Every last bit

I love being able to use up the entirety of something - from "disposable" products, to electronics (my ancient cell phone just will not die!) to things we've grown. Since I'm down to working part-time for the fall and winter, I've been making myself useful around home when I'm here.

Yesterday I chose two 5.5 lb pumpkins as my trial run. I cleaned and baked them, mashing and freezing most of the pulp for later use (without having to start from scratch). We ate a couple of chunks with dinner, and the rest was incorporated into a loaf of pumpkin-banana bread (hey, that overripe banana came from South America somewhere and I wasn't about to toss it in the compost!) The seeds, of course, I cleaned and roasted with a little olive oil, salt, cayenne, and paprika.

The chickens absolutely LOVED the fibrous stuff from inside the pumpkins, and surprisingly, the skins as well (which had been cooked). Much to my glee, not one scrap of those pumpkins even made it to the compost pile.

Pumpkin harvest

The official count is in: 28! The three largest pumpkins came from one Howden vine; the remainder are Sugar Pie, from 6 plants.

Matt can hardly wait to get started carving some of them, but the rest will be for eating (and storing, for later eating!) I'm envisioning pastas, tarts, pancakes, pies, and the best recipes the internet has to offer.

Out of this world

Matt and I saw the most bizarre thing this morning, on our way to work. It was a little before 7:00 am. Heading south outside of Fort Bragg on Hwy 1, to the east we saw what we can only describe as an extremely bright, blue and orange shooting star. It was so low that our first thought was a plane on fire - but it was moving far too fast, and gone in a flash. My pretty extensive internet search leaves me no choice but to believe it was a meteoroid. It's nerve-wracking just how low it was. We were glad we were both saw it, or it would have been too unbelievable.

Of course the photo above is not one we took, but it's just like what we saw! Except that it was nearly light outside.

Funny stuff

The culprit:

Looks innocent enough. We picked this thing up at the feed store a couple of months ago for grooming the goats. They were happy to be brushed, but if they caught a whiff of the brush, they would bolt. We figure it's probably made of boar bristles or something. I left it outside, then in the barn, to try to air it out.

Last Sunday, I took it up again to find that of the goats, only Redwood isn't mortally afraid of the brush, although he will run from it when the others do. I left it on the ground, figuring that if they got used to it, it wouldn't be a big deal. It only took moments to find that the chickens are also afraid of it, and not for love, money, or cracked corn would they pass by where it lay. There was a chicken traffic jam.


A little disgusted, I took the thing out of the pen. But as the animals now clamored after me, rushing the gate like raptors on Jurassic Park, I had an idea:


Voila!

It was working like a charm, although Matt said he saw Redwood brushing himself on it yesterday...

Changing seasons - the bad news first

Last month's warm, late-summer rainstorm and subsequent muggy conditions appareared to cause the tomato - AND the previously-flourishing potato crop - to collapse and die. What actually killed them looks to my novice eyes to be late blight. Aargh. So many tomatoes wasted, just as they were ripening! And that was the last chance this year for a potato crop for us; risking planting them now would be folly since frost, too much rain, or residual blight could make all the necessary work of preparing more rows a collossal waste of time. (So we bought a big "harvest special" sack of taters from our CSA!) And luckily, most of the pumpkins were near mature before powdery mildew felled the mass of vines. We've left them there for now, to absorb what little nutrients the plants can still give before bringing the 25+ pumpkins in for storage.

The greenhouse is also undergoing its seasonal change. The bell peppers are done; the cherry tomato vines are looking tired (although still alive and producing a little, so they get to stay a bit longer). I took many of the randomly propagated perennial flower plants out of the greenhouse, and planted them in place of the fading annuals in the flower garden. I've divided some jasmine to make more for the yard, and started sugar snap pea, lavender, kale, celery, and cilantro seeds. I'm experimenting with planting a few other things "out of season," just to see what happens (e.g., some borage seeds I collected from this year's plants; cuttings from the carnations). I also rooted a dozen strawberry runners, even though I'm not sure if I'll be able to chill them properly to allow them to produce next year. But at least they are making a good hideaway for a fall-camouflaged frog!

The New Farm Name!

We knew from the start that Furlough Farm wouldn't be the permanent name. Before starting the blog, we spent a lot of time trying to come up with something. We looked all over for inspiration, but still hadn't settled on a name that we liked, that didn't sound pretentious, presumptuous, or cheesy. It had to be relevant, but not too bland (named after the town, for instance). And though some of the names sounded good in a tree-hugging sort of way, I knew that if I was embarrased saying the name out loud to Matt, it wouldn't stick.

A couple of weeks ago - after having spent time off-and-on using word-association websites, brainstorming all kinds of things, even the help of a business-name generation guide - I blurted out an ultimatum to Matt: We have to name the farm in the next week. He said, "Oh, OK." Opened the curtain. Looked outside. After 30 seconds, said, "Driftwood Farm."

All my agonizing hours of minute dissection of the meanings of words (e.g., "'green' is good, but so hackneyed now"), the long lists of associations and ideas... Matt just looks out the window at his massive collection artistically displayed around the yard, and bam! Farm name.

The plan for now is to keep this blog; if at some point I get the market business going (it's in the works!), we'll create a new page.

Taking pictures of the driftwood amongst the fence posts and tall grass wasn't as lovely as we hoped; so the photos here are from a little day-trip we took to the south part of the county (Point Arena and surrounding area).

So, everybody... how do you like our new name?