First fruits

First squash of summer!

Summer's first fruits are finally showing up here at the homestead, while the last of the fall crops are harvested.  The last of the carrots came out of the ground yesterday, along with some of the onions and radishes I planted in October, if you can believe that. The cool nights here really help keep things in the ground for a long time, which is great when you want an extended harvest -- picking a few here, and a few there, as needed. The carrots will be blanched and frozen today, along with some more mustard greens.  The rest will be eaten now, or in the case of the onions, hung up to dry and cure for use later on.

Big Ag is bringing home 20 pounds of apricots for me tonight, for canning and making preserves with this weekend.  And my first cucumbers and squash plants are on the vine outside as we speak.  I even found three or four raspberries and a couple of ollalieberries off my first-year vines yesterday, which I ate promptly, before the birds could find them.

Last summer at this time we were busy with two high school graduations plus packing and moving, so we weren't doing much homesteading, and it's funny how easily I forgot just how busy the regular routine of picking and canning keeps me, most days.  It's hard work, but it's rewarding work.  I've said many times that there's no sound better than that of a canning lid snapping into place after it comes out of the canner.  It sounds like satisfaction from a job well done and the promise of good things to come, all at the same time.

I'm working this Saturday at the winery -- hopefully indoors, because it's expected to be 103 degrees outside -- but after this I will be cutting back to working outside the home just one or two days a month (whenever the winery needs help most, if they do) and using the rest of my time to begin putting up our winter stores.

Good work, done in pleasant surroundings -- anywhere that happens, you really can't ask for anything more.

Today we remember them all

Will Work for Wine

Saturday and Sunday were two of the busiest days I've ever spent working anywhere, which is ironic, because I spent them at the winery where we normally go to hang out, kick back and spend a lazy afternoon under the oak trees, glass in hand.

It was good work however, with great company, found in the tasting room staff I helped and those I poured wine for.  And isn't that what work is all about -- keeping busy, doing something meaningful to you, with people you enjoy being around? So I count these last two days a success, and can't wait to go back and work there again.

And did I mention that for my two days worth of labor I received 7 bottles of fantastic wine?  Ya, there's that.

Wineries are interesting places because they run on making people happy.  If you work there, whatever you do, this is an integral part of your job.  If you're making the wine, bottling it or serving it, the pleasure of those who drink your product is always your goal.  That's a nice goal to have, I think.  Make people happy.  Simple, huh?

Well, not quite as simple as you might think, if you, like me, had no more acquaintance with the wine business than having spent so many happy hours  with a glass of something red in my hand.  Wine tasting rooms exist  to 1) sell wine, and 2) promote that particular brand of wine through providing for a memorable and unique tasting experience -- but those things only happen when some extremely hard work goes on behind the scenes.

This weekend, I did pour wine for folks, but along with that fun task comes the responsibility of remembering exactly where each customer is on that six-wine tasting list.  Did they already have the red grenache´or were they up to the cabernet already?  Did they order a cheese plate, so they could taste a little course with each pour?  If so, where is it? 

And what happens on the front lines of the tasting room is nothing compared with what happens underneath that smooth veneer of lovely people walking around with a bottle in hand, dispensing liquid happiness with each 1.5 ounce taste.  The sweaty, difficult work is all done behind the scenes, out of sight of everyone else. There's making sure everyone doesn't run out of glassware, plates and silverware by getting dirties inside and into the dishwasher pronto (while still serving a half dozen people or so wine, remembering what they get next, and making it all look laid back and easy).  There's the sweat and hard work in the kitchen, fixing up lunches for customers who order them -- which most customers do. (The food is to die for at this winery, BTW.  It's absolutely delicious, and is therefore very popular.)

And lastly, there's your feet, which are barking like a pair of dogs after six hours of standing and walking.  And while I found that, after one day, I truly craved a nice glass of wine when I came home, on the second day, what I really wanted was ... a cold beer.  I'd been around wine all day.  Busman's holiday and all that.

I did a little bit of everything this weekend.  I poured wine. I chatted with visitors. I washed plates.  I folded napkins.  I polished glasses in the cool, softly lit wine library.  And as with most work, each task held within itself a certain pleasure.  There was, truly, nothing I did which I could say I didn't like.  Even spraying dirty dishes before they go into the dishwasher is kind of fun (as long as you're only doing it for 15 minutes or so).

But you know, my working weekend at the winery was worth it, just to meet so many interesting people and get to walk around with a bottle in my hand, chatting with fellow wine-lovers.  Wine has been about many things throughout the centuries, but mostly, it really has been about enjoyment, and it felt good to help so many people have a wonderful long weekend in our area.

And it gave me a new appreciation for those who work on the front lines of the wine business, who spend all day on their feet yet still manage to make it seem like they are kicking back and rolling with things so easily, but who are actually working their tails off, never letting it show.

I don't know if I'd want to do it full time, but once in awhile, I'm glad I'm going to get the opportunity to join those folks and help out behind the scenes as well as out front.  Will work for wine.  Yup, that's me.

Broody

It is now clear to me why the words "brooding" and "broody" sound so much alike....it's because they describe the same set of moody and touchy symptoms.  Portia, one of our Buff Orpington hens, went broody about a week ago and I watched as her disposition went from gentle and sanguine to paranoid, antisocial and hostile. 

And as this is the first year we've been able to keep hens, I was at a loss about what, if anything, to do about it.  For the first few days I coddled her, letting her sit on a golf ball so she wouldn't freak out when I took her eggs.  In hindsight, that was a mistake, as it just enabled the bad behavior to continue.

So why is being broody a bad thing, you ask?  Well, its not, if you are a hen sitting on a fertile clutch of eggs and caring for them until they hatch.  But with nary a rooster in sight, Portia's territorial and occasionally aggressive behavior was having an impact on the rest of the flock.  No one was able to sit on a nesting box in her vicinity without her chasing them out.  She would randomly attack hens who got too close to her when I placed her outside to free range with the others.  She was not eating.  It clearly was having an impact on the entire flock, and that was what ultimately led to my decision to break her of the brooding urge.

The internet has a wide variety of suggestions on breaking a broody hen of her bad habits, and some of those suggestions are helpful, some not.  We did not, for instance, get her a fertile clutch of eggs to sit on so she could "be a mommy," because that would only have reinforced the behavior.  We needed her behavior to change, as quickly as possible, for the sake of her and peace in the rest of the flock.

Ultimately, two things helped.  One was removing her from the chicken run and nest box area and placing her in a separate area, in a large wire cage, with food and water, but no place to brood.  Brooding is prolonged by elevated chest temperature in the hen, and with a wire cage there was always cool air circulating around her.

Portia in solitary confinement

The other thing I did was bath her, from about the chest down, in cool water.  As I've had to give her baths before to clean her bum, she is not afraid of the water and did not mind this at all.  I left her in the cage and gave baths for two days before putting her back with the flock this morning, and so far, she looks like she's back to her old self.

Whether we women like to admit it or not, hormones do play a role in our behavior while we're of breeding age, whether we have Homo Sapiens or chicken DNA.  I can think back on times when my children were small and my behavior was, indeed, something approaching "broody."  I was protective, moody, inwardly focused and didn't want to be disturbed.  All creation, whether we're making another life, a painting, or a piece of writing, requires a brooding period. But probably not if you're a chicken laying infertile eggs.  Then its just an inconvenience.

It's for that reason that I won't be culling any of my hens once they age past the laying stage.  After living at the whim of their hormones for the first half of their lives, I figure its only fair to let them enjoy what's on the other side....no eggs to lay, and no brooding moods to manage.  

I know it's a time in my life I'm personally enjoying, so why shouldn't they get the same chance?

Kicking off summer

Everything around the homestead is growing well now that we're rolling past spring and into early summer.  The insect problems of March and April are now pretty much gone thanks to some liberal and regular applications of diatomaceous earth, and the plants which were damaged have rallied and are flowering.

This is when gardening becomes a pleasure and a profit; when you can design your evening meals around what's ripe for the picking outside.  Soon I will be able to have fried squash blossoms and farmer's market sandwiches (eggplant, squash, tomato, onions, basil, and feta cheese on homemade bread which is then basted/doused in olive oil and grilled like a panini, in a cast iron pan), two of my favorite summer meals.  

It will also be time soon to begin canning tomatoes.  If my kitchen is inoperable at this time due to the remodel, this may prove challenging, luckily for us tomato season lasts until about November, so eventually my excuse will no longer be valid and I'll have to get to work!

Herb garden is ready for picking

Tomatoes are getting bigger

Eggplant blossoms are so pretty

Soon-to-be monster squash

What Big Ag and I do when we're not homesteading

A job, or something like it

"Be careful what you ask for," was what the winery owner said to me Saturday night, at the end of a wonderful wine dinner we'd attended.  There had been fantastic food, dancing, and great company. In fact, it was so much fun that after most of the crowd had cleared out, purely out of habit I picked up a bar towel and began helping dry wine glasses as they came out of the industrial dishwasher behind the tasting room bar.  I guess you never stop being a Mom.  When the party is over and all the kids go home, you hang around to help clean up, even if it wasn't your party.  It's what we do.

And that was somewhere during that time that mentioned I really thought it would be fun to work at the winery, pouring for the guests and helping out with events, and that was when the owner told me to be careful what I asked for, saying he could pencil me in on the staffing schedule if I really wanted to work there.

But it had been a crazy night with much wine, and so I honestly was not sure if he was serious or not, until we went back today for brunch and the topic came up again ... the opportunity to work there, in exchange for wine, and help them out when they expected a busy day.  And if I enjoyed it, to eventually be put on a regular salary.

I jumped at the chance, and so next weekend I will spend Saturday and Sunday getting educated about the wines and learning the art of pouring.  I'm thrilled beyond words to finally be able to try my hand at this, to share my love for great wine with visitors from near and far and hear their stories, or answer their questions.

I'd be lying if I told you I'm not nervous about this new endeavor; it's nothing close to what I've done before, although I tend to believe my first career as a public relations person, my second as a teacher and my third as a journalist will stand me in good stead as far as meeting new people and remembering talking points about each wine, but time will tell.

Until then, I'm excited to check something off my bucket list that I've had on it since moving here.  When people asked if I was going to continue writing when I moved here, I told them no, I was going to work in a beautiful winery and make people happy all day long by pouring them wonderful wines.

Soon there will be a check in the box next to that goal!