Saving the Harvest

What a long way the garden has come in one year, and how quickly a freeze can take most of it away. We wanted to make the most of all the goodies in the garden as the first freeze approached, which necessitated a  little creativity.

 We spent one evening harvesting all the basil after dark as we worried the first freeze was approaching. The entire house filled with the smell of basil as we removed the leaves, rinsed and pureed them, then made basil pucks with olive oil in cupcake tins. Although the first freeze ended up still being several weeks out, the basil was harvested in a better condition than it would have been following the cooler, cloudy weather. It also allowed us to focus on the vegetables crops when the next freeze approached...

In mid-December, we spend a weekend harvesting all our eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes, whether ripe or green. This photo shows the harvest after the first day. On day two, we added a few more big bowls of cherry tomatoes. Over the next week we turned over 52 cups of green tomatoes into pickled tomatoes, salsa, and my new favorite - green tomato pie! The eggplant made a super over-roasted baba ganoush.

The frozen water exploding from the stem of native frost weed is evidence of the first winter freeze

A hawk (juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk?) has become a frequent visitor from which we seek to keep the chickens safe