KB Ranch

A lesson in resilience

Written by karen on October 6th, 2014

I’m learning a thing or two from my tomatoes this week.

About 10 days or so ago, the javelina came back and decided, having eaten all of his preferred sweet potato greens and watermelons, he’d give the tomatoes a try. He gave two beds a good stomping through and ate as he went, destroying some expensive insect netting as well.

I mindfully reflected on all the many tomatoes we’d eaten, given away, and canned. It was our best tomato year ever. So I declared it the end of the season and tried not to be unhappy.

Going out to start clearing the beds today, I found though that the tomatoes are having a mini-resurgence. Huh.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Responses »
Tags: garden, javelina, tomatoes

Flood update

Written by karen on September 22nd, 2014

We are both back home now and are seeing the consequences of the flood here. My email box is full with updates, pictures, and videos. It’s big excitement here.

Cave Creek flooded, and Portal is cut off. There is no power in the canyon for a week or so. Horseshoe Canyon (the one behind us) is washed out and impassable even by four-wheel drive.

Fortunately, we had no damage here. The driveway is a bit washed out (passable with the truck but not the car), so we’ll be working on that today. :) Otherwise, all is well here.

Here’s a video from Portal (you might start watching at about 3:00 or so; sorry for the poor quality; this isn’t my video); those of you who have been here will recognize “downtown” Portal with the library and post office.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Response »
Tags: weather

Rain – Odile remnants

Written by brad on September 19th, 2014

Karen and I were both gone when the remnants of Odile rolled through the Portal/Rodeo area. Karen got a few warning emails and later a bunch about the severity and miscellaneous damage. I was a little concerned on my way home, however; other than the driveway there’s no signs of damage.

Before I get into the goings on, this is what I woke up to. The most interesting thing in this picture is that the tall grass is all laying down. We’ve never seen this before.

I checked the rain gauge this morning. I don’t think it’s ever been over two inches. It was full. So, five inches plus.

Not a rain gauge, but you get the idea

There was no water in either house. The ground is very wet and we will not need to water for awhile, but nothing exciting.

The worst spot is the front gate and it’s not too bad. It’s going to need work though. The truck went through without any issue but there’s no way the mini cooper is going anywhere soon.

A lot of our neighbors are trapped on their property. This is primarily due to the runoff coming from Horseshoe Canyon. There’s a rumor that the dam way back in Horseshoe Canyon broke. (Karen and I visited it here) Long after the rain had stopped, there was a roar that could heard far off and the water rose and may have jumped its bank. It’s assumed that was the damn breaking. There was a second rush a few hours later and the speculation is that the damn broke partially and later completely. The last time Karen and I hiked up there it was nearly impassable- on foot. I can’t imagine what it’s like now or if Horseshoe Canyon is even accessible at all.

Highway 80 was closed for a while yesterday from the water leaving Cave Creek. It’s was still about a foot high when I drove through about 1:00 am. I hit significant water on 80 about 4 times.

It sounds like most everywhere there is a bridge the roads have been closed. This would be a good day to have a helicopter.

One last picture of the grass laying down.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Oh the tomatoes!

Written by karen on September 1st, 2014

This weekend we canned salsa, chutney, plain old tomatoes, and a few jars of sweet yellow tomato jam. These will be so good this winter! And there’s lots more coming. We’re going to need more jars.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Response »
Tags: canning, food, garden, tomatoes

Beautiful green

Written by karen on August 22nd, 2014

It looks so different here after a few weeks of rain.

And the rain is still coming down.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »
Tags: weather

From the garden

Written by karen on August 17th, 2014

Got our first cantaloupe today…and we’re going to have to start canning these tomatoes.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Responses »

Making cheese

Written by karen on August 12th, 2014

One thing we have good access to here is goat’s milk. And what better to do with that than make chevre or goat cheese, so I decided to give it a try.

It was very easy and yielded great results.

To start, you heat the milk to about 86 degrees. You then add a very small amount of mesophillic culture (available for about $1 per batch) and let the whole thing sit overnight. The result is a big cake of cheese floating in whey. (For those interested, the whey is good for making bread or smoothies.)

You then strain it with cheesecloth. The amount of time you strain for determines how soft or dry the cheese is. I like mine fairly soft, so I only drained it for about an hour.

After that, you can add flavoring if you like and shape it if you like. I made plain, honey lemon (blintzes?), and fresh herb chevre and rolled them in waxed paper to make logs like you get at the store.

Overall, this was an easy process and was cost effective vs. buying premade cheese. (One gallon of milk yielded about 7 of these good sized logs.) And most important of all, it was delicious!

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Responses »
Tags: cheese, food

Garden update

Written by karen on August 8th, 2014

Despite the trials and tribulations of this summer, most of our garden is doing quite well. The monsoons have been good and steady, and after a very hot stretch in May, it’s been more moderate.

This is what the beds look like full of plants. They grow to fill the shape of the netting.

The tomatoes have done especially well. I’m not sure what to attribute this to, but possibilities include good seed (all locally seed saved), continued enrichment of our soil, new organic fertilizer, the weather, and/or a new method of watering which involves not only drip, but a low level sprinkling (generally sprinkling is thought to be bad for tomatoes, but we speculate that this cooled the beds, possibly allowing for fruiting during hot temperatures, which is normally our biggest problem).

We are currently getting a good size bowl of tomatoes every other day, and the bulk of the tomatoes are not yet ripe. There must be well over a hundred green tomatoes with some getting quite large. Definitely the best tomato crop so far here.

Other crops are doing well. We continue to eat lettuce and have had yellow squash and cucumbers as well. Cantaloupe and watermelon should be ready soon. The beans are thriving as usual. Even the sweet potatoes appear to have come back from their run-in with the javelina (though it’s hard to tell with the actual potatoes being under ground, but the greens look very healthy). Barring any particularly bad insect invasion, which could come any time now, we should have a lot of food here.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »
Tags: food, garden, tomatoes

An abundance of basil

Written by karen on August 7th, 2014

As you might remember, last year, we planted a large bed of basil. It was quite lovely, but there was really a lot of it.

This year, I decided to plant just a few small pots. (We still have pesto in the freezer from last year, and all of our neighbors have probably had their fill too.)

However, the bed from last year reseeded itself, and I am loathe to pull out healthy volunteers, so we now have a large amount of basil among our cantaloupes and lettuce. (At some point, all of my beds will be a mix of everything because of my reluctance to eliminate volunteers. For example, this year we have tomatoes in 3 or 4 different beds. This is a nice treat though.)

In the course of perusing food blogs this summer, I saw a recipe for basilcello. (If you haven’t tried limoncello, you should. It’s an Italian lemon liqueur, best served ice cold.) So naturally, I thought I’d give it a try. And I made it with lemon basil, which I love, hoping that lemon flavor would come through.

The results were fabulous. And you could taste the lemon flavor as much if not more than the basil. Here are a few pics of the process.

First you start with some vodka in a mason jar.

After washing the basil leaves, you par boil them, plunge them into an ice bath, and then add them to the vodka.

The basil then steeps in the vodka for a week. It gradually becomes green colored.

You then strain out the basil leaves, add some simple syrup (with relatively little sugar overall), chill the final beverage, and it’s ready to consume.