tall clover farm

Saturday was one of those days where each step I took seemed out a pace and out of place with the universe. Much like a dubbed low budget foreign film, nothing was in synch–lips, story progression or otherwise.  Considering Seattle’s last three days of sleet, snow and pelting hail in the presence of the daffofils, I was [...]

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It’s that time of year when I instinctively begin to ration my homemade preserves. It truly is summer captured in a jar. In the photo, I’m holding one of my favorite concoctions: apply jelly infused with rosemary and punctuated with dried cranberries.  Apple jelly is one of my unsung larder heroes, a jellied jewel of rich flavor.  [...]

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In my neverending quest to cover every square inch of Tall Clover with anything that bears fruit, I stumbled across a remarkable site: Greenmantle Nursery of Humboldt, California. The nursery’s been in business since 1983, and features some old homestead varieties from plant breeder Albert Etter (1872-1950). Today three small benchgrafts (on M111 rootstock) of his small dessert/cider apples  that the [...]

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The chill of the evening cannot dissuade me from writing my first blog entry, not even at my desk upstairs. The heat in my house is most comfortable on the first floor where it remains insolent to most basic of nature’s laws: heat rises. Not so here; it loiters on the stoop with nary an inclination to ascend past my ankles, warm [...]

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