We've had a beautiful summer so far. It's hard to believe how fast it has gone. We are sold out of potatoes at this point, except for what we will store for our personal use over the winter. We have sold our "Candy" onions to the HGP for the past two weeks. We grew Walla Walla and Red Torpedoes for our personal use from seeds we saved last year, from onions we grew the year before. Tomatoes and tomatillos are just starting to come on, as are our early jalapeños. We harvested our peaches a couple of weeks ago. Those that weren't eaten fresh, we halved, pitted and froze. I like to use them in my smoothies for breakfast. Our Santa Rosa plums will be ready this week. Estelle ate a few before bed tonight to try them out. Needless to say a pajama change was in order. She is also enjoying her Black Manuka table grapes for the second year in a row.
We already made and stored a couple of gallons of pear butter from the Yellow Bartlett at the top of our citrus slope. We also dehydrated two rounds of pear slices in our greenhouse. It maintains a perfect 140 degrees with the doors and windows closed. The kittens are now out, running free during the day, but we still bring them in at night. Yesterday, they came in absolutely covered in hedge parsley burrs, and each required quite a bit of lap time to clean.
We love our new pizza/bread oven. It is amazingly efficient. Nancy's Mommies' Group came over this week for a pizza party this Thursday, and today we had a wonderful collection of friends over for a cooking extravaganza... roasted garlic, flat bread, pizzas, potatoes with onions, and sourdough loaves all came out of the same firing. Ingredients included: two different batches of homemade cheese from Farmer Kiki's goats, caramelized onions, tomatoes, pears, roasted garlic, Jose's ridiculously hot manzano peppers and Jasmine's pear sorbet for dessert. We're really getting the hang of how to moderate the oven's temperature so that cheese melts before crust is blackened. And it still had enough heat tonight, hours after the flames died down, to cook Estelle a tiny pizza before bed.
Truly the best thing about this summer however is the steady stream of family and friends that have passed through and stayed with us. You know who you are, and it has made our summer special.
Abundance and gratitude...
