Seed Saving

With all of the produce we've come across, be it from our own garden, our neighbors, or from the heirloom expo, we've begun saving seeds of the best fruits, veggies and herb.

Most of the seeds have been taken out of the fruit/veggie, rinsed off (if necessary - think; melon seeds) and laid out to dry.  Once dry, we wrap them up and store in a cool spot.

Can you see the white layer of mold in the jar?

David started experimenting with the tomato seeds.  He read that in order to adequately breakdown the slimy outter layer of the tomato seed (don't know the techincal term so "slimy" will have to do), you're supposed to let them sit in water and grow a layer of mold on the top - the mold will "eat" off the outer layer. This mimics nature - generally, a tomato growing in the wild will vine ripen, fall, rot, then germinate again the following spring from seed.  It would be interesting to compare how seeds harvested this way fare compared to those simply rinsed and dried. 

We cleared off a shelf in our kitchen and it's been deemed the "seed saving shelf" - there are seeds from tomatos, melons, peppers, and eggplant so far.  Seeds from cilantro, valerian, calendula, artichoke have also been harvested - but these dried on the plant. 

It pretty cool that we're able to take the seeds we've gathered from our time here and will plant them wherever we all end up next spring ... taking some of SLI and our experience with us to our next destination - quite literally!

Grapes Galore

For those of you that have visited SLI, you may have noticed that the Oasis is covered with grape vines.  They create a shaded canopy, cooling us when it's blazing in the summer and providing a bounty of grapes - more than we know what to do with.

Grapes in the Oasis

Most of us have been eating them right off the vine - picking a bundle and munching on them between meals. even having them for dessert.  They're pretty seedy, but we don't mind - we crunch right through them.  Some have even begun drying into raisins!  The best are the semi-shriveled half grape, half raisin - they're extra sweet and just the slightest bit chewy.

So, what do we do with all these grapes, you ask?  Juice em!

David & Brandon spent half a day harvesting 2 huge coolers worth of grapes to bring up to our friend Jini's house for juicing.  She has an apple press, and we heard that works just fine on grapes, too.

Brandon mid-harvest (I told you they shade well!)

One of the 2 coolers filled with grapes for juicing

We decided to make an evening out of it, as Jini lives in Redwood Valley, a bit north of Ukiah.  So Brandon, David, Vaughn, Mimi and I rolled up there, grapes and empty bottles in tow, to make some juice as well as dinner.

David and Mimi led the pressing while B and I manned the kitchen.  In 2 hours time, we pumped out approximately 9 gallons of grape juice and 10 pizzas.  Now that's teamwork.

The grape juice is so good but it's sooo sweet!  We're talking syrup-sweet.  I'm sensitive to sugars and after 3 large gulps, I could feel my heart rate amp up.  Vaughn had a hefty cupful and started to felt shaky.  Talk about a sugar rush.  We've found the best way to consume is to cut it with some sparkling water.

So refreshing in the hot summer sun

What does one do with 9 gallons of grape juice?  Make jelly, of course!

Family Dinners

One of my favorite things about living in community is sharing meals.  Or, as I like to call it, family dinners. We're essentially our own little family, right?

We started out having group dinners/potlucks every other Tuesday, but that's shifted a bit.  Now we'll plan it on occasion, but it tends to happen spontaneously, when a few of us are in the kitchen making different dishes. We'll join forces, share our respective dishes and end up with a collective feast versus a simple meal for just one or 2.  

This week our theme has been using the outdoor cob oven.  We love that thing.  It hasn't been used much since early spring, but we're bringing it back.  Last night we threw in some sweet potatoes and ranch style beans w/ bacon on top.  The night before we made 2 pizzas covered with heirloom tomato sauce (from where? the expo!), cheese, tomatoes, eggplant, onions, peppercinis, olives, bell peppers, garlic OMG it was delish.  We actually had some extra dough laying around so we made an impromptu pizza last night as well.  Add to that a fatty salad made with freshly harvested with tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, basil, garlic, balsamic & olive oil - YUM.  

Since we're in the middle of what appears to be a heat wave - it had cooled off for a bit but now we're back to the 100's - we've been eating and preparing our family meals outside on the picnic benches.  The yurt just gets SO hot - and it's no fun to cook or eat in that heat.  There's also a circular cob bench that surrounds a fire pit out there - we threw some wood in there last week (when it was much cooler) and dined around it as the sun went down.  

Wait - let's not forget about dessert.  Mimi made a zucchini crisp - kinda like an apple crisp but with zucchini.  Nutritious and delicious! 

As you can tell, there's no shortage of fresh food around here, and we're so grateful for it.  As I write this, there's a crock-pot of fresh tomato puree on its way to becoming homemade ketchup.  And did I mention all the apple butter Cassie & David made and canned a few weeks ago from tree-ripened apples?  

I wonder what's on the menu tonight ....

Solar Dehydrator

Cassie built a very cool device:  a solar dehydrator.

It's made out of reclaimed redwood.  How does it work, you ask?   Well, first you load up the trays with whatever fruit or vegetable you'd like to dehydrate - we're currently drying heirloom tomatoes (we had SO many from the expo.)  The main part of the unit - the rectangular wooden box on the right - opens in the back to reveal various racks that hold vented trays lined with mesh.  Lay the tomatoes on top, place unit in the sun and in a few days (depending on how moist your produce is) you will have sun-dried tomatoes!

Heirloom tomatoes slowly drying

Fresh tomatoes on the tray, about to begin drying

The slanted potion of the dehydrator works to capture heat.  It's plexiglass on top, so it allows the sunlight to enter easily, and below it, the wood is painted black so as to attract as much sun as possible.  The heat is captured in the space between the wood and plexiglass, and moves up (hot air rises) into the main compartment where your produce resides.

So far we've dried apples and zucchini slices.  The heirlooms have another day or so to go, but they're looking good.  We sampled on of the thinner slices that was essentially ready - it was super sweet and almost tasted like an apricot.  Love those heirlooms ;)

National Heirloom Expo

This week, the very first (annual) National Heirloom Expo took place.  It was held in Santa Rosa at the Sonoma County fairgrounds on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  David volunteered to coordinate all the volunteers (gulp!) so he's been down there all week.  The rest of the interns came down to help out as well for a day, if not more.

Gourd, anyone?

Gourdgeous

It was a pretty sizable event, and there were many different areas in which to help.  Brandon and I worked in the Chef / Tasting area - we introduced chefs, and cut up heirloom tomatoes and melons for the tasting competition.  That was a pretty fun job. (Three for you, one for me ... )  There were at least 9 different tomato varieties and 4 melons entered into the contest - all unique and delicious, and none that I'd heard of. Others helped out the speakers and worked with the food vendors.  Before and after our duties, we cruised around and checked things out.

Ridiculous

Melons from the tasting competition

There were some incredible displays as well - numerous gardens had been set up for the event all around the fair grounds.  One guy was carving intricate designs into fruit and vegetables turning them into beautiful pieces of art.  At times he even choreographed his work - speeding up and slowing down his carving with the tempo of the music.

The roses you see are actually potatoes

Close up - melon carving

Delicious, organic, all natural food vendors were represented.  You could also buy starts and produce - one stand let you fill up a paper bag with as much produce as you could for $5!  It was an insane deal.  No doubt I left with over $20 worth of fresh, off the vine fruits and veggies.  Lots of heirloom seed vendors, handmade products (baskets, salts, seasonings, olives, aprons, bags, ceramics ... you name it!)  Stage areas for 2 bands, not to mention speakers galore and even films!  I wish I could have gone back today for the speakers alone (and yes, some goats milk ice cream & more rosa bianca eggplants.)

An heirloom expo celebrating local, organic produce & farmers, the slow food movement, farm to table etc. wouldn't be complete without one of it's pioneers: Alice Waters.  She was the keynote speaker Wednesday night - did you know she essentially started farmers markets in the US?  As in, they were not allowed and didn't exist before she personally worked to make that happen.  Such an incredible, inspiring woman.  I was able to pull her away from book signing for a quick pic (well, Brandon did ... I hate bugging celebs) but regardless - we got the pic for the blog.  And Facebook - score!

My hero

Staying Cool

Anyone who's lived or spent time near Hopland knows how warm it can get in the summer.  There have been some days in the last couple weeks that have been
H O T.  There's not much in the way of cooling off at SLI aside from popping into the office, Pach, or the Real Goods Store and enjoying some of the benefits of passive solar design.  Otherwise, the best way to cool off up here is to head to the river.  There's a "beach" that's walking distance from the property which we frequent - it's convenient, easy to get to and takes about 10 min to get there.  However, we've tried something new lately - driving down 101 to the various swimming holes to find some even better swim spots.

We weren't quite sure where to go, but we had an idea.  You can generally see people either parked on the side of the road or getting back into their car donning swim suits or the occasional innertube (for floating down the river).  This gave us a few different options to choose from for the first attempt.  

Now, it's not as easy to get to these swim spots as it is to get to the one by SLI - you have to earn your swim hole!  This involves steep, rocky paths laden with poison oak.  It was a bit daunting at first, (especially if you're the one holding a pack of brewskies) but not bad once you got the hang of it.  Side stepping is key.

If there was a temperature exactly opposite the blazing hot heat outside, we found it. The water was ice cold. So cold that it's hard to get used to - you have to really work at it, thought it still it feels amazing once you get out.  The best is swimming to a massive rock in the sun, climbing it, and laying out to warm up after you effectively froze your butt off.

Brandon & Eric - the brave first 2 in the water, racing to the rock

We've only tried this once but we'd like to make it a weekly thing, trying new spots each time.  Perhaps we'll find the most epic swim holes even the locals don't know about .... then we'll draw up a treasure map of sorts to pass on to the new crew of interns .... I smell a new project.