Excerpt from Little Brother of the Wilderness: The Story of Johnny Appleseed.

I suppose December is a tad late to be talkin’ apples, but this past Sunday we were brought a peck full of fugi’s and two bottles of our favorite Apple Hill Cider by Scott’s mom. Every December weekend she helps out a close family friend at their Christmas Tree Farm, Harris Tree Farm, up in the California foothills. It’s gorgeous up there, if you haven’t already found the perfect tree, I suggest you head up there this weekend! Inside this barn below you’ll find all sorts of goodies including bags of apples, cider, homemade jam and tamales served pipin’ hot. It’s the perfect holiday experience. A mountainous drive, a little snow on the ground, the smell of evergreens and warm cider and tamales in the barn. You might even see my mother in law there!

For those of you who’ve seen this Rainbow Orchard cider at the Marin Farmer’s market, that’s owned by the same family as well. It’s delicious!

Apples are a passionate topic among members of Scott’s family, especially when it comes to apple pie. Scott’s mom grew up on a good sized ranch in the Sierra Foothills that had an apple orchard with all sorts of varieties of apples. With so many apples, you can see why apple pie baking soon became a competitive affair amongst family members. So it goes as no surprise that Scott won the Pie Baking Contest at the Sonoma Garden Park’s Harvest Fair in October. I had no doubt in my mind that he would win, after all look at his pie: And this one was baked in the barbeque on Thanksgiving day when we realized that the power was going to be out for a long time (oh what an adventurous thanksgiving! Did you know you can barbeque dinner rolls too, oh yes you can!).

His recipe was published in the local paper, I’ll share it with you here:

Grandma’s Apple Pie

This is my Grandmothers recipe(with a little altering). This can be a great communal
effort as everyone can help peel, core, and slice the apples. Things that can make it
especially delicious are local apples in season and the quality of the butter.

For the crust:

The amounts could be adjusted depending on the size of the pan. These amounts are
enough for a large pie.

3 cups of flour
2 TBSP of sugar
1/2 tsp of cinnamon
8 oz chilled butter
ice water (the amount varies)

Place the flour, sugar, and cinnamon in a bowl. Cut the butter up into
cubes about the size of a sugar cube and put in with the flour. Then using
two knives or a dough blender, break the butter up into smaller pieces. You
can do this with a food processor as well but doing it by hand is preferable.
You want to end up with pieces of butter about the size of small peas. Then
work in ice water a little at a time until you can bring the dough together
as one solid ball. Place in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

For the apples:
Again the amount varies depending on the size of your pie. I really like to mound
them up high. I like using a combination of sweet and tart apples.

5 lbs of apples
1 heaping tsp cinnamon
1 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of flour
2 TB of butter

I fill a large bowl half way with water and add some lemon juice. This helps keep
the apples from turning brown while you are working.

Peel, core, and slice approximately 8 granny smith and 4 golden delicious apples.
Again the food processor can do the slicing but hand done inconsistent slices make
a more interesting pie.

Bring it all together:

Cut you rested, cooled dough into two and roll out one for the bottom of the pie.
Drain the apples, toss with the cinnamon and flour, then fill the pie. Cut up the
butter into 6 pieces or so and place on the top of the apples. Roll out the top,
place over the pie, crimp and trim the edges. Cut 3 or 4 slits in the pie so
the steam can escape during cooking. Place in a 350 deg oven for about an hour
and 15 min. About half way through I brush the top with milk and sprinkle a little
sugar over it for browning and additional texture. Let the pie cool for at least 30
minutes but it’s best served warm. Enjoy!!

Early Blooming Camellia.

To hide a view we aren’t crazy about, I spent some time stringing wire along the fence this summer and training star jasmine up them. Hopefully next summer it will be almost a full wall of blooming jasmine. That’s Japanese Barberry in the front because I’ve never been able to resist the ever changing colors of their leaves.

Old Asparagus, New Arugula

We had an incredible wind storm last weekend. The strongest we’ve had since we can remember. It stripped all the leaves off our fruit trees and littered our lawns with sequoia and oak debris. We made mini teepees with our finds.

As much as I enjoy the green lushness of spring, I really do like the stark gray of winter in our garden too.

I’d love to see what your garden looks like now. If you have pictures on a blog or flickr or somewhere, do share the link!

Each year at Christmas time I enjoy making a few things for friends. Many times it’s cookies, but after experimenting with so many lotions and potions this past year, I thought it would be nice to group them all together (with a new label, of course!) into one place. In this thrift store found basket that I lined with a red cloth napkin, I placed a jar of my August made applesauce, a jar of home made hand lotion, a tin of homemade deodorant and a bottle of baking soda hair rinse. All easy and thrift things you can make in your kitchen.

The hand lotion and applesauce are bottled up exactly as I previously wrote about. The hair rinse is a ratio of 1 tablespoon baking soda to 1 cup of water. You can read about how I use baking soda to wash my hair. And the deodorant is the same recipe as I posted, but I split the recipe in half and poured it into these adorable 2 ounce tins from Mountain Rose Herbs.

It’s my guess that you already have olive oil, baking soda and cornstarch (and applesauce or other summer canned goodness) in your kitchen, so the only other ingredients you need will be listed below. I roughly estimate that if you buy all the listed ingredients it should cost about $28 and you can get about 6 batches of deodorant and 15 batches of lotion from them. My guess is that if you made about 6 baskets, it would cost you less than $5 per basket. Not bad for such a cute gift!

• Emulsifying Wax
• Essential Oil
• Shea Butter
• Cocoa Butter
• 2 ounce tins

The label design is inspired by my love of all things Scandinavian at Christmas time. I just love the simple white and red and that folksy cross stitching is so sweet. On the Christmas Label Download Page there are two sized labels, one for wide mouth canning jars and one for small mouth jars. Print them out at full size (Adobe Reader tends to shrink things slightly, so double check in your print window that it doesn’t reduce your file.) on Avery Sticker Project Paper. Cut them out and you are ready to adorn your gifts. Enjoy!

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, I thought it might be a good time to show you some of the new winter squashes we grew this past year. This bowl full is sitting on our coffee table, it’s the perfect seasonal decoration and it reminds me of the good fortune we have to grow such beautiful, nourishing food.

The squash on top is new to us this year. It’s called a Shishigatani or Toonas Makino from Baker Creek. It wasn’t the most productive plant, we only got two small squash, but isn’t it interesting looking? It’s a rare variety from Japan, that supposedly when eaten in the hottest part of summer, prevents paralysis. And really, who doesn’t want to prevent paralysis? We haven’t tried eating it yet so I’ll get back to you on how it tastes.

The long neck squash just below that, I wrote about before, however I had showed a picture of it while it was still green and on the vine. This also is a new one to us from Baker Creek, an Italian variety called Zucchino Rampicante. I highly recommend growing this one next year! The great part about this is that it can be eaten green as a summer squash or you can let it mature into a winter squash, plus the vine is fairly productive and easy to grow.

Below that are a few acorn squashes which we try and grow every year. Who can resist a stuffed, roasted acorn squash? Not I, I say.

Above is a photo of dinner starting to be made with our first ever grown parsnip. This fellow decided to grow two legs. I have to say, I was not a big fan of how it turned out roasted, but I’m willing to give it another chance, we still have some growing outside.

We also tried our luck with Blue Hubbards too. I can’t boast that it was a very prolific crop, we only got one per vine and they didn’t get as big as advertised, but they are worth a try next year too. Remember our growing season this year was a little wonky. Nothing grew exactly as it should have. We did however, buy an enormous one at the Tolay Fall Festival in October that is sitting on our mantle. Early Thursday morning we’ll cut it up and roast it for our Thanksgiving meal.

The Tolay Fall Festival by the way is a must visit for anyone who lives even remotely close to Sonoma County, this was our first year going and we spent hours upon hours there, it is most certainly worth the drive. Mark it on your calendars to visit next October.

Are you serving winter squash with your Thanksgiving meal?

Yes, I really did just take this picture yesterday morning. Yes, it is November and yes it’s been below 30 degrees at night the past couple of nights. So why in the world is our pear tree full of blooms? We did have a string of cold days in October followed by warm, even hot days which I think it what did it. I can’t seem to find anything online that talks about what happens when fruit trees bloom in autumn. Will this mean that we won’t have much fruit next summer? Will it bloom again in spring? One snippet I found said that trees that are damaged during summer sometimes bloom in autumn, however we haven’t even so much as given the poor tree a sideways glance, let alone damage it. I suppose only time will tell. I’ll report again next spring on how our poor pear tree is doing.

Has anyone else had their fruit trees bloom in autumn?

Just for proof of frost, the next photo in my camera, after the pear tree shot was taken was this one. See? Frosty!

Hello There Friends! My goodness it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything! I apologize about that, but sometimes you just need a good blog break, don’t you? I hope to be back with some sort of regularity.

A few months ago when Scott & I taught our winter gardening class with Rebecca at the Sonoma Garden Park, she mentioned that the first frost date for Sonoma was set at November 15th. Usually those dates are just a guideline, but this year, it was spot on. When I woke up yesterday, November 15th, the thermometer was below 30 degrees and the grass was lightly blanketed with white frost. A late morning walk outside showed the evidence, the patty pan squash was toast, the basil was brown and our pumpkin plant was as flat as a pancake.

Winter gardening has official begun!

According to the newsfolks, it’s time to baton the hatches, put on the galoshes and head inside for the first storm of the season. And after our dry few years, we’re ready for it. But I thought I’d take this time, while we are enjoying the indoors to reflect on the good things about this past growing season. Sure we were full of disappointments this year, but our tomatoes…our tomatoes were a huge success. Oh sure, at first I complained about how they weren’t turning red, but once they did, they came on in full force.

This year we limited ourselves to five plants, Better Boy, Consoluto Fiorentino, Italian Heirloom (generic name, isn’t it?), Big Rainbow and a Sweet 100. We also had a spare volunteer cherry tomato that has been sprawling along the ground with the melons too. All five plants that we planted were incredibly happy this year and all pulled their weight as heavy producers. Better Boy hit the ground running at the begining of the season and Big Rainbow has been pulling in the tail end of the season with baskets full of orange goodness.

Our Sweet 100 even reached the top of the 10 foot cage…way to go little plant!

We’ve made about 10 pints of canned sauce and have another handful of portions frozen in the freezer. Plus I dehydrated the Sweet 100’s this year and have about 2 cups of those in the pantry. We should be plenty supplied well into the winter with our own spaghetti sauce.

So tell me, what was your biggest garden success this past summer?

I wasn’t going to share this at first because I like to keep some amount of privacy here, but in this market, in this economy, I think it’s time to be a little creative. So here goes. The main reason things have been a little silent around here is that we’ve found a new garden that we would like to tend. It’s still here in Sonoma, but it’s on almost two acres. Two flat, just waiting to be planted acres with a 1950’s vintage house on it. We’ve had our eye on the market for a while now, but we’re very picky. After turning our house and our backyard from the decrepit, funky junky garden into the cheerful (to our eyes at least) place we have, it’s hard to think of leaving. But this new place looks worth it. The potential is limitless in this new spot. More chickens, maybe some goats, a tractor, possibly a natural swimming pond, and I can’t wait to plant some Scarlet Oaks. But we have to sell our house to make this all work.

We’ve been very hard at work tidying up, fixing loose ends, decluttering, polishing, and putting things in their right place and our current garden (and house) is now on the market. And what I need help from you guys is to help us find a buyer.

In this age of social networking and all, I thought it might help to reach out and risk losing a little privacy if that will make our dream happen. And I trust you folks, you’ve always been more than friendly with us. So, if you or anyone you know is looking for a well built house with a chicken coop, large organic garden (we’ll even leave the compost piles if you like), within an easy walk to town and good schools, please take a look.

I know this economy is tough, and this deal might not work out, which is okay. We do love our place, but oh the dreaminess and possibilities of this new place are hard to resist!

This past weekend, we did something new. Along with the garden park manager, Rebecca, we taught a class on Winter Gardening at the Sonoma Garden Park. If you are local and haven’t been to this fantastic place on 7th Street East, here in Sonoma, you must go and soon! It is one of our favorite places to go for gardening inspiration. Every Saturday morning they have a Harvest Market in their straw bale barn where you can buy all sorts of produce and flowers. They even have a CSA to join as well.

My very favorite part of this place is the fig forest. It is this large circle of old fig trees that has completely become a room of it’s own. There is only one small doorway in which to enter and then you are surrounded by these ancient fig trees. Saturday it was set up for a wedding. How dreamy.

So we sat at a table much like this one and talked all about gardening in winter here. Things you can plant, tips on how to grow those winter crops. Different garden tasks, such as hygiene, pruning, composting, cover crops and keeping record.

Would you all be interested in talking winter gardening at some point? We could do a little week long series if you’d like.
Meanwhile, if you want to see more pictures of this magical place, click here.

Sure, it’s not quite autumn yet, but the signs are in the air. Leaves from our valley oaks are starting to slowly turn and fall to the ground. In our back beds, the cooler part of the yard, we have our fall seedlings starting to grow. And oh, what’s that you see? Yes, we laid drip lines this summer! With a timer! We’ve always watered everything with a hose, which takes a good three hours to do! It is exhausting, so setting in these drip lines has been an incredible time saver. And I’m sure a water saver too.

It has made such a difference to get regular water to these carrots and green beans. They were just sitting doing not much of anything with our sporadic hose watering. And now? They are growing like gangbusters.

We have a new long raised bed thanks to our fence that needed to be replaced. We’ve tried buying the expensive redwood 12″ boards for raised beds, but you know what? We like the old fence boards so much better. Don’t know why. In this long bed we have quite the selection of lettuce, pak choy, radishes, beets, carrots and turnips. I wish I could give you exact dates of planting and exactly what we did sow, however I’m not very good at following my own advice sometimes.

The corn is almost ready.

The peppers have finally come around. Remember how pitiful they were? And how bountiful they were last year?

Overall autumn is looking to be good in our garden. How about yours? Did you get a fall garden in yet?