Cracking on!

Autumn's almonds are still happening,  we have one tub left to shell,  and one jarful of shelled ones that need blanching  but we have nearly cracked it!   Sorry, not meant to be a pun,  but almonds....cracking.... I know, I'm sorry.

Strawberries too are still happening,  I froze a kilo last week,  can't keep making and eating strawberry crumble nice and rich though it is,  all that weight that we've lost this year will be creeping back on around the hips and waist if we're not careful.  ( 1 stone for him,  1.5 for me  :)  )  But yesterday there was another 600 grams,  so another google for hot strawberry pudding ideas came up with a variation of a sponge.  Strawberries, brown sugar  and lemon zest as a base,  a sponge topping with orange zest,  then baked in the oven.  I used 4 microwavable individual ramekin style pots,  much quicker and fuel efficient even though you don't get the nice brown crispy cake top.  But with cream poured over,  does it matter?

John's seed starting process is still working wonders,  on Tuesday he put lettuce,  pak choi and kohlrabi onto damp kitchen paper.  Every morning he sprays them with water and checks, not expecting to see anything just yet,  but today all the trays had germinated and put roots out into the paper.  Some seeds he's managed to lift off and lay onto sifted soil/compost,  some he had to cut the paper up so as not to damage the roots.  As they grow, so he will add compost around them until they are big enough to plant out.

The peas  that I put direct into the ground on the 3rd have appeared,    little clusters of leaves,  and they've been watered today.  The habas - broad beans - are also up.  The acequia has been running although it's not our week, this time of year is not so regulated and so we make use of it when we can.  We have extra hose pipes that I put  in the running water and catch it,  then it trickles onto the land nice and slowly.  The runner beans are running up the poles,  although not beaning as yet.

Tomorrow morning we start next weeks wine batch,  first of all we are going to press last weeks 12 buckets of very fizzy white grapes,  hoping for about 50 litres but they do surprise us sometimes so we have more barrels  ready than we  should need for the juice.  Then Tuesday we will be picking the rest of the really ripe white ones and crushing them.  Monday pressing and Tuesday picking the next batch seems to work well,  I didn't think we had a routine to our lives but I suppose when you look at your life,  there is always some sort of routine.  Be it up at sunrise and eat at sunset,  or picking and pressing grapes,  there's some sort of order.