Summer Bounty

We continue to harvest daily. We got the first peach last Friday.

We also drank this Red Robin Ale. I'm sure we had things to say about it, but I didn't blog soon enough and now I've forgotten. We had it pretty late in the day...

I had finished curing the onions, and cut off their tops, so I needed a storage solution. Rick had a great idea of using milk crates with slats to keep the onions separated.

You can stack quite a few in there, and still have plenty of airspace, not to mention handy carrying handles.

So we packed them all up and put them in the basement where it stays cool.

Life is just a bowl of cherries... I took these to Tom and Nancy's party Saturday night.

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What We're Eating
Besides tomatoes??? Well, I have perfected the BLTA: Cosmonaut Volkov tomato, peppered bacon from the Meat Locker, organic hearts of romaine, organic avocado, and plenty of mayo. The zucchini relish I made last week has been well-received, with people asking me to give them some! Mwahahaha.... But for the party, we ate quesalera. I made them with sharp provolone or havarti or bleu, and smoked brautwurst from the Meat Locker, my homegrown sundried tomatoes, and fresh basil from the garden, and zucchini relish (in all different configurations). People just lapped them up! I used both my dish and Nancy's, and just made them over and over till folks finally slowed down on eating them. Laura shows proper accessorizing for a quesalera party.

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Of course there was lots of great music. Marya sang with her great uncle.

And with the rest of the band. Tom Blodgett also showed up and played.

Sunday, it was back to work. I had these huge cabbage plants to set in. These are the ones I planted on 6-20, so they were 4 weeks old.

I got them arranged in rows of three across. The first 9 are Tenderheart, and the front 3 are Soloist.

Rick helped me by laying down a nice layer of compost, then we got the irrigation going. We also put shadecloth on the west side of the row to shade it from the hot afternoon sun.

That night the moon was almost full, and peeking through the hawk tree.

Monday I got some more seeds started. I did a flat of broccoli, with three rows each of organic Fiesta, organic Thompson, and Hallmark hybrid, with the last row in Veronica romanesco.

Monday I transplanted the biggest broccolis as well. These were also planted on 6-20, and I could have let them go another week or two because these were all in cups. That filled up 6A. From back to front there are 9 Packman, 8 Belstar, and 5 Decicco. I think I planted them even farther apart than necessary, but it should give them lots of room to get big.

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Weather Note
Monday was overcast, and Tuesday was downright cloudy, with chance of thunderstorms. It still got pretty hot but I took advantage of the overcast to transplant. The clouds gave us a pretty sunset on Tuesday afternoon.

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch... yikes! My kitchen is full again! So yesterday got to work. First I roasted up those serranos, added lemon cubes from last year's lemon harvest, homegrown onions, and a dash of cumin and salt. Delish! I froze that up in ice cube trays. Then I made the tomatoes into sauce. I had another set that I'd gotten as far as roasting, so I added those in also. As before, I boiled down the juice for a long time until it was really concentrated before adding the tomatoes back in. The resultant sauce was perfect for pasta sauce, but a little thin still for pizza sauce, so I tried a new technique. I put some in my big glass lasagna pan, and put it in the oven on convection setting at 200 degrees. Then we went to the farm. When we came back, it was perfect! Super thick and super tomatoey. So I froze up the thinner sauce in tubs, and the thick stuff in muffin tins. Now I just have to clean out my freezer to make room for it all!

I also bagged up the next round of sundrieds. Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full! (That's the total so far, not one run.)

Yesterday afternoon I went to visit Pearl again, and noticed these wonderful gourd baskets. The top part is done with pine needles.

Here's another.

And sadly, this isn't the best shot, but the baskets were magnificent.

Last night was Buddy's birthday, but we'd decided that Tom and Nancy's party counted as his BD party too, so the day was low key. Cindy came over and brought him cupcakes, which was sweet. We also drank this beer, which was very surprising. You would think from the label that this would be a big hoppy IPA. But it wasn't at all. It tasted of chocolate and mint. It was delicious and unusual, but I'd never have called it an IPA. I'm sure it had a fair amount of hops, but the malt predominated.

And... I just love these ornamental gourds. Such fun!