By Erika Ehmsen, Sunset copy chief

It might be dinner, but it’s no feast without wine. And food editor Margo True and Team Kitchen are planning a feast.

Our test garden grapevines are leafy and lovely (see below), but their fruit won’t be wine-worthy for at least three years. Where to turn for local grapes? Practically our own backyard: The nearby Santa Cruz Mountains, an appellation known for its Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

We narrow our focus to this local AVA, and we feel the end-of-summer heat to put dibs on grapes soon because the fall harvest is approaching. But who would sell to us, first-time winemakers still debating red vs. white? (I Love Lucy–style grape-stomping appeals to all of us on Team Wine, and we’d love to get our hands—and feet—in on the action with some red grapes, but Margo’s menu is leaning toward a white, which would mean buying white grape juice—instead of whole fruit—that’s already been pressed to get the color-giving grape skins away from the juice as soon as possible.)

Thankfully, I knew someone. Or rather, my dad did: Way back in the early ’80s, my dad worked with Dr. Thomas Fogarty, the renowned cardiologist. Dr. Fogarty was interested in wine’s positive effects on the heart, so he bought some land in the Santa Cruz Mountains and founded Thomas Fogarty Winery. One of my earliest road-trip memories is of driving up from Southern California so my parents could attend Dr. Fogarty’s 50th birthday party. Such a gorgeous piece of property—tendrils of fog sneaking through ridgetop woods. I doubted Dr. Fogarty would remember that gangly freckled kid, but since my dad still sees him at conferences, I thought he’d at least recognize my last name.

So I emailed winemaker Michael Martella (who’s been producing award-winning varietals for Fogarty Winery for more than 25 years), told him what an impact Fogarty Winery made on my young self, and asked him if he ever sells excess grapes to local winemakers. (Or wannabe winemakers—it’s hard to believe that, if we’re successful, we’ll be able to call ourselves winemakers!)

A couple of days later, my phone rings—Michael is interested in our experiment. He asks me a few questions, likes what he hears, and starts firing off possible grapes: “You’re interested in reds? I’ve got Pinot, Cab, Syrah, Malbec, Cab Franc, and Merlot. How much do you want to buy?” And if we go the white route, our options expand to Chardonnay and Gewürztraminer (a floral Fogarty Gewürz was one of the first wines I ever bought).

Hmm, decisions, decisions. Time to get together with Team Wine to discuss our path—over a glass of wine, of course.

By Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

And now they're outdoor chickens! Yesterday morning, each member of Team Chicken carried one of our little clutch over to their permanent home in Sunset's test garden. Click here for photos.

By Lauren Bonar Swezey, Sunset special projects editor

Homegrown vegetables always taste great, but there are a few crops that taste MUCH better than store bought produce. Tomatoes definitely qualify. Sweet and succulent ‘Ambrosia’ cantaloupes do too. We’ve been harvesting corn for a couple of weeks now. Even farm stand corn doesn’t taste THIS good! We chose a Triple Sweet variety called ‘Honey Select,’ which produces 8 1/2-inch-long ears filled with plump yellow kernels in about 79 days.

This is one of the new extra sweet types that incorporates all of the best characteristics (sweetness, good corn flavor, creamy kernels) from the different types of super sweet corns. In fact it's so good that it was designated an All-America Selections winner in 2001. Judges noted that the corn is easy to grow with superior eating quality. Another bonus is that this variety doesn’t have to be isolated from other corns, which is great for home gardeners with limited space. Two things to remember when planting corn next spring: wait to sow seeds until the soil temperature is 55 degrees  2 inches below the soil surface (corn seed doesn’t germinate well in cool soil) and plant in blocks (minimum 4 feet by 4 feet) so the developing ears are well pollinated.

Restive in the cage.

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

Does any other animal grow as fast as a baby chicken?

Every morning our chicks look as if they’ve been replaced by larger versions of themselves. Larger, more energetic versions. They’re hopping around like Mexican jumping beans in there.

Especially the Ameraucanas, now at the ripe age of 5 weeks. They've developed long, glistening feathers, hawklike heads, and large blue feet with alarming nails. They jump on the water dispenser, onto the perches that Team Leader Jim put in to entertain them, and onto the other chickens. Which of course riles up the rest of the brood, and then they all start jumping. Every couple of minutes, the cage turns into a flurry of feathers and squawks.

Clearly these chickens need more space. You can practically hear them begging, “Let us out, for chirps’ sake!”

So that’s exactly what we’re going to do. They all have feathers now (some not as many, but they’ll catch up), and so can withstand the outdoors. Tomorrow morning, at 9 a.m. we will stage a ceremonial Chicken Procession from our brood’s babyhood home in the garage out to the coop. Each Team Chicken member will gently carry one chick through the offices to what will surely be poultry nirvana.

Not only will they have a handsome little house to hop around in (and, eventually, lay eggs in), but also a yard (aka playground), furnished with a fennel bush and patches of green clover sprouting through the straw. Endless hours of contented nibbling and pecking lie ahead. There’s even a miniature pine tree, saved from the yard’s previous incarnation as a koi pond, for those leaping Ameraucanas. The whole setup is roofed over and enclosed with chicken wire, to keep them safe from raccoons.

Will they be stunned? Ecstatic? Nonchalant? Check back tomorrow for a full report.

By Rachel Levin, Sunset associate travel editor

“Have you been sprayed for the olive fly?” asks Chris Banthien of Valencia Creek Farms, the Santa Cruz-based olive grower we’ve asked to help guide inexperienced-us through the olive oil making process.

“Mm, dunno,” I reply. “The olive fly?”

Here we are, happily surrounded by Sunset’s 21 olive trees, thinking all we have to do is wait patiently for just the right time to start picking... But two minutes into my first conversation with our new mentor and I realize there’s a lot we don’t know.

“Yep, the olive fly,” replies the veteran farmer who’s awaiting her seventh harvest from the 2,000 Northern Italian olive trees she planted a decade ago on her own 20-acre property. “They deposit their eggs into the fruit; turns into larvae. They eat their way out; they’re maggots.”

Yum.

“Yeah, it can be a real problem at pressing time. Especially here in California,” says Banthien, who along with business partner, Bruce Golino, sells Valencia Creek's extra-virgin olive oil, Olio delle Colline di Santa Cruz (pictured), at farmers markets around Santa Cruz County.

I highly doubt our olive trees have ever been sprayed. Why would they have? As far as I know, no one at Sunset has ever plucked an olive from our trees before! The evil olive fly. Our trees, although pretty, are no good? It can’t be!

I hang up the phone, ready to break the bad news to the others. Hey guys, guess we'll have to farm ourselves out to Team Chicken or Team Beer...

First, though, I put a frantic call into Rick LaFrentz, Sunset’s head gardener. “Nope, we don’t spray anything on anything,” he says laughing. “It’s okay, a little organic stuff never hurt anybody.”

Well, if Rick’s not worried, then, umm, neither are we... Onward Team Olive!

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

It was touch and go there for a while with our littlest chicken, Ruby (see A Cheeping, Peeping Weekend). A week and a half later, she is thriving—russety feathers sprouting, good appetite, bright eyes, and the beginnings of a tail.

She’s feisty, too. We are out of the woods! Take a look at her, in fine form above (and at the rest of our growing flock, too).

By Dale Conour, Sunset executive editor

Exciting times on the beer front. We’€™ve combined our ingredients (water, hops,barley, yeast, wheat, and honey) and got them fermenting...

we’ve moved the fermenting beer to a secondary fermenter (a big glass "carboy€") and removed the growing sediment (called "€œtrub"€)...

and this week...we bottled it.

Beerless leader Rick stirred in some "€œpriming"€ sugar to give the remaining yeast something to chew on and produce carbonation, and then we poured it into sterilized bottles, using a manually-operated capper to seal each bottle—41 of them in all.

Now we wait for the carbonation, as well as some maturation and a little more clarity; for beer, this means a couple more weeks—€”unlike guys, who need decades. Or so we're (often) told...

By Lauren Bonar Swezey, Sunset special projects editor

After a warm, three-day weekend, I suspected that some of our specialty melons might be ready to harvest. What an understatement! They were ALL ready. About a week or so ago, we harvested all but one of our ‘Sugar Baby’ watermelons. It’s a short season (70 to 85 days to harvest), icebox type, which simply means that the 8 to 10 pound fruits are small enough to store in the refrigerator (anyone who’s ever tried to jam a full-size watermelon in the frig, should appreciate their small size!).

Now our later-maturing melons—‘Ambrosia’ and ‘Sharlyn’—are ready. ‘Ambrosia’ is a luscious, intensely flavored cantaloupe (a.k.a. muskmelon) that always comes out on top in taste tests. ‘Sharlyn’—another taste test winner—looks like an oval cantaloupe, but the flesh is pale yellow-green. Some say it tastes like a cross between a cantaloupe and honeydew. It’s easy to tell when cantaloupes are mature. They literally slip (detach) from the vine - no cutting involved. (The only exception are the French, cantaloupe-type melons called Charentais, pronounced “sha-rahn-tay;” they must be cut from the vine before they slip. How do you know when these melons are ready? The best indicator is smell. The melon's fragrance should make your mouth water! If it has a strong musky smell, it’s overripe.)

Watermelons don’t slip or have a luscious smell. But once you learn to identify signs of maturity, harvest is easy. As a watermelon ripens and develops its mature color, check the curly tendril that emerges from the stem end regularly. When ready to harvest, the bright green tendril dries out and turns brown (shown at top, left in the photo). Also, the spot on the bottom of the melon where it’s been touching the soil turns yellow.

Now that most of the melons have been harvested, we’re ready to test them in recipes for our one-block diet feast—and that means lots of taste tests too. Yum!