As summer draws near its end, I think we are all prone to reflect on “what I did this summer.” Perhaps because that is the inevitable first essay assignment of the school year historically across the nation, or because of the simple reflective nature of fall.
My essay would be quite dull. I grew a garden, and I dealt with the harvest of said garden. That was my summer.
I have a whole list of summer projects and trips that just didn’t happen and still, I am dealing with the garden.
Granted, Frank and I were over-zealous planting this past spring. We increased the size of our garden, and started everything from heritage and heirloom seed. We thought some of the seedlings would die. They didn’t. We thought we’d sell some of the seedlings. We didn’t. We planted them all. Then we planted seed directly in the ground, and after three years feeding our soil – they all did well.
Then there was a long period of late spring rain when we couldn’t get in the garden, and from there on out — the race was on.
I was handing plastic bags of leaf lettuce and spinach to every one I met. I ate fresh peas as I picked them. Three days digging onions. At least a month was spent just dealing with green beans that I canned, traded, sold, gave away. Days dealing with tomatoes blurred into several weeks of processing and carting tomatoes every where I went to get rid of them. I spent a day on break from the tomatoes — processing early pumpkins. And now, as the tomatoes finally back off, the peppers are popping up everywhere.
Another part of this summer was the collection and organization of recipes. You have the canning recipes, but then you have the recipes that you can make out of the canned stuff. For example: I had to find how to can and freeze pumpkin. But I had more pumpkin than we could ever eat in pies. So, I found pumpkin soup recipes, pumpkin casserole, pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffin recipes.
At one point, I had a stack of recipes from the printer floating loose-leaf around the kitchen. They had to be dealt with, copied or glued to index cards to fit in my recipe box. Last week, I had more recipes than would fit in a single recipe box. I bought a second box, and moved all canning, preserving, bread, herb and home remedy recipes to it.
But even still, waiting, out there under the ground, are sweet potatoes, carrots and late radishes and beets. Cucumbers are getting fat, gourds and late pumpkins lay among dead vines waiting to be gathered, and the herb garden waits for a third harvest there.
I have no vacation pictures. No remodeling projects complete. But I have proof that I was busy:
25 quarts of green beans
10 pints pizza sauce
10 pints spaghetti sauce
6 pints ketchup, 4 half-pints ketchup
30 pints salsa
13 quarts tomato soup (of varying blends)
12 quarts vegetable soup
10 quarts hot pepper rings
8 pints sweet pepper relish
9 pints tomato soup (sweet and spicy)
8 pints chocolate mint syrup (um, jelly that didn’t gel)
16 quarts pureed pumpkin
4 quarts peas
12 quarts corn
4 quarts squash
1 quart toasted pumpkin seed
3 gallons pickled eggs
5 pints dried seed for next year
2 recipe boxes
In addition to what waits in the garden to be dealt with, I still haven’t gone and picked apples, I’ve been eying the bounty on the old pear tree down the road, I have to try the chocolate mint jelly again, then lemon balm jelly, then freeze parsley, dry sage, oregano, and make thyme and rosemary vinegar.
I had also hoped to make some tinctures this year, but I drank the vodka I got for that with fresh tomato juice during the summer’s tomato phase.
I suppose I’ll have to get some more.
