Peaches and Tomatoes...

 Oh boy,  the peaches are coming on strong and the tomatoes are getting going.  Process, process, process!

The tomatoes start with lots of beautiful varieties of cherry and grape tomatoes.  They are oh so delicious, but everyone waits for that big red meaty tomato that you can put on a slice of bread with some mayonnaise and salt.  Yum!

After the nice meaty tomatoes comes the romas and the san marzano tomatoes just begging to be made into delicious spaghetti sauce and salsa.  

Peach trees love the high tunnel and reward me with lots of wonderful juicy peaches.  I don't spray and these are not freestone peaches so I cut off all the best parts (checking for little buggies - you know the joke - "What's worse than finding a worm in your apple?  Finding half a worm in your apple!) and then freeze the chunks.  The chickens get the peach parts that don't go in the freezer and from them they make delicious eggs for us. It's a win-win!

I'm also harvesting corn and basil (frozen pesto!) and grating and freezing zucchini for future zucchini bread.

  It's a busy season!

Getting Pickled, Blueberries, and More

It's all about preserving the harvest these days.  I've pickled, frozen, and made jam.  I have yet to dehydrate, but it's coming!

My favorite pickles are bread and butter pickles.  Not too sweet and not too tart.  

There's a nearby U-pick blueberry patch nearby and I was able to pick six and a half pounds of blueberries in no time.  The bushes were bending over because they were so loaded with ripe berries!

I froze a bunch in vacuum packing and made a few jars of yummy blueberry jam with the rest.  

On the drive out to the blueberry patch I saw this little cutie by the road...

We were burning some brush and apparently one of our cats, Thug (so named because he used to be quite the bully), decided to get a little too close to the fire!

Silly cat!