Winter Catchup

So much has been going on, and I'm so behind on blogging about it! I finally finished the art grouping on the kitchen wall, and I really like it. Notice the growler in the corner! I love having herbs and peppers hanging ready for use.

Last weekend was busy. Friday we all congregated at the farm.

It was warm in the middle of the day, but it quickly cooled off.

I had finally finished Rick C's hat.

Buddy and Rick model their hats.

And here's Rick's.

Then on Saturday (last week) we had another beer tasting with Karen and Glen. This was Rick's turn, and he did more IPAs. It's a big, and delicious, category!

Here are all the beers we tried. The winners were Ruthless Rye (I picked that one out right away!), Mongo, and Leafer Madness.

In the middle of last week, we had an irrigation failure. The big central pipe just shattered from all the UV and the freezing. Rick and Buddy fixed it up, and it's working fine now.

I put some new straw out to discourage any spring weeds and generally dress it up a bit. I'm proud of how much we have growing in the dead of winter. We finally pulled the lettuces/daikon bed out, and the chickens are on it in this pic. Then we have onions and garlic, arugula, broccoli, favas, and lettuces.

I planted another row of favas to the left of the older ones in row 5a.

I've also been working on cleaning up the irises along the edge of the tub enclosure. This is where we're going to flag the pathway.

We got serious on the back of the bar. This shot was taken half way through, but we finished digging this out and put the chickens on it. We are all ready to put the mulch on now.

Buddy gets down! He clambered right under the lilac and roses to get some stubborn weeds out.

While we were digging, Rick found this nasty fellow. Has to be the pupa of a tomato hornworm (sphinx moth).

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What We're Eating
Pizza! This pizza has homemade crust, homegrown tomato sauce, homegrown hot peppers, homegrown broccoli, and homegrown arugula. It also has mozzarella and Canadian bacon. MMMMM!

For the beer tasting, I cooked lima beans and dove breast beans, with steak and cornbread. The beans were both scrumptious.
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Mulched

Buddy had dug up a lot of area for mulching. And Rick C brought over a big load of excellent mulch. Then Karen gave me a huge pile of large cardboard boxes. So... it was about time for me to put those three things together. Here is the area in question, between the cherry, peach, and lilac.

Buddy had cleared most of it, I dug out some tricky bermuda near the cherry, and the chickens finished the job.

I laid all that lovely cardboard down, and Buddy started hauling mulch. Rick managed to get off work early enough to join in on the last load. We now have another big patch mulched up and ready for mud-free access.

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Moonphase/Weather Note
The moon is just past new, and hanging low in the western sky with just the bottom illuminated. Venus is bright and nearby. We continue to get rain from the storm that has lasted all week, but it's predicted to clear off. This morning's rain may have been the last from this storm system.
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Lemony

We had a hard freeze last week, with temps in the low 20s. We had plenty of warning, and we covered our citrus, left water dripping, and generally tried to minimize the damage. Most things came through just fine, but a lot of our lemons were still on the tree. After a freeze like that, they'll dehydrate if we don't act fast. Fortunately I had picked a couple of baskets of lemons before the freeze, and those are in my fridge as "keepers." I'd also made six jars of preserved lemons. But I had not yet begun to lemon!

Then we got a long-overdue storm that dropped a good amount of rain. It's been raining hard all weekend, but today the storm broke up a bit, and the sun came out.  Everything was washed clean and refreshing, if a bit drippy. It was cold, but nice to see the blue sky and pick big, plump lemons. So today I picked a two big baskets more. Then, I put a murder mystery on Netflix and gave my kitchen over to lemoning! First I washed them all and cut them in half.

Then I pulled out the electric juicer, and started juicing. I juiced about 10 cups of lemon juice.

I juiced into the big cup measure because it fits the juicer perfectly, then strained it into the big cobalt bowl. After I finished juicing, I filled the first 3 ice cube trays to freeze and put the rest in the fridge.

I also made a few more jars of preserved lemons. They look so spectacular against the zebra print/turquoise walls.

June-uary

With the high pressure ridge stalled over northern California, we've had no rain and bright sunny skies. It even gets pretty warm at midday, although it gets below freezing each night.

Last Saturday, Catherine attacked the tub area, and cleaned out all the fallen leaves and other debris. When I saw it on Sunday, I was so invigorated that I pruned out the butterfly bush and fixed the fencing. Now the tub is ready for summer!

 The moon was full last Sunday night. We could see it rising through the boughs.

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What We're Eating
I cooked some of our homegrown black-eyed peas and chilled them in a vinegrette with capers, parmesan, and homegrown oregano, and served it over just-picked lettuce and arugula from the garden.
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Laura Lamp

Laura made me this lamp for Christmas. Isn't it wonderful? It casts a very nice light.

Doc

Although Doc's been gone for months now, New Year's Eve was the date of his memorial service. We didn't go of course, because it was out of town on the year's worst day to drive, but I put together this piece, printed it out, and had Ed and Anne carry it up for me. I'm reproducing it here to share and save it.

Doc
We remember Doc. He'll always have a special place in our hearts.

I met Doc the first day I was in Chico. I went to a house he shared with Loren, whose cousin Rick was visiting from out of town. So on my first day in Chico, I met the man I was destined to marry, and the man who was destined to marry us.

We remember playing poker after Doc's first stroke, when he had lost a lot of verbal ability. We thought the regular poker game would help him regain some words. We patiently waited while he struggled to call the game he wanted to deal. But when he called Royal Muggleslices, the whole table cracked up.

We remember explaining to folks that Doc not only married us, but his marryin' prowess extended farther than most. After all, he married his brother, he married his sister, and he married his father to his mother.

We remember lots of game nights, around tables, with dice rolling or tiles slapping or cards flipping.We remember lots of parties and good times. We remember his intelligence, and his kindness, and his habit of saving everything that could remotely be useful--and the more remote the possibility of usefullness, the better.

We remember Doc. He'll always have a special place in our hearts.

New Year

It's a bright and sunny new year. And by bright and sunny, I mean there's been almost no rain at all. The "fall storms" didn't happen. We're watering the garden and hoping for spring rains. On the other hand, the bright sunny days are pleasant and there's really no excuse not to be outside working!

While there were parties galore, we stayed home on New Year's Eve and avoided "amateur night." Well, we count the farm as part of our home, so we spent some time there as well. At miday, with the sun on the thermometer, it was balmy. The real air temperature was probably closer to mid-60s but still quite nice for late December.

We decided to do a hard pruning on the back plum tree. All that tall stuff came down to manageable levels. We left a large branch running along the fence, as that gives us some protection from the other house.

All those prunings made a monstrous pile of brush. We've been brushing it out. Buddy made space for more wood to be stacked, and we've just been putting the small stuff in the compost bin. The city can reclaim those sticks better than we can.

The arugula is doing great, and providing most of our crop at the moment. This row is fully grown.

And this one will replace it soon.

The broccoli is broccling, but the heads are very small. This variety is supposed to make lots of small heads, but they also might be a little stunted.

And this isn't a very good background, but that's a fistful of black spanish radishes. Sadly, we'd let them go a bit long, and they were pretty woody.