And in my yogurt and scattered over my pork.  And covering my kids, head to toe.  Literally.  They’re finally here.  Our ranch, long known to us as really more of haven for blackberries and poison oak than a place to grow civilized plants, is just dripping with blackberries.  And we are loving it.

Yesterday morning, while the French Toast was soaking away, we grabbed the wagon, a bucket and some pruning shears  and had at them.  My husband’s job is to cut away the “bull canes”.  The huge, nasty ones that are only there to catch your shirt or worse, your skin.  My daughter picks the low berries, I pick the high berries and my son just robs from the bucket and pulls the wagon around.  But, it didn’t take long before we had enough berries for our somewhat famous Blackberry-Pecan French Toast. 

Summer, summer summer!

Serve French toast with syrup.

Oh, I wish you could all join us for this little outing…  Friday, July 31st, Geoff and Joe (my brother) are going to take four very lucky Farmhouse guests, and two very illustrious members of the press (they’ll remain nameless for now…) out into the wilds of the Russian River Valley for some serious Wine Country adventure- Master Sommelier style.  Isn’t that just a picture?

Views of Russian River Valley

The Russian River Valley is becoming known for it’s new wave of grassroots winemaking.  A dozen or so incredibly talented and passionate winemakers have split off from bigger gigs or other ventures and have started their own things.  They’re blowing off the scores and making wine that we actually want to drink!  Food friendly wine.  Terroir driven wine.  Wines made from organic and even biodynamic vineyards.  Wines that taste like grapes not grape syrup!  It’s serious and we’re really excited. 

Geoff and I have put together a series, starting on July 31st and continuing each month on the last Friday, that will give him the opportunity to take you out and turn you on.   Geoff’s at the absolute forefront of what’s going on.  He’s tasting, he’s consulting and he’s hanging out with this whole new scene within the wine scene.  He’s going to show our guests vineyards on the coast that grow pinot noir in extreme conditions and result in miniscule volume but extraordinary quality.  He’s going to take guests into caves, into garages, onto mountains and underground to sample wines they would never have access to on their own. 

Each event will feature a farm-fresh picnic-style lunch at a winery or in a vineyard.  Joe will drive everyone around and Geoff will teach tasting and wine basics between stops.  Doesn’t that just sound like so much fun?

Here’s the Itinerary for the 31st  (written by Geoff, not me- and I love it!)

10 AM Leave The Farmhouse

10:15 AM to 11:30 Radio Coteau

Meet with winemaker Eric Sussman to taste some of California’s most sought after Pinot Noir and Syrah. The wines at Radio Coteau manage a rare balance of rich California fruit with plush textures and elegance. An unusual chance to taste these limited production wines.

Grapes coming in at Radio-Coteay

11:45 AM to 1:30 PM Scherrer Winery

We will join Fred Scherrer at his annual open house to taste through a range of current release and older vintages. Fred offers a wide range of wines from Cabernet to Zinfandel, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir. Always one of Sonoma’s sleeper wineries, they are not only moderately priced but develop beautifully with a few years in bottle. Lunch will be provided from a local chef.

There's Fred

1:45 PM to 2:45 PM Arnot Roberts

Unarguably one of the hottest new producers in Sonoma County. A diverse range of wines from low oak Chardonnay to cool climate Syrah and rich full-bodied single vineyard Cabernets. These two young winemakers are blazing the way for Sonoma’s next generation.

3 PM to 4 PM WesMar Winery

Denise Selyem, daughter of Russian River Pioneer Ed Selyem of Williams Selyem, makes elegant single vineyard Pinot Noir’s from Russian River and Sonoma Coast. Food friendly, feminine, delicate yet mouth filling wines that remind you what Pinot Noir is supposed to taste like.

That's how they do it at WesMar

 Call or email for more information.  707.887.3300 or catherine@farmhouseinn.com. 

Really.  Out on the ranch we can sense the change of season coming by the changes in the wildlife around us.  In the evenings, we love to sit on the porch and just watch and listen to our little valley.  As day fades into evening and evening into night, some of our friends go off to bed as others arrive.  Our son needs to ”say good night” to the Great Horned Owls- they start to hoot and he hoots back and then off to bed he’ll go.

Spring arrives with the Swainsons thrushes .  Their haunting flute-like calls serenade us in those cool evenings.  Spring means counting and identifying our new fawns, scores of mama quails followed by their scurrying chicks, baby rabbits everywhere and incredibly darling raccoon cubs (it’s so hard not to adore them, even knowing how truly awful they’re going to be in  a month or so).

Look at that little monster. He doesn't even care that I'm two feet away...

Last night, while we were sitting out on the porch, enjoying a glass of Scherrer rose, an all-time, summer-time  favorite- Late Summer arrived.  With a vengeance.  As the sun set, and the nest of Great Horned owls, up in the old pine above the vineyard, woke up, and the warmth of the day shifted abruptly to the cool of the evening, the summer chorus of cicadas and tree frogs started.  Just like that.  I know it doesn’t sound that exciting- but you really had to be there.    Out of nowhere, this cacophony of sound erupted from the creek and voila!  Summer’s here.

You know what makes it so exciting, right?  Blackberries.  Tomatoes.  Gravenstein apples.  Melons.  Corn.  Shell beans…. On and on.  When the cicadas and tree frogs come, so does our summer bounty.  The first berries are ripening as we speak.  The vines are heavy with our summer harvest and  we are ready!

Here they come...

“The only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey….and the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it.”
Winnie the Pooh in A.A. Milne’s
‘The House at Pooh Corner’

Pooh and I have a lot in common.  More than I’ll actually get into here.  A whole lot of what passes as important, I can take or leave.  But honey, now that’s serious. 

Spring Honey, 2009

When I moved back onto the Ranch in 1997, the place was an absolute disaster.  Being an Italian family, feuds are in our blood.  We can’t seem to help it.  So, when  my great-grandmother died back in ‘78, the family couldn’t come to grips with what to do with the place.  She was the absolute glue that held everything together, and she was something really special (the memory of her and how she and my great-grandfather lived really does drive our vision for Farmhouse).  Well, when you can’t figure out what to do, and you’re a certain kind of Italian family, what do you do?  Talk about things, clear the air and come to a resolution?  Nope, you fall back on that old saying,  ”If you can’t stand the heat…” and you get the heck out of the kitchen and don’t look back. 

Until some little pain-in-the-neck in some future generation grows up and just won’t leave it alone.  That would be me.  Well, I mean really… You have this amazingly gorgeous property, in an absolutely heavenly location, with all of your family history just rotting away.  Wouldn’t you take on the elders and have a go at getting it kick started again?  Boy, did I not know what I was getting into…

But, here we are, 12 years later.  Talking about honey.  After we took care of some of the “bigger issues”, you know propped up the house, replanted the vineyard and dug out about one hundred million poison oak and blackberry plants, we started thinking, what next? 

Not being inclined towards farming ourselves- Rod and I love living on a working farm, participating and, well, reaping all of the benefis…but don’t have the time or actual inclination to do all the never-ending work associated with each individual endeavor- we started looking around for people in our community who are farmers without farmland.  And lo and behold, we’ve met an incredible, number of passionate, talented people who share our vision. 

One of the first brave participants in our little scheme came our way via some friends who have a gem of a  farm, right up the road.  Mark and Rob have a few acres, a lot of gophers and a great vision.  They have enough olive trees to make a little olive oil, enough grapes for a little wine and enough bees for … You get the picture.  When Rob brought me a jar of honey, I couldn’t believe it.  My oh so fastidious friend, out there in the full garb, with a little smoker, convincing a hive of angry bees to just “give it up”? 

Turns out they were just reaping the benefit of someone elses bravery.  He’d heard of a local bee keeper who was searching out prime locations to place bees.  Can you imagine?  How incredibly cool!  He brings the bees, cares for the bees, extracts the honey and then gives you some??  So my trees, vegetables and flowers get polinated, I don’t have to do any work and then I get honey from my own property?  We’ll you guessed it, I called them up that same afternoon.

Doug and Katia Vincent own a local business called Beekind.   And, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVaYD3e9KOA- here’s a video of them on YouTube.  They really are “all things bee”.  They have hives all over Sonoma County, sell honey, sell candles, teach bee keeping, specialze in dealing with swarms and are huge advocates and proponents for bees in general. 

Doug Vincent, see his funny hat?

It was through them that we first learned about the incredible and potentially catastrophic decline in world-wide bee populations.  (If you haven’t heard and would like to, helpthehoneybees.com is a great place to start).  We also learned the difference between commercial, heat pasteurized honey and real honey- the raw stuff that’s full of enzymes and not only tastes a thousand times better, but has medicinal and healing properties. 

The bees, like every other endeavor on the Ranch, have taught us so much and have opened our eyes to how perfectly interconnected our world really is.  Our kids are learning that the bees polinate the garden that grows our vegetables, the vineyard that produces the wine that makes Mom and Dad so happy… and the orchards that give us cider and applesauce and pie!  And then, at the end of each season, Doug comes out and puts on his funny outfit and gives them honey still in the comb and warm from the sun.  Not a bad scenario.

Doug just delivered our Late Spring Honey.  We don’t have a ton of it, but it’s unlike any honey we’ve produced yet.  Doug says that the late rains and the additional growth that came with them, account for the delightful cinnamon character in the honey.  Our spring honey is usualy lighter and more butterscotchy.  This one is really deep with great acidity- kind of like wine. 

We have some for sale, and we’re serving it at breakfast and in the restaurant.  So if you come and visit, you’ll surely see some.  We’ve taken a page out of Pooh’s book.  The honey pot doesn’t stay empty for long!

Ok, all of the Cs in the title is pretty cute.  But titles are tough…

What a weekend!  It’s Wednesday and I’m just finding the time- uhm energy- to write about it.  For me, the 4th of July has a few necessary components and the rest is up for grabs.  Something really good on the grill.. a must.  Good friends and/or family and some sort of water component… gotta have it.   Fireworks… absolutely… but I’m not picky about what or where.  The rest just evolves year-to-year. 

We realized, a few weeks ago, that Joe and his family were going to be away, so no family this year.  When Kathryn Sloan called to tell us that she and her family were wondering what we were up to on the 4th we knew we were in for an adventure…  

A little about the Sloans.  Paul and Kathryn have a world-class farming company called Small Vines Viticulture.  They farm organically and biodynamically and produce some of the most beautiful fruit imaginable.  That’s how we met.  Paul farmed our vineyard for a few years.  We’re a really small vineyard, and Paul’s in really high demand, so once we parted ways on the vineyard, we naturally fell into a really great friendship.  Our kids go to the same school, Summerfield Waldorf, (that’s a whole different post), and Paul and Kathryn also make Small Vines wine.  Their children, Dakota and Savannah are about the same age as Helen and Rocco and they’re all great buddies too.  They’re avid outdoors people- Paul’s an actual Eagle scout- how handy is that?  And they’re always up for a good time. 

Dakota, Helen and Savannah. Where's Rocco?

 After a lot of debating about where to go and what to do, we decided we’d just do a little of everything.  We’d head over to the Sloan’s place on Friday for dinner and the Sebastopol fireworks and then go out to Doran Beach (our absolute favorite local beach) on Saturday.  We’d wrap it all up with dinner at our place Saturday evening- if we all could manage.

We’ve been serving some incredible Copper River Salmon in the restaurant- what better for the grill on the 4th?  A side of a salmon,  Kathryn’s weekly CSA box from Singing Frog Farm  , some Sebastopol Berry Farm blueberry ice cream and wine gathered from a few different sources…  Voila, dinner. 

Salmon and Small Vines Chardonnay

One of my favorites.

and a 2007 Small Vines Chardonnay.  What an amazing comparison.  The ‘97 was fantastic, golden and slightly earthy, but still showing that incredible minerality that made us love it in the first place.  The Small Vines Chardonnays are a perfect expression of Paul’s farming.  They’re bright and fruit driven, but they have wonderful structure and balance. 

'97 on the left, '07 on the right

With dinner we also opened a mystery bottle.  Rod had pulled it from a box of Kermit Lynch- the label was shot, but the color was right…  It was one of the best wines any of us had ever had.  Fortunately, we have several bottles left…

What's in this bottle?

After dinner, we popped popcorn in the chiminea and waited for it to get dark.  One great thing about the fact that we can’t ever eat before 8 is that we don’t have that long to wait for dark…  At about 8:30 Paul started getting antsy-  We’d decided we were going to “sneak” into the neighbor’s orchard for a reallly great view of the fireworks.  Well, with a Ford F250 Super-Diesel (I don’t really know what kind of truck it is but it’d really big and really loud), four small kids, one large dog and four slightly rowdy adults, how sneaky do you think we were?  Oh, and we broght some of our own fire crackers just to make sure we were hard to spot…  Sitting on the cab of a truck, in an old apple orchard, drinking great wine, holding my sleeping son and watching fireworks is a really good time. 

Paul and Rod doing their own little show.

Saturday… On to the beach.   I had to run into Farmhouse first thing.  So Rod packed up the kids and headed to the Santa Rosa Farmers Market for Santi Sausages for dinner, some stuff to take out to the beach and yes, more fireworks.  We all met out at Doran at about noon. 

Savannah, Helen and Rocco.

Dakota, Helen and Savannah in the "supply business".

The kids got on their suits and life vests and spent about four hours throwing sand and “boogie boarding”.  When we were all soaking wet and sure we’d accumulated sand everywhere, dinner and cocktails called.

Our current favorite, one part Square one Vodka, one part Ginger People ginger beer, a squeeze of lime and a dash of Peychod’s bitters, on ice, pepped us up and got us rolling agian.  Back to the grill for Calabrese and Brats, down to the garden for chard, kale and strawberries, and dinner was as good as on the table.  Rod had been tasting with Copain and Arnot-Roberts on Thursday, and still had some bottles open.  (Rod’s a writer and is including them in a piece he’s working on.  I’ll link to it when it publishes next month).  We were four adults with about 9 open bottles on the table.  I sometimes wonder what my kids memories of dinner will be?  “They always had at least four bottles on the table”  is going to make prospective in-laws really excited about our kids…

After dinner, Paul and Rod did a little Fireworks show for us all (minus sleepy head Rocco) and then home to bed so we could be off early to the Sunday Farmer’s Market…

So, if you’ve read any of my other posts- you probably get that I love this business.  Not the inn business or the restaurant business or the spa business per se- but Farmhouse.  There’s just something about it.  It’s this collection of really passionate, creative, loyal people who come together and really create something special.  Well, that was really sappy.   But, oddly sincere.  So, it any of you Farmhousers are reading this, there I’ve said it.  In writing.  Having said that, this place does still make me crazy most of the time.

Anyway, none of that really has anything to do with why I’m posting this morning.  Or maybe it does.  Yesterday and last night were just weird.  In a really good way.  We went from being a little slow this weekend, to being basically totally booked with last minute reservations.  And some of them were just a hoot. 

I was walking accross the parking lot, at around 10 am yesterday, and saw two really attractive,  well dressed women just wandering around the property.  They seemed to be looking for something so I asked if I could help.  Turns out they were just out on a day trip from San Francisco and were thinking about having dinner with us if they could find a place to stay.   So I said “stay here”.   And they did.  And instantly became our two best new friends and ambassadors.  Which is just the funnest thing.  I know funnest isn’t a word. 

So, this morning at check out they told me they were going to go home and read my blog- I guess someone here told them about it- and they hoped I’d post Carole’s Sour Cream Muffin recipe.  She served them this morning, and as always, they were a hit.  So, here it is:

Sour Cream Muffins with Summer Strawberries

Sour Cream Muffins

¾ c. unsalted butter

1 c.  granulated sugar

½ c. brown sugar

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

3 eggs

3 c.  flour

2 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

12 oz sour cream

Streusel  Topping

1 c.  granulated sugar

1 c. brown sugar

2 ½ sticks butter

3 ½ c. flour

1 tsp cinnamon

Heat oven to 350.  Cream butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs.  Add dry ingredients, mix well.  Add sour cream.   Drop into muffin tins and top with streusel.  Bake 20-25 minutes. 

This is a really versatile recipe.  Right now Carole’s dropping in strawberries, blueberries or really, whatever berries are on hand.  In the winter, they’re great with dried fruit or nuts mixed in.

Stacey and Ellen let me know how the recipe works for you. 

Happy 4th!

This recipe makes a perfect take-along for whatever you’re doing this weekend.  Flaky-tender biscuits with great flavor are the perfect partner for summer’s sweetest berries.  This is a real Farmhouse favorite. We serve it with a dry sherry sabayon, but soft whipped cream is nice too.  For best results, buy your berries at your local farmer’s market.  We get ours from one of our favorite farmers, Tierra Vegetables.  They come in still sun-warmed and dusty and the fragrance is unbeatable.  At the very least buy organic- for oh so many reasons..

Tierra Farms Strawberries

.

For biscuits

·         2 cups all purpose flour

·         1 tablespoon grated orange peel

·         2 tablespoons poppy seeds

·         2 tablespoons sugar

·         1 tablespoon baking powder

·         1/2 teaspoon salt

·         1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

·         3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons chilled whipping cream

For berries and cream

• 4 1-pint baskets strawberries, hulled, sliced
• 1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 cup chilled whipping cream

·         Make biscuits:
Preheat oven to 450°F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Combine flour, 4 tablespoons sugar, baking powder, salt, orange zest and poppy seeds in a large bowl. Cut butter in until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add 3/4 cup cream. Blend just until moist clumps form. Do not over mix or the dough will become tough.  Gather dough into ball; gently knead 5 turns. Break into 10-12 equal pieces and gently shape them into 3 inch high rounds (they’ll settle during baking).

·         Bake biscuits until pale golden and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool 15 minutes. (Can be made 2 hours ahead.)

·         Make berries and cream:
Combine berries and 1/2 cup sugar in medium bowl; stir to blend. Let stand at least 30 minutes and up to 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

·         Combine cream and remaining 3 tablespoons sugar in large bowl. Whisk until soft peaks form.

·         Gently pull biscuits horizontally in half. Place 1 biscuit bottom in each of 6 bowls. Top each with berries, then sweetened whipped cream and biscuit top.

I do.  Not just any pastry chef, but an amazing, make-anything-you-want and make-it-the-best-ever kind of pastry chef.  Farmhouse has always had a really good pastry program.  But, Steve will tell you himself that it’s not his favorite thing to do (even though he’s really good at it).  It’s been Steve and his team doing pastry with everything  else they do.  So we’ve been looking forever, for someone to take over our pastry program.  But, we had an almost impossible expectation.  Which is, I guess, not uncommon for us.  (Well, several staff members here have alluded to feeling that way…hmm).

We’ve hired a lot of different Pastry Professionals.  And they’ve all ”gone on to other opportunities”.  Which is unusual in our kitchen, because everyone stays.  Seriously. Everyone.  The team keeps getting bigger and bigger.  And the kitchen stays the same size.  It’s like a clown car or something. 

Anyway, back to Pattie.  So, after much wrangling and some starts and stops, we found our person.  Pattie Taan started with us, officially, just a month or so ago.  And boy, it’s great having her around.  She just left a job at a much bigger restaurant, working 60+ hour weeks and she’s easing into things here.  She does great big-restaurant things like make drawings and diagrams for her desserts.   

Dry Creek Peach Semifreddo photo and diagram

And she totally gets Farmhouse.  We’re all about fresh, simple and unexpected.  We don’t do dishes with a million little components, and every single item on every single plate is there for a specific reason.  We’re not huge on “food technology”, although sometimes soemthing new and different really is better.  And we focus on seasonal and local.  The new dishes Pattie’s brought to us really have enhanced the dining experience we offer.  Right now we’re serving a Local Dry Creek Peach and Lemon Verbena Semifreddo with a Peach Sabayon.  This weekend, for the 4th, we’re running a Bombe of Local Cherries, Chocolate Sponge Cake, Cherry Granite and a Vanilla Bean Bavois.  Don’t those just sound like summer?

And, today, she did something that just sealed the deal for me.  She made truffles.  Gorgeous, sexy, delicious truffles.  Truffles have been a big deal for me for a long time.  Hard to believe, I know, but you’d be amazed at what I get hung up about.  Really, how many truly great truffles have you ever had?  Too big, bad.  Too sweet, bad.  Too much chocolate, bad.  Not great chocolate… You see, a truffle-maker can go wrong in a million ways.  When you come to stay at Farmhouse, and you tell us it’s your anniversary, birthday, etc, we put a little box of truffles in your room with a little note.  And I’ve never liked our truffles.  We’ve purchased everything you can imagine.  And I’ve never been happy.  Until today. 

Passionfruit and Hazelnut truffles

What they are

 She’s talking about all kinds of different flavors- really farmy ones.  Rosemary-raspberry sounds particularly interesting.  So, celebrations at Farmhouse just jumped up a bit.  And, I love that!

After months of conversations, research and back and forth-  last summer we became “Chicken People”.  Seriously.  It’s a big deal.  Over the 4th of  July weekend, last year, we finally took a deep breath and went down to Western Farm Supply (absolutely the coolest farm supply place) and bought ourselves a flock of chickens.  Seven of them to be exact.  Two Araucanas (for the blue eggs), three Buff Orpingtons (mostly because we like to say Buff Orpington), one Rhode Island Red (because they’re so pretty and lay great eggs) and one Sexlink (we don’t know why).  And we got a cat.  Because he was there and he was irresistable and everyone knows that kittens with baby chickens is a great idea… 

It’s been a terriffic adventure.  We got our first eggs on Christmas Day.  I was out behind the woodshed with Helen and Rocco (my kids) and looked down and saw an indention in the soil, right up against the building, and full of eggs!  We counted twenty four of them total.  We don’t knwo when they actually started laying- but we did appreciate Christmas surprise.  It had been cold enough that they were all still fresh and we made an incredible scramble for the whole family.

One year later, we have four of our original flock left.  We lost three in the usual ways, and have seriously evolved our chicken strategies to cope with our special selection of predators.  Out on the ranch, we have foxes, racoons, hawks, bobcats, you name it.  And they all like chicken!

Yesterday, we took a deep breath again and went down and picked up six new babies.  We’re watching Joe’s two-month-old chickens while they’re on vacation and thought if we’re babysitting his, let’s add some for ourselves. 

Our baby chicks on the left and Joe's on the right.

This year we’re a little more concerned with egg production and so went with two Pearl-White Leghorns (they’re supposedly not so nice, but great layers), they’re a lovely lemon-yellow baby, two Barred Rocks (again, super layers), one Americana (green eggs) and one Rhode Island Red (we still have one from last year and we like pairs). 

Helen, our 4-year-old, has fallen in love with the Americana and has named her Chocolate.  Poor Chocolate.  Being the beloved of a four-year-old girl isn’t always easy… And Rocco, our two-year-old son, is simply fascinated.

Rod constructed a new “baby coop” out of half pallets that had piled up in the wood shed, and so they are all happily housed on the back porch.  The Chicken Guy at Western Farms told me that two-month-olds and babies will be “perfectly happy” together.  Wrong.  So we employed an out of service baby gate to separate the two sections and everyone is happy!

Rocco and his "babychikins"

Helen and Chocolate

If you’re considering chickens of your own, they really are easy, they live happily in back yards, they don’t stink, and as my Grandmother said, “What’s not to love about chickens?  I feed them my scraps and they feed both my family and my garden”.