Missing Willow Farm

When we first started gardening here, I got just enough cucumbers to make one jar of dill pickles at a time.  Now, I make pickles every 2-3 days.  Just this week I put up 16 quarts on Wednesday then was back in the kitchen with canning gear on Saturday. I’ve been through 12 gallons of vinegar or more.   I pick every single cuke on pickling day then find enough to make another quart or two the very next morning.  I’ve run through every interesting recipe in my canning books and tried a few online.  I really wish we had a root cellar.

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For the first time ever, we have watermelons in our garden.  We must have started them late because it’s the third week of August and they aren’t near ripe yet.  We think.   We may need to sacrifice one soon to find out.  I threw out the empty seed packet so have no clue how big they will get or days to maturity.  Honestly, I didn’t think we’d get a single melon. Growing new vegetables causes some head scratching at harvest time.

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Jack went missing this morning which is happening more and more frequently lately.  He’s decided he’d rather stay near me during morning garden chores and chase bunnies in the woods and play in the pond instead of going to the pasture with Brian.  We figured he’d show up eventually like he always does until we realized (much later) he’d been hiding in the garden and got locked inside.  In related news, does anyone need a seven year old border collie who no longer wants to herd sheep?

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BLTs featuring our heirloom tomatoes heading to the back porch for dinner.  This is one of my favorite meals ever.

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An 8 course sit down dinner served the night before the event was amazing! The chef of Williamsburg Winery made the most delicious foie gras and duck I’ve ever tasted. The wine pairings were perfection.

Rapahannock River Oysters always brings some of the most delicious bites of the weekend.

Porchetta. A whole pork belly filled with awesome, rolled and roasted over an open fire.

Lamb and ducks roasting in the pit.

There was a photographer (and a lamb) available to take photos for a future Lambstock yearbook. This is the fabulous Cardinal Point Winery team.

Vivian Howard brought her production crew to film an episode of her award winning A Chef’s Life this year. The show runs on PBS.

Lambstock is over for another year.  No rain this year, just blistering heat all weekend.  Brian and I are beyond exhausted.  I didn’t get many photos this year (too busy!), just these few.

This is half of a raised bed’s worth of soybeans that we harvested this morning.  We cut off the roots and brought the entire plants up to our back porch where we could work in relative comfort.  They were harvested, rinsed, and boiled in their pods for 3 minutes.  Then we took them out back again and removed the beans from the pods.  Those were then divided into meal-sized freezer bags and stashed in our chest freezer for the winter months ahead.  We’ll need to do it again tomorrow.

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Again.  Pickling cukes, of course.  I’m thinking we might just take 2017 off from growing cucumbers.  We’ll surely have jars left next year.   The magic seeds are called Snow’s Fancy Pickling Cucumbers in case anyone is thinking about growing their own.  We bought them from Seed Savers Exchange, but I’ve seen them other places.

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Our cucumber vines continue to amaze us.  They have stretched across the cattle panels we have situated between raised beds and hang down for easy picking.  I’ve ventured away from my mainstay dill pickles and in the past two days have made sandwich slices, cornichons and started sweet gherkins, which has a six stage process spread out over three days.  I almost hope we hate them so I don’t have to make them again.  🙂

I took a fun class from my friend Lora over at http://cackleandhoot.blogspot.com/ .  We made spool fairies, which are made by decorating vintage images, painting on striped tights, adding butterfly wings then putting them on fancy wooden spools.  That jaunty guy in the center on the top level is mine.  The front of his spool holds a military-style medallion with the words “Hello Gorgeous” on it.  So much fun!

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We planted a few half beds of cucumbers this year and I think every single seed has become a thriving plant.  The vines are starting to creep up over the cattle panels arched between two beds, which means those cukes will be super easy to find.  The ones near the center of the cucumber jungle, not so much.  Brian and I both spend about 15 minutes hunting in there every morning.  I have already put up 22 quarts of dill pickles so far and these beds are just getting started.

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