raisins « giantveggiegardener

Harvest season is full blast right now. Started out with our Home Grown New Mexico ‘Jam On’ class where we made a Strawberry-balsamic jam and a terrific Blueberry jam.

Himrod grapes-yum!

Then the grapes ripened-ate lots and dried some into raisins for later.

bread n butter pickles

The cucumbers ripened so fast I was making lots of pickles. First I made bread and butter pickles, then cornichon pickles and then dill pickles-crock, refrigerator and canned. Must have about 30 jars+ and now the 5 gallon crock is full where I am fermenting some with salt brine. After I was bored with pickles, I made some sweet pickle relish which I haven’t tasted yet. Will probably make more of that with the giant cucumbers I miss when looking for little ones. So far I’ve made pickles with Jody, Nick and Elodie.

Then I bought 20 lbs of peaches from the Farmer’s Market and Mernie and I made 3 different peach jams.

Now the tomatoes are coming in and I’m starting to make the raw tomato sauce that I freeze in gallon plastic freezer bags. Later in November after I recover from harvesting, I will take them out of the freezer and make different pasta sauces like puttenesca, marinara, penne alla vodka and good ole spaghetti sauce.

Potatoes dug out just in the nick of time!

Soon I will harvest potatoes too.

2013-part of the fall honey harvest

and we will harvest honey from the bee hive.

Of course then there is all I take to the Farmer’s Market that I harvest every week-tomatoes, eggplants, shishito peppers, beans, tomatillos and sometimes rhubarb, kale and chard when I have the room on the tables. Phew! Busy time of year!

The best part of it all is I haven’t bought any vegetables in the store since early July and I’ll have a full pantry for winter when harvest season is done.

This year my grape vines are doing fantastic and I only have 3 plants. The variety I planted 4 years ago is called Himrod which is a cross between Ontario and Thompson Seedless Grapes and is an American seedless table grape. It is a great eating variety to grow for our Zone 5-6 areas. It produces bunches of green seedless grapes with honeylike flavor and are juicy. The taste is divine!

Last year we had many hail storms that destroyed the grape leaves and bruised the grapes so badly that there was no harvest and that would have been our first year of harvesting. This year I covered them every time I thought a hail storm was going to hit or if I left the house and it paid off. We have so many grapes we are now drying some of them. It’s interesting that the beautiful green grapes turn brown when they dry. The raisins taste great – can’t wait to cook with them.