DOUBLE BOOKED.
In addition to our lovely little blog, Jesse is happy to have joined the team over at Sustainable Kentucky! He will be contributing an article each month dealing with fermentation - pickles, wine, beer, kimchi, kombucha....you name it! Be sure to check out his first article here, and leave him some comments about what you'd like to see in his future posts!- Hannah.
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| (image from Sustainable Kentucky) |
MYSTERY FRUIT.
We've discovered this fascinating wild plum tree behind the garden only reachable from one of the more precarious spots on the farm––a giant pit of branches and mud. However, seeing some wine possibilities here, I decided to finagle a special harvesting tool (stick with quart container on the end), and see what I could glean. Not much so far, but we might couple this handful of fruit with some basil and make a little fruit mead soon. Or maybe I can talk Hannah into a pie once our oven is fully repaired!- Jesse.
ROUGH DROUGHT FARMSTEAD.
We need rain, and it looks like we need a good amount of it. The garden has become a dry, dusty and predictable place where everything is in basically the same rough shape it was the day before only less happy. Nothing grows, save for a few odd birds––beans, tomatoes and eggplant particularly––who seem to be flourishing. Mostly, however, everything just looks hot, sweaty and thirsty. And when it gets this way, it's hard to find things in the garden to do. Mulching seems futile because one good gust of wind will throw the mulch all over the garden. With the bizarre wind storms we've been having, it's not worth the risk. There are no weeds germinating, and what weeds were there, we've picked three times over (from a weed perspective, notably, the garden looks awesome!). Also, Kentucky has been a furnace this week. So needless to say, with not a lot of work to be done in the garden and being dangerous to do too much work anyway, we've needed to get creative to fill our days. Sometimes literally.Hannah's been painting and working on a new tab for the blog, while I vacillate between reading, writing, fermenting (got one last blackberry wine and some sour pickles in the works) and watching in awe as my wife works. In the heat of the day, we pull Wendell inside and try to talk him out of chewing on our possessions. ALL our possessions. The rabbits and chickens need extra tending around these temperatures so it works out that we're down at the house more. They both seem to be managing well, however, despite the heat. And the farm?––the farm is panting.Our forecast has pockets of promise, though nearly four weeks in, we're not getting our hopes up. At this point, it would take something torrential––five or six inches probably––to get us back to where we need to be. But honestly, we'd be happy with an inch followed by some more realistic temperatures. How's the rain situation in your neck of the woods?- Jesse.
WINE WORKS.
Blackberry season has indeed proved fruitful––pun only mildly intended––and now we have three different batches of blackberry wine in the works. We could probably at least get one more batch out of those bushes, but with four carboys already spoken for, we'll have to find some more containers. I added some beets to one batch––because why not?––and I'm eager to see how that one turns out. Beets are wildly healthy and a famous vegetable in the fermented world, especially in the Ukraine where beet kvass is a bit of a staple. Why not throw some into the wine?The mulberry wine is bottled, the blackberry wines are rolling, the oatmeal beer seems to be maturing nicely, and we haven't even arrived at melon or pear season yet... it's going to be a bubbly summer. And hopefully, if all goes well, a pretty fortified winter!- Jesse.
