A post about veggies....finally!

Given that growing food is one of the purposes of us moving up here and doing all of this farming, we should probably have a post about said food at some point.  No time like the present.  

We were itching to get things going this spring, and we started a bunch of seedlings inside....way too early.  We planted some things in the ground as soon as we thought we were out of the frost danger -- we were wrong.  We lost a lot of our seedlings to a late frost, but now we know.  Luckily, we had a lot of extra seeds, so we were able to start over.  Tragically, we lost all our melons, and we had already given away our extras at a seedling swap.  This means no melons for us this year. :(  

In early/mid/late/all of June, we were beginning to get really discouraged.  All of our seedlings in the ground were a couple inches tall, and then they just stopped growing.  We were beginning to wonder if we were going to get any food this year.  I mean, it was practically July, and we weren't even really eating greens out of our garden.  We were getting more and more frustrated as all our friends from the Seacoast were struggling to keep up with their early crops -- turns out being two hours north makes a difference....go figure.  

Needless to say, things have changed, and now we're struggling to keep up.  

This is how things looked on July 22 -- things are getting bigger!

Also July 22 -- turnips planted around salad greens.  The greens have since bolted, and turnips are enormous.  We're trying to get them all before it's too late.

This is a medium sized turnip -- luckily, the variety we have is still really good when they're huge.  We're trying to get to them before they get huge, but it is hard.  Any tips for preserving turnips?

This is Aug. 7 -- perhaps the most amazingly noticeable thing is the bean teepee.  It is great!  We are going to plant many more of them next year just because they're so beautiful...and we like beans a lot.

Beets are one of my favorite veggies, and Anna waited to pick any while I was away in Ann Arbor.  I was totally expecting a mediocre beet since it was so big, but this thing was DELICIOUS! Like with the turnips, it has been hard to get to them before they're huge.  A root cellar is in our plan for the fall/winter.

Our cukes are totally out of control, it is amazing.  The ones on the right are silver slicers, and they are so so so so good.  The skin is not tough at all, and they are sweet and delicious...even when oversized.  The ones on the left are pickling cukes....and the dill tells you that's exactly what's about to happen to these cukes.

We're trying brining for the first time this year.  We have a 3 gallon crock, and we're a little over a week into it at this point.  We added dill, garlic, and some horseradish leaves as we read that is supposed to help keep them crunchy.  We grew everything going into this crock. :)

When brining pickles, you just add a brine solution (salt water) to the cukes and let it sit for a few weeks.  This is a real fermentation of cukes rather than pickling them with vinegar.  

Cukes in brine -- they float.

So we weighted them with this handy weight.  You can use a plate with a bottle on top, but I like the ease of getting the weight out of the crock since it has the hole in the middle.  Now, we watch and wait...and skim the scum off the top.  Brining produces yeast on the surface of the solution since it is exposed to the air.  The pickles aren't exposed, so there's no yeast on them.

That glorious bean teepee has us swimming in beans.  So, we're making dilly beans.  Aren't they so gorgeous?

Dilly beans -- ready for consumption!

These next few pics are all from today's harvest.  It is so rewarding and wonderful to go out to the garden and pick dinner.  It does make for some interesting meals as we figure out what to do with what we've got.  Today, we're stuffing oversized zucchinis with tomatoes, onions, garlic, kale, chard, and quinoa.  We're saving the beets and turnips for something else.

Have I mentioned I love beets?  They are so beautiful. There's a turnip in there, too. :)

And, yes, we finally have tomatoes!  We have a critter partaking in a lot of our heirlooms, but we still have plenty ourselves.  They are so tasty and a good reward for the person who goes out for the night's harvest.

Zukes and cukes!  Yeah, we have a lot of these.  I think we each eat about 5 cukes a day, not to mention the pickles, not to mention the dogs eating a lot of cukes too.

Totally unrelated to things we've grown (except we did grow the horseradish on the left), but we dove for these by our house.  I'd never had an oyster before, and they weren't too bad.  We'll only be having them when the ducks/chickens need the calcium from the shells.  It's a service we're willing to do for them.

Life is good, and things are growing.  We have a lot more preserving to do, and it is going to be great. Love the summer, love the bounty.