Harvest time

As elsewhere in Europe, summer seems to be coming to an early end. Although we are certainly not worst off, with pretty sunny and warm weather throughout July and the first part of August.

We’re in the middle of harvest time, plums, blackberries and pears need to be picked and processed to chutneys, jams, juice, dried fruit etc. Our garden is providing a steady supply of pumpkins, courgettes, haricot beans and swiss chard and Hannes is hunting for mushrooms as soon as we go for a walk in the surrounding woods… Some weeks ago a neighbour also brought us a Giant Puffball (Riesenbovist, Vesse-de-loup Géante) the size of a basketball, of which we made plenty of yummy schnitzel!

In July we welcomed Pamela and Jean-Claude as the latest members of our tiny herd. Pamela is another East-frisian ewe and Jean-Claude is a little Lacaune ram. He will have the pleasure of mounting our wooly ladies in autumn and he looks like he will be a real gentleman about it.

We’ve been quite lucky with our search for green meadows this summer, and hopefully also for the future: the manager of the organic orchard in the next village allows us to graze our animals on the large strips that are needed for harvesting next to the trees. The animals get shade and shelter in a home-made ‘yurt’ and we move them around every couple of weeks. We sometimes even get help from our guests and their children who see this as the perfect bucolic holiday activity

Finally, (finally!) Hannes finished my cheese kitchen!!! It’s beautiful, it’s perfect, no more splashing milk in our kitchen, no more tiny sink to wash my 30l kettle, no more cheese dripping on the breakfast table… Next steps will be to send the plan of the cheese kitchen to the local hygiene authority to get the green light for production and sale, and to plan possibilities for sales next year (farmers market in Rostock, small retailers in the area, direct sales at home) – but that’s for next time!