High Dry Farm, Sultan, Washington….Certified Organic
This year we had a bumper crop of pie cherries. I saved the pits and covered them with vodka. Two weeks later, the vodka infusion was decanted and filtered. The result is amazing. The liquor has a strong Amaretto-like almond flavor with a touch of tartness and complex underlying cherry notes.
Our custom for summer weekends is to finish the day sipping a cocktail on the bank of our pond. Yesterday we enjoyed a version of the classic Jockey Club Cocktail, which replaced the usual Amaretto with a homemade version, created by steeping vodka with cherry pits for two weeks. I recall this fondly as I sit, bleary-eyed over coffee, on a Monday morning, before departing for work.
Here is the recipe for the down on the farm version of the Jockey Club Cocktail.
Jockey Club Cocktail a la High & Dry Farm
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Two parts gin
2/3 parts lemon juice
2/3 parts cherry pit infusion
1/3 part triple sec
dash angostura bitters
Shake with crushed ice, garnish with a twist of orange peel and a tart cherry, serve with ice.
This year I produced over 120 different heirloom tomato varieties, and more than 1000 plants total, in gallon containers. I have sold almost 600 of them so far this year, at wholesale, to local garden centers. I am attracting a growing customer base, who learn that my plants do better than plants from other growers. Commercial greenhouses are heated at temperatures that give fast plant growth, but produce soft plants that go into shock when gardeners put them out in the cool Puget Sound Spring weather. My plants are grown at cooler temperatures, so they are already well adapted.
Our great weather this summer yielded a beautiful crop of about 20 lbs of Thompson Seedless grapes, from which I produced 3 lbs of raisins.
Growing 100+ varieties of heirloom tomatoes creates such an amazing color palette!
The harvest of the first new potatoes of the season has inspired me to make potato salad. I chose a flavor profile dominated by homemade paprika, which I made last year by pulverizing dried home-grown Basque Piquillo Lodosa peppers. My pepper seeds came from the famous town of Guernica.
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Last year on this date my tomato plants were already showing signs of late blight. So….this year I invested in a sprayer and an organic copper sulfate preparation to battle the blight fungus. But wouldn’t you know, here is today’s forecast of late blight danger in our area. Green = no danger. Yellow or Red would signal danger. Blight likes cool humid weather, but we have had hot dry weather.
Here is a photo of a Pale Swallowtail.
OK, not really. Pale Swallowtails are quite rare here, so when I saw one feeding on these flowers I raced for my camera. Just as I focused this Anna’a Hummingbird showed up and aggressively drove the swallowtail away.
Of the 124 varieties of tomatoes I am growing, these 4 were the first to ripen fruit.
Isaak Walton, in his book Compleat Angler, published in 1653, quoted Dr. Boteler as saying about strawberries “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did”.
