A Great Season is Upon Us.

.

The season of friends coming along to pick berries. We are all looking forward to some trips to the blueberry farm again this year, but to jump start things off, Michael and I have been sharing our cherries and gooseberries.

We had some company over on Thursday morning to pick.





I'm thinking the gooseberry bushes are on the decline, so I really need to take cuttings this winter so I can propagate new bushes for next year. Though it doesn't take too many bushes to satisfy us, it's so nice to have them to share.









Then we went down and picked cherries and had pit spit contests. Here was the undisputed champion at probably near 20 feet. I could not even get close.





Yay, cherries!





Then Michael's friend stayed, as we would all join up later.





And another stayed and got sucked into an eggplant project. We chatted, we dipped and fried, and we ate.





Later that night, we got to enjoy these delicious round scones, complete with cherries. So moist and delicious!





Some of the girls enjoying chatting.





Examining a new machine.





And when the guys came back we said goodbye. Imagine the Walton's, and one can kind of see how our goodbye's go, as we all try to remember who we already hugged. I snapped the backwards shot as I was heading out the door, following some others.





Today is Shabbat, and we can sure use it. We are plumb tuckered out. The only adventure I want to have today is a nap, a swim, some slow meanders around the fields, and maybe seeing if I can turn a delicious pound cake I made yesterday into some form of Biscotti.

Happy Shabbat!

~Faith

.

Treasures!

.

I've been promising some cherry bush cuttings for friends, and I finally got down there today to get some.

Good thing, I've just about missed the time once again. But hopefully I got them just under the wire.

I have been wanting a mulberry tree for years. Whining about them this way and that way, I call it, 'Having Mulberry Whine". The thing is, they are so tricky to get what you want. Not only are there three different basic cultivars, but each one has so many variations that it's hard to know what you are going to get.

Up until last month, I'd never even seen one, or tasted any fruit. So I was really excited to do that at my friends' home then. I had debated about taking cuttings, but hadn't done anything about it yet.

I went down to take Nanking Cherry bush cuttings - don't they look luscious? They'll stay ripe on the branch for a couple of weeks, and they are soooo good!





But I was hot. Pout, pout. Even with my umbrella to shade me. We have had this weed tree in the corner of the fruit area for years. The neighbor whacked it off once, but a new shoot came back up on our side of the fence. Though it's always been in the way, it's been out of reach of the mower, so it continued to grow.

I finally noticed that it was producing quite a bit of shade. So I parked underneath it to mess with the cuttings.





Kind of a nice shape...





As I left, I realized that it looked vaguely familiar, like I'd been discussing this tree lately. I went back, expecting to see dingly balls, like Sweet Gum trees have, only it didn't.





It had mulberries!!!

Tasty ones, too! I ate the ripe ones. Here are a few green.





Michael climbed up to retrieve a few ripe ones for sending to a friend.





We continued on cutting slips to mail off. Kiwi, gooseberry, cranberry, blackberry, as well.





I'm no expert on cuttings as yet and don't expect them to make it, but I thought it was worth a try.

We need to have someone come out and harvest gooseberries. We've still got some in the freezer from last year.









Blackberry canes, filled with promise of tasty things to come.

Cherries!

.

This is what a young man looks like when he catches a nap while taking a short schoolwork break.





Our cherry bushes are really doing well this year.





Once indoor stuff was done, we headed out for cherry picking last week.





We always look forward to this time of year. We have the most wonderful times, sitting under the cherry bushes in the shade, eating, talking, spitting.. all the great stuff. The weather always seems to be so nice.

Here are the bases. We have three of these kind.





Michael decided to use a ladder to nestle up higher in the foliage.













Hey! I'm unarmed!









Get busy!





Here's my share of a couple of gallons of cherries for the day.





These are perfect for fresh eating, making wines, and making jams and jellies. They are smaller than regular cherries, much softer flesh, so pitting them is a challenge, and somewhere between a sweet and sour cherry in tartness.

We are eating plenty of fresh cherries, I don't drink wine, and we don't eat much jam or jelly so, when friends came over the next day to pick, we gave the whole lot to them.

And we got this beautiful and VERY delicious jar of cherry jelly!





It was SO good, as a matter of fact, that I may make some anyhow. We'll have to learn to eat more of it.

~Faith

.

Another lazy Shabbat..

.

Aside from the fact that I felt icky and gross and exhuasted and achy, it was a great day off.

Not much to report, Captain. Except some wind blew off some mulch which we had to fix.





The beach plums (I think) are getting bigger.





And on the other side of the path...





The bush cherries are doing the same.





See those figs? Yup. All those branches are dead. I thought as much, but hope springs eternal, you know?





Looks like we'll be using those loppers soon!

~Faith

.

The Promise of Clear Skies...

.

...was kept only briefly. We did our usual morning stuff of study and a sugary breakfast, using up some blackberries that were picked a little early..





While I did some clean up, Michael picked as much as he could get to again. A little squash.





Overdue okra. It's OK. We don't want to eat it anyway. And YES! You see grapes! They escaped the evil black rot. I'm not sure which of the 30 varieties these are, but they are french wine grapes. Yummy!





More peppers and cucumbers.





Then, he marked out the melons in our patch... 65 markers, but they only mark groupings, not individual melons. You KNOW what is going to happen, don't you... They will all ripen at the same time.





I put off doing the pickle relish, because it was time to get out and try to catch up on yard work before rain arrived yet again. We have counted 3.5 inches this week.

This is what we needed to tackle first. The tall, seedy grass nearest the herb and flower beds.





We mowed low and raked, then dumped the grass into the sink holes down by the cherry bushes.





Then Michael picked some of the blackberries.





This is looking pretty bad. I could not mow here nor in the vineyard until the berries were all picked and the canes tied up again. This took many hours that we did not expect to spend here.





Meanwhile, the marigolds that I never did transplant into the veggie garden are looking spunky.





And the sunflowers and cosmos look great as well. Too bad I've been too busy to actually go get bouquets.





I think this is poke weed. Natives to this area say you make "poke salad" with it, which is not really a salad at all, but cooked greens. It is also poisonous in a certain form, so I've not pursued this yet. It grows ALL over and gets quite large if you don't pull them up. I mean like small TREE large, and fast!





But moving on to the rest, I had to raise the mower up all the way. We will have to mow again tomorrow, lower, if it doesn't rain again. The mower kept cutting out from all the wet grass.





So here are the blackberries we got today; about 4 gallons.





I used up about 1 gallon making hot blackberry jam with our jalapenos.

Just used a simple sugar recipe. I discovered that the spoon test is to be done with a cool spoon, away from the pot... That would have been nice to know on my first go around.





Kind of a seedy place, here.





I finished the pickle relish and it turned out very well.









And then, while the last of the stew was reheating, I quickly tossed a few peppers into the dehydrator.

Jalapenos and sweet banana.





Habanero and um.... I've forgotten. Not very professional, is it. EDIT - Czech Black.





So we missed our home group tonight, getting caught in the blackberry patch, and I'm ready for bed.

Tomorrow I'd like to catch up before the rain, but I'm not counting on it!

~Faith

.