In which there is a big Farm brag: all the crops and what we do with them

It's been a heckuva growing season--and we aren't done yet!

Photo of the Haenaheim garden taken this morning.  Corn is almost ripe, salad greens 
are almost big enough to vote, the herbs are demanding union pay.

I make regular visits to Bellingham, and pack as much garden produce as I can manage into "goodie baskets" for my mom and auntie.

"We don't care about rain.  We halp pick goodies for Grannie."

I'll try to describe things in chronological order--no promises, though.  The summer flew by and we were frequently swamped

We start the spring harvests with salad crops:  spinach, chard, radishes, peas and baby carrots, plus calendula flowers.

pretty

The rhubarb is the first non-salad crop to explode out of the ground.  We really have too much of it, but it's hard to just kill some of the earliest plants on the property because they are so exuberant after the long winter.

Foxie Loxie and April rhubarb.  He remains small. The rhubarb doubled in size by the end of May.

I mostly use rhubarb to make rhubarb marmalade, but Nancy makes pies and gives some to me!
I consider this a very good arrangement.

Another "early crop" is strawberries, which start to ripen in mid-May.

Our strawberry crop this year was pathetic...but the "everbearing" strawberry bushes are still
producing a berry or two every week, even now in September.  We will move the 
plants to a better location for next year.

The garlic was not a tremendous success this year because I planted them in a place where they didn't get enough sun. 

I did get some nice garlic scapes, though!

Garlic scape aioli is amazing, y'all. 

Garlic Scape Aioli

Ingredients

• 4 roughly chopped garlic scapes
• 1/8 tsp sea salt
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 lemon, juiced (about 1 Tbsp)
• 1/3 C olive oil
• 1/3 C vegetable oil

Instructions

1. Wash and roughly chop the garlic scapes. Trim off and discard the flower bud. In a food processor finely mince the garlic scapes with the salt.
2. Add the egg yolk and lemon juice to the food processor and pulse until fully incorporated.
3. Next, with the food processor running, very, very slowly pour in both of the oils. It’s important to add them slowly so that it emulsifies with the egg. Continue to process until the oil is fully incorporated and the aioli is creamy like mayo.
4. Serve immediately or store in the refrigerator, supposedly for a week but it actually tastes fine for a month.

The raspberries decided to join in the party, bigtime.  

I got most of the bushes as "suckers" from Patty's mom a few years ago, and they are now bearing heavily. I pulled up some suckers recently to put in another bed because it's hard to have too many raspberries on my winter oatmeal.

I don't love raspberry jam, but since I grew ginger this year (in the bathroom, the only place
warm/humid enough for tropical things like ginger), I made ginger-berry jam.

 

Ginger-Berry Jam

Ingredients

• raspberries
• ginger (if you freeze the ginger root, it's easy to grate it finely without being overcome by stringy fibers!)
• lemon juice
• sugar

Combine the amounts you have in a big pot over medium heat and adjust ginger and sugar for flavor.  When it's bubbling gently, add some pectin (about 1 package or 6 tablespoons for every 4 cups of berries) and let it boil for a minute or two.  Then spoon into jars and water bath can according to the directions on the pectin box or the Ball Canning Book.  

This was a record year for blueberries.  I think we harvested the first berries in July, I am still picking a half-quart every week now in September.

Pro tip:  buying mason bees this spring definitely boosted the blueberry yield!

I don't do anything fancy with most berries--rinse them off, put them in freezer bags, 
and toss them in the freezer until winter.

The cucumbers this year are astonishing.  We lost the first round of plants to slugs, so I picked up a few cuke starts at the farmer's co-op and threw those in the ground.  When I checked on them a month later, they were barely growing.  When I came back after that, they apparently regained the will to live and now I'm swamped with them!

This one looked a lot like the pufferfish we have at the library.

Also, after years of trying unsuccessfully to grow dill, it grew.

I DIDN'T PLANT ANY DILL THIS YEAR.  Several plants grew from seeds that I must have
planted two or three years ago!

Dill relish, sweet relish, and some refrigerator pickles...and the plants aren't done producing yet.

I did plant onions, but I didn't expect them to grow much.

I've never been successful with onions either.  Until, apparently, now.  Surprise!

I planted lots of beans this year, because Pooh Bear is not a fan of pumpkin and we needed some kind of vegetable to add to his food bowl each day.  Patty suggested beans, so I grew a bunch.

I canned the best beans for human consumption, and then a bunch more beans for the dogs!

Volunteer calendula (leftovers from Monica's tenure in this space) overran the beans eventually,
but since the soil was poor I let them grow to help amend the dirt.

The poor dirt didn't yield many potatoes, with the exception of the fingerling variety called "Makah Ozette," which didn't seem to mind the lack of nutritious soil and my spotty watering routine in early spring.

these should make outstanding hashbrowns!

I've grown sunflowers for yonks--long enough that the birds and the plants themselves are doing some of the seedings for me.  Since I probably started with hybrids, the plants have de- and re-hybridized into random and weird little varieties unique to this garden.

Sunshine all summer long

I don't remember planting red sunflowers, but here we are.

This is a single stem with 40+ blooms, and it's at least 10 feet tall!

I painted this near the front door of the house, using mostly leftover house paint

It's been brilliant to have Jim join me in the gardening adventures this year.  We spent last winter and spring (and um, also all summer) watching "Gardener's World" episodes together, which has inspired and educated us both.

Jim took over the scruffy bed below the house, and has turned it into a properly landscaped
bed that looks like it belongs to adults instead of chipmunks.

We also planted more flowers around the yard and in the veg patch, simply
to make the local bees happy.

These flowers were chosen especially for pollinators

I'm not gonna lie:  the gardens in September are pretty chaotic.  

But through all the weeds and volunteer flowers, we are still harvesting heaps of food.

I have not defeated the Tomato Curse (tm):  

we've had plenty of rain to wreck picnics and keep the state from burning down this summer.

The difference this year is that we have edible tomatoes, thanks to my online boyfriend
Monty Don and his friends at Gardener's World.  It's amazing how well they grow when
I do what experts tell me to do.

Jim's first (of many) jars of canned tomato sauce for winter

Still pending:

Looks like we'll be making apple cider this fall!

Yes, I'm getting tired.  But who cares?

I can sleep when the sun goes down.