Halloween

Halloween was a time-traveling trip at Amberglen's Crosstime Saloon. From Vikings rampaging with Mormans (don't worry, Mr. Smith drank only "grape juice") to ...

hitchikers and steampunkers from far off lands...

Amelia gets with Tacky.

Holiday confusion ensued.

Gone fishing...

Even big bad wolves like Sierra Nevada. This one sang Little Red Riding Hood...

And no saloon, Crosstime or otherwise, can be complete without some Bar Flies.

Food Day at Chapman Market

In case I didn't have enough going on this month, I participated in Food Day at the Chapman Market. It was a great event and a huge success. It was a perfect, crispy fall day and the stalls were overflowing with fall produce.

 I had gourds for the kids to color, which made my booth very popular. And while the kids colored, the moms and dads looked at my wares. I bought some daikon from the Yang's and served it with samples of my Garlic-Herb Salt. I sold 6 bags! I also brought jelly but that wasn't as popular.

I was glad to see that lots of people came out. What this market needs is more awareness and visibility and I hope folks will remember it as being lush and inviting and worth coming back to.

It was a lovely day in the park. You can see the vegetable chucker in the background...There were lots of activities, including some great drummers from Chapman School and a band as well as lots of informational booths about nutrition, GMO, and other food related causes.

The kids all had a good time.

Single, Fresh, Wet, and Wild Festival

This year's festival was every bit as good as the last, if not better! First of all, we had perfect weather. There were a ton of great breweries there, and the space was big enough for the people.

And going with good friends only makes it better!

Rick clowns around in the big brew kettle photo op booth.

There was space outside the big tent to sit and relax between pours.

Then back into the fray! They had fantastic food too. Karen and Glen show off the giant pretzels, but they also had ribs, brats, and lots and lots of other food.

I marked 33 beers that I tried, and I pretty much drank all those pours. No sip and toss for me. That means I drank about 11 beers! No wonder I felt a lil hung-over the next day. Fortunately we'd spent the previous week in training during Chico Beer Week. There were specials all over town and we hit most of them!

At the farm afterward, Karen and Glen show off the fresh hops they liberated from the giant piles available.

Fully Fall

Fall has fell, and we even got a little rain. It's colder now, but still mostly sunny and crisp. We're still outside enjoying the lovely weather, but wearing coats and hats. We even had our first fire of the season. The farm is thriving. The broccolis are broccing, the garlic is up, and the tomatoes and peppers are on the way out. I even got new straw paths down since this picture was taken.

I continue to make fermented veggies. This is a chunky batch meant to be finger food at the farm. This stuff is SO good!

Rick C. had a birthday, so we had a little get together at the farm. Ann was going to make a cake, but she got sick, so I grabbed one from Tin Roof that was fantastic. When Ann felt better, she made him a Boston cream pie, so we ended up with two cakes!

And we had Rock Band last week and we got to meet Jae. We've been getting a good crowd these days.

SummerFall

It's been a lovely summerfall this year. Summerfall is that time after the worst of the heat when it's cool at night and warm during the day. We had one good rain at the end of September to wet things down a little, but none since. We got all the bean stalks out of sector 1 and put the chicken on it for a bit. We've just moved them back out so we can plant onions and garlic there. The tomatoes are about done (sector 2) and we're taking them out bit by bit, as we have room in the bin after tree pruning. I've got all the small trees pruned, and I'm working on the bigger ones. I pushed the gourds aside in sector 4 and planted some broccoli over there, as well as the brocs that are in sector 3. I do have two big gourds forming at the farm, and one at my house. In our backyard, I have onions, arugula, and broccoli in rows 1-3. I still have a lot of basil at both places, and I have been harvesting it and making herb salt. This was the last big batch (this is only one of the containers!).

I've also been making fermented vegetables. They are fantastic!

I bought some airlock caps to fit my mason jars. I also picked a bunch of jalapenos and serranos to make this amazing fermented hot sauce. Rick got me some supercool big glass jars with glass caps (on wires like a Grolsch bottle) so I can store all my bounty.

We got a pullet surprise when we checked the little girls yesterday. Yep, our babies have become hens. Now it's time to get rid of the old ones.

We got the doors up in the bar. Despite the setbacks, they look lovely.

Rick had extra peppers, so I froze a bunch. How could I manage to do that?

Because we got a freezer! Now I have a ton of room to store excess produce for the winter.

We had a fun party for Laura's birthday at Grana. We had a veritable feast, including Laura's homemade cherry pie cake. Yep, there's actually a whole cherry pie inside the cake.

After lunch we rampaged around town for a bit.

We went to Taste of Chico with Tom and Nancy, and it was a great time. They had an excellent beer garden with pourers who weren't overly diligent about punching your ticket every time. We drank lots of good beers. It was sort of Beer Camp light. Single, Fresh, Wet, and Wild is next weekend! Yay.

Then it was Catherine's birthday. Anne made her a cake and we had a party at the farm.

Tom and Nancy had a kick-ass Rocktober party, featuring Old Spice.

Rick and I took advantage of the good weather to hike around 5 mile.

I won at croquet :)

Because of the fires, one evening we had a totally red sun. It was redder than I've ever seen it. It was kind of scary.

We had a very well attended Rock Band this last week. Tom stopped by to see how awesome Lori is.

We had 14 people total! If you look closely, you can see the sheer intensity on Jacqueline's face.

Grapes, Beans, and Salt

Now that it's late summer, we're harvesting beans and grapes. The grapes were really beautiful and prolific this year. The red ones that is; the Thompsons were weak as usual.

The arbor was totally loaded.

So we picked them....

De-stemmed them and ran them through the food mill...

And made jelly. I wish I'd gotten a shot of how many bins of grapes we had! But it was about 15 gallons of grapes, which became about 10 gallons once stemmed, and made more than 5 gallons of juice! Yikes! I made 96 half pint jars of jelly. That's 8 cases of 12. What's showing here is less than half. Yes, that's nuts. Half are low sugar and the other half are regular. The low sugar really lets the grape flavor come through, but the regular will suit many people's palates.

We also have been harvesting and shelling beans. Rick and Catherine work on some Red Mexicans, which were the last to ripen this time (or at least the last to be picked).

We got a good harvest of Cannelini and Jacob's Cattle, plus the Flambo and Black Turtle (not shown). I weighed all the beans and split them into 5 shares. We got: White: 32 oz total, 6.4 oz per share; Jacob's Cattle: 21.8 oz total, 4.3 oz per share; Flambo: 30 oz total, 6 oz per share, and Black Turtle, 57.5 oz total, 11.5 per share. We're still shelling out the Red Mexicans. White and Jacob's only had a half row each while the rest had full rows. I also harvested a lot of Flambo at home.

The third major production piece for late summer is more seasoned salt. I finally broke down and bought a real food processor, so this is the last time I have to make a zillion tiny bits. But I tried some new techniques this time, including adding black sesame seeds and using some of the new basils.

Notice the harp in the corner. I had this huge urge to play harp, so I bought a little one to practice on. To help myself learn, I pulled out the melodica. Now I've mostly been playing the melodica, which is much easier! It's a beautiful instrument though, and I will learn to play it. It's a bit limited with only 12 strings and no way to make sharps or flats on the fly.

We got the cabinet doors sealed and brought to the farm. Now we just need to put them up.

Jesse and Jana from Triple J farms came by last Friday to visit. I didn't get a shot of them, but they brought us this lovely Blue Hubbard squash.

The tomatoes slowed down for a while, but we are seeing lots of new blossoms so we might get another wave. I'm also still harvesting peppers, and I've been very happy with a probiotic hot sauce I made using salt and whey.