Clare | Curbstone Valley

Long-Horn Bees

by Clare | Sep 16, 2011 | Beneficial Insects, Farm Blog, Garden, Native Wildlife

This may be remembered as the year of the bee at Curbstone Valley. It started when we installed a few hives of honey bees on the farm this spring, but we also greatly understand the importance of the native bees that frequent our crops and flowers. Research has...

French Oak, and Fall Flowers

by Clare | Sep 13, 2011 | Farm Blog, Garden, Non-Natives

California produces approximately 90% of all wine produced in the United States[1]. Many wines are aged in oak barrels, as the oak imparts desirable buttery, or vanilla, flavors to the wine. New barrels impart more flavor to wines than old barrels, and depending on...

Woodland Skipper

by Clare | Sep 9, 2011 | Beneficial Insects, Farm Blog, Garden, Native Wildlife, Natives

This year, as the gardens are starting to come together, it’s been tremendously rewarding to see more species of animal life showing up among the flowers. Some of the most notable additions to the gardens this year have been butterflies, including the Lorquin’s...

Tomatillo Salsa Verde

by Clare | Sep 7, 2011 | Farm Blog, Farm Recipes

During late summer we focus our attention away from the garden, and toward storing some of the harvest for the winter months ahead. We love tomatillos (toe-ma-tee-ohs), but until this spring we hadn’t grown our own here. We don’t see them for sale very...

Installing The Garden Greenhouse

by Clare | Aug 30, 2011 | Farm Blog, Garden

We’ve been planning for a greenhouse in the vegetable garden area for some time. Initially we had expected to construct a shed in this part of the garden, but instead we decided that a greenhouse would prove to be a much more efficient use of the space, and be...