Missing Willow Farm

Tis the season for scapes, the flower stalks of the garlic plant.  If they’re left on the plant, they will divert it’s energy away from forming a nice plump bulb.  We’ve been enjoying them grilled whole and chopped in veggie stir fry.

We only took a handful of sheep to shearing day this year.  Augusta is very happy to be without her winter coat.  The majority of our flock are kathadin or texel/kathadin mix and those shed their coats every Spring.  The second photo shows you an example of that.

We had THE BEST meal last night at The Landing Restaurant at Smith Mountain Lake, VA.  Here are a few of the appetizers that our party tried.  The ceviche was served with sweet potato tots and Peruvian corn nuts and was served in the most fun presentation I’ve ever seen.  The next photo is roasted sunchokes and shiitakes with watermelon radishes on a citrus creme fraiche.  Homemade potato chips with queso fresco and spicy pepper sauces.  A Peruvian chicken dip with fried tortilla strips.  We also sampled rock shrimp done both pad thai and wasabi style and had the best corn chower I’ve ever tasted.  Cocktails for our party included an amazing margarita, a spiced rum mai tai that I think I’m going to dream about, a cucumber martini and a raspberry and citrus vodka lemonade that I’m going to try to replicate this afternoon.  Later on, dinner for our table included crab cakes, house made pasta and meatballs and the best Chilean sea bass that I’ve ever tasted.  We spent the night at a condo on the lake and woke up to the most beautiful morning.  It was a meal to remember and I can’t recommend the restaurant enough for anyone who’s ever heading this way.   http://thelandingsml.com/

After a few days of working on this, Brian finished laying greenhouse flooring between our outdoor raised beds.  It’s secured with six inch metal ‘staples’ inserted into the ground about every four feet.  Our ground here is so rocky, it took him sometimes 10 attempts to find a spot with no rocks to install each one.  This will go a long way to keep weeds from our beds.  It unfortunately does nothing about the weeds that are already in there.

Our garden beds are fully planted, both outside of the greenhouse and in.  We are growing a little bit of everything this year.  As soon as the garlic gets harvested next month, pumpkin seeds will get planted in those two beds.  Brian has been laying greenhouse flooring between the beds in order to keep the weeds down.  We, of course, ran out of flooring so have more on order.  Once that’s done, up goes a proper deer fence for the first time ever.

We think we’re done with lambing and kidding for the year.  Shearing day is next weekend.  I’m sure Beatrice will maintain her reputation as the worse behaved sheep of all.

Our girls and grandson visited this weekend.  He had a blast herding the goats, who needs a border collie?  He remembered where the chickens hide their eggs and gathered every single one with no breakage.  Can’t wait until he visits us again!

I started milking Hermione this week and she’s giving me 1.5 quarts every morning.  I made my first batch of chevre but threw it away due to consistency issues which I am attributing to last year’s culture and rennet.  More have been ordered and will arrive soon.  That’s an AM haul of eggs, we get between 5 and 7 additional in the afternoon.  Just enough to keep our regular weekly customers happy.

The veggie seedlings we started a few months back have been potted up in peat pots and are becoming acclimated to the outdoors on our back deck.  I am itching to get them in the garden but am being cautious as we have a few weeks left until our possible last frost date for the season.  We have so much work to do on our raised beds.  We’ve got half of them weeded and replenished with compost from our barn.  We’ve purchased weed barrier for between the beds and have deer fence for the entire garden on order.

That tiny egg is one of our largest, the other one is a duck egg gifted to us by a friend.  It was delicious!  I start milking today.  Hermione’s last kid went to his new home where he’s going to live with lots of other well-loved goats and a few horses.  We need to get the remainder of our raised beds weeded and replenished with compost.  Our seedlings are raring to go and our last frost date is coming soon.  We purchased weed cloth for between the raised beds and that needs to be installed.  This is a busy time of year for us.