Picking apples

We were invited out to a friend's farm to pick apples today.  And he wouldn't let us leave without 2 five-gallon buckets full.  Together they weighed 42 pounds.

He also filled a basket full of produce from his garden, for us, including round carrots, which I had never seen before, broccoli, green onions, artichokes, squash, and tomatoes.

And we got to visit with the chickens and horses.

We enjoyed the visit, but I don't think that we will leave the ocean and move to a farm anytime soon. Way too much work!

Two weeks and a little newspaper

Two weeks ago, I plucked all the tomatoes, and brought them inside.  Few showed any color other than green. I lined a basket with newspaper, wrapped them together, and let them ripen.

I've been checking them daily, and we have been eating them as they ripened.  Tasty.

Here's the recipe to ripen green tomatoes:
     tomatoes + newspaper + time (at room temperature) = mmm good

And after the rain ...

The sun came out today, and I headed out looking for mushrooms.  After a long dry spell, the boletes have finally begun to appear.  I snagged a one-pounder, a king bolete, my first of the season.

When the storms arrive

After a long dry spell from summer into fall, the rainy season has returned in earnest.  This has moved us into our "putting food by" mode.

Over the last few days we have smoked Chinook salmon and albacore, picked all the tomatoes, picked wild huckleberries, and dehydrated apples.

The one that got away

It's the salmon season and this time of year we hear lots of stories about "the one that got away".  However, in this case, I'm not talking about a fish.  The one that got away was our only ripe tomato.  Growing tomatoes on the Oregon coast is dicey, because our night time temperatures are too chilly.  (The daytime temperatures are pretty cool as well, during summer.)  At any rate, I had been admiring the tomato as it ripened.  I even took a photo of it last week.  A few days ago, I went out to pick it, and was quite surprised to find that it had already been picked, probably by a raccoon.


And for those of you expecting a fishing story:  the salmon rarely get away up here.

For the birds

Throughout the year, I put out a feeder filled with sunflower seeds, to encourage songbirds to visit the yard.  The goldfinches of summer seem to have flown south, but our resident birds still stop by to grab a bite.

Today's guest of honor at the feeder was a red-breasted nuthatch. He made so many trips to the feeder that I grabbed a camera and caught some of his returns.

All in a day's harvest

 August 1st was the opening day for salmon fishing in our home bay, so Bori headed out fishing.  Not wanting to come home empty handed, he tossed in a crab pot to pick up after he was done fishing. The moon and planets must have been lined up just right because he came home with 2 Chinook salmon (together weighing about 50 pounds), and 10 large Dungeness Crabs.

Meanwhile, I went out gathering wild mushrooms, and came home with 4 pounds of Chanterelles.  This time of year, we "shop" in the great outdoors.