SummerFall

It's SummerFall again, that lovely time of year when the days only get to the mid 80s and nights are cool, and we might even get a drop of rain. We haven't done much at the farm since the paint and repair job. That really wore us out. We're too old for this crap! Anyway, the house looks good.

We simply boarded up the broken window in the back. Buddy never opens it anyway.

The color changes depending on the light hitting it. We've harvested the first row of beans and we have the chickens working that area. We even have two new girls in the tractor. The flock is blending slowly but surely, and we haven't had any real problems. Most of the new girls are laying now, and we're going to have a lot of eggs, especially next spring.

I got the cabbages in last week. We rigged some good shadecloth covers to protect them. We went to Lowes and got material and poles to make two more for the broccoli beds, which are prepared but not transplanted yet. I'll try to get that done this week.

The peppers are producing like crazy. I keep harvesting and fermenting, and roasting...

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What We're Eating
Brined Eggs
I got this recipe from a link Glen found, but I've changed it to my taste. The original was pretty much just soy sauce, but mine is much better. I put salt, curry powder, a dash of soy, and other spices into a jar with water, and put peeled hard-boiled eggs in to soak for a few days in the fridge. The eggs absorb some of the spices, and taste just like deviled eggs. I just made a hot Thai variation that I'm very excited about, but haven't tried yet.
Peppers in Fish Sauce
We went to Cocodine and tasted their spice choices. One was peppers in fish sauce, and it was delicious. I went home and harvested a bunch of my Thai peppers, and mixed up a fish sauce brine for them to soak in.
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We've been too tired for farming, but not for partying! We drove up to the golf course, and met Karen and Glen after their round of golf. This got us another bar (#38) and the scenery was wonderful. We saw a bunch of deer, including a group of young bucks, and a mother with a fawn. The food was forgettable, and the service was pretty bad, but hey, you can have a beer and watch deer.

Jane had a Karaoke birthday party. We sang songs and had a great time.

We like to go to the Park Avenue Pub. It's become our local bar. Here, Rick tries out his new creation: The Hunt for Red October: It's Hop Hunter mixed with Octoberfest with a shot of tomato juice. It was actually really good.

We had a rare croquet game on a lovely Saturday afternoon

And all is right with the world. I had a couple of sweet shots, and sometimes that is enough for a win.

 We went to GRUB's tomatofest at the grange. I didn't take any pix inside, but I did get one of the pizza poster, done by Monica.

 Delina and Jae came by the farm on Labor Day.

 For Laura's 60th birthday, Catherine, Lori, and I met her at La Hacienda for lunch.

 She got some nice presents.

 We had cake and wine. Well I had a bite of cake and a beer.

 And came back to the farm for the after party.

Katinka!

The coolest thing this month was that Katinka came to visit. We got to hang out for several days, and we had a great time.

Her sister-in-law Dawn came also, for a Chico adventure. It was great to have our sister in the beer garden again.

Katinka rocks the hat and pigtails!

As usual, I was having too much fun in the moment to take enough pictures, and all of the ones I took involve beer! Well we did a lot of beer drinking. Turns out Dawn likes beer! So we had to go to Sierra Nevada, Park Avenue, Winchester Goose, plus Mariscos and Cafe Coda. I didn't have the energy to cook, and besides, I had to show off Chico's eateries.

This doesn't look like it involves beer, but it's us walking back from the Winchester Goose.

Fix Blitz, First Egg. Last Peaches

My ongoing saga of trying to keep the farm insured continues. This time, they asked us to take out a tree, fix the porch roof and add handrails, and paint the house. Now that last makes sense because we all know that a fresh coat of paint will make a house much less likely to catch fire... Also, Chico city code says I need handrails on any landing higher than 30 inches, and that one is 17. So basically they are just fucking with me. But I have to have insurance, so we decided to comply. Rick replaced the front poles on the porch while I continued to clear the whole perimeter of the house.

Rick put new roofing on the top. I cut the pieces and Buddy handed them up and steadied the ladder.

Then we rented a pressure washer, and washed off a lot of old paint.

I got M and S Wesley to take out the tree. That really needed to be done because it never should have been allowed to grow in the first place, and the roots were trying to get under the foundation. Plus it hangs over the roof and in the electric wires.

You can see how it's much too close to the garage.

We watched from the safety of the beer garden while they cut it down. The guy who did it was very skilled.

It didn't take that long, and it was the only part of the whole project we didn't have to do ourselves!

Tree be gone!

Meanwhile, back at the painting project, we started primering. I tried using a roller but... yikes! We quickly decided to get the tool co-op's paint sprayer.

Rick had to do all the ladder and roof work.

We had to do a lot of scraping and caulking.

But once we got the color on, it looked great. I'll have to add more "after" shots later, because we're still doing cleanup and touchups. But this should be good enough to placate the insurance agency. I mailed the pics off with a few days to spare.

When we were all finished, we treated ourselves to a well deserved reward. I had beeramisu, and Rick had wings.

Meanwhile, other things happened at the farm, even though it seemed like this took all our time. One cool thing gets its own post, but here are the rest. We got our first eggs from the baby chicks. Our babies are hens now! That means soon we will have to integrate them.

The peach tree put out a bumper crop of really delicious peaches. This pic also counts as a weather note, because we got a smattering of rain on 8-4. That's good news in a summer of drought and wildfires. Anyway, the peach was ripe about the first two  weeks in August, for future reference.

I picked the last of them on 8-16.

Summer, With a Vengeance

We've been sweltering lately. We hit 107 for several days in a row. Today is a bit cooler, but it's been a hot week. What can you do in that sort of heat? Almost nothing. Last Friday, Old Spice played the Concert in the Park, and fortunately, it was a cooler day than usual (meaning *only* 100 or so). They did a great show.

 We all had a great time. It's nice to see the community come out.

Other than that, it's been hard to do anything but drink beer. We tried this River Ryed. It was nice and crispy, much different and lighter than Ruthless.

We got bar 36 at Mariscos La Costa. Great Mexican seafood; we'll definitely be back.

We're also working on some fixes to Buddy's house, to appease the insurance company. The weather is really too hot for doing that but it needs to be done.

PizzaQue

Karen and Glen discovered this awesome cooking tool, the PizzaQue. It hooks up to propane, and gets super hot: over 800 degrees. Glen got his first, and had us over to check it out. It fits right in with the rest of his outdoor kitchen.

We were sold! I said I was willing to buy one just to not have to finish the pizza oven we started at the farm. So we ordered one also. Rick got it set up for me. We had to move that piece of counter at an angle so we wouldn't burn up the fence.

I had to brush up on my paddle technique, but I learned fast and started cooking pizzas.

Ta-da! Poor Rick has had nothing but pizzas for a week. Yesterday I made 5 of them. I figured once I got started... I took some to the farm and saved some for quick dinners.

Summer Slowdown

We've had some hot hot weather this summer. First, it got super hot (105) in mid to late June. Then it cooled down for a bit, even tried to rain a little, then went back up to the 90s. With this sort of heat, it's hard to do much. In fact, this is when I'm reminding myself that you don't really garden in July and August. All you can do is water and harvest. The crops at the farm are doing well. My crops at home are struggling more.

One surprising crop was the buckwheat. It grows super fast and doesn't mind the heat at all. We are using it for green manure/chicken food, and we had to move fast to get the chickens to it in time! We built more frame pieces so they can eat half a row at a time. I will plant more soon, because I can get another whole round before the fall crops go in the ground. But this time, I'll stagger planting so they don't all come ripe at once. Speaking of ripe, here's a lovely big harvest of tomatoes.

The tomatoes were in sector 3, and got some shade. They seemed to prefer this. The peppers in 2 are ok but could use more shade. For next year, I plan to plant flowers again, but farther from the crops, and on the west side to shade them more. These Indigo Roses look like jewels.

I baked them with pesto and parmesan and served them on pita chips. They went fast! I also made plum cobblers that were well received.

Jae's mom is in town, and they visited the farm. I guess they don't get this kind of variety and flavor of tomatoes in Sweden.

We went to La Salles for the Thursday Happy Hour music. Apparently this is where all the old folks go to get their groove on. This lady in yellow was having a blast. She was even dancing with the poles by the stage. Rick said, "If those fishnets come off, we're leaving!" It was pretty hilarious.