It's harvest time!! Gathering and processing, cooking, steaming, freezing, canning, bagging. All so that we can eat fresh, homegrown, organic veggies and fruit all winter.
Our freezer is packed though and we have a 1/4 of a cow coming any day now from an organic farm near our home - it'll make it's home in our freezer next to 50 pounds of tomatoes (or more!), AND 360 pounds of organic peaches and nectarines...as well as bags of pesto, shredded zucchini, squash and spinach puree, and bell peppers. Not sure how it's all going to fit...
Still in the ground awaiting their lucky moment to meet the family are 2 yummy varieties of potatoes (German Butterlings and a buttery fingerling), carrots, beets, and the rest of our onions.
Above ground we have 4 different types of lettuces, swiss chard, collard greens, and kale as well as broccoli, rhubarb, and acorn squash.
But this weekend, we were seeing red. About 200 pounds of tomatoes - half red and ready - were harvested last weekend and on this rainy, slushy day after an invigorating 5 mile run, we spent the day blanching, peeling, and cooking down the yummiest looking puree. To our tomato blend we added oregano and basil and onions from our herb patch...the whole concoction grown in our back yard. I LOVE IT!! We'll can it later today.
For weeks we have often had lunches and dinners that were totally acquired locally - goat cheese I made from our sweet friend's goat milk we get each week and sun-dried tomatoes (from our garden), on a huge salad or an egg omelet with eggs from our friend's goat farm, zucchini, bell peppers, carrots, tomatoes, onions and herbs from our garden. Or our favorite - fresh tomatoes on top of an olive oil brushed pizza crust with our homemade goat cheese and tons of garden veggies to top it off. The best pizza I truly have ever had - and I grew up eating Chicago pizza, living in the burbs of the windy city.
So my little princess sprout said today, "It's so fun to store up food for winter! Mommy, are the stores closing this winter?"
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