Bright Ideas

This year we were lucky to harvest plenty of tomatoes to eat, freeze, and share. We had enough apples to can applesauce and make a pie and crumble. Brice still picks the occasional apple off the tree. A small pepper crop turns colors in our house; cayenne peppers ripen in the shop. Now the task of dismantling begins.

Three short rows of corn stalks were pulled out; the birds took the last kernels from the garden. Twelve tomato plants were pulled off cages and metal fence posts used to hold them up. When they were taken down they left the garden. All plants were piled with corn stalks, plants and forgotten tomatoes, waiting for a trip to the landfill.

When our son was of the age to create loud shouts of joy, he and the Kalstrom brothers had tomato fights with forgotten tomatoes! We ended up with seeds everywhere.

Beans started coming out; yellow beans had dried beans in the pods, dried beans to pop out and store like other dried beans. We have two pounds of them. How will they taste? A small onion crop showed a few baseball sized treasures. The only problem with them is they take longer to eat!

We need to dig beets and pressure cook them before slipping the skins and eating, or freezing for winter use. Our small pressure cooker can only handle two of these globes at a time. Our big pressure canner would take too long to come to temperature. We couldn’t justify the energy expense for the project.

Does anyone have a good recipe for borscht? That’s a beet soup finished with a swirl of sour cream. I like beets so just describing it makes my mouth water. I’d bet the computer has all sorts of borscht recipes.

Potatoes are simpler underground staples, but we use them. Carrots will form the base for another soup. We don’t have enough to freeze, just enough to enjoy.

When everything was harvested, the stems and leaves above ground went on the pile Brice took to the land fill Saturday. He collected the cargo at the western gate to our garden and drove everything away.

With all supports and most plant material out of the garden, Brice adds outside rotors to the tiller and starts his engine. That sounds like car racing, “Gentlemen, start your engines!” Twice through the garden does it. Then we consider which garlic to plant for next year and where to plant it. We always plant the biggest and best cloves, hoping they will grow even bigger heads of garlic for next year.

And at last we are finished . . . until next spring!