The Brickyard trees… And Xiang Chun being served!

A quick update on our own tree inventory. On September this year the company’s first Inn, The Brickyard Inn, should open with sixteen rooms all with Great Wall views. The Inn is built into an old glazed tile factory and will be a great addition to China Countryside Hotels. Anyway, there has been all together nine edible trees planted there, which is naturally good news to our project to grow and serve own food. Obviously they weren't planted from a seed, but from a young tree - otherwise it would take ages for them to grow. There are also plans made already to plant more edible trees in The Brickyard in the future, probably next year - preferably apricots, but decisions haven't been made yet. So, for now, these should be added to the “tree list”:

- The Apricots of The Brickyard (5) (pictured, below, right)
- The Hongguos of The Brickyard (3) (pictured, below, left)
- The Persimmon of The Brickyard (pictured, above)

These are all brand new trees and won’t probably give any fruits until next year. However, what is especially delighting in these new plantings is that before we had only two apricot trees in our premises, although apricots are something our chef really wants to have – he makes, for example, delicious home-made apricot marmalade. We are trying to find a local, responsible vendor for apricots, but it is good to have own ones growing as well. As for hongguo, we previously had six trees, so now we have nine, which is a significant increase. That’s always good to have as there’s quite a many things that can be made out of it.

And again about Xiang Chun… Great news! As it turns out, it is already ready to be harvested and we already started to serve it in The Schoolhouse. On Thursday, we took Xiang Chun leaves from a tree at The Pavilion’s gate, and the next day Randhir made deep-fried Xiang Chun out of them (pictured). Those were served as complimentary appetizers for guests – and yes, they received many compliments. I tried to go around as much as possible to tell people what those are and that they are actually from our own three. I think it is important to let customers know the efforts we are making to be as sustainable and local as possible. Randhir also made Xiang Chun omelets yesterday and served them as appetizers in our Saturday night gourmet dinner, as well as used it to make the T-bone steak dish more interesting, but I failed to take pictures of those. Anyway, we harvested about one half of a big Xiang Chun tree and got 3,2 kg of it - three plastic bags full. There is still left of that 3,2kg, after two busy days and a Saturday night dinner! More is being served today. And there is plenty more where that came from. So we are going to have a lot of this Chinese delicacy. In fact, I am starting to believe that the 39 kg a year might actually be possible. That is great, because in many cases Xiang Chun is a great option for something we would otherwise have to buy and transport! So far we are only serving it in The Schoolhouse, but soon we are going to get in to Roadhouse and Xiaolumian as well.

I'll keep you updated again. Have a great week everyone!