Fall Fun

We are in PEPPER CITY!!! The peppers are in FULL production. We have Spanish padrones, jalapenos, serranos, 2 varieties of Anaheim (Joe E Parker and Big Jim) along with pasillas, tabasco, and then the sweet peppers!!! Right now we have an abundance of RED and sweet Sheepnose Pimento peppers. These little babies are on Slow Food's Ark of Taste list. Last week we were fire roasting the peppers and I thought I was in Albuquerque from the smell!

Our dill is very healthy and of course we are growing WAY more than we need! I guess I will go out and start collecting seeds for use during the year!

We are also in great melon production. Our favorite, Moon and Stars Watermelon, complete with big, black seeds, is so good this year. I will miss having a big slab of it in the fridge. The crop of hard winter squashes are just taking off. They aren't quite ready...but we are growing butternut squash, pumpkins, Sibley squash, also on the ark of taste.

This is a late year for us for eggplant. It is still coming on. I am finally going to make my caponata and see if I can successfully can it. Caponata is a Sicilian eggplant relish and I love it!

The peaches are at an end. Jeff picked the last of them from the tree and made a big batch of jam. I do my best to eat jam every day, otherwise our supplies will be too vast. I think we will see where we can sell it. Maybe we will sell some online.

The pears are here for another couple weeks, the tomatoes are starting to show signs of slowing, but are still wonderful!

Our "shoe peg" dent corn has finally tassled out at 14 feet! We are growing it for cornmeal. Yes, another attempt to do it all!!! We call it the "Field of Dreams" corn patch because you honestly could get lost in it!

Where did summer go? Was it on the fast track? I don't know about you, but I am so happy it is fall. Why? The farm slows down, the catering picks up, it is cooler (or at least it is supposed to be!) and time for slow-cooked "comfort" foods.

I had best get off the computer and out onto the farm to help Farmer Jeff with the chickens. They are all good, healthy and starting their annual molt. We have enough random feathers floating around to make at least one good sized pillow, but I don't think we could ever get the smell out! Yum, chicken feathers!

HAPPY FALL!!!

Farm Update - July 21

We have been working so hard on the farm, I just had to write about it!

We had a farmers' market on both Saturday and Sunday. Right now we have eggs (less when it is hot!), LOTS of summer squash, a few lemon cucumbers, a few Armenian cucumbers, very rare Gravenstein apples, spearmint and chocolate mint. It doesn't seem like much because we are waiting for the show stopping tomatoes to ripen!

Yesterday we got up early (early for me! 6:15 is early!!!) to go tie up tomatoes before it got too hot. It has been getting up to 104 here and I just melt! We tied up tomatoes for 5 hours and then came home. This took place at "Site 3" of our farm which is also known as the "Ruff Garlick Patch". Long story, not very interesting...

Anyway, with long spools of wire and lots of stinky twine we tied up over 100 tomatoes. I guess I need to supply a picture so you can see what I am talking about. Afterwords we came home for lunch in the backyard, and then started building more bee frames. We knew we had to go back into the hives because one was full to bursting and a little more space keeps them from leaving and "swarming".

I had also heard that some bee keepers were noticing that the bees are starving or are out of their honey stores for the winter and this is causing quite a bit of concern. Between folks pulling up everything that is flowering (weeds/herbs) and the drought (no wild flowers bloom when it is too dry) there is concern about how these critters will survive the winter.

Farmer Jeff and I suited up and went into the hives for a look.
We were lucky to see that the bees are very happy and very productive. The best of all was finding that the "girls" are building up stores of honey and started sealing it. This is called "capped" honey.

After we went through each and every frame, we found we were really pissing them off! How do we know? They start moving their wings faster and raising the pitch of their hum...and they try to sting you! We wrapped things up quickly after that...and then went out into the tomato patch on "Site 2", which is thankfully next door. I couldn't believe we were still tying up tomatoes. While tying them up I couldn't help but notice some little ripe tomatoes! Jeff made a wonderful dinner for me with those tomatoes, along with some other yummy food.


Today Farmer Jeff smoked some sausages, we ran an errand to the fabulous garden store, Harmony, and then went back to Site 3 to fix the irrigation system so we could plant pumpkins. That took 3 hours vs. the one hour that Farmer Jeff promised...so I tied up more of the tomatoes. I think Farmer Jeff finally "gets" how wiped out I am from working out all day in the sun. That is why, when he went to work, I took some time off from duties and ...watched some TV. Don't tell him, okay?

So, the last of the crops are in. Well, major crops. Now we just have the raised beds to pull apart, mix some sand into it, and then plant it with more carrots, radishes, and whatever else we can think of! At this point, all I want to think about is when will the peaches be ripe?

Playing Catch Up!

This is what happens when I am too busy to blog twice a week...It all builds up! Jeesh! Can't have that? Hm...Where to begin...














The Greenhouse is all done and is now housing tomatoes starts and 2 sets of young chicks! That is fun news! Farmer Jeff is very happy to have the tomatoes transplanted, all 1,000 of them! Once they were transplanted and moved to the greenhouse, then he immediately started the pepper babies in the growing room. They are just now beginning to pop up.

The carrots we planted over a month ago are coming up. This is a first for us. Farmer Jeff doesn't like to grow things that develop under ground. He is more comfortable growing things he can watch as they grow. Me...I am game for anything! Let's grow it all!!!

The chicks that have been in the little videos are growing. Some are developing combs (uh, oh...Roosters!) while the others are not (thankfully!). One of the young roosters looks just like my dear Tyner. He has been named Ivanhoe. Don't ask...I have no idea where that came from!

One of the things that kept us busy in the past few weeks was the class we taught on how to raise a backyard chicken flock for our Slow Food group. It was really a lot of fun and I came to realize that...gee...I really DO know a lot about raising chickens!

Well...I had best get back to my paperwork. Hope you are all having a great Spring!

Have you seen where Summer has gone?

I can't believe how fast Summer zoomed past. CRAZY!!! I am just now sitting down share our exciting tomato news only to realize that this all took place 3 weeks ago!

Windsor Farmers Market holds an annual Tomato and Pepper Festival the first Sunday of September. Included in that festival is a tomato competition/judging. Last year we won: First place in the purple-black tomato category with a "Cherokee Purple", first place in the yellow category with "Olga's Round Yellow Chicken" (you've gotta know we HAVE to grow that one!) and third place in the red category with our Florentines.

This year I am proud to announce more ribbons!!!

We won first place in the purple-black category with "Paul Robeson", named after the famous actor, second place in the white-yellow category for "White Queen" and...drum roll please...BEST OF SHOW for Paul Robeson.

Farmer Jeff has worked very hard to produce tasty tomatoes. We don't water them as much as other growers do. We have smaller tomatoes, but the ribbons show they have been judged and deemed BEST!!!

Farm Video

How crazy are we? We are so crazy that we are farming on 3 different properties! This is a video of our third and largest farm plot. It is at the house of our friend, Larry Ruff, so it is called, "the Ruff Patch".

We are growing all kinds of vegetables and fruit there, including tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, over an acre of corn, rows of basil, arugula, Italian parsley, baby pumpkins, butternut squash, cucumbers, drying beans (Jacob's Cattle), watermelon, peaches, pears, plums, pluots, apricots, apples, grapefruit, lemons and other things I know I am forgetting!

We are having fun!!!

Hot Chickens, Hot Dogs, Hot Chicken Mama and other news

How hot was it? Hot enough. Today it hit either 101 or 102, depending on who you believe. All I know is that our family has been hammered by the heat. Not quite like "Lawrence of Arabia/The Devil's Anvil" heat, but too hot for me!

We had a warning that today would be hot so I rigged up some new misters yesterday for the chickens. Small problem: I did it in a hurry on my way to a catering job and 2 of the 6 emitters worked...that was all. Grrrrr....

This is the third day of heat and my honey has gotten to see firsthand how I handle heat...not well. Kind of like a delicate flower...or a cube of butter. I melt/wilt to an unrecognizable form. My face goes red, I swear like a sailor and feel trapped like a rat in a glass jar. That bad.

Today it was 95 degrees at 10:40 am and it just got worse from there. Sigh...I didn't do much today but do what I could to stay cool, including climbing into an empty bathtub and just turning on the cold water!

The chickens are surviving the heat with the help of the misters and the fan in the coop. The dogs have gotten to come inside, the inside kitties are sleeping in the sun (yes, they are crazy) and the outdoor kitties are hanging out.

Garden Update:
The tomatoes are HAPPY!!! The property that was hit the hardest by the frost (can you even believe that less than a month ago we had frost???) was replanted and they are all fine, as are the corn. The 200 plus eggplants (6 varieties) and peppers (over 400/8 varieties) are still in the greenhouse but will be planted on Sunday and then the other plants will be moved to the greenhouse.

Ginger Update:
She is fine. Still no signs of a return of cancer, thank you God. I am so happy she is healthy.

Callebaut Update:
He is fine. His tummy issues seem to have calmed down and he is much happier. I am happy not to be supporting the emergency vet hospital!

Farmer Jeff and Chicken Mama Update: Farmer Jeff has his hands full with the garden, the restaurant and the catering jobs this past week. He is happy, exhausted and falls asleep when he stops moving!

I am happy to have a few days between catering jobs to catch my breath, see friends, get caught up on paperwork and hang out. My wrist is almost completely healed (Yeah!) and tomorrow I am going on a field trip to the super-cool yarnstore, Knitterly, in Petaluma. There I will learn first hand what a yarn "trunk show" by "Habu" is all about!

Coming soon...the second half of the Portland trip, including the famous Bacon Maple Bar donuts from "Voodoo Doughnuts" shown on Anthony Bourdain's show this week, No Reservations.
(They are strangely wonderful!)

Stay Cool!!!!

Praise the Lord and Pass the Tomatoes

After our devastating freeze last week in which we lost 80% of the tomatoes planted at the Ruff Patch, our other farming area, we had almost enough tomatoes so we could re-plant. This is why Farmer Jeff starts 1,000 sproutlings... We only bought 12 plants to fill in the hole created by the freeze.

There is so much trial and error along with "acts of God" aka weather that makes farming such a precarious and courageous pursuit. Farmer Jeff kept telling me, "This is why I didn't follow in the family footsteps of being a commercial grower. I can't stand this kind of loss or gamble!". So he is in the restaurant business instead!

In Other News:
While capping off T-tape, an irrigation hose with holes/emitters every 24 inches, I stood up, fell over my feet and fell backwards on my hands, wrenching my back, neck and spraining my wrist. Sigh...My neck is better, my back is still a little sore, but the wrist is taking a while to mend. The hardest things to do with my wrist (thankfully the left wrist and I am right handed) is hooking my bra and giving the girls in the "hospital" their twice daily pills.

They are almost done with the pills, but still have a little bit of a sneeze/cough. I think I have to take one of them back in for a final exam.

Callebaut is fine. He has not had any stomach issues for a couple of weeks, thankfully. India is good, too.

Now the great news: Tasso is the break out star of the group. He has found his calling and you can tell it has done wonders for his self-esteem. He has become the official "Ratter" of Eastside Farm. A nasty business, rats. When you have chickens/aka the 24 hour buffet with water, you will have rats. We have tried just about everything except for poison, which is too dangerous around the dogs and chickens. We have rigged up the food bins on pulleys, we have lined the floor of the enclosure with wire cloth, we have put out traps of all sorts, and we even bought a pellet gun. The best ....TASSO!!!

The cats are all good. Ginger hasn't had any recurrence of her cancer. I keep praying over that one!

The most important being at ESF (Eastside Farm) is Farmer Jeff. He is happy and tired. We are catering like crazy and when not doing that, he is at the restaurant, smoking bacon and sausage, checking on all of the vegetables/plants, mowing the lawn and ...working. We are both happy when we are busy. I am feeling it a bit more than he is...sigh...

It is cool today and for this I am grateful. If it were a prettier, sunnier day I would be tempted to be outside planting flowers and trimming. However, today is cool, breezy and cloudy. Perfect for staying in and catching up on paperwork. I think I will sneak in a nap today!!!

Happy Tuesday!

Gambling on Tomatoes

Yep...we gambled, and gambled big. We planted the tomatoes at our "satellite" property (featured here on this blog) and we took a gamble by planting before May 1st. This is a calculated gamble because, historically, the last freeze of the year could be as late at May 1st.

Well, historically, the worst freeze in April in the last 30 years was April 20th. We lost 75-80% of what we planted on April 13th. I didn't take a picture because I honestly didn't want to see it more than once!

Farmer Jeff has reminded me that this is why he starts with 1,000 seedlings. Sigh...

Tomorrow he will be replanting about 150 tomatoes. I will be at a marketing class in San Francisco, in a nice warm, dry room. It is supposed to rain again tomorrow here...

At least the tomatoes will like it!

All in a day's Work!

Today we planted the first of the tomato babies. What does that entail?

• Creating rows/furrows (6 rows, each 60 feet long)
• Setting up the irrigation system
• Spreading 4 bags of powdered oyster shells carefully over the rows
• Turning the dirt over the irrigation tape and oyster shell

Going to the nursery (Harmony Farm) to buy more stuff for the irrigation

• Putting green plastic over the tops of the rows
• Fixing us/the workers lunch
• Cutting through the plastic to make holes for the tomatoes
• Adding mushroom mulch to the holes
• Planting the tomatoes, all the while making a very detailed list of exactly what was planted where. WHY? We did “library rows” at the Ruff Patch (the name of the farm where we are planting) with 2 plants of each variety of tomato and needed to keep track what was where.
• Planted the tomatoes – 192!!!
• Added more mushroom mulch
  

What are we doing now, you might ask? I am writing the "load/packing list" for an event tomorrow at Stryker Sonoma Vineyard. Farmer Jeff is supposed to be writing recipes for the cookbook. I think he is wandering around the internet while I write my blog! We are both playing hooky!

All work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy. Right?
(Who remembers what movie that was in? It featured someone named Jack. Coincidence? We think not!)

I am leaving with you a hint to the question above. A hatchet actually had a part in that movie.

The guys found this hatchet head while cultivating the soil. Will someone please explain to me how in the world folks believed that burning glass and metal with their trash would get rid of it?

Happy Easter!

I love Easter. It is a day that, for me, symbolizes new beginnings, a celebration of Spring, one of good food, family, and ...more good food!

We started off our day with our wonderful farm fresh eggs from this morning! YUM!!! We also had my honey's housecured/smoked bacon and some yummy Apricot Panetone. What a treat!

After that we went to church to hear a friend of our sing. It was quite beautiful and inspirational on many levels.


Speaking of new beginnings, we went over to the greenhouse to visit the tomato babies. They are so big I am going to need to refer to them as toddlers!

We are now going to clean up what we can of the back yard and the outdoor kitchen in preparation of guests for Easter dinner. Chef Jeff is fixing his famous Crab and Mango Salad in Avocado halves, my mother's marinade is on the leg of lamb which will be roasted in the wood burning oven along with fingerling potatoes, I will be making a beet, tangerine and mint salad, steamed asparagus and fresh meyer lemon mayonnaise. For dessert...back to the panetone, but this time it will be the one with Moscato wine mixed in.

Wishing all of you a happy Sunday, happy Spring and happy new beginnings!

Life on the farm

After spending another night in emergency with Callebaut (he had another spell of anxiety, lip licking, drooling and general discomfort) I thought a blog on other news would be welcome.

Friday night Farmer Jeff and I found ourselves still pretty exhausted after the marathon chicken coop redux and crawled into bed looking forward to a good, long and deep nights sleep. Can you hear it coming? I was holding Ginger in my arms, praying for good health, when Chloe started chasing something in the bedroom. I didn't think I had seen a moth, but that is what it sounded like she was chasing. Once Ginger sat up to see what was going on, I thought I would join her. I turned on the light just as I saw something pretty damn big fly past me and land on the quilt that hangs behind our bed. Then I saw it. About a foot about Farmer Jeff's head was a very large and very dark lump. Hm...BAT!!!! I thought I had best wake him up but there really wasn't a damn thing we could do.Benny the bat flew back and forth across the bedroom, stopping only to fling itself onto curtain rods, closet doors and then the air show would resume. At one point he smacked against the wall and slid down the closet doors to the floor where Chloe was ready and waiting. I am not exactly sure what happened, but I heard both the bat AND Chloe let out a squeal and Chloe ran to the bathroom. Once Benny stopped again on the closet door, I turned off the light and told everyone to go back to sleep.

We didn't see Benny at all the rest of the night or the next day until...we came home that evening in the middle of the aerial show punctuated by cats racing back and forth in the room. I wish I had had the presence of mind to grab the camera and take movies, but I was actually laughing too hard. Once I composed myself I took action. I closed all of the doors, started turning off lights and herding the cats behind the closed doors. Small problem. My brain said, "get Julian and get him out of the room". Small problem...I tried to put Julian outside on top of the dogs. OOOoooPPPSSS. Farmer Jeff grabbed my arm as Julian was throwing himself into reverse up my arm. So much for Calm, Cool and Collected. (It is all done with mirrors!!!)

Once we got everyone secured behind the correct doors, we opened the front door and tried the "sweep him out" maneuver. We switched tactics when that morphed into bad version of "BatMinton". Farmer Jeff grabbed the tube leftover from the chicken coop linoleum, crammed paper in one end of it and then offered up the open end to Benny. After loud complaints from Benny he finally jumped into the ticket to freedom. Farmer Jeff carried/ran him outside, still in the tube, and then shook the tube until Benny came tumbling out. FREEDOM. Benny took off with nary a backwards glance. Whew...

In other news:
The 30 varieties of tomato babies, about 800, are poking their heads up. Needless to say, that is the first thing Farmer Jeff wants to look at in the morning and the last thing at night...and maybe 2 or 4 times during the day! Yesterday we did a thorough cleaning out of this room, aka the Mad Scientist's Lab. It is a much nicer and cleaner place to spend time.

This room is, not surprisingly, misunderstood and so is the crop! Last year we had a gas leak in front of our house which required a visit through the lab. Farmer Jeff wanted to make sure that the utilities guy understood that we were growing TOMATOES...not that other famous cash crop. The guy just laughed and said, "it's okay, dude, I live in Mendocino. Don't worry about it. I won't say anything". Farmer Jeff TRIED to tell him that THESE ARE TOMATOES...but the guy just waved him off, "don't worry, dude". Oh well...

The composters are in full tilt boogie. We are monitoring the temp and moisture content daily and now Farmer Jeff is intent on building our own tumblers out of 55 gallon oil drums. There is something to be said for his upbringing. Farmer Jeff is a third generation farmer and carries with him the can do/can figure it out spirit that is so essential to survival. I stand is awe of him, his ingenuity and his tenacity.


Yesterday was the first time I had ever seen Chloe and Ginger sleeping together, so I had to get a picture. I have always worried about having 2 females of the same specie together and there have been some turf wars since Chloe moved inside. It seems as though we may have had a serious breakthrough. I really hope so. Ginger needs all the love and support she can get.




Last night, when I took Callebaut to emergency, our dear, little den-mother, India, flipped out. Callebaut is her alpha and omega/all and everything, and she is NOT happy when he leaves without her. Farmer Jeff stayed behind last night to get some very necessary sleep (he had to be at work very early today) so it was up to him to calm her down. Ultimately the only thing that worked was allowing her to get up on the bed and then curl up on MY pillow right next to Daddy. She settled down after about 10 minutes, but was up and at Callebaut's side right after we arrived home. Once she saw that he was okay, she settled down on her couch and went to sleep.


We can't do a blog on the kids without talking about the darling Tasso. He is such a love. He just wants to cuddle, smile, play, sleep on the bed, be adored and be king. Well, he can't be king 'cause that is Callebaut's position, but he is certainly our fine, young prince. I couldn't decide which picture was cutest, so here are two!
PS: I can't sign off today without a picture of Julian, aka J-Boy, Sputnik, Gray boy, who was kind enough to keep me company in my office/crafts room between bags of fabric!