73 this morning, with light showers tapering off. Not enough rain to even wet the ground but every bit helps. Now it's hot and so humid and hazy. Three H's and none of them welcome.
We started today early, getting out to pick blackberries at a pick-your-own farm about 45 minutes away. I knew it would get hot later, so arranged a 9am picking time, and I am so glad I did.
This farm stretched along a ridgetop in nearby Mason county, and offers a wide variety of vegetables and fruits, some pick-your-own and others for sale at the house, farmer's market or, for one group of people in Huntington, WV, by weekly delivery of whatever the farm has available. Blueberry season had just ended, but we had blueberries already, Blackberries were our goal since the wild ones around here have all shriveled away before they ripened due to the extreme heat in June. I admit, it's hard for me to buy them when we could have picked them in the wild--and some years ago we even had a strong patch of domestic blackberries ourselves. But this year, we had to bite the bullet and buy berries if we wanted any.
The farm we visited is an interesting place. There are miniature goats, pot-belly pigs and regular ole pigs, geese, ducks, peacocks, guineas, and all kinds of other birds. Chickens were somewhere, and out in a distant ridgetop field we could see greenhouses and an apple orchard. The place is wildly overgrown with weeds, and yet there are crops galore, from herbs to horseradish, tomatoes to muscadine grapes, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, chokeberries and probably more we didn't see. There are rich raised beds, piles of mulch and manure, hutches and pens and who knows what else. It's a happy mishmash that all looked fertile and productive. Talk about a diverse eco-system.
The blackberries were growing in rows between peach trees. I was puzzled by the peaches. There were brown, mummified fruit hanging on most of the trees, with a few healthy trees bowed down with fruit. I asked Martin, the farm owner, what was wrong with the trees, and he said sadly, "brown rot." This is a disease, he said, that can only be contained with heavy chemical sprays and since he refuses to spray anything, he is letting the trees go. It seemed so sad, and yet, I understood his point.
I came home and put up some of the berries in the freezer, made a batch of jam and have a panful left to make a cobbler this evening.
Good food for a little work, and we had a nice visit with Martin in the bargain. We'll be back out to his farm, for sure, to see what else he might be offering.
Yesterday while we were away our good neighbors brought over some beef bones, and packs of steak, beef liver, and ground beef from the steer they had butchered. Bless them, they put all this goodness into our freezer. So today I am cooking down beef bone broth and we'll be having liver for dinner. Everyone should have such kind neighbors. We're bringing them some of our corn, and some honey from Martin's farm this evening, a fair exchange I hope.
Back to the kitchen I go to make that cobbler, and figure out what to do with the liver.
I've been out to inspect "my" blackberry hedges and it looks as though we might have a bumper crop this year - not for a week or two though.
ReplyDeleteI remember picking wild blackberries at a quarry in FL, and watching for snakes. At the time I was living in my camper, which had an oven, so my cobbler was adding to the heat in the un-air-conditioned camper...but we enjoyed eating it (cobbler of course.)
ReplyDeleteLast year, the blackberries were everywhere. This year, nary a one. But, my blueberry bush produced amazingly, so I guess it evened out. Great neighbors you have!
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