The Life and Times of the Plume

We harvested our garlic over the weekend. One variety was ready and the other three varieties we grow could have stayed in the ground for another week but Robbie suspected he was going to start rolling* since the McCall base has pretty much emptied out to spike bases in Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. Sure enough, he was given a division position on a Utah fire on Monday and I’m not sure when he’ll make it home again so it’s really great to have this crop harvested and curing on the racks in our big workshop building. It’s our biggest and best harvest yet! We had great success this year which is probably a sign of our seed adapting to our soil and the overall health of the soil here. This will be our fourth year carrying our own garlic seed over into the next season and it just keeps getting better, richer, more complex in flavor.

This garlic crop was grown under contract for a fermented garlic company in Sun Valley as well as for our own consumption (we eat SO MUCH garlic), and seed stock but we do hope to be able to offer you garlic for sale in an online farm store next summer. We continue to expand and develop our garlic plot here and as our knowledge grows so does the quality of our harvest. Stay tuned! We hope to make your garlic dreams come true!

And since I know some of you will ask about her, the new kitten is Roxanne, as in, “you don’t have to put on the red light“. Our friends found her mostly dead in a puddle of water on the side of a road in McCall. They brought her back from the brink of death, gentled her, but didn’t want to own a cat so we brought her to the farm. She loves it here and is a pesky little savage. Mew mew!

*Rolling, in fire lexicon, refers to a two week long work segment for a smokejumper or hotshot crew. Your wildland firefighters tend to roll for two weeks at a time with two days off between rolls. Sometimes they will extend to three week long rolls but two weeks at a time is the usual. When we say “we’re rolling” as a fire family, it means Robbie is on the road, in the sky, or spiked out on a remote fire. Once we start rolling, we’re in the thick of it for the rest of the fire season, hanging on for dear life. Bear with me here as I drop down into a lower gear and simply try my hardest to do my very best every single day.

:::EDIT::: It’s now June 30 and I STILL have not managed to get these rings photographed and listed in my shop! I am so sorry! I will be trying my hardest to get them in the shop by Friday. Thank you all for your patience.

Life has been a GRIND. A truck backed into our front gates and tore out a small section of fenceline, I had three appointments rearranged at the last minute which botched my entire studio work schedule last week, three flat tires on the car…etc. Hellfire and misery, but I shall prevail! I managed to turn out a few pretty things in my studio in recent days. I put together these Hope Rings with simple sterling settings that hold some funky, free form cuts of chrysoprase in varying shades of green and varying degrees of opacity. I hope to get these rings and a big batch of hoop earrings listed in my shop over the weekend, until then, I am focused on hosting a family jamboree! We have a gaggle of sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews visiting us at the moment and it is a great week for it as the sky has been clear, the wind laying low, and the sunshine hot. It’s a great time to be in a boat on the reservoirs and on the river, eating tasty food, and stockpiling vitamin D in the form of a SUNTAN!!! Some of these siblings of ours haven’t seen the farm yet or our house or met any of our beloved animals so it has been a delight to host them on the river and share our lives with them.

In very important farm news, the piglets arrived! I’ll be sure to get you some glorious photos of these babies and tell you all about them (they really are magnificent) as soon as I can but here’s a sneak peak for you:

What a joy to welcome these babes into this beautiful world, to give them a place to live and thrive, to tend them with joy and curiosity and wonder, to give thanks for those little hooves and snouts and milk mustaches. Bless their hearts. Bless mine, too, for it could burst.

Have a beautiful week, one and all. Be good to one another. Find your joy and feel it and share it with everyone you meet.

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2020/06/24/15388/