Missing Willow Farm

We spent three days before boarding our cruise in Barcelona and were so happy to do it!  At the top of our list of things to do on our food and wine vacation was to visit Bodega 1900 for tapas.  This is one of the restaurants in Barcelona opened by Albert and Ferran Adria, known for their three star Michelin restaurant elBulli which was renowned as the world’s best restaurant for many years.  Since elBulli closed in 2012 and was way out of our price range anyways, we were thrilled to try something currently offered by them.

These are spherical olives made through a molecular process. It’s actually olive juice made to look like an olive. They were so good we placed an extra order.

House made potato chips? Yes please. They were served with a bottle of their hot sauce. I will eat potato chips with hot sauce from now on.

They sold canned seafood so we decided to try one. We selected the tuna belly in oil. It was served with a crusty bread and was delicious! We brought a can home which we plan to have on New Years Eve.

Snow crab salad with dill. This was served with a different crusty bread.

Ham croquettes with a glass of cava.

Strudel with baked apples and calvados cream. I adore calvados.

Chocolat truffle cake with hazlenut ice cream. Yes, a bite was taken before the photo was. It was yummy!

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We got away from the farm, and I mean really far away for a few weeks in the Mediterranean once again on the Seabourn Sojourn. What we really wanted to do was a food and wine themed cruise with Seabourn but they only do 1-2 a year and they are always either to a destination we’re not interested in or in a time of year we’re unable to travel so we decided to come up with our own food and wine vacation. Autumn is a really easy time for us to get away. Nothing much left in the garden, no seeds to plant, no lambs being born, etc. My folks were kind enough to come watch our place and they almost made it the entire time we were gone except they live in a direct hit area for Hurricane Matthew, so they left a day early to batten down the hatches. I’m still getting over jet lag and have mountain of laundry so will take my time over the next few days documenting our amazing travels. Welcome aboard!

Every year it’s my goal to grow a pumpkin.  I’m not greedy, just one is all I need.  I have failed miserably over and over again and decided this year to increase the odds by planting two full raised beds of pumpkin seeds plus plant some in the greenhouse and some along the edge of our property far away from our vegetable garden to try to hide from the squash bugs.  I bought new plant-based pesticides at great expense to add to our arsenal.  Pretty much everything I could think of besides getting a commercial pesticide license which allows us to use the really harmful stuff (and I’ve considered it, believe me).  I’ve been fighting squash bugs for months.  Spraying them, picking them off, ripping off the leaves that have squash bug eggs on them, looking under every leaf of every vine.  Every. Single. Morning.  Two days ago I gave up and ripped all the vines out of our raised beds, I couldn’t look at the insect-damaged vines any more.  October is next month and  we hadn’t produced a single pumpkin.  Yesterday I ripped out the ones in our greenhouse for the same reason.  Today Brian found this along the edge of our property while mowing.  It was growing on a vine that had every single leaf eaten away.  Happy early Halloween, everyone!

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Our beauty bush is just starting to change.  The colors remind me of grapes, they ripen from the color of green grapes to something that reminds me of concords.  I just learned from my friend Janice this summer that you can make jelly out of these tiny little berries which surprises me because I’ve never seen a bird or squirrel on ours in the 10 years since we’ve had it.  So beautiful.

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Beautiful morning glories from our tiny back yard flower garden.

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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.