Jam and Juice in Session
- Kim Malaj
- 33 minutes ago
- 3 min read
August was here and gone in a blur. We've been busy hosting guests in the Orchard Guard Tower, an engagement party (congrats to Art's cousin Denis and Melisa) and had a few relatives drop in from out of town. We are lucky to have some big fans of our little corner to share in the abundance of love flowed over to the food forest. We've been picking figs, apples, plums, and grapes all month and still have so much more.
The weekly decisions on what to jam, dry or juice became more about what jars and bottles we had available. By the end of the month we ended up with two rounds of fig and apple jam, fig jam, apple and plum juice, two rounds of apple juice, grape mushti wine, and are actively drying figs in the greenhouse.
The winter pantry is nearing capacity so the next few months we need to eat/drink more to create more shelf space. It's not a bad problem to have these days. The deep freezers got a restock of wild blueberries which means we got to take my favorite scenic drive and had a few guests tag along.
Art and his sister harvested sage from the rocky hills on the far side of the orchard. An essential herb and tea for most households here. It takes about ten days to dry out naturally in our hanging basket.
We had our first experience opening the waterglass eggs (distilled water and pickling lime with fresh unwashed eggs in a jar) from April. One egg toward the top had a hair line crack. We tossed the egg and cracked open a few more. All looked intact with no odor. So, we made a few scrambled eggs and they tasted great, but then the long wait began. Thankfully we did not give ourselves food poisoning. I would call that success.
Our food forest has many treasures ripe and still ripening. The cornelius cherries, fall pears, walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts, quince, plums, pomegranates, lemons, oranges, mandarins, persimmons, olives and jujube dates.
The pomegranate orchard is surviving despite zero drops of rain in big thanks to our well and irrigation. We've picked a few crack pomegranates and they are not quite ready.
Our grapes are enduring the heat. Some vines definitely look tired and others are thriving but we expect to harvest for wine a little a head of last years date at the rate we are ripening.
The garden has been pumping out peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, watermelon, melons, cucumbers, spinach, kale, parsley, and basil. We're putting the bounty to use and roasting a vegetable medley every few days. Between Art and I are eating a watermelon every afternoon. Our guests have enjoyed picking and eating from our garden.
The chickens are clucking and finding every working irrigation to lounge near to stay cool. We are averaging about five eggs a day. The littles are growing fast.
The bees are enjoying the sunflowers morning, noon and night. We've also noticed a few returning birds and some that are sticking around longer than others.
Piggies got some love from our guests. Plus, the turtles are still hanging out eating their leftovers.
Our monthly flyover shows our drought conditions a bit and a few bits of fall colors.
This month we also added two new Great Nephews that we are abundantly over the moon to meet. Welcome to the world, Rio and Rex.
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