Things That Happened in the Past Week or So

The dogs all got baths this past week. Here is Danny all wet and unhappy (he hates the idea of wetness). After his bath he felt much better.

We invited Jules and Rosie out for dinner and pear wine making as we have for the past 5 or so years. here we have (from left to right) Rosie, Jules and Eugene busily cutting up pears.

The pot of pears that we planned on making into wine. but so far this has not happened. the pears were heated (it turns out too much) and than cooled and than wine yeast was pitched (added) but so far after 3 or 4 days nothing has happened. The yeast was old (expired 2 years ago but usually yeast vacuumed packed last many years beyond expiration dates) and so far has not worked. because of that we went to Dayton yesterday and bought fresh wine yeast at Belmont Party Supply on Smithville Rd (if you brew beer/wine or just like drinking great beers go there they have all the brewing wine making supplies one could ever want (or they can order them) and they have one of the best beer selections I have ever seen). While there we picked the owner's brain for ways to deal with this potential wine disaster and he gave us lots of ideas and sold us stuff we may or may not need for the wine. So plan B is to reheat the pears, cool them again and pitch the new yeast and see what happens. It may be we start over with new pears and instead of using whole pears put the fruit into the cider press and use the juice (which would take a lot less time, actually). One way or another we will have a 2008 pear wine vintage.

We went to the farmers market. And here is a rare picture of me at the West's stand across the way from our stand at the Saturday market. We have 2 more weeks of Tuesday and Saturday markets and than we are done with regular markets for 2008. that said we are not done with harvesting and selling food. If you need our food check out our farm store page for instructions on how to get our food when there are no longer 2 markets a week in Oxford and our farm store is not holding regular hours