Harvest

Last week, with all the chaos of Cutie’s bottle jaw and mixing goats, they came and harvested my beans!

Of course, they showed up just as the sun went down.  I need to talk to them about combining when the light is better for pictures.  LOL

The fence looked good.

Actually, no matter what time of day they harvested, I was very happy to have that done.

It was a really rough year for farming, and I wasn’t even sure I was going to have a harvest for a large part of the summer.

It wasn’t a record harvest, that’s for sure, but it will help pay the bills.

Sunset on the Growing Season

Our growing season is winding down for crops.  That is largely due to the drought.

we are back to moderate drought; the whole state is getting worse

Everything is ahead, which typically is not good news for harvest.  I shared after our last rain (yeah, it’s been a long while since we had any rain) that my soybeans finally set pods.

from August 13th

I hadn’t checked them for a while, so I went out Friday evening.

My plants are still green!

They have beans in the pods!  I wasn’t sure they would fill out, but I am feeling pretty lucky right now.

A couple of fields just a mile north of me look like they are not even going to have a harvest, and that’s due to hail damage.

sunset over the soybean field

It’s just been a horrible growing year.  I’ll be glad to see it done.

Canning Season

Well, I’ve hit canning season. Of course, I have a lot of zucchini.  I’ve made a couple of batches of zucchini fritters for lunch and made sure to have plenty of leftovers to freeze.

The latest picking of zucchini.

I’ve been freezing some peppers off and on.  My bell peppers have been fairly small as dry as we are, but they still add up.

bell peppers

My hot peppers have been doing really well.  I have some frozen.  I even measured out and froze enough for two batches of salsa.  I finally got around to making and freezing some jalapeño poppers.

I might have to try and get another batch or two done.  They are good for family gatherings.

I also decided I didn’t have to wait until the end of the garden season to pick green tomatoes for my sweet relish.

part way through the process

It’s good and I like it, so I just picked green tomatoes and started the season with my relish.

the finished product

The one thing that isn’t doing well are my green beans.  The stinking groundhog keeps eating the plants, and they don’t like drought and heat.  I really want to can a couple of batches.

I am getting some ripe tomatoes now.

So I started with a batch of taco sauce.

It starts as raw tomato juice.

With the craziness of this summer, I’m probably not going to do a lot of extra canning this year.  It shouldn’t be too bad that way.