As the sun snuck below the sky on a crisp Monday evening, I arrived early to my dance studio on High Street and received horrible news – the studio was closing.  I sat right down and stuck my nose in a book to avoid openly crying.

Late last fall, Firefly the Scottish Highland Cow (shown above) gave birth to a beautiful bull calf.  After a heated vote at a staff lunch, he was named Hank.  Hugh was a close second, but after getting to know him, he’s totally a Hank.

Amid an August full moon night, I lay alone on the couch, eyes fixed wide to the ceiling in fear. Sleep wasn’t interested. My hand bounced, powered by the unwelcomed adrenalin that coursed through my veins. We’d just sold the book, and now, we had to finish. Finish. Finish. Just finish. I’ve finished things in my life – college, culinary school, relationships, leases, jobs, projects . . . why was this so raw and different? Why did I feel that it might literally kill me?

Of all the animals on the farm, whenever asked who’s my favorite, I’ve always answered Guppy the goat.

We lost Gup.  And, it was a sad day at the farm.

In the picture above, see how the avocados still have a bit of the stem on them?  If avocados are picked with a little bit of stem, they rippen evenly all the way through.  No more dark ring around where the stem was, just an even shade of green.  Cool!

Living on a farm with acres of Avocados, it was about time to make something other than guacamole & avocado toast.  Inspired by one of our WWOOFers, John decided to experiment with an Avocado Smoothie.

Like the effects of a bad high-school rumor, coconut oil came out of the 80’s with a horrendous reputation.  Demonized for its saturated fat content, you’d have thought that every heart attack began with tub of coconut oil and a spoon.  The clarification that I believe went unnoticed was the difference between organic, unrefined coconut oil and the highly refined hydrogenated version.  The media is beginning to scrub the graffiti from poor coconut oil’s locker, touting the possible connection between unrefined coconut and heart health, but there’s another beautiful story about the positive effects of coconut oil that has thus far, gone largely unnoticed.  And folks, it could be huge.  Here’s why…

One egg short for my Mango Coconut Milk Ice Cream... my feet burn on the hot bricks as I cross the path towards the quiet coop.  Out for the day, their clucking and leaf shuffling sits on the edge of ear-shot, so I slip confidently past the open door.  One nest sits empty, two empty… shoot. Last nest, there she sits, our broody hen.  Not only is she broody, but our roosters are little banyan fellas, which are miniature.  Cute, but they don’t seem to have the logistical height necessary to be effective.  Meaning, a little short for our tall, sexy hens… if you get my drift.  So, she sits all day to no avail.  Poor lady.

A few weeks back, a team of guys came and picked the lemons from our orchard.  This harvest will happen about two to three times a year for lemons, which produce pretty much year round.  Our foreman Raul highly recommended the contractor who picked lemons for the previous owner of the farm, so I called up Simon and ended up feeling very satisfied with the results.  Not to mention that the very last day of picking, I answered a knock at the door from Simon, who was grinning and holding an entire flat of the most delicious strawberries you’ve ever tasted.  Too many for my small family to eat, we took some up to Raul, but he said no.  Simon had brought him a flat, too.  Smart man because I now think of strawberries when I think of Simon, and that’s one happy association.

Have we had enough cookies lately? I’m gonna go ahead and assume the answer is yes, actually YES. Respectfully, I decided not to drown you with red & green in this picture. No fa-la-la’s. No mistletoe. I went for a more year-round color scheme. That way, if the thought of another cookie repels you like a pair of like magnets, return in May and without feeling the need to share with Santa. However if you, like my husband, don’t mind a cookie, after a whole lot of cookies. Knock yourself out, cause these are good.

Watermelons can have yellow guts, too! A peculiar yellow melon made me a big hit with our good friends the Dikos’s who were in town last week from Baltimore. Little Mia thought it looked like a pineapple, but couldn’t get over the fact that it tasted “just like watermelon!” Once they took off for the Grand Canyon, I used my leftover melon to experiment on a recipe headed for Farm to Table.