Dropstone Farms

It’s been a while since I’ve updated y’all on account of my professional life has been more interesting than I’d like lately and, well, it’s September, there’s vegetables everywhere. So some updates:

I found some neat little things to hold down floating row cover. They come in packages of six for $6 or three-hundred for $50. Oscar feels that I bought too many of them.

Oscar Regards the holdy-downy thingees with suspicion.

I am continuing to add to what I call Compost Island.

See? Piles of compost.

Here is my latest pile of grass and chickenshit and, in a maudlin touch, two bouquets of flowers. It’s already cooking around 125 degrees.

It rots using the magic of chickenshit!

Then I dug a hole to expand the chicken coop. Lauren helped some but, as the brains of this operation, she lost patience with the shovel and pickax pretty quickly. To rub salt in the wound, our neighbors demolished their chicken barn with the help of one of our other neighbors who, you know, owns an excavator. Heavy equipment is really something else.

It really doesn

Prior to digging the hole I had to clear a mess of brush. Oddly, it turns out that ferns have incredibly well-developed root systems.

My brush pile. Let me show you it.

Then I made a bold technological innovation. Instead of making multiple trips to feed the ducks and the chickens I realized that I could implement the Galvanized Pail® method wherein you fill a bucket with feed and carry it to multiple bird enclosures. I know what you’re thinking, but this is just the sort of out of the box thinking it takes to succeed in small-scale agriculture.

The chickens are distrustful.

Distrustful chicken wonders if the pail is edible.

And I’m working on a hooky hanging thing for hats and the like.

I made it. FROM METAL!

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We’ve been processing tomatoes, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

… a little at a time. We don’t have a pot that holds more than four quart-jars anyway so it works out.

We have also slow-roasted and frozen a couple of pounds, and have dried some too.

Pictured: Green Zebra; Ananas Noire; Black Prince; Brandywine; more varieties whose names I don’t know; some basil; an apple.

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Harvest moon dinner, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Corn: garden.
Artichokes: garden.
Cabbage for coleslaw: garden.
Bread: homemade.
Burger: from our cow.
Ripe Green Zebra tomato on the burger: garden.

The Harvest Moon is full tonight.

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Sad news today about lemon prices, which have doubled or more. It’s sad because there really is no substitute for lemon in most recipes. Occasionally a light-flavored vinegar will suit, if acidity and brightness are all that’s needed from the lemon, and sometimes you can use another citrus, but in that case it doesn’t really alleviate many of the issues making lemon prices jump, like gas prices and weather damage to citrus crops.

Fortunately for me, I got two little lemon trees this spring, one a year-old Improved Meyer from Territorial, and one older/bushier one from the nursery. The younger tree is still growing its branches and leaves and whatnot, but the older one is pretty robust, except it lost a lot of its leaves when we first got it home. I learned it wanted to be fertilized! So I did that. Now it is happily leaved and it is growing me lots of tiny lemons.

My Meyer lemont ree, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Apparently it takes a long time for a tiny green lemon to turn into a delicious juicy cookable lemon, but it also (apparently) blooms and fruits whenever it feels like it, hence the tiny fruit, mediumly tiny fruit, and the blossom, all at once.

Both of these (as well as my fig and bay trees) will come inside in the winters, at least until they are bigger and hardier.

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Hey new chicken! Let’s have cuddles!, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

This is Mr. Klassy. He is a Polish rooster. He came from our friend in Seattle, who cannot have roosters due to noise. He is not crowing yet, but he is trying …

I am on my way to a Kitsap Community & Agriculture Alliance meeting right now. Local readers should read their blog and get involved! Meetings are the second Tuesday of the month in Bremerton. If you’re coming from Bainbridge, or anywhere in between, let us know and we can see about a carpool situation.

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I was sure it was just going to rain all through August (which it did) and into September and then for the rest of the winter, with no breaks. But it has warmed up and cleared up, and we have some tomatoes coming in after all. In fact, we harvested enough on Thursday to make two delicious pizzas.

We had a tomato taste test, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Unfortunately, I don’t know all their names, but, left to right, #2 is Black Prince — VERY delicious!; yellow (#4, let’s say) is Limmony, also tasty; #6, a favorite for 3 years now, is Green Zebra. One of the red bumpy ones (either #1 or #3) is a Brandywine and delicious as always. #7 is, I think, an Ananas Noire (”black pineapple”).

Delicious awesome pizza, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Background pizza: Red Tomato Pizza, cooked.
Foreground pizza: Funny-Colored Tomato Pizza, yet uncooked. Yellow, green, and black/purple/brown tomatoes.

Both have fresh mozzarella from the grocery store, and for sauce they have chopped basil and garlic, mixed with olive oil and some grated parmigiano — a sort of loose pesto.

There has been much more preserving around here. But most of it was today and I am too tired to post more, so, further updates … in the future!

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