Dehydrated tomatoes

Last year I got some sun dried tomatoes from a friend/organic farm manager and they were super delicious! When we finished them I bought some at the store and they were not even close, not as sweet. I found out from my friend that she used Juliette tomatoes, so, this year when we sought out tomato plants I made sure we got some Juliette's. I've been so looking forward to making these, hoping they will turn out just as delicious as Kay's. In with the Juliette's we dried Roma's and a couple Speckled Roman's. And yes, they are delicious!

Pickles

We received a water bath canner for an anniversary present, and we have been harvesting lots of cucumbers so we decided to make a batch of pickles. We followed a basic recipe and added jalapeno, garlic, black peppercorns, and grape leaves. We will let them sit a couple of months and see how they turned out, hopefully it works because we are making more tonight!

Morning glory

Our greenhouse has not been getting any love from us lately. It has been overrun by morning glory's. Monica snapped this picture a while back and I thought t was cool.

Chico bicycle music festival

drive work drive garden drive work drive garden

ever notice that when you start doing something you like other things in your life don't seem as important and aren't as fulfilling?



today we picked all the beets that were left in the beet box, some carrots, MORE cucumbers, sungold and juliette tomatoes, 4 strawberries (the most to date) and 2 scallopinis. we did this in about an hours time. after driving and working 8 hours it was the best part of our day. although, today is Wednesday which means we went to the Davis Farmer's Market and The Village Bakery for a slice of pizza and that is always a treat!

More harvesting

We picked this first bunch of stuff on Friday July 3rd. Notice the 5 cucumbers, this is getting to be a daily occurrence.
We didn't pick much on Saturday or Sunday. But tonight we picked the first round of Roma's for us, plus another bowl full of sungolds. Just one squash today.
Tonight was a big haul of cucumbers-12. There are alot more that are very close to ready, so I'm sure we will get a bunch more tomorrow.
This is the first one of these for us also, Spreckled Roman. It looks cool, we see how it tastes later tonight.
Looks like time to make some gazpacho.

I can't believe this is our back yard

Brian made these cool tee-pee's for the Mediterranean Cucumber and Kentucky Wonder Bean beds.



Our Nasturtiums. I've been putting the flowers in our salads. This is the first time in my life I've eaten flowers and it's still quite a novelty for me.





When I look at this picture I feel like I'm looking at someone else's garden. But no, it's ours and when I look closely I can see the blood, sweat, and tears Brian and I have put into it.

failed camping trip

Last weekend we took off for an overnight camping trip. The Yuba River was our destination. Thanks to me (Brian) and some directions I got from the internet we ended up in the middle of nowhere, lost. We saw a cool ghost town (?) These buildings were on the outskirts of that town. We should have waited till dark and camped inside one, but we were on a quest to get to mother truckers for one of their famous sandwiches. The sandwich was worth getting lost.

We finally made it to the river, but unfortunately all campgrounds were full. We drove further until finally making it to the gold lakes basin where we cruised through a campground and found a nice spot, or so we thought. It wasn't until after we paid for it that we discovered it was next to a small lake and a stream. Sounds nice huh? It was until the mosquitos found out we were there. We through some food on the fire, and sat in the car reading until it was time to eat. We ate in the car and then went to the tent and tried to sleep. At 6 am we decided that we should bail out. We were on the road by 6:15. We stopped a few miles later to brush our teeth and snap a couple of photos of the sierra buttes.Our trip didn't turn out as expected but after looking at these pictures it wasn't a wasted trip. Expect the unexpected.

Daily harvest

This is two days in a row of harvesting.


cucumbers, sage, basil, sungold tomatoes, squash, plums(from over the fence in the neighbors yard), kentucky wonder beans, purple green beans, zucchini, crookneck, scallopini, salad greens, beets.