Summer's Bounty

In the past few years, our whole family has gotten more into gardening.  I can hardly stop myself from buying every single flower, herb, and vegetable when spring rolls around and there is finally beautiful green back in the stores.  This year was no exception and along with the many flowers, we also planted a nice garden in our raised bed.  We few several varieties of tomatoes, lots of herbs, cucumbers, peas, lettuce, habanero peppers, serrano peppers, kale, rhubarb, and watermelon.  Most things thrived; a few things died, but Nolan really enjoyed taking care of our plants and picking our produce.  I like being able to walk outside at dinner time and pick some lettuce for a salad or some herbs for a sauce, with my little sidekick right beside me.

 Our rhubarb plant is probably the largest rhubarb plant I've ever seen.  It continues to produce all summer, and so I finally got around to making some strawberry rhubarb jam.  Nolan was my big helper and patiently helped me measure and stir our yummy jam.

Besides our own garden, Steve and Patti built a greenhouse a few years ago, and boy, was it producing this year.  They have every kind of herb, kale, lettuce, brussel sprouts, kohlrabi, tomatoes, various chili peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, peas, squash, pumpkins, potatoes, green beans, eggplant...really anything you could imagine.

Some of the day's harvest

Digging potatoes with Grandpa

Nolan is a really good helper and loves to help take care of the plants and pick the produce.

Hang on tight to Livi! She could get lost in here!

The tomatoes are perhaps the most impressive.  They are an absolute forest and one actually has to crawl into the huge dinosaur plants in order to find the ripe tomatoes.   They are probably 7 feet tall and incredibly plentiful.

Add caption

 Steve and Patti's property is also lined with wild blackberries.  Nolan also really enjoys picking those, so we spent some time picking while we were there for dinner the other night.  We were able to get enough berries to make some amazing jam, which I can't wait to dig into!

We have been busy trying to preserve all of this wonderful produce with canning, freezing, and trying some new recipes.  So far we have made:

• 14 jars salsa
• 5 jars pico de gallo
• 2 jars Habanero hot sauce
• 19 jars strawberry rhubarb jam
• 6 jars wild blackberry jam
• 7 containers parsley pesto
• 3 containers basil pesto
• 6 jars spicy garlic dill pickles.

It has been a big job, but it's been a great learning experience for Nolan and I'm really excited to have a pantry full of organic, homemade food for the fall/winter.