From the garden

Growing a garden has certainly kept us busy this year and thankfully we continue to enjoy it.  We managed to grow three bundles of onions like this one:

an array of potatoes - all the same kind, just many different sizes

and more than eight quarts worth of green beans!  I have been hinting at, talking about, thinking about canning produce for several years now.  Yes, I said years, and finally last night it became a reality.

 We packed seven quart jars with green beans and let the boys "fish" out the remaining beans from the sink where they had been washed.  Everything was going smoothly except all of the sudden one of the jars in the canner was floating!  I took it out to realize it had cracked.  Ben and I immediately started to worry that we'd done something wrong and that all the jars would crack but that wasn't the case.

 Thankfully, we ended up with six sealed quart jars of green beans.  Next time we'll do pint jars instead, since a quart is more than our family can eat in one meal.  I picked some more beans from the garden this evening and there are lots more out there that need a couple days to finish growing.

 We're having trouble with our tomatoes.  Apparently, the brown spots are from insufficient/irregular watering so we're trying to get that straightened out.  We continue to get a few cucumbers and I'm planning on canning some dill pickles with them soon.  I picked one green pepper and there's another one that'll be ready to pick soon.  It's amazing to watch food grow - and in some cases, like the green peppers, magically appear!  I knew we'd had blooms on the pepper plants but I hadn't noticed anything growing until suddenly there it was, a full-grown green pepper just waiting to be picked.  Since there was a big open space left by the potatoes and onions, I decided to try out pumpkins.  We're on the verge of being too late to plant them, but I thought I'd give it a go.  We'll see what happens!

 In non-garden related news, the big white barn is undergoing a serious face lift these days.  The over 100 year old barn is in good shape, but her exterior needs an upgrade.  She used to be red, and red she will be once again.  Only this time it'll be red tin siding instead of paint.  Her old wood siding won't hold paint anymore so the most economical solution is to put siding over the top of the wood siding.  At this point, my cousin Austin it working to firm up some of the spots that were in dire need of repair before the tin goes up.  Red will certainly be a change of pace for that old barn, but I think she deserves to look her best after all she's been through.