Gentle Days

Today was a beautiful day. We can't believe it is late winter! How crazy is that with weather like this?

After feeding the masses for 2 long weekends in a row, Farmer Jeff and I are doing something a lot quieter. We are transplanting the 1,000 tomato babies! He has been very organized and written out planting maps for seedling trays. I have assisted by printing up labels for the transplant trays.



Once they have been moved to the trays, the trays are labeled, the labels are taped down to slow the water damage to the label, then they are numbered and moved to the truck. Why the truck? Once the tomatoes have been transplanted, they are moved over to the greenhouse at the other property we are farming.




I have never seen my honey so happy. He loves what he is doing. We are both grateful for the life we are leading. What more could we ask for?



(I just had to include a picture of our beautiful blooming camellia!)

Glorious Tomatoes

These are the very first tomatoes from our garden! The really ribbed ones are Florentine tomatoes and the really round one in the back is a Brown German. Farmer Jeff planted 250 tomatoes, all raised from seeds, which are comprised of 35 varieties.



We quickly went to work on these tomatoes and paired them with home grown Genovese and Opal basil, bufalo mozzarella (which can be found at our local store, the Cheese Shop) and then some lovely southern Italian olive oil which we carried home with us!














We have also been enjoying a record crop of stone fruit. We have already picked and preserved jars of exquisite Santa Rosa plum jam. I can't get over the color. It is as though we have captured a sunset in a jar. Did I mention the flavor? Farmer Chef Jeff summed in up best when he said, "this just tastes like summer". Boy howdy, is he right!

We are not the only ones that are thoroughly enjoying the summer produce. Our dogs and chickens LOVE whatever we are not eating. We are currently doing work on the house and in our yard, so we are keeping the dogs in a big dog pen. This has really worked out to our advantage because the dogs used to pick the ripening fruit right off the trees! We would be lucky to get any of the low lying fruit! While amusing, it is really annoying!

Nonetheless, I can't help but share some tomato bits with our beloved chocolate lab, Callebaut. He takes it so gently, looking like he is accepting a communion wafer. He is blissed!