Pickled Okra.

One of my most favorite foods in the world is pickled okra. I am partial to Wickles pickled okra to say the least - every fine grocery store sells it. And I absolutely love it! And one of my goals as we continue to learn to farm and preserve our homegrown fruits and veggies is to perfect our own version of pickled okra. With that being said, I realized that even though we have two very long rows of okra in our current garden, it really is not going to produce enough okra to merit the process of pickling what we harvest. However, in conversation with a dear old friend of mine (who is the pickling/preserving/canning guru) told me that if found her the fresh cut okra she would pickle it for me! Holy cow - it was an offer I could not go by. So I got on the horn quick...

I was very fortunate to get permission last week to pick okra in the farmer's large garden up in town. Hubby was out of town for work most of the week so I made my way to their garden on my own to pick from their three super uber long rows of okra... My view started out like this in the first two side-by-side rows:

I opted to walk up the middle of the rows to try and catch both rows from one vantage point.... This was a great idea other than the fact that the plants are so darn tall and some of the okra was so big on the tall shoots that it had pulled the trunks down. And why is this so bad? Well let me tell you how bad the okra makes your skin ITCH! And those plants also include every insect known to man on them... so a whole lot of swatting and thumping bugs was going on while the other hands were holding and cutting the okra in between all the scratching of my arms hands and face.

So many HUGE okra pieces! Way too big for pickling (or eating for that matter)... Someone should have spent some more time picking earlier in the season.

Such a beautiful backdrop though!

And the garden overall view in the sunset was gorgeous too!

I was successful in picking about 6 gallons before dark and hand delivered it to my friend.

And here is the finished product! Great birthday gift!!

We wound up picking again this past Saturday morning... Hubby and I both made our way up and picked about four more gallons.

Beautiful morning view.

Great view of my own okra-picker!