Saturday, August 22, 2009

Creamy Potato Soup all from Our Garden

Our garden has been growing beautifully this summer. I've posted about 8 older posts about past harvests. I'm keeping track of the gardening in a journal. I haven't recorded all the food we eat fresh, but have tried to start recording more faithfully so we can get a true picture of the food per $ ratio. So far my first harvest of potatoes is the equivalent of what I spent on seed potatoes if I were to have to buy the potatoes for us to eat. So the rest of the potatoes are total “profit” from the planting. YEAH!!

Today we harvested 6# tomatoes, 1# 12 oz. Carrots (for a roast tomorrow), 32 yellow onions (20 I hung to dry for later use), 16# 6 oz of red cabbage, 32# 2 oz green cabbage, 1# 4 oz cherry tomatoes, 3 small, 2 medium and 1 large zucchini, and 3 ½ quarts celery. I'm finally done harvesting my first cutting of celery. Our first celery harvest brought in 16 quarts of diced celery that we will use in soups, stews, & bone broth. I also sprinkle it on chicken and roast along with onions and garlic before roasting. Last year our frozen celery lasted us until March. There are 1-3 new bunches growing on each celery plant that I will be able to harvest before the frost. Would you believe that I actually have a blister at the base of my pointer finger from dicing celery.

My tomatoes are starting to ripen. I hope that next week we will see them turning red more quickly so I can start canning sauce and salsa. I have about 4 dozen huge peppers that I'm leaving on the plants until I need them, some are starting to turn red. YUM! We have lots of rutabaga's and turnips that we are pulling as needed for the pigs. There are also many carrots that cold be pulled but for now I'm leaving them in until I need them for a meal. I'd like to wait until it cools down to harvest them. The cool temperatures usually help them to sweeten up more.

My purple and red through potato plants are starting to die off. It will probably be a couple weeks yet until we dig them up. We are still enjoying eating the 40+# of potatoes we dug on the 14th . Well I'm off to chop celery and hopefully get some fall crops planted, if time allows.

Today it is rather cool so we will be making creamy potato and broccoli soup with the fresh produce form our garden: potatoes, broccoli, celery, onion, and parsley. YUM!

Friday, August 21, 2009

Whats Fresh ? - August 21

Today we harvested diced and froze 7 quarts of celery. I also froze 2 ½ gallons of sliced peaches for winter use. Our local Amish produce stand was selling a case of peaches for just $10. I bought 2 cases which made 24 pints of peach jam and 2 ½ gallons of frozen peaches for eating or smoothies.

I also explored the back garden and found 1 spaghetti squash, 1 small & 3 large yellow summer squash, and 1 small 3 large, & 1 jumbo zucchini. Most of the zucchini we are eating fresh or giving to the pigs. I will probably freeze some grated up for winter baking eventually.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Tomatoes & Celery

Today we harvested diced and froze 5 ½ quarts of celery. This was the first cutting of our celery. I probably should have cut it about a month ago but it still tastes fine even if all the leaves are not use able. Some of the leaves are bitter. We also brought in 11# 4 oz of tomatoes. I'm going to save them until we get more so I can make some sauce or salsa.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Beans and Potatoes

It was so hot today. But we braved the heat to harvest some beans and potatoes. The kids and I had so much fun digging our red skinned potatoes. We had a grand total of 47# 10 oz. That ought last us for the next month or so. After the fun was over we pulled, snapped, blanched, and froze 7 qts. yellow beans, 8 qts. green beans, and 3 qts purple beans.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Beans and Onions

Today was another bean day. The older kids and I picked, snapped and froze 9 qts of purple beans.

Philip and Nathan wanted to help in the garden so I had them start pulling yellow onions. They pulled 240 onions that I later bundled into bunches of 20 and hung in the garage to dry. I've been pulling and using onions as needed. Almost all the greens have fallen over now so today was the start of the onion harvest.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Need Potatoes for Dinner

Today I wanted to make potatoes and eggs for dinner but was out of potatoes. So I grabbed a shovel and went down to the garden to pull up another potato plant. There was 1# 12 ounces under that dead plant. I also grabbed an onion and green pepper to add to the eggs. I love eating food fresh from our garden. It makes all the hard work worth it!

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Beans

Today was our first day harvesting beans. We picked snapped and froze 19 quarts of beans. We only have a partial row of yellow beans because we don't use these as often. The break down was 3 qts. Yellow, 3 qts. Purple, and 13 qts. Green.