Homemade ricotta with edible flowers!

I just whipped up a batch of homemade ricotta--I continue to be surprised when my homemade cheese tastes exactly like store-bought! I then put it into plastic-lined cupcake tins (the big one was made in a cereal bowl) with edible flowers from my garden. I used nasturtiums, basil and dill. Check out the pictures! Next I'm going to try chevre, I just need to find out where to get goat milk around here:)

A visit to Harley Goat Farm...

So in the course of my cheesemaking, I was looking online for more information about local cheeses. I stumbled upon a website for a goat dairy called Harley Farms, and found that it's located here in San Mateo County, about an hour away in Pescadero. The website was fantastic and I noticed that they give tours every weekend. Voila! My Mom and I went today and we could not have had a better time or been more impressed!

So. Harley Farms is run by Dee Harley, who lives on the premises with her husband and son. It's a small operation and the tour was so incredible! For those of you reading this who live in driving distance of Pescadero, you simply must go. My Mom and I (and the other 15 or so people on the tour) got to play with the goats in the fields, including the 148 baby goats born on the farm so far this Spring. Every single person on the tour got to milk a goat (!!!), tour the goat cheese making facility, and of course, sample lots and lots of beautiful, scrumptious goat cheese.

I recommend a visit to this place strongly, enthusiastically, and with the knowledge that I'll be back again, soon. Over the summer there are nearby U-Pick strawberry and olallieberry farms, and the small town of Pescadero is authenticly small and charming, as is the dairy itself. It's $20 for the 2-hour tour, and it's completely worth your time and money. Tours sell out quickly, so book yours soon to see the baby goats while it's still Springtime! The drive on Highway 1 is gorgeous and it makes for a spectacular day all around. Go see for yourself!

PS The tour guide told us goats are the third smartest animal, after pigs and then dogs, I'm guessing (I'm not counting primates of course). I cannot convey how adorable, soft, sweet and non-smelly they were. My goat-coveting in the previous post is now amplified by about ten and I can't wait to buy some property where I can realize this dream! I think Ty will really like to have some goaty sisters.

Cheese and bread, my way...

Over the hot, hot weekend my plants sucked in water like crazy, I was watering them twice a day to keep up with their thirst! Now that we're back to cooler weather, I felt like baking. I just took 3 beautiful loaves of whole-wheat bread out of the oven and the house smells like a bakery! I also crafted some more homemade mozzarella, it turned out wonderfully as well.

The garden's coming along great, the baby spinach now looks like baby spinach, but I'm going to wait until it's regular adult spinach to harvest. I have small green strawberries and a couple of new additions to the garden--dill and lavender, both planted yesterday. I must say, being laid off sure has improved my quality of life by about 1000%--no complaints here:)

What a difference a week makes...

My Mom and I went to tour Sunset Magazine's gardens in Menlo Park last week. Although smaller than we expected, it was beautiful, and was not surprisingly divided into sections: Desert, Southern California, Coast, Northern California, just like the legendary magazine itself. I must say, though, my favorite part was the small vegetable garden and chicken coop. I'm thinking we need chickens as soon as we have some land of our own~~maybe a goat too... I wonder how Ty will feel about those additions to the family?

I potted most of the rest of the seedlings and now my kitchen is feeling like herself again. I'm still having some trouble with the cucumbers; the seedlings in my big homemade planter are doing well by now, but the more recent transplants are struggling. As long as I can get 3 or 4 prolific cucumber plants out of the lot I'll be happy! My beans, on the other hand, are growing like crazy and I may have to thin them at some point. Incidentally, thinning, to me, is one of the saddest parts of gardening. I hate pulling up beautiful plants whom I've raised from seeds (I have a strong tendency towards anthropomorphism)! But if not doing it will kill them all by depleting the nutrients and leaving less than enough room, what choice do I have?

I was feeling similarly about pinching back my sweet peas. The seed packet stated very clearly that to get the fullest plants and the most blooms, pinch off the top inch of the seedling once it was 3-4 inches long. I almost wasn't going to do it but at the last minute found myself wincing as I pinched off a few token tops of my beloved sweet peas. They still aren't as tall as I'd hoped they would be by now, but they are doing fine and are green and healthy.

...Looks like we'll be having bell peppers coming out of our ears this summer. The seeds I planted didn't sprout, and so I gratefully accepted some hand-sprouted seeds (dried from her crop from last year) from my neighbor, as previously mentioned. I was about to toss the entire 2 flats of peppers after they failed to sprout after nearly a month (the packet stated 14-21 days) but I gave them a few more days and they all popped up like crazy! Now I've got tiny pepper plants EVERYWHERE. Not that I'll be complaining once they grow--we've got red, orange and yellow.

Sorry about the delay in photos but keep an eye out, they're coming soon...

A picture's worth a thousand words.

This is a beautiful photo my Dad sent me a while back--it catches my breath every time I look at it:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/211/510607717_0257f1b16b.jpg?v=0

Thanks Dad!

Cheese can be made at home, did you know?

I've gotten some wonderful gifts in the last few days... My former coworker (and current friend) Cheryl Lynn surprised me with a big tall box on my doorstep yesterday; she had thoughtfully sent me a beautiful honeysuckle vine, about 3 feet in height, presumably as a going-away present. Thanks Cheryl!

My neighbor also showed up at my door with two potted young bell pepper plants, one orange and one red. We've been swapping gardening tales as of late, and I gave her one of my many flats of spinach seedlings in return. She showed up with her 6-month-old on her hip, and in the course of our talking, her two boys, about 4 and 7, showed up as well. Ty was overjoyed to have kids in the house; he LOVES children and babies. Hint, hint, Artie! Then this morning, Artie's friend/employee Seamus showed up for their Saturday workday. I had some of Martha's fresh zucchini/carrot muffins for the boys and Seamus had brought me an assortment of terra cotta pots for the plants he's been watching grow week by week, when they come by for a homemade Saturday lunch, made by yours truly.

Speaking of homemade, and having to do with my garden only in terms of growing/making my own food, I am proud to say that today I ...drumroll please, MADE MY OWN CHEESE! That's right, at this very moment I have a fist-sized hunk of handmade mozzarella in my fridge! I recently finished Barbara Kingsolver's fantastic new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, in which she describes her and her family's year of moving to a farm and learning to eat locally, growing most of their own food (see where my inspiration came from?). In the book, Kingsolver describes making her own cheese from fresh local farm milk. She attended a seminar by "Ricki the Cheese Queen" and listed Ricki's website, and here we are with our own mozzarella (btw, I got my "Ricki the Cheese Queen" cheese making kit, which is essential for the recipe plus the citric acid and rennet tablets required in cheese making, at Rainbow Grocery in SF; probably available at natural foods stores but if not, just Google it and order directly).

My mozzarella is AMAZING and tastes and looks exactly like store-bought. But I made it, how fun!!! Pictures of everything above coming soon~

Dog in the garden--oh no!

Today was very warm on my deck. I'm a little concerned about my cucumbers, they seem to be fighting for their lives in the great outdoors. So far they're winning, but they wilt pretty easily during the day. I'm going to make little shady tents for them until they get a bit bigger and acclimated to being in the sun all day. My beans are going crazy, and there was a little mishap yesterday with my dog in the garden, which resulted in one of the tomato plants going from 6" to about 1" in height. It wasn't Ty's fault; Artie was chasing him around and chased him right into the garden--oops!

I'm finding that the soil dries out very easily and I'm watering every day, although it's only March. I think I need to really soak the bed so it's damp from the bottom up, hopefully that will help it retain more moisture. Things are looking good; the sweet peas are really getting tall and I've concocted a trellis for them out of stakes and dental floss. I'll post pictures of that soon; I'm very proud of my innovative solution trellis-wise!