Thursday, June 19, 2008

Tending the garden

My parents have always had a pretty large garden. In fact, when we were kids we had two separate gardens. One was the main garden for the veggies and the other was a big strawberry patch. The strawberry patch is long gone but the main garden still exists. Last summer, Jason decided we should plan the '08 garden for a month of "living off the land". He watched a PBS program several years ago about pioneer living and thought that would be a fun challenge...I guess he thinks we all have the same idea of "fun"!!! Seriously though, with grocery prices steadily increasing, I for one am looking forward to meals made from our garden produce. Not to mention there is no worry about where it came from and what kind of chemical it has on it that could potentially give you cancer....but I digress (don't you get tired of hearing about the latest thing that's going to kill us all?). Anyway, the garden is all planted with onions, beets, green beans, tomatoes, zucchini, red & white potatoes, eggplant, butternut squash, cantalope, pumpkins, okra and sweet corn. Whether or not we have a corn crop depends on these girls.... Yes, the goats have found a way out of their pen and they come out each morning and browse anywhere they feel like it....including the garden. Mostly they just nip a leaf here and there but the sweet corn has really been damaged because they just walk down the row and bite off the top of the plant! OOPS!



Other than discovering the goat damage, we put cages on the tomatoes, tilled and hoed



and picked some green onions.





Leah found a worm and was fascinated with that for a while.


And just look at these little beauties ripening!!! Dad just planted the tree last year so it's still small and probably only has enough cherries for one pie but let me tell you.....that pie is going to taste SO good!! The farm has been without a cherry tree for several years and we have missed having it. I can't wait for this one to be big enough to produce enough cherries for the freezer so we can have cherry pie in the winter!! There are few things better than that....YUMMY!


2 comments:

Stephanie said...

Bad Lola and Bella! Stay out of that corn. We'll need more for our freezer :)

Vivi now wants to eat every berry she sees on a tree, because I let her try a cherry from that tree.

Beautiful onion picture I'll share with Rich!

Anonymous said...

Those two, four-legged girls are not happy campers today! They ignored my warnings so the pen was enforced and they are now sad prisoners being deprived of those delicious munchies throughout the day. I do miss seeing they free-range around the farm though!
MOM