Vegetables !

On Monday we picked a few green beans from the second bed.  The first picking provided only enough beans for a meal or two.  We called a friend in town and she was happy to have some beans and tomatoes.  Above is the bucket of tomatoes that I froze.  I have been blanching the tomatoes to remove skins and then freezing the tomatoes. Once the vines have finished producing, I will thaw the tomatoes, run them through the sieve attachment on my mixer to remove seeds and cook them down to make spaghetti sauce for canning.

Wednesday was the second picking of green beans and we got about 2/3 of a bucket.  We also picked zucchini.  The beans were blanched, vacuum packed and frozen. Some of the  zucchini was grated and frozen for zucchini bread this winter.  The rest was made into zucchini spaghetti. We only have three zucchini plants and have no trouble keeping up with the harvest.

Today we gave the strawberry plants a haircut and thinned out the strawberry beds.  It was difficult to throw away strawberry plants but they would have choked each other if allowed to multiply.  We didn't know of anyone who wanted to start a strawberry bed so the excess plants went to the trash bag. We will fertilize the strawberry beds and then they will be ready for winter.

In the afternoon we picked tomatoes (again) and this time got two buckets full.  Tomorrow I will be freezing these beauties.  Tomorrow is also another green bean picking day.

Our weather is supposed to become more tolerable in the next few days with cooler temperatures and lower humidity.  The plan was to go on a day trip tomorrow to take photographs but I believe that the kitchen is as far as I will travel.