This week saw several friends coming back from vacation. Eme came back on Tuesday and was back in the garden Wednesday afternoon. Zak and his family came back from vacation on Thursday night, and he was back in the garden on Friday. It was nice to have Zak back, but I was so excited to see Eme, she’s been on vacation with her family for the past three weeks in Brooklyn. Eme completes the garden crew’s four horsemen of the apocalypse– Fern, Eddie, Sid and Eme all make fun of everyone in their general vicinity. Although Fern and Eme could work on being teased back, it’s hard to be in bad spirits when every few minutes you’re being accused of having liver in your legs (Eddie), a big ole punk (Sid), a chocolate chip brownie (Eme) or a chickenhead (Fern).
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This week I also spent a lot of time jamming. Last Saturday Miss Whatsit and I each picked twenty pounds of peaches, determined to make them into jam. We succeeded, but we also agreed that it was a lot of work and twenty pounds would have been enough for both of us, instead of forty pounds between the two of us. I do have eighteen jars of jam though, which I think will make excellent Christmas gifts. We processed most of the peaches Monday night, making peach-apple jam.
On Tuesday the village had a very successful and fun Karaoke Night. It was great to see so many people getting up to sing songs that they had no idea what the words were. This included Zeke trying to sing Pink’s Just Like A Pill, Pippin trying to get a bunch of coworkers to sing the latest version of Lady Marmalade and Sunshine singing… I’m not exactly sure, to be honest. I had a lot of fun, dancing and making a general fool of myself. Miss Whatsit planned the event and from my untrained eye it went off without a hitch.
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Wednesday night I did the second batch of peaches– this time making a ginger peach jam, that I think came out deliciously spicy. Pele and I ended up processing our peaches at the same time, but while she finished around 10pm I finished around 1am. Pele was a great help in the morning/afternoon because she ended up cleaning out my jam pot which I had caramelized sugar at the bottom of. Altogether I had eighteen jars of peach jam, but I’ve already given out three jars. Over the next week I’m going to try to do lacto fermented sauerkraut, pickled green tomatoes, pickles, recaito (or cilantro-based pesto) and basil pesto. I realize this is a lot for one week, but I’m not here for much longer and I want to try as much as I can while I’m here. Especially with our bumper crop of awesome vegetables that we have crates upon crates of.
I missed every house meal on Thursday because I slept through breakfast, skipped lunch at the cafe and had a phone interview the same time dinner started. On Friday I missed breakfast, like normal, because I was at the garden for harvest morning and I missed lunch because I was taking Ayya to the hairdresser. Even though I know that in less than a month I’ll be eating almost all my meals by myself, it felt weird to not be eating with a large table, passing around and passing out food.