Reaping What We Sowed!

Its been a nerve wrecking year as far as the garden goes.  Well, as nerve wrecking as a garden could possibly be.  We don't particularly rely on our garden for any financial purposes and we certainly have food to eat if it doesn't produce as well as I would like, but still... its something we put a lot of time and effort into and really enjoy seeing produce bountifully being picked from it.  You've read as I shared excitedly that we started to plant, and then almost cried as I watched gullies being washed into it and my plants being washed away during the torrential downpours we received early in its life.  And now here we are in the dead of summer and in drought conditions. 

Yet, a large part of the garden has actually survived to some extent despite its rough life.  I lost all the strawberries (the biggest disappointment), all the spinach and the four green pepper plants we set out.  The green beans grew to a mighty six inches tall, but managed to produce about one ice cream bucket full before I finally pulled them up last Sunday to relieve them of their misery (and my misery of having to look at them and dream of what they could have been!).  The carrots are almost ready to pull and I still have a few onions left that have grown to about the size of cooking onions one would find in the grocery store. The lettuce did really well, but its prime has come and gone.  We got monster cabbage heads, with another three or four to pick yet.  I have beautiful cucumber vines that are producing just enough cukes for us to have a couple a day.  And we're starting to pick vine-ripen tomatoes with lots and lots of green ones coming on each day!  Our crook-necked squash did tremendous, with some of the biggest squash vines I've ever seen.  (Josh got a little carried away with the fertilizer one afternoon!)  We'll also have an abundant crop of cantaloupe if everything keeps looking as good on that end of the garden as it does now.  So, all and all, I think we were successful this year!

So far, I've been able to freeze a couple dozen gallons of squash, several quarts of green beans and I have freezer pickles in the process of being made.  I'm looking forward to when the tomatoes are coming on full force.  I'll can those, along with juice, for the pots and pots of chili we'll have this winter.  Oh!  and make salsa.  Can't forget the salsa!



Even though my green beans didn't make anything, my family was kind enough to share some of theirs.  When it was time to break the beans, I started off with one helper...




...which soon became two helpers....




...until they decided the "drag Sarah Rose across the floor by her feet" game was more fun than snapping beans.




But no matter how fun it was mopping my floor with Sarah, they couldn't resist coming back to help again! 




This is what happens when one plants cucumbers by crook-neck squash.  One gets crook-neck cucumbers.  I wonder if this is scientific enough to prove that the crook-neck gene is stronger than the straight-eight gene?



Anyone who knows me well knows that garden tomatoes are among my absolute favorite foods EVER!  (Cucumbers come in a very close second.)  These are the third and fourth tomotoes we've picked off our plants so far this year.



I could eat this every day of the year.  Tomato, cucumber and croutons sprinkled with just a little salt and pepper (sometimes dill weed or onion).  Let sit at room temperature for about thirty minutes.  Yummy :-)
The best part about eating in the summer time is that most of our meals are all our own.  We freeze our own meat and with the garden produce and eggs thrown in (and most times homemade bread), we have our own Van Zante meal.  Its espeically neat when we sit down to a "breakfast for dinner" meal with our own bread, bacon, sausage, and eggs.