September 19, 2012 - Morning Song Farm

Notes From Your Farm

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I’m pretty excited about the enhanced quality of our Harvest Ticket this week. Ever since starting our blog here at www.blogspot.com, we’ve had problems downloading images created in Word, which is where I’ve found it’s easiest to create our tickets. I’ve jumped through all kinds of hoops, and blogspot usually says it’s not in the right format. The only way I could figure out how to get blogspot to accept the image, was to scan and save it in a format blogspot would accept, with an unavoidable, ensuing quality reduction . I’ve just discovered Gimp2, which is a free software program that can change formats, and it works!

 

Passion fruit this week!
Passion Flower

For those of you who have been with us since last year, this is old news; but here’s what you need to know to enjoy your passion fruit. First, the uglier, and more wrinkled, the better. Where else are you going to hear that sentence? Yup, the smooth, fresh looking fruits should be left on your counter to “age” a little, although I often can’t wait and eat the unwrinkled ones anyway.  They sweeten a little as they wrinkle up. I cut the very top off each fruit with a serrated knife, and sprinkle a tiny bit of stevia in the cavity. Then just scoop out with a dessert spoon and enjoy. Although it won’t win any beauty awards, or even “smooth as pudding awards,” for that matter, the taste is explosive and the explosive taste is why people wait all year for the 2 or three week harvest we provide.  We grow the commercial Frederick variety, although if you can find “Bountiful” they are bigger and just as tasty. Passion fruit is an easy to grow vine for southern California, and offers one of the most beautiful flowers ever. The vine does require a fairly sturdy trellis. And keep an eye on it, because it will completely take over nearby structures or even fruiting trees.

Apples!

This week is the first of our apple harvest. You’ll find green cooking apples (the common Granny Smith) in your boxes this week.

We had plenty of Swiss Chard, or so we thought, for all boxes. Unfortunately; the row we had earmarked to harvest this morning has been impacted by aphids, so we could only harvest from yesterday’s row and not everyone got Swiss Chard.

Absolute last of the 2012 kumquats

OK, they aren’t gorgeous; as they’ve been hanging on the trees for months; but this is the time of year when I get excited about kumquats because they aren’t as sour, requiring less sugar or stevia in anything I use them for. Throw them in the blender with your next smoothie, slice over fish, add to a tomato chutney, or just enjoy out of hand. There’s always the kumquat reduction recipe (click on “Kumquats” at right.) I prefer the flavor of a cooked kumquat, and as a bonus; the aroma fills the kitchen and living area with a perfume I find irresistible. The very best use of a kumquat reduction is for a margarita!

 

Goat News from Morning Song Farm

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Carl the Menace has outdone himself this week and has exceeded even his usual level of nonsense and bedlam he provides us for our enjoyment. As the herd’s official “taster”, he takes the first bite of anything suspect and then the rest of the herd follows after him. I don’t know how he got this job. But there seems to be a herd consensus.  He ate all my Temecula Valley Pipe and Supply invoices this week (really just half of each—but to the IRS, half a goat-eaten invoice is the same as no invoice), saving none for the others. So I guess the flimsy invoice paper stock the invoices are printed on, is extra tasty. As I was unloading my car yesterday, I put my purse down for a second to shift the groceries in my arms and Carl pounced on my purse and bolted. That’s it, down the driveway with change, lipstick and Notes To Self flying in the wind. I cornered him in the goat barn, as he calmly starred me down with a $20 hanging out of his mouth. Here’s the thing.  Like the chomped on invoices, anything less than half is the same as nothing. I know this for a fact; as I’ve brought goat-eaten bills into my bank and that’s the rule. Trying to negotiate, I offered him a branch from his favorite tree. Carl’s eaten all the low hanging branches, so he needs someone’s help to get his favorite tree now, and I thought I had a chance at an exchange. Nope. Realizing that it must be a very special morsel indeed for me to be making such a fuss over it, Carl swallowed.  Not for nothing, son Frankie again remarked that goat barbeque is among the most common protein sources per capita on a world wide basis. I still have the email Frankie angrily sent over a few months ago, with a dozen goatmeat recipes– after Carl broke into the house and spent a morning in my son’s bedroom.

The loss of the twenty bucks pales in comparison to Carl’s latest offering a couple nights ago, however. As many of you who have visited us know, Morning Song is a hillside farm. Except for our row crop areas, there’s little flatland. We travel up and down the roads in little golf carts and when it gets too steep; we park and use footpaths. I used to make a big deal of always parking on flat land or finding a big rock to put behind the back tire every time I stopped. But as I’m shifting water I might stop a dozen times in 15 minutes; going  from one valve to the next, and have gotten a little lazy with the whole parking on flat land /big rock rule.  I parked by the goat barn at near level, and then hiked down the cliff behind the barn, flipping valves. Ones that were off get turned off, and vice versa. Behind The Goat Barn Avocado Grove has one of the most treacherously steep paths; I can’t ever flip lines at night; not even with a flashlight.  Reaching the very bottom, I heard a familiar sound from way up top that dropped my stomach: the “beep, beep, beep” of a golf cart going in reverse. Since it was dusk, no one else was out working; which meant only one thing. The brake release had been knocked off, and my cart was going somewhere without me. I screamed for Lance; but he’s in the barn happily building boxes with his headphones on and singing at the top of his lungs. You are just kidding me!!! I made a wild and absolutely hopeless break to ascend the hillside (while freakishly being serenaded with Lances’ private karaoke) . I made it to the top of the crest just as the cart went over the embankment . Luck, if you want to call it that; provided a large stone that got caught on the undercarriage of the cart and stopped the vehicle from plummeting further.

Carl stood looking on at all the excitement, stolen cookie bag from the cart dangling from his mouth, indiscriminately munching on cookies and packaging. Lance, still plugged into his earphones, still singing, arrived to bottle feed his baby goat, Boo Boo,  and asked why on earth I drove the cart over the embankment like that.  “It’s Carl,” I began….
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