Orchard Gems

There is more growing in our Orchard at the farm than just fruit.

We've had great luck this summer with beans here. 

We are growing royal burgundy and blue lake beans. 

Royal Burgundy Beans have beautiful purple blossom 

These striking purple blossoms turn into dramatic looking beans 

providing a different flavor and color combination

to inspire our chefs as they get creative with summer beans. 

photo courtesy of Territorial Seed Company

At the girl & the fig right now, we are featuring a delicious entree: 

tomales bay king salmon with salt-roasted yukon potatoes,
summer beans, arugula, smoked paprika beurre blanc.  

As you may recall, we are also growing beans along the fence behind ESTATE. 

Beans are easy to grow and here are some great tips for growing beans. 

Beans along the fence at ESTATE in July and then a month later

beans going crazy at ESTATE

If you are lucky enough to have
beans growing out your back door,  

you might try grilling them. 

These are not weeds in this orchard bed, it is purslane.
Chef John particularly likes using purslane to enhance a salad.
And according to Cook Local food blog: "Purslane has long been considered a weed,
but you can eat it just like you eat a leafy vegetable.
The flavor is sweet, salty, and sour all at the same time.
It tastes like a succulent bit of romaine lettuce and
has more Omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy green.
It is also high in Vitamins A, C, and B."
There are a lot of ways to enjoy purslane and our chefs continue to be inspired.

you could almost bite right into this cluster of apricots

We work hard to use all the fertile beds in the Orchard, 

but the real treasures there, of course are on the trees.

We have 49 trees in the Orchard including multiple varieties 

of peach, nectarine, persimmon, mulberry, plum, pluot, apricot, 

fig, pear and apple trees and one jujube tree! 

we won't be seeing these jujube fruits until the fall 

A pluot is a hybrid plant grown from a plum and an apricot.
They are about 70% plum and 30% apricot and look more like plums than apricots.
They are very sweet!

In our orchard, we have Flavor Queen Pluots, Dapple Dandy, 

Emerald Beauty and Flavor Grenade varieties.  

Pluots are sometimes also referred to as "Dinosaur Eggs" due to the strange dappled coloring on some types of the fruit.

Nearby the pluots and the apricots in the Orchard are our plum trees. 

We have Brooks, Green Sage, Late Santa Rosa, and Tom Cot plum trees. 

Did you know the history of plums dates back to the Roman Empire 

when more than 300 varieties were grown?

Late Santa Rosa plums

While we are enjoying all the summer fruit ripening now in the Orchard, 

we know there are still some gems to come, especially our signature fruit!

the Orchard figs are not quite there yet, but we are patient.

You can always enjoy the popular fig salad at the girl & the fig
but soon we will be making it with the fig "jewels" we harvest at our farm.

photo by Steven Krause for
Plats du Jour: the girl & the fig's Journey Through the Seasons in Wine Country

What are you doing with the summer fruit you are either growing 

or finding at Farmers Markets these days?

ESTATE farming - farming at ESTATE

The herb plots at ESTATE

As we head into our third fall at ESTATE, we have a good understanding about what product grows nicely, what the quails are enjoying and what the ESTATE chefs use the most of. On this beautiful day in October the property looks quite handsome, plants peeking out today to welcome back the sun and for the most part the past few days rain has evaporated.

Apple Espaliers

Tomorrow night, we are having our Harvest Dinner a tribute to the hard work of farming and a time to appreciate the bounty that we collaborated on with Mother Earth. All sorts of produce show up on the menu including sunchokes that will be harvested first thing tomorrow morning, heirloom squash and zucchini that will be turned into over-sized ravioli and sun-dried tomatoes that were dried on the roof at ESTATE and turned into a ragu with peppers from the Imagery Gardens.

Quail have not found this box yet.

With the Devil's Gulch 200 pounder Porchetta, we are serving with Integrale polenta, we are serving what would be expected in spring, but completely happy to be harvested today (baby carrots, radishes, baby fennel) and wood-fired honey roasted squash. Indeed we are anticipating a feast.

Of course a fall harvest menu would not be complete without orchard fruit like apples, quince and figs, all served with rice pudding and pumpkin fritters.

With the last few days of rain we have seen an abrupt halt with our tomato growth, so it is time once again to think of what to do with all of the unripe tomatoes (green tomato jam, green tomato pickles, green tomato sauce ...). I have no doubt the chefs will find a use for every one of them!

Sharing the farm project

Even though it is great knowing what we are doing in the farm, and how much we are harvesting, it is pretty awesome to be able to share this with friends from all around the country.

Donna at Relish Culinary School in Healdsburg sent us some of her guests for an up close look at what we are doing at Imagery Gardens.

Kim and Anne took the group on an eating tour of the garden plots and the orchard rows, where they were able to touch, smell and taste the fruits of our labor. After wondering through the farm, they went inside Imagery Winery to cool off and have a glass of wine and some nibbles.

Explaining the farm project.

Exploring the different heirloom tomato varietals.

a closer look

their harvest, maybe the start to happy hour salsa?

detailing the different plantings

wandering towards the orchards

a little conversation about new growth and water usage

looking at new radishes and carrots

Yikes, they are snagging the figs

 

Do you want to visit the farm project? Let us know, we would love to share our passion with you, we are there almost every morning.