Enjoyed a berry nice visit from my mother over the weekend. She arrived early Saturday, and first stop for us was a mixed flat of organic love from the Eugene Saturday Market. The flat carried teeming pints of picture-perfect melt-in-your-mouth blueberries, cherries, blackcap raspberries, and logan berries, again all organic and so sweetly ripe. Not too mention, expertly picked/cleaned as we later found hardly three stems in the whole thing…

Sunday morning, momma made a nice raspberry cream cheese spread for bagels that was perfectly blended to embrace the flavor of the raspberry, yet not too sweet as to overwhelm the cream cheese, a culinary combo surprisingly harder to properly proportion than one might suspect… Bravo! ~

For Sunday dinner, we enjoyed organic carrots, green beans, and delicious tiny new potatoes, also from Saturday Market farmers. For dessert, I crafted a quick parfait of cherry yogurt, dark choco nibs, and crushed cashews that was quite decadent… Yesterday, mom left in the early morning. It was a great visit and I’m excited for her upcoming adventure in Korea. She’ll be enjoying a little more time in the midwest before the big flight.

For me, turns out my weekend berry adventures was only just the beginning, as later yesterday afternoon, a friend made a quick surprise visit, conveniently just in time for dinner, where I’d used a few handfuls of berries mashed through a strainer and reduced, to burst a flavor explosion into another of Ray’s BeerBQ sauced creations… Blueberry Moon Pork Chops.

And also last night, well before the berries had a chance to go bad, I turned the rest of the flat into a double batch of freezer jam, yielding 2 pints and 6 half-pints, all sweetened with brown sugar and honey. I was a little nervous the pectin wasn’t going to set well because it was rather runny going into the jars, and if had been the case, no worries, perfect for a tasty froyo topping, but alas this morning, the jam had gelled, and is perhaps perfect, as good as it gets.

So after my morning french press of coffee and toasted spelt bread with jam, I knocked out a half-hour of chores. While feeding Burp some grain, I spotted several ripe brambles of blackberries on the other side of the pasture. So I re-used one of the berry cartons, and picked my first pint of fresh blackies that grow abundantly all over the property, and are just now starting to ripen. There are gazillions more that should ripen over the next few weeks.

Open to any ideas and suggestions for more BeerBQ berry recipes… =)

Beyond mountains, more mountains…

Had a great long afternoon at a perfect swimming hole on Fall Creek… We were about to leave, but saw a few trout, so fished for an hour or so. Caught one nice native rainbow. Caught a nice Ninkasi IPA too…

Wyatt enjoys the front pasture full of grass, and huge trees…

This was a great restaurant, took about 20 minutes to climb the trail up the cliff, overlooking the South China Sea.

The dogs have been excited that their big-big-big brother, Wyatt Burp, is at the homestead, maybe a little too excited… This morning they were ready and waiting to go for a walk with Wyatt. They were all ears, and liked the sound of the word Burp

My soul bro Wyatt Burp checks out his new home and snorts a hello to the neighbors’ horses… So I set up a small 20×20 run off his stall on the side of the barn with an electric fence. While Wyatt was smart enough to stay away from it after one shock, I’ve taken three good zaps now, one while holding on to the metal gate… I’m happy he’s there though, and I’m sure this will be a much better place for him. Dogs are excited to have him around too. Of course, when Boom was trying to give Wyatt kisses, he caught a shock on the tail, and went yelping away. Baba had it the worst though, she took a Wyatt love-tap to the head. She’ll know now to stay away from the business end of a horse. ~

Here’s a phone pic of the swimming hole at the new place, only a couple hundred yards from the front door… Sitting on a folding chair, my feet in the river, the dogs aren’t the only ones loving it.

Drift Boat Fishing for Smallies on the Umpqua River

My friend Phil was visiting from Phoenix, and we decided to take a drift boat trip on the Umpqua River with a guide from the Big K Ranch. We easily caught 100 smallmouth bass between the two of us. It was fun, but all the fish were pretty darn small.

Trout Fishing on the McKenzie River