worked really well anyway. I did three racks worth.

After I dried them, I made sauce out of some of them. First I harvested more tomatoes from the backyard, and roasted them for a couple of hours. I mixed that with sauteed onions and garlic (from the farm), fresh oregano and basil (backyard), plus olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then I chopped the dried tomatoes and added them also, and cooked it down for a while. It was pretty thick! I froze it in one-tablespoon dollops for later pizzas.

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Weird Random Street Performance
I was downtown for lunch with Rick, and I saw these guys on the corner. Edward and Orion were doing their own little social experiment/performance art piece to see how people reacted to guys with cardboard signs. These are their second signs. Edward's first sign said "Don't read this sign." So I had to stop and apologize, because I'd already read it by the time I learned I wasn't supposed to read it. We got to talking, and generally had a wacky interaction there on the corner of 2nd and Broadway.

Salsa Winner!

Ricky C made a big pot of salsa for the Salsa Competition at the Farmers Market. He had learned from experience that the fruit salsa category always had the fewest entries, so he made that.

He poses in front of his entry.

But there weren't a huge number of entries. Here are some of the red salsa entrants.

Rick ended up taking first place in fruit salsa, and third in overall presentation.

He clowns around. Imagine that!

I went to the market too, and bought a ton of peppers. They all looked so beautiful!

They are prize winners already!

Rick brought over the roaster, and we roasted them up in 3 batches.

Here are the Anaheims and Big Jims after roasting.

Rick turns the crank.

It was pretty hot, so I sat in the tub with Harvey. We managed to have an outdoor event on both super hot days this summer. Yeah... "both" hot days. It was another cool summer. Nonetheless, this is the only way to cook.

Rick got the circle laid out on the pavement.

It gets dark earlier now, so we get some nice moonscapes at the farm.

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What We're Eating
Besides roasted peppers? Well I roasted up a bunch of our tomatoes too, and made a delicious lasagne.

I've been too busy to cook much, so Rick has to make do with sandwiches.

I did manage to scrape up an omelette one day. Homegrown onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, basil, oregano, and eggs, with Pedrozo cheese and Meat Locker sausage. Mmmm...

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The naked ladies hit and passed their prime. Here they are in full bloom.

Laura models one.