It Begins

What begins you may ask? The serious harvest time where we actually put away quite a bit of food for the coming year.  Above on left about a third of our potatoes, the reds are still in the ground and we've been eating these yukon golds baked, boiled and fried up in the skillet with onions, they won't store all year but should last us into the fall anyway.  On right, the garlic, spread out and curing/drying in the garden shed, in another week or so I'll clean it up, trim the roots off and make braids, this should actually last us until next year, I just tossed the final head from last year into the compost bin, too dried out and sprouting.  With all that delicious juicy fresh garlic ready to eat, why compromise.

The tomatoes are starting to come in nicely, I couldn't believe these two yellow Brandywines, they are monsters, each one the size of my hand, they look like crazy twin embryos. At this stage we are still relishing them in slices, wedges, chopped, with crisp cucumbers and sweet red onions, a little fresh basil strewn over the top, a drizzle of olive oil, a splash of balsamic, S&P.  Soon it will be sauce making time and the ingredients; onions, basil and garlic are all ready and abundant.

I dug a couple of pounds of carrots yesterday, had left them in the ground too long, lots of root maggots or something were eating away at the tops, but still got plenty of useable roots.  Also pulled another big batch of beets, half of which got slow roasted in the oven last night, they'll be like candy.  The eggplants are growing daily along with the squash and beans, soon we'll be overloaded, asking "Who planted all these vegetables!?" and I still need to defrost the freezer...

Onions Curing

The heat is supposed to break tonight and I'm so ready, so many days in a row in the upper 90's really saps my strength and will to get anything done.  I went out to the Eno River quarry this morning for the first time this summer to swim with a friend.  It was beautiful there as always, had the whole place to ourselves, but the water was dissapointingly hot.  I'm longing for that mountain experience of last week and wondering when we can get back up there for another hit of cold water.