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"Gardening is like a treasure hunt!"Exclaimed our six year old as we strolled through our garden discovering the many delights! How true her statement is. Our gardens are full of treasures to fill our tables, pantries and freezers with healthy, wholesome foods to provide sustainance throughout the winter until next year.And what a treasure hunt it is! What fun it is to look through the cucumber patch to try to locate the ripened cucumber hidden underneath the leaves. What a joy it is to search for the camaflouged snow pea hanging on the vine. What a pleasure it is to seek through the bushes for the ripened green beans. Who needs "I Spy" to build visual discrimination skills when God provides it naturally and multi-dimensionally in a garden? To watch the flowers grow and bud and then finally bloom and burst forth into color is such a delight. We so enjoy watching the beneficial butterflies and bugs we welcome to our garden when we plant flowers to attract them. What anticipation builds as we wait and watch those green tomatoes begin to turn red until they are ripened to a beautiful, rich red color. This is probably the most anticipated vegetable from the garden. We refuse to buy those pale. rubbery, red counterfiets they call tomatoes from the grocery store. We can enough salsa and tomato sauce to last us a year and only eat fresh tomatoes during the summer from our own garden. No, we wait all year for the real thing. We just picked a year's supply of onions, dried some of them in the dehydrator for soups this winter and tied up a majority in panty hose to keep them fresh. We harvested and cured a year's worth of gourmet garlic. And are beginning to harvest our tomatoes. In our drought conditions, our year's supply of sweet corn did not make it. However, we did get a good start on green beans and potatoes and beets to last atleast through the fall. We also managed to finely chop and freeze a significant amount of beet greens and swiss chard to last us a good part of the winter. We add this to soups and omelets. We love the challenge of trying to raise our own food. We also love the taste and decreased grocery bill as well. We didn't make our challenge of raising everything this year. We've been here four months and have so much to tear down and build and settle, but we've made a decent start. We know the soil conditions better now that we've worked with it and are planning the location of the expansion of our garden for next year. This time next year I pray there will be little to no time to blog due to even more treasure hunting! Time to harvest more cucumbers with my daughters, The Farmer's Wife 10:46 - 2006-Aug-11 - post comment
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Description Sharing our thoughts, events, ups and downs, as we restore a once profitable farm to its former greatness as a Christian agrarian family. Home User Profile Archives Friends Lighthouse Farm Our DVD's for homesteader's Homestead Series e-books Lighthouse Farm Podcasts No NAIS Recent Entries - Pig-headed or chicken-hearted???? - Health care - the way it used to be - The Egg Hog - Back in blogdom after chasing sheep - Ode to Winter 2007 - Chicken and Hog DVD's are now finished!! - Video clip of the birth of a piglet - News about Haitian friends!!!!! - Authentic AgricultureTM - Welcome! - A Peaceful Night in the Pasture - Big Sale at The Old Schoolhouse!! - Rendering Lard - Hog Butchering Time - John Ray - Founder of Biology - A Breath-taking Field Trip - Fat and Sassy - Real Men Eat Quiche - Green Tomato Recipes - Harvest - Two Cents Worth on Pinching Pennies... - Cockle burrs and stinging nettle a blessing? - Gourmet Meals At The Farm Table - Seeds Worth Saving - Sweet cartoon - Commercial rice supply has been contaminated - Spermicidal Corn - Agricultural Science Fiction Horror Flick or Truth? - SImple Entertainment - "Gardening is like a treasure hunt!" - Pigs don't stink - Diggin' For Gold!! - Rain - a Blessing or a Curse? - My Sheep Know My Voice - er - Chain Saw... - The Old Farm Dog - An Alarming Nightime Visitor - Farming Magazine - A Pig's Nest - Meager chicken harvest - Bacon + Garlic = Piglets? - A Rare July 4th Tribute to Farmers - Fencing in more pasture - Three months on our new place.... - Blood suckers in Minnesota :( - Miss Bacon and Rocky Mountain Oysters - Sheep without a shepherd - Haying with my man! - Mink solutions, anyone? - Goat meets pig... - I Smell a Skunk... - URGENT!! Please forward!!!! - Did Adam Smell Like That? - Minnesota!!!!! - Problem solved - God is good - The Rat Trap and One Happy Girl - New Podcast - Farm Restoration - The Beginning - An Honorable Gentleman Has Died - Why teach our children about agriculture? - Cheap, Safe Food??? - New NAIS links worth reading - Old Tractors Never Die - A Lawyer comments on Constitutional Rights and NAIS - Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks - Big Bellies and Big Bags - Hosting Haitians on the Homestead - Minnesota, Here We Come (after we sell our house) and "the Chip" - And God saw that it was good - Greetings |