Where's Winter?

I remember a year we had no summer, and it seems like this will be the year with no winter. We've had no rain to speak of since late November. It's sunny and really warm: 63 degrees as I type this. A high pressure ridge is predicted to stop any rain for the next few months. We will have to be very water wise this year. Last Thursday, 1-16, it was almost 80 degrees by mid afternoon. It was 74 on Monday 1-20.

The spring flowers are just starting to come out. The paperwhites are just past their prime, with the first narcissus popping up. The big daffs are just budding out. The fruit trees are showing some swelling buds too. We're hoping to put a few bareroot trees in at our house this year, but I need to get out and do some digging first! I've been a bit ill so not much has progressed at the house.

Before I got this cold, I processed more orange peel. I cut the peel in nice strips.

Boiled it three times, then boiled it in the sugar syrup for an hour, and spread it out to dry.

For the perfect finishing touch, I dipped the dried peel in semi-sweet chocolate. They are delicious! This is such a perfect use for the oranges. I also tried candying lemon peel, which is good, and grapefruit peel, which came out surprisingly bitter.

I got one perfect head of broccoli from the backyard. The rest got eaten up by aphids, but this plant was strong and vigorous. The broccoli was insanely good.

With some lettuce mix from the Farmer's Market, we had some fantastic salads.

Back at the farm, Rick unearthed the rest of the trailer bits. Rick C. got it registered, so he should be all set to go.

Rick works on the piece that will be the door to the chicken run.

Loren's dad died recently, so we drove down to Willows to the funeral.

And today, the city put up new street signs. Yes, I'm easily amused.

New Year

It's a new year, and as always, I'm a bit behind on blogging. There's been a lot going on. We had a Solstice day croquet game.

It was a close game.

The farm is pretty at night on the first day of winter. Since this picture was taken, we added more lights.

Titus and Jane finished their tiled sink. Jane shows it off.

They did a really nice job.

We put some more pavers around the firepit, and moved the rugs closer.

We also put together a neat chicken run. This makes good use of previously wasted space. As a bonus, they can tear up the third bin of compost.

I planted row 1B in favas on 12-28. They haven't come up yet, but it's been pretty cold for germination. The starts in the taproom are coming up, but mice got in and dug up some of the seeds! We put some screening around the flat, and replanted.

We caught up with Nancy at the Goose. I had two really big beers. I first ordered the Speakeasy Double Daddy, but we blew that keg. They gave me the snippet that was poured, which is the one on the right. On the left was my second choice, the Drakes Jolly Roger. That was a killer beer! Rich and robust and very high alcohol.

Here we are on new year's eve: doing what we do best.

We walked on the first, and saw all the crazy folks who showed up for the polar bear swim across Sycamore Pool.

Catherine turned me on to candied orange peel, so I tried it with oranges from the farm. It came out great! We finally have some way to make use of those substandard oranges.

Rick finished unearthing the trailer chassis, which we sold to Rick and Catherine. Rick wants to make a teardrop trailer.

Catherine and Laura and I had lunch, and I gave Laura this scarf. She looks great in it.