The Harvest

It's been so long since I've had time to blog.  I have so much catching up to do.  We've been a little busier since we started school back up - it's been a lot of fun so far, but I'll have to blog about that some other time.

For now, let's talk about the harvest.  At the end of spring when we planted our little garden we were half convinced that nothing would grow.  So, we threw a whole bunch of stuff in the ground just hoping something would take. 

Well, it took.  While the rest of the country is suffering from drought, we got rain in abundance.  We asked God to water our garden.  He did.  And then some.

Our garden has given us (so far) bags of sugar snap peas, bags of sweet corn, a bag of green beans, a handful of cucumbers, several tomatoes are still on the vines, and at least three pumpkins have been spotted in the under-brush.

We've also gotten loads of zucchini and squash.  People said that squash and zucchini grow well around here, and you know what?  They were right!

This is just one of at least four such piles that have graced our counter tops.  It's to the point that it's a mite stressful for me.

There's only so much you can do with zucchini and squash.  Here's what we've tried so far: giving it away, dehydrating, grating and freezing (I have at least 8 bags with 4 cups each of shredded zucchini currently in the freezer), muffins (we have at least 5 bags of frozen muffins - I'd like to make more), fried patties, roasted, pan fried, breaded and baked, and breaded and deep fried.  Pancakes is something that I'm hoping to try with this last batch (hopefully last) of zucchini that has piled up.  The thing is, nobody is that crazy about zucchini.  Go figure.

Sammy's really been our garden guy.  He loves to check the garden and find all of the treasures.

And not to be left out, our new hens have begun to lay.  We still have two hens from our first batch three years ago, two new roosters (we're looking to get rid of one - you want it?), and eight new hens.  You can see by the size of the eggs which ones come from the new girls and the old.  I'm really looking forward to not having to buy eggs anymore...or at least until dead of winter when the hens will stop laying.

Oh! I figured out how to make a nice loaf of bread - less yeast.  It was counter-intuitive (to me at least), but that's what the experts said for making bread at high altitude.  And, go figure, they were right.  Less yeast by half.  Yummy!!

Here'a a couple of pictures of Ben and Jon since they weren't interested much in gardening this year.

Our scrawny little string bean.

That's all for now.  More to come.