As many of you know, this was our first summer with a vegetable garden here in this home. We've lived here for 10 years and finally decided to try our hand at vegetable gardening. Mind you, we live on 2 acres that is filled with pure clay! Every bit of loam that we have for our lawn and flower gardens has had to be hauled in by dump truck. For the first few years living here, I felt like we lived on a barren waste land filled with weeds. Each year we do a little more to the yard and maybe someday it will be just the way we hope it would be.
Anyway, getting to the title of my post today. I thought I'd share with you some of the preserved goods I was able to put up this year as a result of our little garden. It wasn't large, and we actually lost all our tomato and green pepper plants due to the abundance of rain we got early in the spring into summer. Thankfully other veggies did survive and we're still now enjoying the fruits of our labor fresh from the garden.
Our cucumbers did amazingly well this year. We've yielded so many cukes that I've been giving them to family, friends and neighbors.
I've put up two batches (14 pints) of bread & butter pickles so far this year.
The green beans did well too. We grew both a yellow and a stringless green bean and combined them. I love the color variation in the jars! We eat a lot of green beans so next year we're going to double up on our rows in the garden.
Although the peaches and strawberries didn't come from our garden or property, I still count them in the fruits of our labor because it was still work. I made up 7 each of strawberry and peach jams. There's nothing like sweet jam on warm toast in the morning... Yummy!
Our summer squash and zucchini's have been producing well for us too. I put up 2 batches of zucchini relish too along with eating stuffed zucchini, zucchini bread and roasted or grilled veggies all summer long. The plants still are covered in blossoms and growing more fruits every day.
To some of you, this may not look like much but to us it is more than plenty! We'll be giving much of this away at Christmas with other home made food goodies. I like to make up sweet bread recipes, fudge, peanutbutter balls and homemade candies to give as gifts too.
We've still got carrots growing in our garden as well as winter squash, pumpkins, turnips and rutabaga's. The corn was coming along nicely. We planted two different varieties. I had never grown corn before and my friend told me how I could tell when it's ready. When the raccoons eat it! Seriously though, she said when the hairs turn brown and start to dry up. I've been watching it on a daily basis get bigger and bigger and watching for the pretty pink hairs to turn brown. My sweetie went out the other morning and came in and told me the corn was ready!! The coons got it last night!! Thankfully, they didn't get all of it. I went out that day and picked the last 8 ears and cleaned up the mess that the over~stuffed and ungrateful raccoons left behind.
Anyway, that's all I have for today. Tomorrow I'm going to Shaker Village with a friend of mine. I'll be taking lots of pictures of the old Shaker Village to share with you all on my next post. Until then, have a great day! Count your blessings and be blessed! Hugs~ Birgit
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