The Fruits of our Labors

(And when I say "our" I really mean Marty.)

It's beginning to be that time of year - harvest time. We have a small garden that Farmer Marty has kept going (he didn't plant what I wanted, but I was too busy and unwilling to do it myself, so....). He planted carrots this year for the first time, along with beans, peas, tomatoes, cucumbers and corn. And it's all becoming ripe and ready to eat.

The carrots have been really good - crisp, sweet and kinda zingy.


We've given lots of them and the green beans away so far, which is half the fun. That and feeding carrot tops and corn stalks to the horses.

Despite our cold, wet spring, we've had a massive bumper crop of apples on our two adolescent apple trees. There are so many, we've had to prop up the branches. I've even considered learning how to make applesauce. Or, maybe not, sounds like waaaay too much work. I think I'll just throw them all to the horses and be done with it.

We also have PEACHES again this year, for only the second time ever. Last year and the year before they froze, but the one year we had them, they were truly the sweetest most delectable peaches you can imagine. I can't wait!

So far, we have only one peach that's almost ripe:

Ain't it purty?!!! We've been planning and calculating and we think tomorrow morning is the precise moment that our peach will be ready to be picked - we definitely don't want the birds to get it -- or it's 26 friends, but none of the rest of them are close to ripe yet. This peach is way more ambitious than the rest, kind of an overachiever peach.

Our garden is out behind the tack shed and is apparently not very safe from raiders. Marty came in today from picking tomatoes with a tomato that had a big bite mark in it. He actually accused the kids - - OUR kids - - of biting into it.

HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA...oh my.

That's a good one, babe.

But I digress.

There's something really cool about growing your own food. One of my favorite things lately is chicken salad with grapes in it and we now have super fantastic extra delicious tiny little seedless green grapes on our grapevines. It takes a while to pick off enough for a batch of chicken salad, but they're soooo good. And free!! (Now if only I had a chicken bush out back too.)

I've had to beg squash off our friends and neighbors and I'm going to have to buy punkins, but the rest of the stuff is still nice.

Marty laughed at me for taking photos of his produce, but when he saw them up on the screen tonight he thought they were very pretty. And I reminded him how handy I was to have around..... while I was cutting his hair.