Destruction!

What happens when you don't get your plot saver fence up early enough? Large wildlife find their way into your garden or pumpkin patch and wreak havoc on the young green sunflower stalks... And unfortunately, we had to learn the hard way. Early last week every plant was intact... by Saturday morning the young shoots of sunflowers were missing their leaves... Every last one of them! UGH On a side note: They also sampled several tops out of the bi-colored corn stalks and took a couple of bites of one of the pumpkin plant leaves... Must not have liked them!

Close up of what's left of a couple of sunflower stalks.

And here is the entire row of sunflowers... Tops are GONE.

Lots of hoofprints all over the garden...

And so by golly we had the plot saver up by mid-afternoon - TWO lines of it!

Hopefully, this will deter the hungry wildlife. We would hate to see this lush pumpkin patch go to waste!

Garden Progress.

A few photos from around the farm:

Baby pumpkin.

Another baby pumpkin.

Okra!

Finally some decent tomatoes!

First corn we ever grew! And it's a miracle we have edible ears of corn!!

The front pumpkin plants have blown up in size already!

Our corn picking help!

Freezing Peas.

We finished preparing the last of the zipper peas for the freezer earlier last week. Rinsing over and over, looking through them handful by handful for wormy or bad ones, blanching them and then bagging them. Glad to have our garden stock put up for the winter. Now we can enjoy the rest of our harvest for meals or for sharing!

Yesterday's Harvest!

Did I mention that the first planting of corn is in??!

Getting Our Pickles On...

Another fond childhood memory of mine was eating my Grandmother's homemade dill pickles. My brother and I loved to eat them... and I mean LOVED to eat them. Until last Sunday, I had no clue what it actually took to MAKE dill pickles... and oh the pain-staking process of pickling will make you think twice to decide if you really, REALLY want to make them. Or do you just keep buying those store-bought ones? (I do have to admit that I am HOOKED on Wickles pickles... or anything else Wickles... pickles, okra, the garden mix, you name it!)

With that being said, last Sunday we spent ALL DAY LONG in the kitchen pickling. Pickling cucumbers, pickling banana peppers and pickling jalapeno peppers. We were pickling fools. Yes, we were.

How do you know it's time to pickle? And what to pickle? It all starts with collecting your ingredients...

When the bushes are loaded with the fruits of our labor... it's time to pickle.

I started collecting the ingredients early in the week.

And then I started the cucumber hunt. We did not have any pickling cukes small enough to make whole dill pickles... so I started looking around town for other local farmers cucumbers.

By Saturday night we were in business...

We set up a washtub on the back deck to brine the cukes overnight.

Hubby was a tremendous help chopping up all the dill weed and garlic.

So much to wash...

So much to prep...

Almost ready to start stuffing jars!

And so it begins!

And the final pepper product.

And at 11:00pm we pulled the last jars from the boiled water bath... The sounds of the jar lids "chinking" throughout the evening was music to ours ears as each and every jar sealed. We had a countdown going to see just how many more "chinks" we needed to hear before we went to bed knowing that all 8 quarts of whole pickles, 5 quarts/3 pints of dill pickle spears, 4 quarts/6 pints of pickled banana peppers and 1 pint of jalapeno peppers had properly sealed. Whew! And then we died in the bed from exhaustion...

Yesterday's Harvest!

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Freezing Peas!

It's funny how the entire harvest seems to come in at one time... ours and the other gardens around town. After all the canning of the green beans last weekend, it seemed we spent a lot of time in the evenings after work this past week shelling peas. We bunch we picked in the garden last week just seemed to take forever to shell... but, we finally finished late Friday night.

Lots of shelling in front of the television. I guess you could say it's a lot like the old days when I use to spend hours shelling peas with my Grandparents... same shelling metal pan, same house... except for us having the AC, cable TV, internet, and cell phones it is pretty much the same task!

My plan was to shell the peas during the week days and then prepare them for the freezer on Saturday. And then I got the call that the farm in town had me a bushel of zipper peas. That's a bunch more work... so I brought in the recruit to help shell on Saturday once I picked up the zipper peas.

Meet my Mom. She is a shelling machine. On Saturday, she shelled and I rinsed the bushel and a half of purple hulled/pink eyed peas from our garden multiple times, looked them over handful by handful for the wormy ones, blanched them and bagged them for the freezer... and I shelled zipper peas in between all the boilings. Hubby even helped get the zippers shelled. We had a nice time grilling steaks and shelling for a Saturday night!

By Saturday evening, the purple hulls/pink eyes were in the freezer and all of the new bushel of zippers were shelled and in the fridge for rinsing/blanching/bagging for the freezer at a later date.

And then Hubby showed up with this harvest from the garden... Ouch.

Today's Bountiful Harvest!

Canning Green Beans!

So after spending the entire evening on Saturday shelling zipper peas, snapping green beans and washing every pot and pan in this kitchen twice, I spent most of Sunday morning cleaning the rest of the kitchen up and preparing to attempt my first ever try at canning... Yep, old school canning! (Super thanks to the our friends, the Parkers, who loaned us their pressure canner!) Hubby spent a huge chunk of the morning stuffing blueberries into freezer bags... so that freed me up to go retrieve my Grandmother's quart jars from the storage shed. Next up was washing the jars... and then I remembered that we threw out all of her metal lids and rings when we moved into the house because they were rusted. All I can say is thank the Lord for the dollar stores in this small town! Hubby scored new lids and rings and a whole flat of pint jars for whatever else we decide to can later. After washing the green beans four times (which took forever since there was probably 4 gallons of beans) we finally started the actual canning process. I have to say what a chore this whole canning thing is! I do not know how my Grandmother did this every year all by herself. I would say that the entire amount of time we spent was about 8 hours to can 14 quarts of green beans and froze the remaining 4 quarts. Whew! I am just tired thinking back to Sunday...

I do have to say that I am very, VERY proud of my Grandmother's antique mason jar collection. There are so many different ones and she has a ton of jars in quart and jelly jar sizes.

Hubby loved to stare at them while they bubbled in the jars long after they were removed from the pressure canner.

We are very proud of our first run at canning. Next up, is freezing the zipper peas... just hoping to score a few more from the local garden stand in town to go with them!

Today's Harvest!

Picking, Shelling & Snapping on a Saturday Night!

After the blueberries were picked and delivered to the house, we made our way to the farm to pick all of the green beans ready for picking. It was quite a search and rescue scavenger hunt to find the matured beans in the bean vine arbor they created because we planted the rows WAY too close together... Plus it was hot and we were both in close quarters wedged between the beans and the corn on one side and the beans and the peas on the other long side. But, we managed through it... (even though child labor would have been easier to get to the beans).

We also picked some other things... Funny cherry tomato!

Plus my ONE lone cabbage that made it... out of 7 original plants!

The purple hulled pea pods are starting to turn purple... Maybe a week or so and will be covered up in picking, shelling and freezing peas!

I would say the harvest was quite bountiful on Saturday!

The harvest made a great passenger on the way home... so much that I called my Mother to come over and help us snap beans Saturday evening. And then we stopped by the veggie stand in town and scored a little over half a bushel of zipper peas!

To say the least, we had our work cut out for us!