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.

Beer Camp and Bar Progress

 In mid July (yeah yeah, I'm behind as usual) we went to Beer Camp Across America at the Sierra Nevada hop field. Sadly, it wasn't anywhere near as fun as the Single Fresh Wet and Wild event from last fall. First of all, we had to stand in line to get in for more than an hour--which seriously cut into our drinking time, especially since they called last call at about 4:15. Our "noon to five" event time ended up being more like 1:30 to 4:30 Then, there was no shade! They made us stand in full sun. If I'd had any idea they would make us do that, I'd have been better prepared.

Nobody in their right mind stands in full, midday sun in July in Chico. We love the outdoors, and go out in all sorts of weather, but we don't stand in the full sun in July!  Because some of the only shade was around the beer booths, everyone crammed in there so you could hardly get a beer. Karen and Glen at least had hats, and Rick and I finally bought some just so we wouldn't die of the heat.

And speaking of hats, check out this gal's hat. And what's with the banana-suited photo bomber??

In other Sierra Nevada related business, we finally got the posters up on the cabinet doors.

 I had been in the process of putting light, thin coats of spray acrylic over them for protection when it rained! Who thinks it will rain in July? At first I thought they were ruined, but now I'm going for the idea that they look antiqued....I'm going to get some clear acrylic paint to finish them with. We might even get them back on the cabinets someday.

Rick did an excellent job of holding the poster just right and laying it down slowly. I painted the back quickly with ModPodge, then we both worked at getting it laid down smoothly

TomatoMania

It's definitely tomato time. Why did I think I needed so many?! I'm drying, roasting, and freezing as fast as I can.

They are all beautiful tomatoes and every one of them turned out to be real winners.

The Blue Beauties are a spectacular tomato: beautiful, delicious, and fairly firm when ripe (so they last longer).

The Indigo Blueberries are beyond gorgeous, and are turning out to be a good dryer.

There just keep being more!

We made the sign for the outside tomatoes.

And Rick got it installed.

And when we're not eating tomatoes, we're eating peaches. We got a very nice crop off our small Fay Alberta tree.

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Weather Note
I've lived in Chico for 30 years, and I've NEVER seen it rain in July. But this year it did. We had a few sprinkles one day, then we had a solid night and day of rain, when we got just over half inch of rain! But hey, don't worry, we haven't ruined our planet's climate...

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Had a nice lunch at Tres with Nancy.

First Big Harvests

This picture really explains July: Full harvest bowls and lots of sitting in the shade. It was 105 yesterday, and that made it pretty tough to farm. Fortunately, we're all tougher.

The tomatoes are really coming on, as are the zucchinis and peppers. Here is one day's haul, mostly Borgs and Sungolds with some Indigos. The peppers are Beaverdam, Jalapeno, Serrano, and Cayennas.

I picked this lovely bowlful yesterday. Notice all the different kinds of tomatoes: Pink Berkeley Tie Dye, Cosmonaut Volkovs, Indigo Rose, Indigo Apple, Indigo Blueberry, Sungold. Those are Nardello peppers.

The Pink Berkeley Tie Dye are as beautiful as advertized. Metallic green-gold striping!

Sometimes when you get a really tasty, beautiful heirloom, the plants are stingy with their fruit. But that certainly isn't the case here. This big, vigorous plant is just loaded with beautiful tie dyes.

The back ones are Indigo Apple and the front ones are Indigo Rose. They both have great flavor.

The Indigo Blueberries are so fantastic also. Really beautiful and tasty.

I may have gotten a bit carried away... I have 11 tomatoes on this back area, and 6 are Blueberries.

They get pretty red when ripe, but keep a little of that purple hue, especially where they got full sun.

And once again, the plants aren't stingy. This baby is loaded!

The beans are all setting up as well. These are the Flambo from the backyard. The Blue Speckled Tepary beans are just starting to pod up.

Also in the backyard, I have a hedge of basil!

And the gourds are trying to cover up that unsightly woodpile.

I started 2 flats of broccoli on 7-8.

Rick and I had some fun playing with the Summerfest can.

Ah, nothing like a cold beer when you're farming.

Outstanding!

On the social side, we went to Delina's Fourth of July party, wished her dad a happy 80th, and took a peek at her lovely raised bed garden.

Then went to Tom and Nancy's for Cornhole and barbecue.

I finally got the wine vinegar made up. I put the bottles in paper bags to keep the light out.

Mid July saw the super moon.

Summer Sizzle

It's July and summer is here with a vengeance. We're looking at 100+ days for the next couple of weeks. It was 104 yesterday. Even though it's super hot, I decided to start some more basil. I can at least trial the different kinds. There are 10 different kinds here; Lemon, Lime, Licorice, Cinnamon, Blue Spice (vanilla), Genovese, Red Genovese "Red Freddy", Corsican, Persian, and Thai "Siam Queen". I started these on 6-19 but I found that shade cloth lying on the baby starts will kill them... so I reseeded as needed yesterday. I also started a flat of lettuce "Summer blend." I'm hoping to get a late summer crop out of them.

I took a bunch of shots of the garden around the solstice to mark the progress. Everything has grown enormously in the two weeks since then. The beans are happy here, and now they are covered in flowers.

Rick shows off how tall the tomatoes were back then.

If Rick were standing in the same place two weeks later, he'd be invisible! Notice the purple basil between the tomato plants. It made a lovely contrast.

Here's another good overview of the farm on the solstice.  And yes, it was a bit overcast.

These Blue Beauties are shaping up to be a big crop. While we've harvested a few tomatoes here and there, most are not quite ripe yet.

These are the first two Indigo Apples from my backyard. I picked them for dinner when my folks came to visit.

This isn't the best pic, but here we are, enjoying a farm-fresh salad.

Of course we took them to the farm and showed off the chicks and the veggies.

Last Rock Band night was also Keith's birthday, so we all hoisted a glass in honor of Scrod O'Day.

The gourds are looking good. I know... I need more gourds because? I only planted a few of the dancing gourds, and some of the giant "bushel basket" ones.

This might look like an unassuming plot of dirt, but really it shows a truckload of compost that Batch brought us. I think I'll plant summer alfalfa in this spot, and let the gourds ramble over it.

We got this huge pizza pepper. The ones I grew last year in the backyard never got this big!

This is just to remind myself that the beans I planted on 6-17 were up by 6-25.

The Cardinal basil is coloring up beautifully. It also has a very licorice taste.

We are continuing to work on the cabinet doors. This is the latest plan. The posters will look nice displayed like this, but I just hope it isn't too hard to get them on straight and flawlessly.

And our final pic is one terribly obscene zucchini!