Postcards from Home ~ Harvest from the Garden

Today was a gorgeous, sunny fall day where I live.  Soon we're expecting our first overnight freezing temperatures so I picked most of what is left in the vegetable garden.  Almost all of the remaining tomatoes, zucchini, string beans, basil, and flat leaf parsley.

A couple of weeks ago we harvested some of the beets.

I know a lot of people don't like beets, but I adore them. They were one of my favorite vegetables as a child, and they remain so today.  I love to pick some of the beet greens throughout the season and saute them quickly in a little olive oil with some slivers of garlic.. they are very nutritious and are delicious steamed as well.

I feel fortunate that most every herb, except the most tender, survive year-round in my climate, ready for the picking.

But still, I like to cut big bunches and dry the stems in my dehydrator. Then I remove the crispy leaves...

And store them in big air-tight canning jars.

This is oregano,  I also dried some thyme, rosemary, lavender and parsley. The flavor of the dried herbs is more intense than when used fresh from the garden.

Once the leaves are removed, I make small bundles of the dried stems ~ they add a delightful flavor and scent to grilled chicken, meats, fish and vegetables. Just add them to the mesquite or charcoal (just to the side of the hot coals) after you've begun grilling.

We also planted successive plantings of several kinds of radishes a few weeks apart for continuous harvest.

These are French Breakfast radishes, quite mild.  In loamy, sandy soil  they will grow twice as long as mine do. 

You've probably surmised from the length of these radishes that (even with plenty of soil amendments) our soil is neither loamy nor sandy.  ;)

I love the purple ones, and the white ones the best.

The very tip of the iceberg when it came to our tomato crop.

As the season progresses and we become flooded with tomatoes, I generally lose interest in photographing them... this year was no different.

The preceding two shots were from the very first of the season... when we cannot wait for them to ripen!

We've been enjoying quite a few of these Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwiches on homemade whole grain bread throughout the summer and early fall.

And plenty of wild blackberries from the back of the property.  

This year we didn't get many nectarines from the tree, (due to the crazy weather) but the few that ripened were sweet and juicy. 



The plum harvest was also light, but they were sweeter than any I remember.

I neglected to get photos of  any of the grapes, but I did preserve some grape leaves for making Dolmas later.

Earlier this year I also put up some more Rose Petal Jam from our roses...

And did I mention eggs?

We have five different breeds so the eggs are a variety of colors.

From the fifteen chicks we raised this Spring we now get between 9 to 12 eggs PER DAY.

And that's not bad...

Considering that THREE of the fifteen chicks turned out to be ROOSTERS. 

Here is one of them. Please meet "Trouble",  he's the king of the roost and loves nothing more than to perch on the highest places.  (As seen here, about 7-feet up, on top of his pen.)   His other favorite place to roost is on top of the 9-foot high cross members of the bean supports.  Or taking a jaunt over to the house to come spy on me as I work in the kitchen.  He's quite the character.

My next group of Postcards from home will be all about the chickens... so you can see how they have grown since Easter.

I'm always a little sad to see the summer harvest come to an end because it means winter isn't far off...

But it will give the garden a rest, and give us time to make plans for next years vegetable garden.  :)

Thank you for coming by today, friends!

xo~m.