Summer Harvest

My absolute favorite part of summer is growing and eating our own food. Over the weekend, Preston and I canned 10 quarts of beans... the first batch of many to come. It was the first time we had used our new (used) pressure canner. In the past, we just canned tomatoes which you can do in a hot water bath.

I purchased my 3rd dozen ears of sweet corn this morning. I can eat sweet corn every day of the summer and not get tired of it. We tried freezing it last summer and it had a funny taste. The farm where I bought it from made a few suggestions, so I'm going to do a small batch and try it out of the freezer before I do a bunch.

I planted one single solitary cucumber plant in my garden that claimed to be a "bush plant." I took that to mean it would be very compact and fit along nicely with the other vegetables that are in rows. HA!! It has spread across and thru it's two adjacent rows and has produced at least 20 cucumbers so far. I'm not a huge pickle fan, so I had to send Preston to work with a bunch the other day. I'm eating a lot of cucumber sandwiches for lunch!

We did try a refrigerator pickle though that came out pretty good. We are growing banana peppers and I cut up two of them with a cucumber and an onion and put it in a quart jar with vinegar, pickling salt and some pickling spice. I refrigerated it over night and the peppers warmed the mixture up quickly! Preston and Ben really liked it, so I'm treating it like a "friendship bread" recipe and just adding more cucumbers to keep it going.

Yesterday, I picked a variety of things from the garden... beets, cucumber, onion, beans and potatoes. I made 3 different summer salads and we took them down to a place on our property we call "The Park" for dinner.

The Park is a wooded area along the creek that we keep mowed down. It has a fire ring and a place to hang hammocks. Annie, our Sheltie, and I do our best to smell yummy enough to attract all the bugs away from everyone else.

Colton had the area freshly mowed and Ben weed-wacked so we could find the fire ring. They had a fire burning by the time I arrived with salads and hot dogs. Later we had s'mores for dessert ...yummy!