Friday Peach Party

I have a long weekend off from work, and yesterday I brought home a giant box of local peaches from the farm down the way.  They were super sweet, dead ripe and filled my car with a heavenly fragrance on the way home.  Knowing that they'd be mush in a matter of a day or two, I set about the hot, sticky work of preserving them.

First, I packed four quarts of halved peaches in light syrup to be saved for snacking during snowstorms.  Nomnomnom! (Ignore the date stamp on these photos, it is incorrect).

Then, I decided to make peach butter with a touch of vanilla and cinnamon... completely naive to the fact that it would take more than 6 hours of cooking down on the stove to go from 20 cups of this:

...to 14 cups of this:

By the end of the night, I was miserably hot and tired, and not wanting to see another peach ever again.  That's a problem, because even after all of that, there's still this left in the bottom of the box that was once overflowing with peaches:

However, by the time I woke up this morning, my loathing for the fruit had passed.  When it came time to devour my breakfast of french toast (made from homemade oatmeal bread, our girls' eggs, and local raw milk), spread with the bit of extra peach butter that wouldn't fit in the jars, I concluded that it had been indeed worth the heat, time, and effort.  Meals like that make me feel almost like I should be able to walk outside afterwards, hitch up my horse and go riding through the wooded acres of the farm we'll own someday...

The fig tree is pushing out colanders full of ripe fruit on a daily basis.  We're picking every day and freezing them whole to make jam and wine with at a later date.  It's unbelievable how delicious these are... and how I ever got by without a tree in the yard.

Our little rooster, Mr. Ethel, will be going to a new home today.  I was lucky enough to find a lady in need of a rooster to protect her little flock of bantam hens.  I'm very sad to see him go.  He's really a sweetheart, and a beautiful creature to boot.  I have loved watching him court the ladies... and watching him submit to Popcorn... even though she's half his size, she's still the top chicken in the flock and he runs from her if she charges at him! 

I know that at least a few of our younger girls will miss him, despite his very sudden and rude sexual advances.  Here he is with Lady Jane:

And in other chicken news, one of the young ladies has begun laying!  Beautiful little creamy light brown eggs.  They grow up too fast...

Apparently preying mantids also grow up fast... this dude was hanging out on the lemongrass yesterday evening... I'm thinking he was once of the little nymphs that hatched in the garden earlier this Spring, all growed up and purdy...