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Pickles, Jams, and other Goodies

The garden is really kicking in now . . . kale has been in for weeks and yields lots of good salad greens, greens to use for other purposes (steamed, or in omelets, for example); wax (yellow) beans are producing nicely and I'm thinking of pickling some of those; beets are lovely, first two rows of corn is ready to be picked, steamed, and frozen; pickling cukes are producing like crazy and I just processed what will be the last batch for us this season; and have had a few tomatoes, although not enough yet to go into a canning frenzy on those. We are out of nearly everything "tomato" from last season - canned tomatoes and salsa are gone, there's one jar of juice, and a couple jars of ketchup left . . . restocking is vital!

Darrell has made blueberry jam and peach jam, and is planning on peach pie (YAY!) and freezing the rest of the peck he got last week.

Last night I dug up a few potatoes off the Kennebec row and made scalloped potatoes with ham from a picnic shoulder from one of our Berkshire hogs - so yummy, and the left-overs make a great, quick lunch for both of us.

I spent a lot of time in the garden this weekend getting caught up on weeding and tilling - the recent, blessed rains had the little weeds popping out all over! Plus I actually got a major weed-through on the asparagus rows done - it's a challenge and entails crawling on hands and knees under the asparagus ferns - not a perfect job, but the rows are cleaner than they've been for awhile!

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