Days 7 through 9

During work on Friday I went to visit a farm on West End Road between Arcata and Blue Lake. I took this picture of onions curing in the field - these are the red onions that we'll be selling at the co-op soon!

There's a lot to catch up here...get ready for a long post.

Friday morning I had yogurt with honey and my last peach from last Saturday's farmer's market. I've been having mint lemon-balm tea every morning as well. I even brought a little baggy of it to work. I get some weird looks, but it's definitely worth it!

For lunch I sauteed some broccoli and zucchini with some left over re-fried beans and salsa from the night before. Satisfying for sure! The salsa is pretty strong - I had garlic breath all afternoon at work.

After I was done with work, Johnny and I did a big co-op shopping trip. I got:

• 1 gallon of milk, 4 sticks of butter, and 1/2 pint of cream from Ferndale
• 1 1/2 pounds of ground beef
• 2 big Cod Fillets from Crescent City (Yes, I know this is Del Norte County, but I'm sure the fish swam in Humboldt Co. waters!)
• 1 bottle of red wine from Petrolia
  
• A really big block of cheddar cheese and a smaller block of Fontina from Lolita
  
• About 10 Dapple Dandy pluots and 3 big heirloom tomatoes from Willow Creek
• 2 eggplants and 4 regular tomatoes from Orleans
• 1 big walla-walla onion from Blue Lake (from the same farm as the picture at the beginning of the post)

I've been eating those Dapple Dandy pluots like crazy. They're such a great sugary snack! I've been appreciating fruit in a whole new way this week. It's really the easiest snack- just as good as a cookie when you get used to it.

After we shopped, we drove to McKinleyville to our friends Erin and Chad's house for some fresh eggs. They have a small flock of chickens and ducks - Erin usually has extra that she gives to their two dogs, but instead she saved them for me. I got a dozen total, two or three duck eggs and nine chicken eggs. The duck eggs are huge!

We didn't know beforehand, but Erin and Chad have a bunch of apple trees on the property that they're renting and they're ripe! There's a Pink Pearl, which is a small heirloom apple with pink flesh, and a bunch of Jonagold type trees. The trees were loaded with way more than Erin and Chad were going to use, so Johnny filled the front of his shirt twice like a bag.

We went home briefly and then drove to Eureka to run some errands. We were in a bit of a hurry to get to stores before they closed, so we didn't eat dinner beforehand. By the time we got home it was 8:30 and I was starving! Johnny made himself some nachos, and I boiled some blue potatoes and made mashed potatoes with butter and Fontina cheese. Comfort food if I've ever had it!

I got a call on Friday night from the farmer in Southern Humboldt who was featured in the Redwood Times article about wheat. He's willing to sell me a couple "sheaves" of wheat that I can thresh, clean, and mill myself for flour! The sheave is the actual bundle of wheat right out of the field. Threshing is the process of getting the wheat berries to separate from the rest of the plant. He recommended doing it in a 50 gallon garbage can. I had no idea what a project I was getting myself it to - but I'm excited about it! He had to call his farming partner to make sure it was OK, and then he'll call me back to work out the details.

Saturday morning the farmer's market was my first priority. I had some Prune plums with yogurt and honey and drove down the hill to market. Here's a picture of my haul:

• 5 big peaches from Willow Creek
• 1 HUGE bunch of basil from Blue Lake (once again, from the same farm I had visited on Friday)
• 2 Delicata squash and a package of Raspberries from Willow Creek
• 1 bunch of Peppermint and one of Spearmint from Orleans
• 4 ears of white corn, a big bag of red potatoes and a big bag of Devina potatoes from Arcata

Once again, I stretched the capacity of my shopping bag. If the North Coast Grower's Association are really serious about people shopping at markets, they really should get some shopping carts!

Saturday afternoon my friend Alisha and I drove down to an old apple orchard in Fortuna. The orchard is on the outskirts of town, and the man who owns it was born and raised in the house that's right next-door. He has a little farm store there where he sells fresh cider (It's legal for it to be non-pasturized since he grows and produces it on site.) and other local produce and foods. It's a great little store! Since we know the owner, he took us into the orchard to see the trees and his cider press. Alisha picked a big Mutzu apple - it was so huge that we shared it and could still barely finish it!

I also bought a gallon of cider, an "ice cream melon" (a watermelon that's light green on the outside) from Southern Humboldt, a pint of strawberries, and a pint of "mountain wildflower" honey from Willow Creek. It's the reddest honey I've ever seen! I'm not sure why - I guess the blackberry blossoms and other wildflowers around Willow Creek produce that tint. On the car ride back I ate the strawberries and we split the Mutzu apple. That, plus Ice Cream Melon when we got home, was all I had for lunch.

We had Alisha and a friend of Johnny's for dinner. Alisha and I did the cooking. It was nice to cook with another woman - and she's a great cook! You can really learn a lot cooking with someone else - new techniques that you might not think of on your own.

We started the grill and then made "veggie pockets:" little packets of chopped potatoes, onion, zucchini, garlic, and butter wrapped in aluminun foil. We put those on the grill and then patted out the hamburger patties. Alisha mixed some garlic and chopped onion with the groud beef beforehand - a delicious touch! We cooked the hamburgers and the corn on the grill and dinner was served. The veggies in the aluminum foil cooked to perfection- mushy, but in a good way. The corn was awesome as well. I couldn't have a hamburger bun, so I wrapped the burger with tomato and cheese in a big leaf of lettuce and ate it like a taco. It was quite good, and not as messy as I'd feared!

This morning I had the last of the yogurt from a week ago with some plums. Right away I started a new batch of yogurt and sour cream. Hopefully it goes better this time. My Mom recommended culturing them in a cooler, so that's what I did. I heated the milk and the cream to 180 degrees and then cooled it to 120, added yogurt starter to the milk and sour cream to the cream, poured them into jars, wrapped them up in dish towels, and put them in the cooler.
Hopefully that will keep them warm all day. We'll see!

We also started some apple butter with the apples we had gotten from Erin and Chad and some from the tree by our front door. Here's a picture of the Pink Peal:
They sure are pink - and boy are they tart! I'm glad we have the other varieties to balance their tartness. I cut up all the apples and started them cooking on low with just a little water. Here's a few pictures of the cooking process today:

Obviously, it's not apple butter yet, more like apple sauce, but it'll get there.

This morning I separated the rose hips that had been drying since last Saturday from their seeds and left them out to dry as well. They remind me of citrus peel. Here's a picture:

For lunch I had 3 of Erin's smallest eggs over easy with my left over potatoes from Friday night mixed with a little of the left over veggie pockets from last night. They are wonderful eggs! Way more substantial than what I got at the farmer's market last week. The yolks seemed especially perky.

Whew! Hopefully I won't miss two days in a row again. That was a lot!