Backyard Bounty

If I had my way, I’d be pleased as punch to be able to harvest the veggies and turn them over to someone else to process. Preparing everything and either canning, freezing or drying is not my favorite part of the season. But I love to pick.

In the past few weeks we’ve harvested well over 14 quarts of raspberries. Grant really likes to pick these so I usually leave it for him at the end of the day. He usually picks enough to freeze a quart, as well as for us to enjoy during dinner. Many people might be surprised to hear of harvesting raspberries in September (and into October), but these are an everbearing variety called “Polana” that a friend of ours gave us 3 years ago. She’s been growing them in this area (as up on the windy hill where we all live) that I know it’s smart to follow her lead on many things when it comes to gardening here. The ones planted along the western fence are during exceedingly well, probably because they’re protected by the damaging winds prevailing from that direction. We have another bed planted on the east side of the house so it’ll be interesting to see how they do in comparison to the original bed.

It was also time to pull the onions. The boys gave me a lot of help. Finally, they could pull them without being chided! My favorite for long-term storage is the “Copra” variety. They grow well and store a long time when cured properly. We pulled them, cut off the tops and placed them in baskets. I spread them out a little more in the garden shed so there’s plenty of air circulation. After a week or so, we can bring them into the pantry to use all winter.

The corn was done a couple of weeks ago. I like the “Ambrosia” variety, although Bob, the guy who has one of the community gardens stands by his “Golden Bantam” heirloom type. It matures very early, but has a small ear and, like I told him, tastes like field corn. (It’s the Ohio corn snob coming out, you know.) From what I read in product descriptions, it shouldn’t taste like this, but it might be the possible years of his saving his own seed – because I know he doesn’t save the best specimen, he just saves a couple of ears – that it doesn’t taste or look right.

We froze a fair amount of it. The boys really get into husking it, and I’m not about to pass up a couple of helping hands! To freeze it, I blanch the whole ears for a couple of minutes, then balance the ear on top of the center of an angel food cake pan. It holds it perfectly in place while I cut off the kernels, which drop into the cake pan. It works like a charm. Even though I don’t have as many packages as I’d like, I’m happy to have any with the squirrelly spring we had this season.