Weekly bird in the hand

Here's this week's good stuff - the things I am grateful for:

• A passerby who wished me "have a great afternoon".
• Spending time with good friends who are up visiting us for the weekend.
• Taking a class and learning something new.
• Going to my friend's art show.
• Warm weather (helping the grapes along) and still enjoying eating dinners outside.
• Cooking quince and enjoying all their flavors.
• This time of year. I just love it.
• Picking fruit off the vine or tree and eating it, warmed by the sun.
• The conversation between myself and my hair stylist.  It's such a different relationship from all others and  I always look forward to our chats.
• Seeing frogs jumping.
• Planning our trip back to the UK in 3 weeks time.
• Sharing green smoothies with friends!

One thing I am sad about this week however is that our friends from England who were due to arrive yesterday and share the grape harvest with us, had to cancel their trip due to ill health.  Here's hoping J gets better soon and that they can come another time instead.

Hope you've had a week full of things to be grateful for too.

Weekly bird in the hand

Here is this week's bird in the hand - all about food:

• Harvest time.  It seems my week has been full of fruit from our garden - apples, pears, green table grapes and now the figs are just ripening!  What a perfect time of the year. And the main grape harvest is yet to come!
• My aga.  The aga is our stove in the kitchen, but we don't use it in the summer when the weather is too warm.  This Monday I turned it back on and it's like a friend has returned to stay!  Yummy...lots of baked sweet potatoes, roasted vegetables, tasty comfort food...and a place to warm yourself when you come in from the cold.

My colorful Aga cooker

• My dehydrator. It's been working flat out this week!  I have an excalibur dehydrator - a wonderful machine, and it's been busy dehydrating apples, grapes to make sultanas (golden raisins), and blended grapes to make fruit leathers.  The last of the sultanas and grape leathers are finishing as I type this...then it's back to more apples.   We are eating the pears fresh as they are so heavenly and juicy, but if we can't keep up with them, we may have to start dehydrating them too!

Dried yummy apples from our trees

Hope you've had a fruitful week too!

Our own sultanas in the making!

First harvest of September - Green Anjou Pears

First harvest of the month today was picking the small Green Anjou pear tree.  Even though the tree is small, it had plenty of fruit on it - 20lbs of pears. 

We have another pear tree that needs picking soon - with dark red anjou pears, but that'll wait for another day. I think these will head for the cellar to keep cool!

Guess we'll be having lots of pear green smoothies in the near future ( yes we still have green smoothies every day!) and I'll also dehydrating be some as we loved our dehydrated apples and pears last year!  What is your favorite pear recipe - do let me know and I'll give it a try!

Are you harvesting anything?

Oranges and Lemons

Despite the grape harvest been over, we are still enjoying our homegrown fruit as much as ever. The figs are still going strong (and so are we!!!); the apples and pears that we stored are being used and enjoyed with individual pear tatins, apple butter, baked apples, and with cheese; and our latest delight are the citrus. The lemons and limes are just gorgeous! Our limes are so strong in scent and taste. You can imagine what fun our cocktail hour is. I sit here typing this with my little cocktail in front of me and the wonderful citrus scent just makes your mouth water!


The oranges, grapefruit and mandarins are not ready yet - but wow, our little grapefruit tree is laden down with fruit. Not sure it can withstand the weight of all it's fruit, but it seems so sad to thin citrus. We try and thin out our orchard fruits, but you don't normally need to do citrus. Our grapefruit "tree" (more like "little plant") needs to do some weight training I think!


I recently made this "oranges and lemons" necklace for a friend of mine. She lives in the land of citrus in Florida. Did you used to sing the nursery rhyme "oranges and lemons" when you were young? I suspect it's just a British rhyme as it is talking about the church bells around London. It's starts off so nicely, sung in a way to emulate bells....but then gets quite sinister:

“Oranges and lemons” say the bells of St. Clements,
“You owe me three farthings”, say the bells of St. Martins
"When will you pay me?" say the bells of Old Bailey
"When I grow rich" say the bells of Shoredithc
"When will that be?" say the bell of Stepney
"I do not know" say the great bells of Bow
"Here comes a candle to light you to bed
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head
Chip chop chip chop - the last man's dead."

There's a little dance with children going under the arms of others...and then the arms go down when you get to the "chop off your head" part! The last three lines are because the Great Bells of Bow were used to time the executions of a prison nearby which for many years were done by beheading. The "here comes the candle" was when the warden would tell the prisoner the night before that his time was up. The executions commenced when the bells started chiming at 9am. When the bells stopped chiming, then the executions would be finished until the following day!


Gosh, the sweet little songs children are taught! I remember singing and dancing to it....but never did question the lyrics.

Anyhow - I hope this doesn't put my friend off wearing it. Maybe it's best to think of just how lovely those citrus are in your cocktail instead!


Cheers!

The harvest continues......

Well it may be December with frosty mornings, but our harvest still continues!

We still have gorgeous roses blooming - and John even picked me a sweet pea this morning - and it still has it's amazing perfume as though it were the middle of summer!


Winter is a wonderful time here - just when you expect everything to die back, we get rain after months and months without any - and so some things seem to just come to life! All the grass goes from gold to green - and the hills look so lush again.

We still have quite a few flowers out - especially the roses.....

And now we are harvesting persimmons, mandarin satsumas, limes, lemons,.....just had a grapefruit for my breakfast, picked fresh off the tree......


The oranges are not quite ready yet - but we can wait :=D

What a bountiful place we live in. Santa will be able to pick up some healthy snacks for himself and the reindeer when they call by tomorrow night......

Harvest time

Harvest started this morning!


Our vineyard management crew arrived early and are busy picking the top part of the vineyard.

As you can see from the photos, the leaves are changing colour and this indicates that they have stopped making sugar and are shutting down. The grapes are therefore as sweet as they will get - and measuring their "brix" level - sugar level - they seem to be great.





The harvest is lighter than previous years but this seems to be the same throughout northern CA this year.

I've just wandered the vineyard and it's always such a happy day. You hear the chat of the vineyard workers - in spanish - but it always sounds happy. I've never been out there when they don't sound cheerful. Some singing, some joking, and plenty of talk that I can't understand! Yet they work so hard. They cut quickly, using a curved knife, put the grapes in small bins then when their bin is full, they put it in half ton bins on the tractor.

In a couple of the photos you'll see my husband next to the tractor, talking to the crew organizer. They are discussing which grapes to harvest. The sugar levels have been measured throughout the vineyard and these determine which grapes get harvested. The levels vary depending on the position, so today they are hoping to harvest 5 tons from the very top and then down the right hand side. The other grapes will continue to ripen and increase their sugar levels until they are harvested next week. As our vineyard is on a slope, the top ones always ripen first - and have the best flavours!

We have now picked 3 tons - one of the photos shows 3 half ton bins on the truck and then another three full bins on the driveway with Chris the vineyard manager driving the tractor with three more empty ones, ready to be filled.

Well- this ends today's viticulture lesson! Hope you like the photos and get a sense of the day!

Green grape harvest II

We've just harvested the green grapes....not many this year - but still nice to do it. But it's hot out there already! Phew! need to cool off now...

That's my husband in the photo in his new "merlove" tee shirt! And it's his hand with the yellow curved knife that you use to cut the bunches off with.

After we picked the few green ones (this year we got many more from our arbor) we then did some sampling of the vineyard checking the brix level of the merlot grapes in different areas. I took rows 8 to 14 above the oak tree and then did the center section too. As you sample, this is meant to be a random thing, so you try and find a representative sample. The grapes are then "mushed" up (very technical term!) and a little of the juice is put in a refractometer and from that you can read the brix - which is the sugar content!

This is useful to guide the decision on when to harvest. It's not only the brix important - other things too - like acid levels etc - but brix is a good indicator.

In previous years, our buyers have only wanted one harvest so some of the grapes were a little over ripe and some were under ripe and some were just perfect. We sell to Havens now and they like to harvest different sections at different times as they ripen at different times. Normally we harvest the top section first ( most of the vineyard is on a slope), then above the oak tree, then generally the rest is pretty much the same as it is on just a gentle slope or no slope at all.

The brix today are: 24.1 for the top section - that means we may be harvesting those next week. The ones I sampled are 22.2 and 22.8 - so probably a couple of weeks yet before they are ready but as we've been having such hot weather lately...who knows.....

Green grape harvest

A morning for some grape harvesting - but green grapes, not merlot!

There are three rogue vines in our vineyard - with white grapes instead of red ones. They were mistakes when the vines were planted. I think two are Gewurztraminer and one is Chardonnay. They are no doubt ripe - as our merlot is just about ripe in some areas. The tricky part is finding them in the hundreds of other vines - and then two of them are in a really awkward position - so it's like risking life and limb just for some grapes! But I do it!! We will probably then juice them and be drinking our grape juice for a while.....

Then, later this morning, we are going to go to the coast for a picnic. My brother in law is with us at the moment and the weather is really too hot to do much outside...but it will be nice at the coast.....

Anyhow - sorry the photo is of our merlot grapes - but I'll take my camera with us now and try and get some of the green grapes....

Full of Treasures

I can't believe it's the end of August. It hardly feels like I've started August. Where do those days disappear? But one stroll around the garden where you see all the ripening pears and apples and grapes and yes, there's no doubt that it is the end of August.

What a bounty of yummy fruit! And that pleasure you get from eating something that you have grown - never mind the extra pleasure when you eat it straight off the tree, warmed by the sun.....

Everyday we are picking a bowl full of tomatoes. They are the sweet 100 ones - yes, it's like a hundred a day! We leave them out in a bowl in the kitchen and they are just a tasty little snack as you walk past! By the next day - they are just about all gone and we go and collect some more! We aren't quite as good at eating up the apples. I guess apples come down the list for me and at the moment they compete with the pears and I think the pears win! But I'll cook with the apples.. make some nice chutney, some pie mix, and last year I made pear and apple marmalade which is my favourite marmalade ever - so I guess I'll do some more of that.

But right now, I'm holding out for the figs.... Ah...a warm fig fresh off the tree. I don't think I ever had fresh figs before moving here and we now have three trees - two green figs and one brown. The biggest green fig tree just has the most tasty figs ever. There is alot of fruit on the trees but they still need another couple of weeks to ripen. I think we might cook with their leaves tonight though - if you wrap fish (I'm going to buy some wild salmon) in the leaves and cook them on the barbecue the leaves not only give off this lovely coconutty smell but impart a delicate flavour to the fish.

(Oh - my husband just brought me in half a Gravenstein apple! Juicy, sweet and crisp! He's been strolling around the vineyard and maybe he knew what I was writing about!!!).

So the garden is just full of treasures! Bountiful treasures everywhere you look. And therefore my "full of treasures" necklace is shown here. It is designed to look like a bag/purse and inside are lots of little garnets - the treasures. Looks like it could be a fruit collecting bag, full of plums or grapes or maybe our dark red pears..........What treasures are you gathering from your garden right now?