Every summer the Grieb family spent many hours harvesting apricots. Most of the crop was cut and sun dried in preparation for selling to SunSweet Growers.  However, the family always saved enough to meet their own needs to eat fresh, bake in pies or cakes or preserve in Mason jars.

Orchard Apricot Jam

Our favorite was the jam. Many hands were needed to make enough jam to last until the next season. Tasks were divided up – washing, peeling, grinding, measuring the sugar and stirring the big pots and ladling in jars. It was hot work, but oh, how good that jam tasted and smelled. And the family time was priceless.

Here is Grandma Grieb’s recipe—no pectin—no pineapple just pure apricots.

Apricot Jam (Makes 2 ½ pints)

3 C ground apricots (Grandma peeled hers)
2 C sugar

Bring to boil and boil 20-30 minutes stirring constantly until jam drips heavy off wooden spoon.  Skim off foam. Ladle into hot jars, leaving ¼ inch headspace.Wipe rim. Center lid on jar. Screw on band until just tight.

Need to make a big batch? Here is the big batch quantity.

9 C ground apricots
6 C sugar

Prepare as above.

Recipe submitted by Sandi Ferrio a grandaughter.

Grandpa Fred Grieb enjoyed fishing.

The Grieb cousins have fond memories of Grandpa Fred Grieb teaching them how to make fishing poles out of bamboo sticks and fishing line.  The cousins would walk up and down the Arroyo Grande creek and stop and fish from the banks.  They also enjoyed camping out at the Nelson Place (now under Lopez Lake that was built in 1960’s) where Grieb Ranch ran the cattle.  So many treasured memories and fun times camping with the Grieb cousins.

Recipe for: Trout

From the Kitchen of: Grandma Gertrude Grieb                    Servings: 5

Needed: 6 Medium-sized fresh trout

Ingredients for Coating the Trout:

1C Milk in bowl
1 tsp Salt
Dash Pepper
1 Cup Progresso Bread Crumbs
½ Cup Cornmeal

Bacon grease for fry pan

Instructions for Cooking the Coated Trout:

Begin heating fry pan with hot bacon grease.
Put milk, salt and pepper in bowl.
Mix cornmeal and bread crumbs in another bowl.
Dip trout thru milk.
Roll in crumbs.
Fry coated trout in bacon grease until fork-flaky.

We process the entire beef cow. Each carcass provides about 27 lbs of variety meat: liver, heart, tongue, tripe, sweetbreads & brains.

We, at Grieb Ranch, keep these special variety meats – heart, tongue and liver – for that once a year special treat.  Because liver has a texture and flavor all its own we always cook it with bacon and onions and serve it with mashed potatoes, and green peas.

Recipe for: Liver, Onions and Bacon

From the Kitchen of: Connie Grieb Willems                   Servings: 5

Ingredients:

6 strips of bacon
1 lb thin Sliced liver ½ inch thick or less
½ onion thinly sliced
Flour
Salt & pepper

Instructions:

1. Cook Bacon in pan until half done.
2. As the bacon is cooking coat each piece of liver with flour and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
3. Place the thin liver slices under the bacon.
4. Add thin onion slices to pan and cook to carmelize.
5. Cook on medium high heat until the liver is cooked through. When the juices in the liver slices rise to the top on one side flip to the other side.*

*Avoid over cooking, which toughens liver.

Serve with mashed potatoes and peas.

Happy New Year from the Grieb Ranch! We have started the New Year off wet and muddy. We are thankful for the rain and are adjusting to the mud that it creates here at the ranch. We are surrounded by steep hills so the rain falls and the mud runs down . . . even more so now as there is less ground cover to hold the dirt on the hills, due to the years of drought.

So we make Pake!  . . . Pake? . . . That is translated to Pie-Cake and sounds like “rake” when you say it – when you cook a pie inside a cake you get Pake. Cousin Sandi came up with it for her son-in-law’s birthday this month. That’s what he asked for to help celebrate. Well that started a new cooking adventure that is so Yummy! We all got to enjoy it and thought we’d pass the recipe on to you.

Pake (pie baked inside a cake)

Ingredients:
1 pre-baked pie preferably no larger than 8” flavor of your choice

1 cake mix flavor of your choice mixed according to package directions

1 10” spring form pie pan

Directions:
Spray spring form pan generously with Pam.

Line bottom with parchment paper to fit. Respray.

Pour 2” of cake batter in pan.

Dump pie onto cake batter upside down.

Pour remaining cake batter over the top of the pie.

Bake 350 degrees for 45 minutes to 1 hour depending upon your oven until cake is firm to touch. Let cool completely. Remove cake from pan; discard parchment paper. Frost with frosting of your choice.

Enjoy!

Pake flavor combination suggestions;

Cherry pie with chocolate cake

Pumpkin pie with spice cake

Apple pie with white cake

“My Mission in life is not merely to survive but to THRIVE and TO DO SO WITH SOME passion, compassion, humor and style.” – this quote was sent to Connie by a dear friend.

Yes, Connie is praising God that He has carried Grieb Ranch through and the ranch has survived the drought so far.   Some days are harder than others; the song THRIVE by Casting Crowns is her inspiration to thrive.

The first few lines just seemed to hit home about the worn and weary land and many a dream has died. The hills are crunchy dry and are a fine powder in others. Many cattle had to be sold and the work it has taken to keep the few we have left has been very time consuming. As we continue to trying to keep the our orchard watered and producing the phrase “like a tree planted by the water will never will run dry”. This song refreshes our souls.

Listen to the music video for Thrive here

“Here in this worn and weary land
Where many a dream has died

Like a tree planted by the water
We never will run dry

So living water flowing through
God we thirst for more of You
Fill our hearts and flood our souls
With one desire

Just to know You and yo make You known
We lift Your name on High
Shine like the sun made darkness run and hide
We know we were made for so much more
Than ordinary lives
It’s time for us to more than just survive
We were made to thrive

Woah/ Woah

Into Your word we’re digging deep
To know our Father’s heart

Into the world we’re reaching out
To show them who You are

So living water flowing through
God we thirst for more of You
Fill our hearts and flood our souls
With one desire

Just to know You and to make You known
We lift Your name on High
Shine like the sun made darkness run and hide
We know we were made for so much more
Than ordinary lives
It’s time for us to more than just survive
We were made to thrive.” – Casting Crowns “Thrive”

Consider where you are planted.

“He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers.” Psalm 1:3

Where are you planted when many a dream has died?

Connect yourself to the living water, Jesus.

Mud means rain so we want to see more of this!

The El Niño rains are coming they say . . . we so desperately need the moisture, yet we are fully aware of the impact a lot of rain will have on our parched land. Most of Grieb Ranch is steep hillsides, where the rain will flow down and will make getting to the cattle nearly impossible. The hills are steep and will become too slick to take feed up to the cattle especially following so many years of drought.

Steep hills make up most of Grieb Ranch.

When the rains come we need to bring cattle in close to home. So we gathered a work crew to ready the ranch for the El Niño rain and upgrade old fence that was not keeping cattle in anymore.  Normally there would be extra feed on the hills to carry the cattle through the wet days, but not so this season since we have experienced so many years of drought. We need a few years of normal rainfall to reseed the native grasses which we  rely on to feed our cattle.

Our work crew consisted of several generations of Grieb Ranch men. It was great to have all the boys working together. The fences are now repaired and we are ready for the rain. So, let it rain!!

As summer draws to a close, it brings to mind memories of the wonderful care-free days we spent at our private family camp. Cattle grazed lazily in the pastures, a creek flowed by huge sycamore and willow trees.

The campsite itself had our grandmother’s unique touch. She probably invented the first outdoor kitchen. There was a tall, green camp cupboard to store supplies, a table for food preparation, a large picnic table, a spot in the creek for keeping perishables cold.

Our grandparents had “luxury” sleeping arrangements, a large tent erected over a wooden floor complete with cast iron bed and chest of drawers. The rest of us slept in our own tents or nestled our sleeping bags together on the ground under the stars. We didn’t seem to mind the hard ground.

Grandpa Fred Grieb with Grandkids.

The camp gathering was unique and special bringing together our grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins as many as 40-50 at once. Lots of laughter and fun. Cousins played in the creek in inner tubes or rowed back and forth in the rowboat, fished for trout, played kick-the-can or hide and seek. Adults lazed back with a good book or played cards and shared all the family news.

The great cooks, with our grandma in charge, prepared meals that were fabulous from breakfast to dinner. We feasted on homemade family recipes. Evening campfires with storytelling, roasting marshmallows and popcorn ended perfect days of togetherness.

The best part of it all was the family closeness we experienced; a feeling of belonging and being a part of something very special. What in life is better than that?

Written by Sandi Ferrio the owner the Grieb Farmhouse Inn.  Her mother was Lorna Grieb Erickson

1 John 4:7 “Beloved, let us love one another for love is of God. Every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.”

Grandpa Fred Grieb enjoyed fishing.

Fences . . . there is always something to do with the fences.  A few weeks ago I had to move the cattle from one pasture to another because there was a short in the electrical tape. The cattle are used to this drill, as all I had to do was call them.  I was on foot and the herd moved into the next pasture as I called them in. Fortunately, I keep the electric line tester handy in my purse which was with me in the truck. That way, it’s available to me when I come across a down fence while on my rounds on the ranch. Really, it is amazing how one little strand of electrical tape keeps in a whole herd of several hundred pound cattle!

Today there are more fences to fix on the ranch so I have loaded up the whole fencing kit – this one I can’t keep in my purse! Fence pliers, staples, clips, post-pounder, some fence stakes all travel with me now as I make sure the fences are in good repair so that our cattle stay home and not stray away.   – A day in the life of C. Grieb W.