Summer Continues

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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...

Sartaj's Second Birthday

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Today was Sartaj's second birthday. He has switched from his large breed puppy food to adult food over the last couple of weeks. He continues to make amazing progress in his ability to intuit and anticipate what is expected of him in novel situations. He is also somewhat refining his target acquisition skills, much to the relief of the bikers and joggers that pass by the farm on a regular basis. We are grateful daily for his companionship.

Summer is flying by, and our plants are thriving. Estelle's sunflowers now tower over her. Over the last few weeks, we've sold potatoes to the Homeless Garden Project and also to Casalegno Family Farm for their CSA's. Red Pontiac and Purple Viking are pictured above. We harvest Austrian Crescent fingerlings tomorrow. Also pictured above, our Cranberry beans tower above their 7' tall cages...Lychee tomatoes, Cisneros tomatillos, Gypsy Bell peppers, Candy onions, Yellow Bartlet pears, and Wonderful pomegranates are all sizing up nicely.

And last, but far from least, our firewood is split and stacked not only for next winter but also for the brick pizza/bread oven we just built. The second coat of stucco just went on it tonight. (Yes, flashlights were involved). There's a bit more tile work and grouting to be completed behind it over the weekend, and then the color coat of stucco goes on Monday. A week from then, we can begin a series of escalating firings to cure its mortar, and then it's no-holds-barred until we all wind up on diets. Estelle is already anticipating holding a "dog party" for Sartaj with all of her friends. She says she will cook him "a vanilla cake with twenty eggs." We'll see...

Solar Farming

We were just featured on Residential Solar 101. There are some nice shots of the farm towards the end.

Three Little Kittens...

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From L:R-> Casper (named in honor of his late Uncle Jasper), Chloe & Luna. Casper is male, the others are female. They are still nursing, although they're spending more time independent of Opal. We're trying to handle them on a regular basis to domesticate them. They're still unsure what to make of that...

Summer Approacheth...

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Much has happened since our last update. The cover crop on the avocado slope finally got its summer haircut this week, and the entire citrus slope was remulched today as my birthday present to myself. We have completed our spring plantings of both annuals and perennials at this point. Estelle's flowers are enjoying their home in her new plot, and our peppers are taking nicely to our new beds as well. Onions, tomatoes and potatoes are all sizing up. (The prickly tomato pictured above is the fabled Litchi). All of the table grapes we propagated from cuttings this winter had great root balls on them by the time they went in the ground. Our landscape is fully in bloom right now before the the crush of the summer heat overwhelms its efforts.

Although Sartaj has shed his winter coat, he actively seeks the shade throughout the day and gophers by night. Our ducks turned 1 a few weeks ago. They laid 878 eggs in their first year of life, and we commend them for their efforts! Finally, in an extremely bizarre turn of life's wheel, our cat Jasper was taken out by a predator earlier this week. Then his sister Opal gave birth to three kittens three days later. She had a rough time of it, getting skunked in the process. We now have her and the wee ones safely indoors however and will post photos in our next update.
Happy harvesting!