April & May Harvests from the Garden

Taking photos of the harvest on a consistent basis started when I stopped one day to put some of our pickings on the slab of rock on the pathway to the house. I took a few photos and Forest and I went inside. The next time we were out I wasn’t planning on taking photos but as we approached the path Forest began getting excited and talking about taking photos and wanting to arrange the harvest himself. Well, I couldn’t say no, so I started trying to make an effort to take photos each time. Then I remembered the leaf and vegetable portraits I did a few years back on the white board so I grabbed some foam board from my studio and I’ve been trying to do that ever since! Now, I have definitely not photographed every harvest but I think it has been beneficial to get most of them. The blackberries and smaller tomatoes are starting to get out of hand and I’ll probably have to put those in bowls to photograph instead.

Taking the photos has been helpful in that it helps to reflect back at what we were harvesting at any given moment during a particular season. The carrots were pulled back at the end of April and I didn’t get any photos of that happening. I believe Chris harvested a lot of those with Forest when he was home from field work early one day. But I did catch some of the post blanching process and how many were packed up for the freezer. There are still some forgotten carrots left out there that we will probably pull over the next few weeks. Forest still likes getting them straight from the garden and eating them after we rinse them off with the hose.

So far we have two quarts of tomatoes water bathed and in the cabinets. I need to probably do another jar or two soon—probably this weekend. I made 10 jars of my grandmother’s pickles recently and Chris has made maybe 25 jars of a Claussen type pickle. I need to make more pickles, too because not only are we harvesting our own cucumbers but our neighbor has been giving us a bags full from his vines, too! We haven’t had to do much with beans yet but may need to as I plan on getting more beans planted soon. We’ve been harvesting Kentucky Wonder beans and I’ve cooked up some and we are now getting the Oriental Wonder long beans coming in, too.

Summer harvests are just getting started!