Saturday, July 28, 2012

Summer in the Northwest (I've been busy)


I think this is going to be photo heavy. We have been canning, preserving, and gardening. My youngest and I canned Bing cherries yesterday. She pulled the stems and sorted while I washed them, filled jars, and processed. We did 14 quarts and froze the rest (9 lbs frozen?) A total of 36 lbs. Oh ya. I made a pie too. I think I prefer pie cherries for that but the family liked it.


Sugar snap peas have been abundant and long lasting this year due to our cooler and wetter conditions. We have eaten them until everyone is complaining, sold some, froze 20lbs, and given some away to family.



Potatoes are going great guns. The reds are popping out of the top of the soil and many of them are huge. The vines are still going so I don't feel like I can quite harvest them yet but I have pulled a few here and there for a couple meals. They are great. I am a little concerned that with all the rain they may not store well.

These were great roasted with garlic

Beans are coming along and I have high hopes for them. Tomatoes not so much. Maybe some green tomato relish. I haven't got but one ripe tomato this year. Just too cold. I'm glad I didn't plant corn.

Last year I submitted a photo of one of our baby ducks fresh out of the shipping box to the dept. of Ag for a photo contest. see it here It was placed on the first inside page so this year I submitted four more photos. Let me know what you think.







4 comments:

Caroline said...

Thanks for the photos. Great to see the preserving, would love to hear more.

Izzy said...

You have been busy. I've said it before, I wish we had Bing cherries here in FL. One of my all time favs. I'm tied between the third and fourth pictures. I think the contrasting color of white and dark/black really stands out in the third one. And of course, who doesn't like to see ducklings!

How many rows of peas did you plant to get such abundance?

sista said...

I'm torn because I love all the pictures but I'm biased because I love the subjects. Let's see. I planted 2 10 foot rows trellised between metal post using garden twine. Them I used 8 or 9 of the largest tomato cages turned upside down with peas planted around the outside so they could grow up the cages tepee style. Hope that makes sense. It worked reasonable well except both types of trellis weren't quite tall enough.

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