Missing Willow Farm

Here’s the one watermelon we were able to grow this year.  A miniature variety?  Nope.  Just an example of what not to do.  What’s amazing is it was delicious inside.  It’s bigger than the pumpkins we were able to get this season.  The vines were gorgeous but, despite our best efforts, the bugs got them.  We sprayed everything we had on a daily basis, picked the bugs off and removed their eggs from the leaves every morning and they beat us anyways.  We think it takes something non-organic to defeat them and are considering getting an aresenal of the bad stuff and moving the pumpkin patch to our back yard next year far from everything else we grow for food.

The dehydrator is going pretty much 24×7 these days to process our hot pepper melange into our own special blend of hot pepper flakes.  The house smells divine!  We have a bumper crop this year.  The largest peppers on the right are pimentos.  Those are stuffed with cheese and roasted.  I’m going to try to freeze a few stuffed ones to try this winter.

My freezer is full of lamb and tomatoes.  Not a bad situation at all!  I also found some time to can 6 quarts of them in the middle of our water issues.  Where there’s a will…

After 2 weeks, an electrician, a plumber, a well company and 700 feet of electrical wire, our water woes appear to be over.  We’ve been suffering with a minute of water flow from our well followed by 30 seconds of no water.   Laundry has been piling up, dishes have been washed by hand and showers have been ever so interesting.  There are jars of water everywhere.  A pressure switch and check valve have been replaced, and the electrician has been called to come pick up his 700 feet of unnecessary wire.  Of course, the final step of the fix required bleach to be poured into our well so we’re still drinking bottled water and only washing our whites for now.  To pile onto the misery, we suffered a power outage during this mess the day after we took our generator in for repair.  We need a vacation.  Somewhere with lots of champagne.

Our chickens occasionally gift us with a double yolker.

Our peppers are just starting to come in full force.  I’ve been stuffing the pimentos (bottom photo) with cheese and roasting them.  The smaller round ones are some sort of cross from seeds saved from our garden last year.  I suspect a ghost pepper/red caribbean habanero cross.  I tried stuffing and roasting a few of those and the heat almost killed me.  Those are going right into the dehydrator for pepper flakes.

We had a big rain and they started leaning on our garden fence so we took them all down.  Some for display, some for seed saving and some for our chickens.  They are eating well this Summer.

The annual event that we manage for a friend ended this morning.  I went through the photos on my camera and found that I was probably busier than I realized this year.  I think I just grabbed my camera on occasion for some photos in the kitchen pavillion.  Fried pies for breakfast, brisket, some fresh ingredients and a slab of pimento cheese.  Three days of amazing food, wine & music.  I’m tired.

We were last weekend and ate at Ed’s Lobster Bar in lower Manhattan.  The lobster roll is epic and worth the trip!

This little sweetheart joins us for dinner every evening.  We sit out on the back deck watching Food Network shows while we enjoy our meal and she comes right up to the edge of our deck behind our chairs to munch clover in the yard.  I think she has a crush on Bobby Flay.  🙂