Hurd's Orchards and a Beautiful Summer Day

We are having absolutely the most glorious summer day. The weather is mild, sunny with a light breeze. The birds are singing their hearts out! And, the flowers just keep on coming. We have a lot of day lilies, and most of them have begun blooming. Still to come are the ones we got last year at a wonderful day lily farm near here -- QB Day Lily Gardens. If you are in the neighborhood, you should definitely check them out.

So yesterday we took a drive out to Holley, NY to visit my absolute favorite vegetable stand, Hurd's Orchards. Hurd's is a darling place -- full of jams, jellies, and preserves made from their own luscious fruit. And cookies. And dried lavender. And sweet cottage-y linens. And bowls. It is really adorable, as you can see. They have berry fields about 2 miles from the store and J and I headed over to pick raspberries. We intended to only pick 2 quarts for ourselves, plus one for our friend Liz. But the picking was so easy that we actually picked 4 quarts.

The raspberries canes were just laden with fruit. When we moved into the field, the buzz of the bees was so loud! I was a little nervous at first because I am very allergic to bee sting. But I had an Epi Pen in my pocket, and the bees were actually too busy to notice us. It took us about 30 minutes to pick our 4 quarts and it was only good sense that made us stop at that. It so beautiful there that I think we could have picked until supper time!

On the way home we stopped at another fruit stand and bought 3 ears of local corn. Yes, people. Corn on July 2nd! How is that even possible? I was a little skeptical about how good the corn would be, but it was actually fantastic. Here is how I cook corn: I bring my big dutch oven full of water to a rolling boil, and drop in the fresh corn. Then I turn off the heat, put the lid on tight and make the rest of dinner. J asked me what the minimum time is for the corn to be in the hot water. Honestly, I don't know. I guess it took me about  40 minutes to make dinner  last night. And the corn was perfect then. I think there must be a very wide range of acceptable times to make corn this way because I have never had it not come out perfect and it takes me anywhere from 20 minutes to 90 minutes to make dinner. I only wish I had bought more corn!