What a fun day we had yesterday!
I had a bubbly, giddy feeling rise up inside of me. I felt like a joyous ball of sun was in my belly and deep laughter started coming out. I wanted to jump up and down like a little kid. I surprised myself. I wasn’t even quite sure why I was so excited, but I was. Bracken was very amused by me. He was in the pack, against my belly, and looked up at my face with curiosity and a giant smile. He knew just how I felt, I’m sure of it.
We were harvesting in the garden and it felt like the most wonderful thing in the whole entire world. Suddenly everything seemingly ordinary felt so very special. The morning light was just starting to rise over the trees. The mountains were waking up. The day was fresh. Life felt so rich and full. I was outside. I was alive. And I thought ‘life is truly such a gift!’
It was the kind of good mood that comes over you in summer. When suddenly you are bursting with so much energy and inspiration that you feel like you could just run everywhere.
I harvested our first celery! It felt ceremonial. I held it in my hand like a prize and showed it off to Jeff, even though he’d been watering it and seeing it every day. He shared my enthusiasm anyway. The slugs had taken a liking to the leaves, but it was so deeply green and looked like the most beautiful celery I had ever seen, holes in the leaves and all. It was beautiful because we had grown it ourselves and that felt satisfying.
Jeff harvested globe basil, that we planted for the first time this year. We love it.
Jeff harvested lettuce, arugula, basil, and parsley. We washed it all and got it ready for salads in the fridge. We’ve been eating lots of fresh herbs in our salads, how divine! We feel so good when we eat raw foods.
Jeff also harvested our first two cucumbers. They were so cute. (Gardeners can understand my adoration for homegrown garden produce and will not think it’s weird at all that I call our first tiny cucumbers “cute.”) He harvested zucchini. We were starting off our day in a happy, bountiful way!
Our day got even better from there….
I had a feeling to call our neighbor with an organic farm nearby. I knew he took weekly trips to town on Mondays to drop off produce at the co-op. Our house is right on his way to town so I asked if he could swing by so we could buy some produce. (We weren’t at farmer’s market last weekend and I was missing it.) He brought us blueberries, shittake mushrooms (above), yellow summer squash (that we didn’t grow this year), beets…………
…green beans (ours weren’t ready yet), walla walla onions, elephant garlic……………..
……..marjoram herb (so yummy)…
….and lots of apples!
All for a really great deal!
We hadn’t planned on a canning project, but before you knew it we were making applesauce. That’s how those canning projects happen sometime, when you least expect it. He gave us some windfalls too, which I expected to be wormy, but they were gorgeous inside.
We ended up getting 8 quarts of applesauce canned! (Reiki the cat decided she wanted some, as you can see in the picture.)
I put all the blueberries in the freezer, which inspired me to organize the entire freezer.
The feeling of writing on the top of the jars, making it “official” is exciting. (Writing the year is not really necessary since we will most likely eat it all up before the next canning time.) Putting the jars of applesauce on the wood pantry shelves inspired me to start cleaning out the pantry and before long I had a truck full of boxes for our farming neighbor, wine bottles organized for our next wine making project, egg cartons waiting for us to get chickens again…. the pantry started looking good! I smiled at the gallon jar filled with dried nettles I harvested in the spring. The jars of dried herbs from the garden. And now the jars of applesauce.
This time of year gives me an inner drive to start filling those shelves up!
He also brought us a few figs from his greenhouse.
They were like gems!
Thank you, thank you for good food!!
What food have you been putting by for the winter?
(I’m so excited about it, I’ve got a tally going on the side of my blog.)
To answer your question (after your deLIGHTful post)- I ferment my veggies in salt brine to preserve them, keeping them fresh and vital and nutritious through the winter, with extra enzymes and vitamins. Yea!!!
I know that wonderful happy feeling. Storing food is very soulfully satisfying.
Happy days.
Much love.
I totally get the excitement of putting food by. π I keep a tally sheet for a year of all the food I can. I didn’t know other people did too. My latest project was corn that a coworker of my mother’s allowed me to glean from her field. I ended up canning four quarts of regular corn(would have been five but one jar broke when I put it in the canner), thirty two pints of corn, and nine half pints of corn relish. All for free! yay! It’s really refreshing to at least read about other people canning. Everyone I talk to thinks I’m insane. π
Great looking food photos!!
So far this year I have frozen strawberries we picked at a upick farm, I’ve canned 15 qts of green beans- picked from my garden, 30 qts of peaches-bought at the farmers market, and 8 qts of applesauce- made from seconds at the farmer’s market. Yesterday I went back to the farmers market and bought a bushel of green beans and canned 14 qts from that with still more to do, today, and I also bought a bushel of peaches and hope to get those canned today as well or at least started canning on those today. After peaches and green beans the plan is salsa from our own tomatoes!!
I too feel the push to get the pantry shelves filled as well as the freezers!! Summer is rushing by and soon it will be winter and all that summery goodness in a jar will be a real treat!!
Have a blessed day!!!
Dana
Would you mind sharing your recipe for applesauce Taryn?
Applesauce is not popular here in Greece but I’d love to make some when I return to Athens from my vacation as the apples at our farmers’ market would be at their pick then!
Those figs…sigh. I haven’t seen truly ripe (and surely truly sweet) ones like that.
I have a small yard but we try to do edible landscaping here in the southwest.
We recently moved to an area further out and we are having a terrible time with desert rodents eating everything. Lemon buds. All the leaves and berries off our potted blueberry bush. The loquat tree was eaten, the bark chewed until the tree died despite wire cages and trunk wrap.
It is hard. Our dwarf orange trees have fruit. The pomegranate should bear next year. I am going to try and replace the poor naked blueberry bush (no leaves, alas!) with a fig tree.
I am enjoying reading your blog and rejoicing in every one of your harvests and in doing so, recall fondly gardens I had in the past in other areas of the country.
You do grow beautiful food and a beautiful little boy! Great blog.
oh yum! it all looks so fabulous! you two sure do inspire me…
TARYN!!!!!! I loved this blog post so much because it completely mirrors what’s been going on inside me too these past couple days! Just yesterday I said to my Hubby, “Lately I’ve been so excited to get up in the morning — like I don’t even want to continue sleeping even though I’m still tired…I’m EXCITED to get up because I have all this fun stuff I want to get going on! That’s really significant.”
And it’s true…I’m practically giddy with excitement and good feelings.
This is such a change from how I’ve been feeling for quite a while, and I can relate so well to your description in this post! I love it. I was in my garden yesterday too and was savoring it.
Your picture of Reiki peeking at the applesauce is one of my very favorite photos of all time, that I have ever seen anywhere!!!
Love
Lindsey
p.s., thanks for your comment on my gratitude sunday post! always love hearing from you. and i’d suggest reading “Round Ireland with a Fridge” first before the other one…in fact I want to re-read it too. π
How wonderful! You had me going for a while…I was starting to perk up which hasn’t really happened in 5 years. Well done! Your joy is contagious :-). Such bounty. Congratulations on that which is grown at home & that which is generously given!
Oh…my…goodness!!! What an amazing day, and such amazing food! I get so crazy excited about home grown produce as well, and something about this time of year is especially magical to me, too. It just brings all this happiness and satisfaction bubbling upward. Hooray for your fruits and veggies!!! π
PS ~ love the new look of your blog! π