Garden Conservancy

Cricket Hill hosted a two-day clinic with international dressage rider and trainer Shelly Francis.  Saturday night dinner at Sue and Art’s home featured 19 different dishes, from appetizers to desserts, developed from the produce of the gardens at Cricket Hill.

The Cricket Hill preparations included fruits, vegetables, herbs of all types grown organically on the farm. There were pickles, chutneys, and sauces of all types. Art contributed the pheasant for pheasant sausage! Decorations were made with flowers from the cutting garden dried in the Summer Kitchen. The food was prepared by Melanie Melius, Flowering Gardens, who also helps Sue with the plantings.

We were actually happy to have an overcast day for the annual barbecue, riding academy entertainment and tour of the gardens – the temperature was just right! The gardens, lush from all the rain earlier in the season, still showed the summer bloomers overlapping the classic fall asters, anemones, chrysanthemums and grasses.

It was a terrific year for fruit production: apples, two kinds of pears, Cornus mas, quince just ripening – and some wonderful jams, jellies, chutneys and preserves were put away. And veggies were turned into pickles, barbecue and chili sauces, stewed and dried tomatoes. Garlic and shallots were already hanging in the summer kitchen along with all the flowers drying. These will see us right through until spring!