we allowed ourselves to sleep in this morning, got our jars and lids ready for canning homemade stock tomorrow, played some cards, ran around the yard with the cats, collected anise and dill seeds, as well as grapes - more on the grapes later - and then made a snack and headed for the river!!!
i always take this pic for my friend C!
in the boat and heading out for a wonderful boat ride - it was an incredibly magic day!
taking our spin around the river with the wind blowing in our faces! i kept looking back at jambaloney and we would smile at each other.
the clouds even seemed to be smiling!
we love being out on the water! the sun made us a path to follow to get home.
while jambaloney put away the boat and the motor this beautiful red dragonfly kept me company.
after spending time out on the water it was time to pick cranberries - woohoo!
so on to the great catastrophe of a cranberry fail done Framboise Manor style.
that's how many cranberries we picked! and our land is usually covered in cranberries!!! every year we get a ton of cranberries!!! what the heck?!?!?!?!? not a single cranberry to be found?!?!?!? so we have to do some research and see if cranberries work in some kind of cycle, not producing fruit some years or something. we saw many trails and paths through the cranberries so jambaloney thinks that either the deer ate them all or it was the coyotes that we have been hearing. either something ate EVERY SINGLE CRANBERRY or they just didn't produce fruit this year. i need to do some research. and we need to go to a few other boggy places around here and see if we can get cranberries. we LOOOOVE cranberries!!!!
anyway - here's our fancy dinner down at the river - bahahahah!
some water, some beans, shrimp, and then carrots, cucumber and tomatoe from our garden/greenhouse - deelish!
well now kids - we know that the Framboise Manor Winery won't be open for a few more years - but check this out - we actually grew some grapes!!!
the previous owner planted them and much to our friend W's consternation - we haven't done anything with the grape vines since we got here - too much other stuff on the go! but this is the first year that we actually grew grapes that ripened AND taste like grapes. these are concord grapes so they are small and tart as can be - too tart for me but jambaloney loves them!
me? i love shellfish and seafood! i can eat platefulls of these babies everyday! we get them fresh from the beach and they are sooooo deelish!
and of course - shrimp and vegetable tempura!
even better than from a japanese restaurant!
well - we had a fantastic morning and afternoon! jambaloney is putting our windbreak/plastic contraption on the front of the kitchen floor - it really helps with heating the kitchen and the floor over the winter. then he's off to re-tarp our tool shed. i'm off to make cabbage rolls that we will scarf on all night. then it's our warm blankets, a cup of tea and sitting out front in our rockers watching the sun go down.
and thanking the Lord for such an amazing and wonderful day! we hope that you all had a beautiful day too!
MY bet is birds ate your cranberries. Either that or some local teenage boys spying on you from the woods :)
ReplyDeleteI wish I had access to seafood like you do. My ex's step son has been bringing me fresh Florida shrimp and Tuna about every other week but those are some long weeks.
PP - we do have a lot of various birds in our area and in the forest on both sides of our road to the river. ducks, geese and partridge too. it's anybody's guess who the culprit was. but they ate ALL of the berries???like every single one??? dangnabbit!
Deletei gotta admit having access to all of the shellfish and other kinds of fish is pretty awesome. we have 10 lbs of crab at our besties' house in fourchu - one of our buddies caught them on the crab boat, took them home, cooked them to perfection and then froze them right away. we'll be picking those up on the weekend. we've got more fish than we know what to do with and the smelt run is coming up soon - woohoo!
glad you are getting shrimp and tuna, buddy! sending much love! xoxo
Pioneer Preppy beat me but I too think birds. I've never heard of coyotes eating berries and though deer will, they will also go for the foliage which would have been noticeable. I've seen birds pick a tree or bush clean of berries in a matter of hours so it wouldn't surprise me if they beat you to the punch. You can buy large nets to protect your berries but they are hard on birds and I was forever untangling them from the nets. I finally just try to beat them and "share" the crop but it takes constant monitoring for berries just getting ripe enough to pick to them being picked clean by birds.
ReplyDeleteEd - you and PP could very well be right! maybe it's just our coy-wolfs that eat the berries but they eat raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, cranberries, peaches, pears and apples. there are some old apple farmers here who say they used to sit on the porch and shoot the coyotes as they came to get the apples.
Deletewe would not use nets for the reason you mentioned but next year, i'll be paying more attention for the sounds of birds as the cranberries are ripening. and i'll have my cannon out and loaded and shoot groups of them out of the sky - bahahahah! we loooooove our cranberries!!!! xoxo
We had a lot of rain this spring, so a lot of pollen was washed from things in bloom. As a result, he have almost no acorns, walnuts or wild grapes, wild cherries or apples.
ReplyDeleteyou might be on to something Gorges...we had a pretty wet june and july as well.
DeleteSounds like you guys had a wonderful relaxing day. Too bad you didn't get any cranberries. As usual, the food looks delicious!
ReplyDeletewe had a great day DFW - thank you. but ya - bummed about the cranberries! we'll try a few more places and hopefully get some!
DeleteHey, other than the cranberries, it as a great day and that's all that matters. Do you know this past spring, which should have been our bumper year for dewberries, we didn't get ANY either. What the heck? All I've read about cranberries is that they absolutely have to have a certain number of "chill hours" (temps below a certain amount) in order to produce. Was your last Winter slightly warmer than normal? And by warmer I don't mean it had to be sunny and 70's, just not as many freezing nights as years past? Or birds. LOL!
ReplyDeleteit was a fantastic day 1st Man - we really enjoyed ourselves! and i am sorry that you didn't get any dewberries we have berries up here that we call dewberries but i am not sure if they are the same as yours. and yes, cranberries need a certain number of frosty nights before they lose their tarty-tartness. we had the perfect amount of frosty nights and then a beautiful day for picking but no go. we'll try some other places on the weekend - we NEEEED our cranberries!!! sending much love to the both of you! xoxo
DeleteSweet Kymber and Jambaloney,
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing birds and deer had a field day with your cranberries.
Sorry to hear you and Jam didn't harvest any berries. In the end, you both had and enjoyable day with each other.
Hugs, and love to you both,
Sandy
Sweet Sandy - we had a wonderful day and if you had have been here - you would have had a wonderful time. but no go on the cranberries - dang! we'll try some other spots on the weekend and hopefully get some. sending love and hugs to you and yours as always! xoxoxoxo
DeleteYou know if you'd gotten a bunch of those cranberries and eaten them, Sandy would be calling you, "Tart Kymber" instead of "Sweet Kymber". And Preppy would just call you a "tart"! ..... just kidding..... anyway I'm thinking it was birds and the other critters round the area.
ReplyDeleteTake care.
bhahahahahahah! that's a good one Matt, buddy! i just saw your email and because it is detailed and i want to give it proper attention...and we are in our small city tomorrow for most of the day, have engagements on friday and saturday, give me the weekend to think of a response and a few days to respond.
Deletesending love to you and M! xoxo
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ReplyDeleteDuplicate
Deleteit's because your comment was so funny - it had to be published twice - bahahahah!
DeleteNow that's a good one Matt!!!
DeleteIf you had to choose between time together and socializing, I'm sure you made the best choice.
ReplyDeleteHarry - we usually put community events at the front of anything that we have plans to do but not this time! we knew it would be the perfect day for cranberry picking (even though we didn't get any cranberries!) and we are going to start putting ourselves and our desires on what we want to do first...and then socialize. not that we don't want to socialize - just that we have put off stuff that we really wanted or needed to do for community events. not gonna do that anymore.
Deletesending much love to you and yours Harry! xoxox