Mixed Berry Bread-Pudding

Here is another great use for mixed berries fresh out of the garden: bread pudding!

Ingredients:

• Butter for the casserole dish
• 3 large eggs
• 1.5 - 2 cups of sugar (depending on the tartness of the berries used)
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 2 cups mixed berries (for this batch I used red and black raspberries and blueberries in season)
• 8 cups dense bread cubes (I used left over home made dinner rolls from last night)

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and butter a casserole or 9x13 baking dish.  Whisk the eggs, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla in a large mixing bowl until smooth.  Blend in the milk and cream and then carefully mix in the berries.  Add the bread cubes and let them soak for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Then our the mixture into the prepared pan and bake 55 to 60 minutes, until a knife inserted comes out clean.  Serve warm with vanilla ice cream for a perfect  midsummer eve.

Grape Update

Vidal Blanc

Our grapes look amazing this year. The Chambourcin and Vidal Blanc vines are loaded with fruit, and the newer vines (Chardonel, Corot Noir and Concord) are growing nicely.


We worked on the trellis for the Corot Noir vines, which were just planted a few weeks ago.  We need to get the wires strung, so we can tie up the young grapevines!

Chambourcin 

Drilling Post Holes

Sharpened Fence Posts

Mixed Berry Jam

Raspberries and blueberries are ripening right now and this morning's picking was perfect for a batch of mixed berry jam.  I use the Sure.Jell low sugar recipe, following basic directions for blackberry jam, only I modified the ingredients to match the fruit I had on hand:



Nearly Seedless Mixed Berry Jam Recipe:

• 3 cups prepared seedless black raspberry puree  (i.e. heat the cleaned blackberries and run them through a food mill with a berry screen)
• 1 cup smashed red raspberries (these will have seeds)
• 2 cups smashed (not pureed) blueberries
• 4 cups of sugar
• 1 box of low sugar Sure.Jell

Wash jelly jars, heat lids and have the matching rings ready.

Follow directions for making cooked jam:  measure the sugar and use 1/4 cup of this to mix in with the Sure.Jell powder.  Place all the measured fruit into a large pot, add the sugar/Sure.Jell mix to the fruit and bring it to a full boil (one that cannot be stirred down).  Make sure that the sugar mixture is blended in and that there are no clumps.  When the fruit reaches a full boil, add the remaining sugar and return to a full boil.  Once the full boiling point is reached, boil for exactly 1 minute.

Pour hot jam into prepared jelly jars, wipe rims, adjust lids and place filled jars in a water bath, bring to boil and boil for 10 minutes.  Remove jars and let cool overnight before removing rings.

Yields about 7 half pints of rather thick, amazingly good jam.

A Week at the Beach

A whole week in Hilton Head Island - Tina, Jeff, Lars and Toben!!  What a blast...played all day  and fished all night.

Massive Storm System  Approaches

Calm After the Storm

Herb Garden Replenished

After re-arranging the paths of the herb garden to line up with the greenhouse, we had to do some replanting...and of course the annual herbs had to be added in as well.  Some of the new plants include:

Parsley

• Curly and flat (Italian) Parsley
• Cilantro
• Rosemary
• Summer Savory
• Cumin
• Chamomile
• Basil ... lots of Basil

Oregano

 The herbs that overwintered are doing great and we are just about to do a "first cutting" of tarragon, Italian oregano and Greek oregano.  Our chives are blooming beautifully right now, as is the thyme.

Tarragon

Chives

Assessing Winter Damage

The 2014/15 winter was harsh - maybe not record breaking, but awfully cold.  The good news is that we had a lot of snow, which helped to insulate the roots of plants.  The other good news is that we never experienced a period of warming temperatures in early spring, only to dip into deep cold again.

All in all, we could have done worse.  It seems that our grapevines sustained no winter injury at all - mainly due to the fact that we only planted hybrid varieties, which we selected for cold hardiness appropriate for our growing zone.

We did loose a few blueberry bushes, but those had been weaker plants going into the winter.  Also one of our Asian Pear trees did not make it.

However, our blackberries did get hit by winter damage: probably between 15 - 20% of the fruiting canes are damaged.  Luckily this does not mean that the plant itself is dead, there will just be less berries.  (we had expanded our blackberry patch, so we probably come out even at harvest time compared to last year)

Some of our herbs did not survive the cold winter either - not surprisingly, the rosemary did not make it, but neither did the marjoram.  All other perennial herbs are growing fine and the dill self-seeded again.

Planting More Grapes

We planted nearly 2 acres of grapes today, the majority - 550 - at Zach and
Rachel's farm just down the road, and then just 200 at the Long Shot Farm.  We had a better system  than in past years, and it went rather quickly.  Jeff made deep rows with a large single plow blade.  (We had already measured and placed posts to mark the rows on both ends).



Jeff used his deep sea fishing rod, which is over 12 ft long,  and duct-taped it to the tractor, so it stuck out 10 feet (the distance between the grape rows).  He had a string with a sinker at the end of the pole, which basically was centered above the previous row while he made the next furrow, so the spacing between rows remained a constant 10 ft.



We then used marking spray paint, and a "measuring stick", to mark each spot where a grape had to be planted.  Lars, Jens and Zach alternated with marking spots, digging out the hole within the row a bit deeper, and planting.   Rachel and Tina helped with planting, and trimming roots, and Toben and Fiona dropped trimmed grape plants by the marked spots.

After the grapes were planted, Jeff used his "home-made" hiller - which consists of 2 disc blades mounted on a frame in the exact distance needed to disc/hill the grape rows shut, while straddling the grape plants.