Olallieberries and Pie - Summer Heaven

Around here, summer isn't summer until you visit Gizdich Ranch and pick some plump juicy Olallieberries.  Now, if you have never had an Olallieberry, you are sure missing out.  Even around here, you can't find them in stores.  The only way to get them is to go pick your own or find a grower who is selling them for some crazy price. 

What is an Olallieberry, you might ask?  It is a cross between a Loganberry and a Youngberry.  Now, if you are like me, I have never had either of those.  To me, it is a little sweeter and a little more tart than a blackberry.  It has a lot more flavor and is SOOOOoooo good! 









 
We go picking, just about every summer.  2012 was no exception. These little gems are only ripe for 3-4 weeks in June, so we have to be vigilant on checking for availability. 





Thankfully, this year it was nice and cool.  Watsonville is near the coast, so it is sometimes hot and sometimes foggy and cold.  You just never know what you are going to get.  Here are my helpers.  I'm not sure how many were eaten and how many actually made it into the baskets! lol  Always a good time.





So, what does one do with these delicious gifts from God?   Oh, the possiblilities are endless.  Pretty much what you would do with any other berry.


* Step 1 is to freeze them:  I don't have pictures, but this is a simple process.  I DO NOT WASH the berries first!  When the berries are first picked they are quite juicy

.  If you put them in water or run water over them, you loose a ton of juice!   No one wants this.  So, I put them in a single layer on a cookie sheet in the freezer for a few hours.  I then measure out 2 cups of berries and then I bag them up in quart ziplock bags. Several of those 2 cup bags go into 1 gallon ziplock and get put in the freezer.  When I want to cook them, they are already measured for me and I know exactly how many to defrost.  When you use them, just run the frozen berries under some cool water and rub a bit to remove any dirt or leaves.  You can also put them in a bowl of cold water and the leaves or debris will float to the top where it can be skimmed off.  Do this quickly though, so the berries don't loose their juice.





*Pie - This goes with berry picking.  I don't know if my little helpers would be nearly as helpful if they didn't have pie as an incentive. I usually make a pie with the fresh berries that day, so these do not get frozen but just get a light rinse. 

Here is my recipe for a 9 inch pie: (Adapted from Betty Crocker's Blueberry Pie recipe)
Pastry for 9 inch 2 crust pie
1c    Sugar
1/2c Flour (I actually use a little more than this because the berries are so jucy)
6c    Berries

Heat oven to 425F.  Prepare pastry.  Mix sugar, flour and cinnamon in large bowl.  Stir in berries,  Turn into pastry lined pie pan.  Cover with top crust.  Cut slits in top crust for ventilation. Seal and flute edges of pie. Cover edges with strips of aluminum foil to prevent excess browning or burning.  Remove foil during last 10-15 min of cooking. 

Bake 35-45 minutes or until crust is brown and juice begins to bubble through slits in crust.  Bake on center rack on a lined cookie sheet, just in case that juice decided to bubble over.

HINT:   You can assemble this pie ahead of time and stick it in the freezer, then pull it out when you need it.  I also have been known to make 1/2 pies (just fold the crust in half), just for my family.  I put them in the freezer and pull out when we want a treat.  Bake frozen uncooked pies at 450F for 15 min (covered).  Uncover and reduce heat to 375F (with edges still covered with foil) for about 45 min. ENJOY!


So, what are your favorite uses for Olallieberries?  Please share!

Dusting Off the 'ol Blog and Catching Up!

How fun to look back at our early days, here on the homestead.  Boy has time flown!  I am going to try to be back on here for a while and catch up a bit.  Here it goes!

I am going to take a jump back in time to the summer of 2012, which is where I left off with my new garden.  I have found some old pictures that show how things turned out!  Oh the memories! Enjoy!

 Here are my wonderful husband, Bryan and my sweet son, Brendan, making the trellis for our tomatoes.  We used PVC Pipe and wire.  Put the pipe together like a Tinker Toy and then add some horizontal supports between the polls as well.  We drilled holes in the PVC and ran wire through it.  As the tomatoes grow, I wind them through the wire.  This design actually works pretty well, though we ended up adding more supports to it.  It does require that you keep those tomatoes trimmed or they take over! 

Here is the finished product!  It worked well.  Yes, I know what you are going to say...I have WAY too many plants in that there planter!  Live and learn! :)

Here is our garlic, that we planted earlier in the year.  Remember, we planted it using store bought garlic heads that we just happened to have in the kitchen.  Guess what?  They aren't heirloom, so they reverted back to one parent or the other and were small with out much flavor.  Everything here on the homestead is a learning experience.  It is all new to me!

April Showers Bring .... Easter Eggs and Egg Muffins?



My kiwi vine is coming to life



IT'S SPRING AND WE HAVE RAIN!!!  It has actually been raining pretty good for the past month!  I am so excited.  There is snow in the mountains and the hills are green.  It is SO pretty around here.  April & May are my favorite months because everything is beautiful.  Here in the Bay Area, our hills are brown most of the year, but with some winter rains everything turns emerald green.  The clouds are big and puffy.  The sky is a beautiful blue.  Everything is clean and coming to life.  Now I really can’t wait to get my garden going!



Mixing the dirt and compost



Now for garden news!  Um....well....not much. :)  Actually, a couple of weeks ago, Bryan and I went to the local nurseries to talk to the experts there about our soil problems.  Here goes: Our compost is "hot" and our top soil is just dirt.  Nothin' good.  I am afraid that my poor little plants will shrivel up and die!  I have been avoiding the whole subject for some time.  Today, we face the facts.  The first person we talked to really didn't know what he was talking about and wanted us to buy $150 in planting soil.  NEXT!  The next nursery started to tell us the same thing.  Then the real expert came in.  I actually took a sample in of my dirt and my compost.  He told me to go out and mix and turn frequently.  It should be ready to plant in a couple of months!  YAY!  That is perfect timing.  It will be a somewhat late garden, but given our vacation plans this summer, that works out nicely.  I will use potting soil when we plant our seedlings.  Between now and then, we just turn it all over and keep it wet.  With the recent rain, that hasn’t been a problem.  Getting the dirt all mixed has been a chore.  It isn’t hard, it just takes time and muscles.  I finally got it all done.  (Bryan helped)  It is turned and hopefully cooling in the rain.



Baby sunflower that still has it's hat on



Now for inside!  I am starting some seedlings.  YAY!  So far I have started some pumpkin seeds for the kids, sunflower seeds for our hopefully soon to be chickens and basil for all of our summer dishes.  I am dreaming of bruschetta, tomato salad, any salad…there are so many things to do with basil!

Let’s see, what else has been happening on our little urban farm.  Well, last week we celebrated Passover with my sister and brother in law.  It is always a great time with family and really makes the Easter celebration special.  Because my kids don’t have any cousins their age, we decided this year to throw an Easter party at the park with friends during our break.  We settled on a glow in the dark egg hunt one night this week.  Wouldn’t you know, it rained cats and dogs all week!  <sigh>  We had to reschedule for this weekend – tomorrow. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
Part of the party is an egg fight.  This is actually a Mexican tradition that our friends taught us.  It is now something that my kids (ok, me too) LOVE to do each year!  You blow and dye eggs and then have a fight smashing the eggs on people’s head and getting egg shell everywhere.  There is suppose to be confetti in them too.  I have done this before with tissue paper confetti and then you tape up the end of the egg. 

Unfortunately, the tape isn’t biodegradable and it is just a lot more work.  I now skip that part and no one really misses it.  So, this week we headed down to our local-ish egg farm to pick up 7 flats of eggs.  That is 140 eggs!  We got them all blown this week and Samantha and I dyed them today.  

 Now the question – what do you do with 140 eggs!  In the past, we eat eggs until we can’t stand them any more then they get thrown away.  Open eggs don’t last a super long time.  This year though, I refuse to let them go to waist!  I am making egg muffins!  Like the ones and McDonalds only yummier and hopefully healthier.  (though with all the good stuff I added…I don’t know. J)  These are going into the freezer so that those mornings when we are running late, I can still have a breakfast!  Maybe now, Samantha will have something other than toast for breakfast before school.  YAY!  I got 24 made today.  I probably still have 50 or 75 to go.  I guess I know what I am doing tomorrow besides getting ready for our party! Lol  It’s ok, I just keep thinking about the peace that it will bring to our mornings.  That makes it all worth it.

We Have Dirt!!!

It has been a while since my last post.  Things here have been bustling!  It is so hard to fit this farm into our standard life of homeschooling, errands and activities.  Both of my kids are at that age where they are involved in everything and can't drive themselves yet.  So, life ends up being a "Hurry up and wait" type thing.  I wouldn't change it for the world!  Ok, maybe I WOULD cut back some.  I want to just simplify.

Back to the dirt!  My nephews came down from Sacramento and helped us out.  We found out kinda last minute that they would be coming so we had to scramble to get dirt for them to fill our new planter boxes.  Many of the local cities offer free dirt to their residents.  Unfortunately, ours doesn't.  I had arranged to meet up with a friend in a neighboring city to get the compost there - only to find that I could only have 1 square foot!  Um....that's not quite going to work for me.  So I start looking at other cities and the only ones that had unlimited compost weren't open until the end of March and we were sitting in the middle of February! 

Thankfully, a local mushroom company offered free compost to city residents.  Since it was where I grew up, they let me have it. :)  I was so relieved.  I rented a U-Haul pick up and went down to get it.  What an adventure!  Now, if you have never driven past a mushroom farm, you just haven't lived.  The aroma is similar to that of a dairy farm.  Heaping piles of fresh manure steaming in the sunshine all watered down and fermenting.  Oh lovely.  My kids were NOT amused!  We pull around back and after some Spanish/English/hand gesture communication with the guys, they take a big scoop with their tractor and dump it into the back of the pick up.  It was like being in an earthquake and was kinda fun!  Compost fell on the roof, the windshield and filled up the back of the truck.  It was then that I remembered that my mud boots were still back there for when I had to get out of the truck....OOPS!  The kids and I tied a tarp over the whole thing.  Brendan got to show off his new Boy Scout knots and we all got to walk through the mud...oh how I wish I had my boots!

We got the load home and started to unload.  As you can see, it was quite a job!  It took us about 3 hours to get the whole thing emptied.  The compost was a bit...um...riper than I had wanted.  Compost is suppose to season and break down.  We were stepping through manure.  I was so afraid that the kids would balk at this and really give me a hard time about working in it.  They did great though!  They got used to the smell even!  We emptied the whole truck in the driveway and returned it just in time.

Getting the topsoil was an adventure as well - though not as fun.  My wonderful husband called around and it wasn't until Saturday that we got someone to come deliver free dirt.  We had to pay for delivery, but hey, we didn't have to shovel it or pay for it!  What was suppose to be top soil is just dirt with rocks and debris.  Oh well.  You get what you pay for!   At this point, my nephews were here and ready to work. 

Step one, we lined the bottom of the planters with cardboard - which means we got to go dumpster diving!  It started to sprinkle while we were diving through dumpsters.  Oh the fun!

Next we hauled dirt.  My nephews, Kyle and Kevin, did an amazing job hauling one layer of compost followed by one layer of dirt.  Lots of loads! 

We all helped pulling rocks and debris from the dirt.   For every one we got, 5 more went into the planters.  There was just no way to get it all.  The kids worked tirelessly with Kyle and Kevin all day and into Sunday smoothing out the soil as they dumped load after load.  I cooked a big dinner and fresh sourdough bread to send home with the boys.  It was a great weekend and we got the planters in thanks to family.  It looks like this farm thing is really going to happen! 

Construction Begins!

The wood is here now it is time to build!  Bryan got to dust off all of his toys that have been sitting in the garage.   You know what?  They still work!  We had to cut the  8 foot boards onto 4 footers for the ends of our boxes. 

The kids got to help too!  Brendan loved using the drill to screw the boards together.  He is such a boy!  Gotta love those power tools!   

Samantha gave it a go as well, but wasn't as excited about it. 

I had fun watching Bryan work up a sweat while I took pictures.  This really was more of a one person job, but we all chipped in and helped.  At the end of the day, we had some really big planter boxes all ready to be filled and Bryan had some serious bragging rights!  Am I the most blessed girl ever or what?!  



My New Favorite Place!

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to my new favorite home improvement store!  This place is amazing!  Here is how it works: When someone wants to remodel their house and it needs to be gutted, they can call a contractor who will come in, break up the cabinets, floors, roof, fence, etc and then haul the pieces to the dump.  OR, they can call Whole House Building Supply!  This little company will come in and take out all of the materials carefully and then sell them.  If, as a buyer, you are really lucky, you might see something that you are looking for come up on a demo day!  Then you can be the one to go in and carefully remove it from someone else's house and buy it for pennies on the dollar.  It is pretty awesome!  

On this shopping day, we headed straight to the warehouse.  As you can see from the picture, they had tons of wood!  We got 2x10 pieces for $0.75 a foot and 4x4 posts for $1.00 a foot!  What amazing prices!  They have tons of other stuff too.  It was fun to poke around at all of the vantage doors and hardware.  There are new things too, like a jacuzzi tub that was never installed and is now being sold as used.  Oh, I wish I had a place for THAT!  

 

Bryan and Aaron worked hard hauling down the perfect pieces of wood.  Aaron cut them all into 8 foot lengths so that they would fit in the back of the van.  He was a perfectionist, so it took longer.  We were so thankful though because the boards are all just right.  Assembly will be much easier!

Here it is, all laid out the way we want it.  I was thinking that I had room for two 20 foot beds, but I must have measured wrong.  We are getting two 16 foot beds instead!  All of our lumber is cut into 8 foot sections, so this should be easy.  The extra lumber will be used for the chicken coop.  YAY!   I'm getting excited!!!

Grapefruit and Oranges - OH MY!

Boy do we have an abundance!  These trees were here in our yard when we moved in.  The grapefruit goes crazy every year!  Unfortunately, no one in our family likes them.  I usually have a couple of friends who come over and pick a few, but really, how many grapefruit does a person really need?  Each year we watch the fruit fall and splatter on the patio, making a big mess. 


This year is going to be different!  We have decided to donate the fruit to the food bank.  YAY!  I am excited to get picking and see how many pounds we end up with!  I have given notice to my friends that they have one week.  That means that after next weekend, there will be no more mess.  WHOOT!

Now for the oranges.  These, we LOVE!  But what to do with them?  I have heard of pickling them in salt to use in cooking.  hmm...not sure I would use them.  The juice doesn't really freeze well.  I might try again, but it tends to separate and not come back together well.  I can't find much on preserving them other than canning in heavy syrup - blah.  I guess, we will just start eating oranges morning, noon and night.  Manna from heaven! :)  If anyone has any great preserving ideas, I am open.  Please share!