The ground is frozen today. They’re predicting 8-12 inches of snow. Our breath steams in the air, and the hair in my nose prickles as I breathe in.
The garden is asleep; we put it to bed this weekend. O and Sam harvested 140 green tomatoes, which are ripening on the counter. I made another two quarts of tomato puree out of cherry and grape tomatoes. We found a cauliflower that had gone to seed, and we brought in the last watermelon. The raspberry bushes were picked faithfully every day, and the strawberries and rhubarb outdid our expectations. Our potatoes are beautiful, but won’t last long. I have spinach and lettuce seedlings out there, but I’ll be surprised if I harvest anything from them. We pulled (and have already eaten) the twelve carrots the rabbits didn’t eat. I had several meals of zucchini, three eggplants, ten red peppers (a first this year!), and one acorn squash.
Our spring harvest included several pickings of sweet peas, one harvest of pea pods, tons of lettuce and spinach.
Saturday my friend Renee and I drove 500 miles round-trip to pick up beef (we split it with another family as well) from the butcher. Here is what 200 (or so) pounds of beef looks like in my freezer:
I still have 40 pounds of apples coming at the end of the week to make into sauce, and I’m thrilled that the store of our local farm will be staying open for the weekend so I can buy as we go, instead of trying to store it all myself. My little basement is not anything like a root cellar, though every time I go down and see what’s for dinner for the rest of the winter, I feel happy. Very happy.
How was your harvest?
Learning As We Go 