Apricot Update, County Fair and Nectarines

Family vacation was all too short. We had a few days after returning from Crater Lake, which gave me time to check up on some of my experiments.

I will not share the recipe I used in my attempt to make apricot wine. Not yet, anyway. It definitely turned to vinegar by the time I was able to bottle it. It was a disappointment, but I do have uses for vinegar, and it sure looks pretty in those clear flip-top bottles.

Too much delay getting the wine into the carboy, plus too much air at the top of the carboy, meant too much exposure to air in the fermenting process. 

The apricot wine-turned-vinegar sure looks pretty in the bottle, though.

I don’t know if there were flaws in the recipe I used, but I suspect operator error—too much air and too little sugar. I’ll have the chance to try again though. Our nectarine tree is loaded with fruit that can’t be ignored much longer. I’ll keep you posted.

One of my apricot brandy experiments is still steeping away, though the eight-week process is nearing its end. The other two turned out rather well, though with a lot of apricot sediment that probably wouldn’t have occurred with dried apricots. I honestly don’t know which recipe I prefer, though I’m leaning toward the first, simple recipe. The sugar finally mixed with the vodka and apricots, and it ended up with a pleasant, liqueur-like consistency that was just what I was looking for.

In case you think I’m obsessed with alcohol, I did do other things with those apricots—roll upon roll of apricot leather, dried apricots…did I mention the freezer preserves?

Tray upon tray of apricot leather.

A couple of jars of apricot freezer preserves.

On another note, one of my recent Amazon purchases is my favorite thing right now. I used to dry herbs by hanging them on a hat rack, but I decided to let my husband’s hats have their space and got this herb-drying rack instead. I am happy both with how it works and with how it looks. It adds a certain charm to the kitchen hall in our Victorian home.

My new drying rack is mounted and in use.

Vacation was over all too soon, though. Hard on the heels of our brief time of relaxation came the county fair.

Last year, we were about to set off on a month-long, cross-country trek, so entering things in the county fair wasn’t high on our list of priorities. This year, I persuaded several of my family members to enter items (the lure of premium money helped) and gathered everything I could find to enter myself.

The fair hasn’t officially opened as I write this, so I don’t know all our results, but I did get this peek at one of my photos. Unexpectedly, a photo I took of those apricots received the Judge’s Choice ribbon. It’s an honor I’ve never received in my life before, and I’m kind of proud of it. Even though our fair is a small one, there’s a lot of competition from some amazing photos. Turns out those apricots were good for something I never imagined!

All those apricots!

Proud as can be of that ribbon!

After two days of 100+ heat, today is forecast to be gusty with a high of 91. We’re all sending up a prayer that no stray sparks start any fires in these ideal wildfire conditions. Meanwhile, the forecast of high winds means I need to get outside and pick the nectarines—ripe or not—off the overloaded branches of our tree before those branches break. In the seven years since we planted that tree, I’ve never seen an abundance like this. It’s a blessing, but also means more time up to my elbows in fruit.

Better get started.

 

Family Vacation 2025: Crater Lake

 

Last week, our family took an all-too-short vacation to Crater Lake.

You’ve probably seen hundreds of pictures of Crater Lake. I took more than 50 myself on this trip. I took them knowing that no picture I’ve ever seen truly captures either the scope or the particular shade of blue in that water.

No words can describe, or picture capture, the amazing blue of Crater Lake.

There’s a scientific reason Crater Lake is such as startling blue. It has to do with the depth and clarity of the lake—Crater Lake is one of the deepest lakes in the world, and its waters are among the purest in the world. That allows light to penetrate deeply, so blue light is scattered more.

Still, those explanations don’t really prepare you for the amazing color palette God used when he created that famous body of water. It’s truly one of the world’s wonders that you have to see for yourself to fully grasp.

Crater Lake is a drive of several hours for us, nearly as far as the Oregon Coast. Since we weren’t able to get an early start on our Monday drive, we stopped about halfway, at a KOA campground near Madras, Oregon. I will freely admit that I had never stayed at a KOA before. When I was growing up, camping was less a destination and more a way of avoiding the higher costs of hotels, so parks like KOA were considered too expensive. At least, that’s what I remember.

Anyway, I was duly impressed. Our family of five stayed in a teepee that was both roomy and comfortable. It had actual beds. With mattresses. Yes, it was the cost of a motel room in some states. Trust me when I say, though, that hotels in Central Oregon in the height of vacation season are waaaayyy more expensive. Even though we were nowhere near our destination, the vista of the high desert country with the Cascade Mountains in the distance was extraordinary. We kind of didn’t want to leave.

Since we were still in semi-arid country close to home, and low enough in elevation (about 2,600 feet), the temperature at night never dropped below the “pleasantly cool” zone.

The same can’t be said of our journey's end. At 6,178 feet in elevation, with the caldera rim ranging from 7,000 to 8,000 feet in elevation, the climate at Crater Lake is considered subalpine. Shaded areas around Crater Lake can still hold snow even at the end of July. Since our own semi-desert climate means little snow even in winter, our teen/tween children were in awe of the large patches of white we saw along the road.

The campground at Mazama Village was booked solid well before I started planning our short family trip. The only other campground in Crater Lake National Park, Lost Creek Campground, turned out to be closed for the season. That left us grabbing a last-minute free spot at nearby Diamond Lake.

Around the Campfire at Diamond Lake.

Diamond Lake is about a thousand feet lower than Crater Lake, but still an elevation of 5,184 feet. Our sleeping bags and multiple blankets were no match for the cold the two nights we stayed there. Lesson learned.

Cold aside, it was a fantastic, if quick, vacation. Since we arrived early Tuesday afternoon and left early Thursday morning, we ended up only having one full day at Crater Lake. We spent the morning meandering around the lookouts at Rim Village and then had lunch at Crater Lake Lodge. After lunch, we finally made it to my main reason for pushing for a Crater Lake visit this summer—the trail to Cleetwood Cove.

Even from the end of Cleetwood Cove Trail, the trip to the water is rocky and steep.

The Rim Drive offers multiple viewpoints with every-varying vistas, but Cleetwood Cove trail is the one and only way to reach the water at Crater Lake. If you want to fish, swim or take a boat tour to Wizard Island, you have to walk the grueling trail from the rim to the water’s edge. Cleetwood Cove will be closed for maintenance for the next couple of years, so I felt like it was a now-or-never moment to experience one of the world’s most famous lakes up close.

The view of the water from Cleetwood Cove.

Cleetwood Cove trail isn’t for the faint of heart. Remember the elevation difference I mentioned between the lake and the rim? While the trail is only about a two-mile round-trip, it drops 700 feet in a series of steep switchbacks. It’s not such a big deal on the way down—maybe a little hard on the knees—but you really feel it on the way up. I’ve let myself get out of shape the last couple of years, and I deeply regretted it on the climb back up that trail.

Splashing in the rare water of Crater Lake.

That said, the climb was worth it, and I’m glad we took the chance to visit Cleetwood Cove, even if we spent more time driving than hiking on this trip. Crater Lake is famous for a reason. This blog post, like so many, falls far short of explaining why.

 

Gazing across Crater Lake at Cleetwood Cove.

Summer on the Farm

There are a lot of things that separate the life we live from what many would consider “typical” American lives. From rural life to homeschooling to Lutherans who vote Republican and like Doctor Who, there are just a few things that set our family apart from the mainstream.

The other morning, up to my elbows in apricots (again), I couldn’t help thinking about summer. What is summer to you? What is summer to me?

Growing up, summer was all about work.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved summer and still do. School break, fresh produce, long days and heat (as much as I love looking at snow, I’ve never been a fan of the cold).

But summer on a working farm isn’t about vacation. There were no trips to the beach, few outings to the mountains. There were hot days of watering, weeding, harvesting and, of course, preserving.

Summer was watering the garden enough to keep plants alive in the semi-arid dryness of Eastern Oregon while not wasting precious water.

Gardening wasn’t about growing enough tomatoes to put in a salad or two. It was about growing enough that, hopefully, we would have enough to feed ourselves for months instead of relying on grocery store produce.

Canning wasn’t about putting a canner-full on the pantry shelf and feeling productive. It was about putting up shelves full of jars of fruit and beans and tomatoes that would, hopefully, get us through to the next harvest season.

It was shredding head after head of cabbage and mixing it with salt to put up jar after jar of homemade sauerkraut.

Summer was putting water in the freezer by the gallon, because halfway through a day in the wheat field, it would still taste tepid.

It was about wearing boots and jeans, not shorts, because they were better protection against vines, branches and wheat stubble.

It was cheatgrass and foxtails in your shoes, in your socks, in your clothes, in the animals’ fur—everywhere.

Not that all of that was bad. It was an amazing way to grow up, one that seems foreign and surreal when held up against a world of TikTok and cell phones.

Summer was about playing in the sprinkler and drinking from the hose.

It was about strawberry Crush in a glass bottle.

It was about days so hot and sunbaked that the air smelled like roast grain and wrapped around you like a blanket.

It was about diving into a grain truck full of wheat and rolling around like Scrooge McDuck in his money room.

It was about skies so blue and cloudless, they hurt your eyes.

Yeah, it was weird. But you know what? I’ll take it any day.

Apricots and Brandy

You didn’t think we were done with apricots, did you? I still have a box and a half on my kitchen floor, so I’m still experimenting.

I already mentioned Apricot Brandy experiment number one: a pretty generic three-ingredient Apricot Brandy Recipe from Food.com. It called for mixing apricots, sugar and vodka and letting them sit in a dark space for about eight days. I’m four days in, and a little concerned that the sugar isn’t mixing well even with daily bottle-tipping.

After four days, there's still a layer of sugar at the bottom.

For my second experiment, I stayed with vodka but searched for something with more of a twist. I found it in Alton Brown’s Orca Apricot Brandy. This recipe was a similar concoction to the first, but this time with a kind of simple syrup using apricot jam as a base. It went on the shelf Wednesday afternoon. I’ll know if it worked in about a week.

Finally, I felt like I really wanted to make apricot brandy with actual…brandy. For some reason, maybe because I felt like I was stepping up my game using real brandy, I also wanted to use honey as a sweetener. After some searching, I found this recipe for Sandsedge Brandy from the Fantasy Inn blog.

It’s from a fascinating little blog I’d never heard of before, a recipe designed to pair with a scene from a book I’d never heard of, but I was instantly enchanted.

The blog reviews fantasy titles. Blogger Wol developed this recipe to pair with Fool’s Errand by Robin Hobb. I’m not endorsing the book; I’ve never read it. It might be great; it might be terrible. However, the whole idea of creating a drink for a book charmed me, so I decided to give it a try.

It was a pretty-straightforward recipe. I had just enough of my own home-grown honey to use in the simple syrup, and the jar looks amazing sitting on the cupboard shelf next to the other two. (I kind of want to dive in now, it’s so pretty.)

Apricots, brandy, honey, sugar and time--hopefully a recipe for success.

The downside is that I will need to wait four to eight weeks to find out if it worked. That’s an upside, too, though. Some things just get better with time.

Apricots and Vodka

Who wants apricots? 

My dad called last week with an offer to lift me up in the tractor bucket if I wanted to try to strip the upper branches of their prolific tree. Of course, I can’t pass up the opportunity for free fruit. Within an hour or so, my 13-year-old son and I were sitting—uncomfortably—in the bucket of my dad’s small tractor in the 95-degree heat, trying to reach golden fruit that was just out of reach. Even the bucket of the small Kubota wouldn’t reach the loaded uppermost branches.

This is what a tractor bucket full of apricots looks like.

Still, it didn’t take long to fill six small boxes. The next question—what to do with them? While I expected to share the apricots, it turned out my parents didn’t want any of them.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I really have been looking into traditional winemaking. While it seemed the perfect solution to some of that fruit, I’m nowhere near ready to dive in—no knowledge, no equipment. I posed the question of apricot wine to my husband, perhaps looking for tacit permission to dive into supply purchasing. He responded that he would prefer apricot brandy.

Well, I don’t know how to make brandy, either. I bet it’s more difficult than wine.

Still, I took to my ever handy Google and managed to pull up some ideas. It turns out, you can make a pretty good apricot brandy simply by soaking apricots in, well, brandy. Or sometimes vodka. I confess, I don’t understand why apricot brandy would call for vodka. Either way, though, it seemed simple enough.

It took me a couple of days to implement my plan. Saturday was taken up with a five-hour round trip to pick up my 12-year-old from ranch camp, and then by last-minute cooking for church fellowship on Sunday. I finally managed to get to a liquor store for some vodka and brandy. (Not being a regular in liquor stores, that felt like a whole adventure itself. Who knew there were so many kinds of vodka?)

I decided to experiment with several different recipes. The first one I tried was a generic Apricot Brandy Recipe from Food.com. With three ingredients--none of which was brandy--it seemed by far the simplest. It called for dried apricots but, rightly or wrongly, I figure fresh must be better, right? Okay, I get that the dried apricots must add to the depth and intensity, but the whole point of this is to use all my fresh apricots. Anyway, by Sunday afternoon, I had the mixture of apricots, sugar and vodka sitting on a dark shelf next to my homemade vinegar.

Apricot brandy attempt number one, ready for the shelf.

The rest had to wait, though.

Monday and Tuesday were swallowed whole by work at the newspaper. Then it was Wednesday. The rest of the family was asleep, including the rescue kitten nestled in my lap.

I’d already skipped out on an AWANA breakfast meeting, I had a board of commissioners meeting to Zoom and an antique airshow to attend with my family (and cover for the newspaper), and I was looking around my house with the paralysis of someone who has a ton to do and no energy to do it. And all…those…apricots.

Get out the dehydrator; it's time to tackle those apricots!

Fermenting…Again

 

Nearly three years. Nearly three years. I can’t believe it’s been that long since I poked away at this blog. So much has happened—and yet not so much.

I always think I’m going to be so productive during the summer. After all, I’m down to one job instead of two, and homeschool has slacked off, if not stopped, for a couple of months. It doesn’t happen, though. Summer rushes by just as quickly as any other season, maybe more so.

It’s July, and I’m still trying to find my footing after an exhausting spring. My house is a mess. My garden is a mess. My flowerbeds are a mess. I’ve gained even more weight. I’m a full-fledged member of the sandwich generation. My two chickens are living in a dog kennel because I haven’t had time or energy to fix their coop.

Despite all that, though, I’ve been a fermenting powerhouse. It’s as if all my homesteading instincts that get bottled up during the winter months have come pouring out at once. Yes, I’m still making my own vinegar. (Did I ever mention the vinegar?)

I managed to make my most successful batch of kvass ever last week, along with a successful batch of old-fashioned ginger ale. My grandmothers never made ginger ale, as far as I know, but if they did, they would have made it just like this old-fashioned method.

It's already time to make some more ginger ale and kvass.

Now, I’ve got my own creation in the works, a strawberry-apple ale using the same method. I’ve made apple ale before with good success, so we’ll see how this goes.

My attempt at strawberry-apple ale and homemade sourdough, side by side.

On top of all that, I’m back at creating my own sourdough starter, this time with help from The Perfect Loaf blog.

I will admit that I haven’t always followed his directions perfectly.
Once or twice I’ve forgotten to tend it for a couple of days, and it has formed what one blogger colorfully called “hootch.” (Yeah, fermentation is a natural process that comes with certain side effects, some of them delicious.)

Recently fed, this sourdough starter is just beginning to bubble again.

No worries, though. As long as it hasn’t gotten too far, you can stir that liquid back into the batch and feed away without any negative side effects. My sourdough bread won’t get you drunk, I promise.

I haven’t made my first loaf yet, but I’ve used the discard in a couple of recipes and…so far, so sourdough. One of my favorites so far is this Sourdough Cinnamon Quick Bread from Farmhouse on Boone. No photos, I’m afraid. It was demolished far too quickly.

Now, heaven help me, I’m researching barley tea, apple presses and traditional wine-making methods. Somebody save me from myself.

Don’t Miss the Green Light

In my last blog post, I talked about how I don’t want to be a backseat driver with God’s plans in my life. Ready for another driving-related analogy?

I also don’t want to sit through any green lights.

I sit waiting for sixth-graders on a field trip.
How does driving a bus full of rowdy children fit into God's plan?

Okay, there’s absolutely a backstory to that. Nearly a year ago—or maybe it’s been a whole year—I approached our church’s interim pastor, “Doc,” with an idea. I wanted a new Bible study, I told him. I was hungry for Bible study and needed accountability. I couldn’t make it to our church’s Tuesday evening study because of ongoing commitments, and I didn’t feel it was welcoming toward younger women anyway. I wanted to start a Bible study that was open to any of the women of the church, but that would specifically draw moms and younger women.

That was a great idea, he told me. Go ahead and do it.

It wasn’t completely unexpected. When someone comes up with a new idea, a good leader will tell them to run with it. So I did. I researched and decided on Priscilla Shirer’s study, Gideon: Your Weakness. God’s Strength. I even went out and purchased the DVD and leader’s guide with my own money, because I did not want that Bible study to fall by the wayside. It had to happen.

But of course, it did. Fall by the wayside, I mean. First a scheduling conflict, then the holidays. Then more scheduling problems, then spring, followed by summer. I knew there was no way I could get a new Bible study up and going over the summer.

Then it was fall. Soccer. Drama club. Two new jobs. The Bible study was on the back burner, but I checked in with the church administrator occasionally to make sure it didn’t slide off the stove completely. She checked with me on scheduling. More recently, divisiveness and factions have reared their ugly heads. That only made me more convinced that this study needed to go forward. Finally, a date was set.

Today. It’s today. When the date was set, it felt like plenty of time. That was before our lives were turned completely upside down. This week, I’m coming off six straight days of work, four of them 12-hour days. I’ve attended two play performances to support my daughter and her friend. I’m exhausted. I’m distracted by the work I have to do over the weekend. That’s why I didn’t sit down to refresh myself on the first lesson of this study until this morning.

Such a good study. I’d recommend it (obviously). It hit me like a ton of bricks, though, when Shirer talked about a time she’d been so busy taking care of chaos in the back seat that she’s sat all the way through a green light. (As a mom, I related to that. As a bus driver…well, I’ve certainly blocked some traffic.) It was an illustration of how we get so caught up in our own lives that we miss the big green lights God sets in front of us. Like when we get so caught up in lost jobs and new jobs and daily routines and postponements, and we miss the opportunities that God is showing us—sometimes with big, flashing, neon signs.

She also mentioned her friend, Christine. I knew from the reference that she meant Christine Cain. I suddenly remembered that I had bought a book by Christine Cain weeks, maybe months, ago, and that it was still sitting on the shelf wrapped in cellophane. With the renewed energy and determination to dig deeper in my faith that the video had inspired, I pulled it off the shelf and dove into the forward of the book, Unexpected.

I can’t quote the whole forward here, both for space and legal reasons, but a few quotes jumped off the page.

“When God gave Abraham such an outlandish and unexpected promise, he simply believed God’s promise—he risked hope against all rational hope. He didn’t deny the facts of his circumstances, but he refused to believe they were the whole truth because they did not account for God’s promise” (page 13).

I almost dropped the book. Abraham answered God’s unexpected call because he recognized it as a green light. How many times do the green lights in our lives appear as unexpected circumstances? How many times are those circumstances unwelcome, uncomfortable, or outlandish?

I can’t pretend to know God’s plans for my future, for my family’s future. I don't know how bus driving and news reporting and dealing with rowdy children—and sometimes childish adults—plays into it. I’m only beginning to understand the unexpected green lights He’s giving me as I interact with people and circumstances I’ve never experienced before. I am, however, beginning to see how God is using the unexpected in our lives to grow us and prepare us to go full speed ahead.

“And, in our humanness, we will try to control everything—including God. Yet, we serve a God who refuses to be controlled by us. That’s because part of the mystery and the adventure of following Jesus is to trust him no matter what is going on around us. To keep our hearts completely open to him, so that when the unexpected happens, he can use it for our good. To free him to use the unexpected, a necessary catalyst, to grow us, sanctify us, and help us to see life with a whole new perspective, because nothing grows without disruption and interruption—without the unexpected” (Christine Cain, Unexpected, pg. 33).

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28, NIV).