The above photo is from a few weeks ago, I can tell that because at that time I felt like pulling this much produce from the garden was momentous enough to take a picture. Still, it looks magazine cover perfect to me, and I will say (once again) how very proud I am of Darren and all the hard work he has done to build & grow our garden! The man is an amazing green thumb (though I might amend that to blue thumb after receiving this quarter's water bill, which is three times our usual- we have got to get our well working)!
We harvest every other evening, and the weird picture above is my own invention because sticking your arms into zucchini plants and other vegetables can be irritating work. For those of you unfamiliar, lots of viny plants are covered in a protective, spiky fuzz that somehow seems to burrow into your skin. It can scratch you up and it can also leave you itching like crazy, even hours later. I cut off a pair of Kyrie's knit pants that she'd put a hole in and used the scraps as arm protection. Darren may be the great planter & grower, but we have moved into my time of the year and I am the great harvester/preparer/cooker/canner.
We had so many bush & pole beans to pick this week, that I had to turn over a bucket so that I could sit down. Sitting there pulling beans, I could not get over how very lucky we are- my family specifically, but also most of our entire country. The fact that we have good ground and (mostly) adequate water and can grow our own food with relatively little effort is simply amazing to me. I do not understand how it is that every school yard, church yard and public park does not have a space for community gardening. Hunger is an issue in America, and anyone who has compared the prices of produce to the prices you can get going through the drive-thru at McDonald's knows that healthy food is at a premium. But with some bags of dirt and a few packets of seeds, we can grow so much. Just our garden is producing more than we can consume. We have more than enough to share with neighbors, friends & co-workers, and I am canning with the hopes to share with far-away family, too.
Here are a few photos of the large garden beds. I am ashamed to say that we have not made much use of the lettuce this year. I have given some away and we have a bag in the fridge that we have been using for sandwiches & burgers, but otherwise it just keeps growing (and some has gone to seed). I like having lettuce, but I would prefer to have spinach just because it is more versatile (our spinach seeds did not take this year). In the photo above, the wispy patch is our asparagus, which will take a few years to actually produce. Behind that we have a bed of cantaloupe. The garden is really pretty and some of the neighbors have even stopped by to take a closer look- our next door neighbor refers to Darren as "the gentleman farmer," which makes me smile.
Our berry bushes! The kids are huge berry eaters, so these are so good for our garden. These are blueberries and blackberries, but we also have raspberries, strawberries & currants (& mulberry trees). The berries have been trickling in, but most get eaten as soon as they ripen.
I did not photograph all of this evening's harvest, but this is a good example of what we can get in one round. The zucchini is by far our biggest producer at this point, but we have a lot of tomato & pepper plants that I know will start producing soon. After I took these photos, I went inside and blanched & froze beans, broccoli & cauliflower. The next day, I canned zucchini cobbler filling using about half of these zukes. We have yellow squash and two kinds of cucumbers that are just starting to come in now. I just canned a dozen jars of bread & butter pickles this morning.
