Category Archives: Lemons

When life gives you lemons…

From time to time we get questions from readers & friends about the goodies we make. Typical questions range from, “where do you get all that fruit?” to “how do you prepare the fruit for making the jams, jellies and liqueurs we get from you?”.

After much internal debate, we’ve decided to pull the covers back on a few of these deeply-held secrets and show you “how it’s done”. We realize we’re taking a big chance… some of you city slicker-types may be scared off by the ugly details, but that’s a chance we’ll all have to take.

Ready? Here goes:

Where lemons really come from:

Yup – Lemons come from Lemon-Cats
(no, we’re not making this up)

What happens to the lemons that aren’t quite ripe?

Good question: As shown here, the Queen Lemon-Cat places them under a layer of towels, then nests on the towels until she feels they’re ripe and ready for the next step. When they’re ripe, she gently removes them from the towel so the house-dude will see them.

And then what? House-dude moves them to the lemon spa.

I’m sorry, did you say, “the lemon spa?” What’s that?

It’s where lemons with potential are taken to de-stress, naturally.

Here is a group of lemons with potential, de-stressing and au natural…


(Note: It’s obvious why this group of lemons didn’t make the grade – they’re rather gloomy and desultory.)

Next, after they’ve had a chance to clean up, they’re brought back together…


We’re careful not to overcrowd them 🙂

Then they’re pampered until relaxed…

The rest of the production process is our secret, so now you know where lemons come from and how we make them ready for being part of our jams, jellies and liqueurs.

(This weekend we picked the remaining 30 lbs of the little buggers. Washed, then zested and squeezed them one by one. The zest went in to two gallons of limoncello and the 2 gals of juice were made into ice cubes for storage / use throughout the year in jams / jellies.)

The cherry tree is ready for harvest now, so Farmer Hal signing off.

Thanks for visiting, take care and write when you get work.

hal