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What July should be

Monday, July 5th, 2010

Locally-grown peaches, sweet corn, green beans, eggplant, and tomatoes

You might remember that last year we discovered a whole network of farm stands and u-pick vegetable growers in Willcox…except that we couldn’t seem to find one that had anything when we were there (and they are a good drive off the main road). Well today that was all remedied when we went to Apple Annie’s produce stand and fruit orchard.

I am anxious to make some baba ganoush from the lovely eggplants, which we picked ourselves. (After seeing how big their plants are though, I’m less confident about my own.:) I am also going to make a peach pie this week with 10 lbs. of organic peaches we got.

They also had zucchini that were the size of watermelons, but we are well stocked on those from our own farm. They said that they will have all this stuff and more through October. We’re looking forward to going back. During apple season, I may bake some pies to sell at the farm stand.

We also got the rest of our furniture out of storage in Willcox and into the guest room. (We got the final cove put down this morning.) It is quite a bit of fun to have our own stuff back and to see things that we haven’t seen in a year and a half. I am most missing all my books and am excited to get them back on shelves.

When we unloaded the bed back at the house, you could see that there had been some kind of water leakage somewhere in the process. It was packed in a big corrugated box, but we were worried what we’d find when we unpacked it. Upon opening it though, we found that the whole mattress and box springs had been shrinkwrapped tightly before going in the box. Again, we thanked Charles our mover for his amazing professionalism.

After we got everything unloaded, we ended the day with a fire, chips and guacamole, and watermelon margaritas. The stars were amazing.

Great end to the week

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

Earlier in the week, I framed the shower and put in copper piping, while Brad worked on getting water run into the house.

shower

Brad and I worked on plumbing Friday, putting in a new pipe to take water from the water tank over the top of the container and into the battery house, where the pressure pump will be. It was the first time we cut through a roof, which is something that has been making me nervous, but it went well.

pipeoverbatthouse

pipeintobatthouse

Then, we had a picnic lunch under the cool of one our oak trees (yes, it’s finally getting warm!), before heading over to the farm for Friday harvest.

picnicunderoak

Friday is harvest day at the farm, something I hadn’t experienced yet. (Brad went without me last week while I was traveling.) The basic drill is that we get there after lunch and start harvesting, which entails cutting things like lettuce, greens, and herbs and digging up potatoes and other root vegetables. Then everything gets put in plastic bins and taken in to be washed, which is a big production in and of itself. Then everything goes into plastic bags and gets labeled for sale at the Saturday farm stand.

So far the marketing efforts we’ve been doing for the farm seem to be going well. This week we made a new sign for the farm stand, as well as continuing to work on the web site, email blasts, etc. The word is definitely getting out.

sign

I helped paint the cold box for the farm stand, which is a large trailer-mounted box that all the veggies are kept in. I also had a new experience of gathering eggs. Fortunately, I had two little kids to help show me what to do! At one point, one of the chickens flew up and landed on my upper back, causing me to shriek in surprise. The six-year-old girl assured me that had never happened before. We later joked that the chickens could probably smell my fear. :) I also helped label and alphabetize many jars of herbs, teas, and supplements that we’re selling. Happy work for someone as compulsively organized as me.

The evening ended with a great meal of salad and pizza with lots of fresh veggies and yummy cheese that Jerry made. He is quite the cook and appreciates good food, much like we do.