Missing Willow Farm

Our garden is 100% planted.  We’re trying some new things this year; daikon radish, chinese long beans and thai basil to name a few.  We even ripped out the honeysuckle down by the little house and put two fig trees in.

We have two kinds of peas coming in. Giant garden shelling peas and sugar snaps.

Baby purple kohlrabi.

Shallots and a few of our carrots.

Our potatoes are in the greenhouse this year.

So are our jalapenos and cilantro. I’ve been experimenting with thai cooking and use cilantro on almost a daily basis lately.

We planted six sunchoke roots in this bed last year. This year we have what appears to be a few hundred plants. They grow to be about 20 feet tall. We obviously have to get control of this situation!

When we visited Tahiti last year, I bought the fattest most plump-yet-still-expensive-considering-where-we-were vanilla beans.  I have a few projects in mind using them, first on the list is homemade vanilla.

I started by slitting a bunch of them in half while leaving their ends attached.

Using a sharp knife, I scraped out the seed ‘caviar’ from inside the beans.

The pods and seeds went into both vodka (on the left) and bourbon (on the right) then were stored in a dark cabinet. The jars were shaken daily.

Here is the clear vodka version after just one week.

Just two months later we have bourbon vanilla cupcakes with a bourbon vanilla buttercream frosting. 100% made by my husband Brian.  Who’s lucky?  This gal! 

Here are some artist trading card sized summer cocktail recipe cards to celebrate the day. You can find the how-to at http://gslcuts.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/summer-cocktail-recipe-cards.html

We’ve seen coyote, deer, beavers, otters, raccoons, possums, a bear and all other manner of wildlife on our property over the years.  This is a first.  Four cows strolled into our back yard last weekend.  Our gate was open at the time so it’s possible they walked the half mile up our driveway.  When they noticed us staring at them, they nonchalantly walked into the woods behind our house and disappeared.  Brian took a ride to see if any of our neighbors had a fence down or was out frantically looking for livestock but couldn’t find anything.

Today on the Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts Blog you’ll find a craft organizer I made using the rotating hobby organizer.  It’s already being used in my craft room.  If you want to learn how it’s made, check it out at http://gslcuts.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/circus-themed-craft-organizer.html

I am entering into the world of making croissants.  This is my second batch, my first went straight to the chickens.  The recipe I have is in grams, not teaspoons and cups.  I used a bakery conversion tool to translate ingredient amounts and they still came out too buttery.  We do have an electronic scale but it’s meant for the farmer’s market and only does pounds.  Time for a kitchen scale!

Today on the Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts blog is my Easter Basket Assembly in Miniature. It’s made from a hidden drawer book box. You can check it out at http://gslcuts.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/easter-basket-assembly-in-miniature.html