Truely Local

We realized recently that all of our meats and poultry were produced either by ourselves, or someone we know, in the San Juan Islands, or only as far away as Ephrata,  in Eastern Washington.  The Mangalitsa Pork was raised here at the Inn.  The beef was raised down the road at Coffelt Farm, Lamb from Horse Drawn Farm on Lopez ( yes they mostly use horses instead of tractors), Eggs from Ruthie at Brightmeadow farm here on Orcas Island, poultry ( chicken, squab, quail, quail eggs from Bernie Nash, otherwise known as the Mad Hatcher.  All the shellfish is from either Buck Bay Shellfish or Judd Cove.  Mark Hoffman caught the Black Cod we are serving and the troll caught King Salmon came from Ecluelet on Vancouver Island.
While we always do our best to source local, quality products, it does not always fall into place, so it is very gratifying to have it all work out this way. 

The first 30 or so tomato plants are in the greenhouse.  It has warmed up a bit, finally getting day time temperatures into the 60's.  It may be too late for some of the fruit trees to be pollinated, but the bees are now officially flying.

Here is a shot of our newly planted garden outside of the kitchen.  Now that the area is fenced in, we are deer proof, everything is starting to take off, we have a mix of perennials and lots of culinary herbs, like various basils, thyme, sage, rosemary, lavender, chives, Bay, Artichoke, Nasturtiums, parsley, etc...

One of our spring favorite combinations, Local Morels and Ramps, served today with Troll Caught King Salmon from Ucluelet, British Columbia, not far at all from Orcas Island.

Tomorrow our little female Mangalitsa, Link, goes to Lopez Island for some piggy love.   She will be bred with Angus, a rather good looking young Berkshire boar.  So with any luck we will have some half Bershire - half Mangalitsa piglets.  Most likely we will only raise three of them here at the Inn.

Wood Fired Pizza

 

A nice Sunday afternoon pizza.  The plan is to have casual outside pizza, salads, beer, wine and dessert every Sunday, 12 - pm,  throughout the summer at the Inn, weather permitting.  This week with Mangalitsa Salami & Basil.  Also asparagus & sweet herb flatbread.

More Mangalitsa on it's way.  Two hogs hit the scales at 220# & 229#, finished on Bruce Dunlops corn free formula.  They will be on premise tomorrow.

Transplant Successful

All 120 transplants are alive and well.  It is nice and warm. 
Go time for Tomatoes.

Tomatoes

 Today is tomato transplant day.  The seeds were started on March 8th.  Nearly 100 % germination = lots of tomato plants.  We will put them into 1 gallon pots until we can make room in the greenhouse, which is full of various lettuces.  So it will be very tight for the next month or so.  The basil looks very good for this time of year, with our long, lingering cool spring weather.  Thanks for the greenhouse.

The line up for this year so far is;

Cherokee Black
Brandywine
Lopez Red (6 years saving seed)
Green Zebra  (6 years saving seed)
Orange Persimmon (9 years saving seed)
Yellow Pear
Sungold
Paul Robeson
Black Cherry
Zuchello *
Sioux *
Arbuson *
Mountain Crest *

* New varieties from mrf, thanks John.  Curious about Japanese Black Trifele.