It was harvest time today, after a fashion.
We fancy ourselves as small-scale urban homesteaders... in the sense that we grow a lot of our own food, at least in part because it's so damn expensive to buy decent fresh food from the supermarkets and local produce stands.
Besides, gardening is a really good form of relaxation and a great way to de-stress getting out in the garden and getting your hands in the dirt. Try it sometime!
Anyway, it's that time of the year and getting out there and harvesting some of the things we've grown was also a bit of a trip down memory lane to a part of my childhood where we did actually grow a lot of our own food back in Denmark.
My Auntie was actually old enough to have lived through WWII as an adult, and during the German occupation of Denmark, growing your own food to whatever degree possible was essential... so she took the whole gardening thing very seriously.
The blackberries are getting really close to their season and I managed to pick about 4 lbs (1.8kg) today which is just the beginning. These ended up going pretty much straight in the freezer and will be great for jam or pies in winter, or even as topping for ice cream or pancakes.
As I was picking I had warm memories of my dad, who always tended to elevate picking berries to a whole new level, basically turning it into a contest of sorts, complete with his own plans and system for maximum efficiency.
I remember how he would announce things like "I'm going to pick 12 (500gr) bags of blackberries," to which my auntie would reply "Oh Preben, you can't get that much done... don't be so ridiculous!" Of course it was like waving a red flag in front of a bull... you should never tell my dad what he could or could not do so he would go out and pick his obligatory 12 bags of blackberries... in probably less time than the rest of us would take to pick 3-4 bags.
We also started processing our apples because we've had a lot of fall apples already and we like to turn them into juice and then reprocess the leftover pulp from making juice to turn into applesauce, which is what we spent several hours doing today.
In addition, I set aside the particularly choice and attractive apples that didn't have any bruises and peeled them and cut them into slices to be frozen and brought out later for apple pies during the winter.
We only have four apple trees but they tend to give us a couple of hundred pounds of fruit, although this year seems to be a bit thin. However the apples are definitely very tasty even if a bit tart.
We also got some tomatoes picked and these are going in the freezer as well and will be taken out for sauce, come winter time. The tomatoes are a bit strange this year because they're extremely tasty and red but they're quite small for whatever reason. But that's part of the fun of gardening: you just never know what you're going to get.
We also picked and froze the last of the snow peas from this year's harvest, and picked some of the first of our green beans to have with dinner. Our green beans are very late this year because the first batch were eaten at the roots by rodents and never turned into anything so we had to start over.
In an unusual turn of events we're having some really nice strawberries for what we call the "second Harvest", some of which are actually going to be ready around my birthday next weekend. I can't remember ever having fresh strawberries in late August and into September but that's what we're doing here!
Gardening is good for the soul, even if it's a lot of work... and a great way to get time away from our electronic devices.
Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of the week!
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2026.08.25 01:10 PDT
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