Jam at last

You may remember last summer when Grace, Ryan, Lauren and I went extreme blueberry picking and ended up with 60 pounds of fruit with which to contend. We bought a deep freeze specifically for these beauties. I have eaten a lot of blueberry smoothies since then but still haven't made a dent in our inventory. Today I decided to do something about it: jam. I used up half of the remaining stash and got about 20 jars of jam. That's a lot of preserves. There was even a big spoonful left over that wouldn't fit in the jars, so I ate it warm with heavy cream. I can't believe there are still 3 giant bags in the freezer! Pie anyone?

Ducklings!

Well, thanks for your imput Kylie! We decided, with out doing any research, to adopt two chocolate indian runners named Chaka Kahn and Stevie Nicks!!!!! Welcome to fancy acre girls!!!!!!
So far they have played in their water bowl and made more noise than I ever thought possible. Like, so much noise. I am trying to tell myself that nature sounds are peaceful. Crank the volume on this video and you can hear them eating lettuce leaves and being generally noisy in the bath tub. They practically sound quiet here compared to their real life volume levels! They will live in our kitchen in a wash tub until they are old enough to join the chickens in the yard. Since we already have enough poop in our lives, we have decided to build a small fenced in area around the coop for all the feathered monsters to play in.  Hopefully this will help to keep them off the porch and out of the vegetable patch.

I can't get enough of watching them play in their little home right now. They squirt water with their beaks! They also love kale, just like me. It's love already. Now if we can just get them to imprint on Jacky....

Ducks or no ducks?

Let's put this question to the public- should we get ducklings??? We both feel like the answer is YES. Jacky feels like the answer is NO. Anyone have any experience raising ducks? Is it worth it? Pros and cons?

She shall live to see another day

Patsy cline has been the only chicken not laying. She has instead been acting like a giant bitch and pooping all over the porch. But, today she left us a gift in the quail (rip) condo. She's so LIKE that, you know??

Seriously Back in the Saddle

Here are some photos from our trip to SF. Dreamy...

The Dawning of Aquarius!

I just got home from an eating marathon in San Francisco. While I was there I visited the Edible School yard with Kevin, my mom and my brother. My auntie Esther works there. It was an inspiring visit to say the least. The kids were making quinoa salad with oranges. The gardens were blossoming and sprouting, the chickens laying and the ducks swimming. The sun was shining and we were together as a family. Really- we all wanted to move to Berkley immediately. I'm guessing this is not uncommon. After our visit to the school we went and had lunch at Chez Panisse. We ate fava beans, sole, beets, even a steelhead roe pizza. We ate dates and honey mousse! We drank wine from alsace! It was a dream.
What surprised me about my visit was that each friend I visited asked me why I stopped writing my blog. I didn't know so many friends cared about it, and I didn't know I missed it until I opened it up on my computer and looked through the archives. The pies! The breads! The animals! I'm back! Get ready for photos!