When the cat's away, the mice will play

So they say.....

But not if you live on Seven Cats Farm! The Lovey was away on business last week and what did I do? Farm, of course. But I also visited a farm! High Ground Organics had a U-pick on their strawberry field. SincIe strawberries are not yet a part of my farm (and strawberry jam is the Lovey's most favorite of jams), I decided to go wild and pick a bunch!

A bunch turned into 20 pounds of strawberries! Yummy!

I have a new canning book, Canning for a New Generation. I got the book because she uses little to no pectin in her recipes. And when she does, she makes her own from apple peels and such. My kind of gal. She also doesn't use a ton of sugar. So I thought I'd break in the book with a jam recipe.

I made two batches, one with a bit of lemon zest and one without. Both are wonderful. The consistency is more of a spread and less like the really thick, globby result that I get with pectin. And less sugar makes it taste like strawberries instead of like candy. I like both - the tart sweet of the lemon and the regular non-lemon jam, but the verdict will be made by the Lovey. After all, this is his thing. My bet is that he will go with the more traditional, non-lemon one.

And, just in case you're wondering, 20 pounds yielded 22 half pints. That will hopefully last us the year!

10 pounds of apples equals how many half pints?

13. Thirteen half pints of really yummy apple butter. We're giving it to our Thanksgiving guests. :-)

 

Sauce

'Tis tomato season at the homestead and Full Circle Farm. LOTS of tomatoes are ripe and need to be processed in some way. So, I've asked my Lovey's Minnesota Farmer Friend (MFF... also his BFF, but I like the sound of MFF much better!) for he and his lovely wife's tomato recipe. We have a ton of empty quart jars ready to be filled for use over the course of the year, until next year's bounty. Soon we will have a massive sauce production kitchen going! Until then, I will do small batches of my own concoction!

Catching up

Hey there!

It's been a long time since I posted. I've been BUSY!!!!!

In late July I went to the Golden Gate Fiber Institute hosted by Carolina Homespun. It was an INCREDIBLE experience. The location was BEAUTIFUL.


The two courses I took were Spinning with Judith MacKenzie McCuin. If you ever get the opportunity to take a class with her, TAKE IT! She is an excellent teacher, no matter at what skill level you are at. At this 6-day course, we worked with hemp, flax, mohair, rabbit, camel, bison, tencel, bamboo, and several different breeds of sheep wool. I learned how to thigh spin (did you even know there was such a thing???)


I also took a natural dyeing class with Darlene Hayes, owner of Hand Jive knits in Davis. What a great woman and teacher she is as well! We came home with 13 skeins of natural dyed yarns in colors from brown (walnut husk) to blue (indigo) to red (cochineal), and everything else in between.

When I came home, harvest was in full swing. In my garden, we had so many beans, that we canned 9 pints for winter use. That got me to thinking that if we have 9 other things to winter over (canned corn and harvested butternut squash), plus produce from our winter garden (chard, broccoli) we could last over 2 months and have a different veggie every night during a week. There is some work to do, but it's a thought.

Harvesting at the farm is HUGE and occupies at least half our days. We now harvest for our on-site farm stand that is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 5:00 - 8:00 pm. So far, our largest nightly sales have been in excess of $500! We also began a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Folks can purchase an agriculture share for $300/ every quarter and pick it up on Wednesday evenings. We currently have 22 CSA members. Exciting! And every Tuesday, Mike Miller, the chef owner of Travese in Los Gatos http://www.trevese.com/ is coming to the farm to choose produce for his restaurant. Pretty cool.