There is a tendency among new parents, single or otherwise, to want to hole up at home because lugging a baby around with all of the necessary gear — diapers, food, sippy cups,  sunscreen, toys, plastic bags for dirty diapers, etc — especially when it’s 99 degrees outside, can be a pain in the butt.  But I discovered (pretty much the weekend Jake deployed) that spending weekends alone in my little house with a one year old requires a Zen-like composure I lack.  I have to get out.

So yesterday I loaded June and all her gear in the car and we drove an hour to a nearby vineyard for their annual blackberry festival.  Virginia is loaded with amazing vineyards, but this particular destination specializes in fruit wines — peach, cranberry, peach and blackberry.  I’ve long been intrigued by such questionable vintages, Jake and I being questionable wine makers ourselves.

Our first order of business at the festival were the blackberries. I put on my sunglasses, set June in the shade while I scoured the bushes.   As I picked, I plied her with the sweet tart berries.

She loved the berries, evidenced by June’s signature Stink Face, an expression made in harsh sunlight, extreme temperature or when she wants another bite of something. Yesterday was a confluence of the three; Stink Face was out in force.

At one point while bent over some bushes, my Gucci sunglasses — one of the last pricey designer splurges I still possess from my NYC days — fell off my face onto the ground.  I put them back on and kept picking, leaving June in the shade to play with my iPhone and empty the contents of my wallet. When I stood back up, I noticed my vision was off, like one eye could focus more than the other.  It almost made me dizzy, but I ignored it, thinking it was one of those weirdo body tics that quickly corrects itself.  A nice couple approached, we started talking and I sort of forgot about my slightly wonky vision.  Then their children stopped by and I couldn’t help but notice everyone quinting at me funny, but I assumed it was the sun in their eyes.

It was only 20 minutes later — after June and I had paid for our blackberries, visited the rest room, checked out local artisans’ wares — that I realized my glasses only had one lens.

The lens had somehow popped out while I was bent over the blackberry bushes.  Yet there I was, wandering around, wine glass in hand like some crazy lady blasted on blackberry wine and I hadn’t even had a drink.

I didn’t bother going back to look for the lens.

Speaking of wine…

You know you’re in trouble when you’re served a little wedge of cheddar cheese before the tasting.

And the cranberry wine (??) tasting was accompanied by a weiner.

A weiner. On a toothpick.  And that’s all you need to know about CRANBERRY WINE.

In fact, each tasting was accompanied by some food stuff….hot pepper cheese, smoked salmon, a meat product that looked like it came out of a can of Dinty Moore, biscuits….anything to detract from what we were drinking.

I can’t say much about fruit wine, but June and I had eaten the equivalent of a truck stop sandwich by the end of the tasting.

It only cost me my Gucci sunglasses….and my dignity.

The mulberry tree is still loaded.

The evidence is in the fingers.

Sweet delicious mulberries. Ripe for the picking.

Somebody’s under the mulberry tree.

It’s June!

Happy feet, happy June.

June likes eating mulberries.

Mulberries are awfully juicy.

Too juicy for a baby with clothes on.

Into the tub the mulberry eater goes.

The latest addition to our orchard: Another apple tree.  We surrounded it with fencing since deer can be a major problem around here. They like to snack on the bark of baby trees.

This is some kind of flowering tree we got for free from the Arbor Foundation. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m hoping it’s a lilac bush.  Miss Tree Chick, if you happen to read this, do you know?

One of eight Sugar Maples Jake dug up as saplings in the woods and re-planted along the edge of the road bordering our house. Sugar Maples turn fluorescent red in the fall…they’re a sight to behold.  It’s taken these trees three or four years to get comfortable, but now they’re really starting to take off.

Another gift from the Arbor Foundation. We thought it was a nut tree, so we planted it in the “nut grove” of our property, which turned out to be non-existent as all the nut saplings died save for one Chinkapin tree; this one here turned out to be a peach tree!

Problem: We have two giant white peach trees coming on and usually at this time of year, I can be found gearing up for a canning, jam-making, peach-dehydrating odyssey. Unfortunately, that’s not happening this year due to the newborn permanently fixed to my chest. And now I wonder: What will happen to all 10 million of those gorgeous white peaches? I fear Jake will end up making more peach wine out of them. Peach wine tastes about as good as it sounds.

It’s funny.  I used to think that I could keep doing my usual thing with a newborn in the picture. I thought I would be able to can my brains out right about now. I figured June would just sleep all day, freeing me up to indulge in all my usual pursuits. Wrong. So very, very wrong.  So tragically wrong.  June naps maybe once or twice a day and when she’s not napping, she’s usually one whimper away from a Three Mile Island-scale meltdown.

I suppose this is my comeuppance for such blind ignorance. In the meantime, I wonder how many peaches I can eat a day.

I’m going for ten.

For many women, Memorial Day means barbecues, days off, cold beer and the chance to debut white sandals. For others, it means hooking up with a swarthy sailor on leave during Fleet Week.

Around where I live, a veritable vortex of agrarian adventure, Memorial Day really only means one thing: Mulberries. Memorial Day is mulberry season.

As you can see, the berries are still a little bit underripe. But they should be black and sweet and ready to pick this weekend.

This year I’m going to try to make mulberry jam. I say “try” because picking mulberries requires climbing a very tall ladder and I’m 8 months pregnant. It’s also quite challenging not to eat all the berries whilst picking, they’re that juicy and tart and delicious.

In other exciting, farm-related news, here are the hens slurping from a bowl of creamy, whole, organic milk.  What can I say? I’m whipped. Whipped, I tell you.

Ick...

This one courtesy of our nectarine tree.  

This particular tree has been infected since I moved here. Not sure how to get rid of the fungus, aside from spraying it year round with heavy duty fungicide. Conflicted about this.  On the one hand, I want to eat nectarines, but not sure how I feel about constantly spraying. Once-in-a-while applications I can handle, but rigorously spraying—like, every other week for a year—gets into Chernobyl territory.

But I’ve noticed the fungus seems to be spreading to one of our peach trees as well.

Blurgh.  This is HIGH STRESS around here.

Does anyone know how to battle fruit fungus??  Anyone?

The offending tree (and Cowboy)

I’m all for organic farming, but I don’t understand how to deal with a nasty fungus that’s decimating my peach trees.  This is when I reach for good ole fungicide. 

Gnarly, n'est ce pas?