It's Sept 14th, and just yesterday i harvested the first 4 tomatoes out of my garden. to say it is a slow year in the garden? yeah. putting it mildly.

I also got - 4 apples, 14 pears (first harvest from our orchard! i'm so excited!) and a whooooole lot of okra. what the heck am i going to do with it?? I planted it on a whim. who knew it would be the only thing that would produce in this crazy year?!?!?

Posted this compost-dyed scarf on etsy today! A few more will be coming soon.

In other news- WELL. it's finally harvest-time here. Last summer, I filled our freezer (a big upright one) with all manner of garden goodies: tomatoes, carrots, peppers, peaches, raspberries, corn. We ate from it all winter long - it was fantastic. Hearty winter soups, cobblers, berries for breakfast. This summer the weather was so horrid... I was beginning to wonder if I'd have anything to freezer. Well this past week, all hell broke loose (so to speak) in the garden area. All of a sudden I have LOADS of fruit to deal with - a bumper crop of crabapples, regular apples, wild plums, elderberries, and wild grapes....with pears and peaches still to ripen. A friend of mine has been bringing me tomatoes, 20+ lbs at a time, and I've been making pizza sauce, and freezing tomatoes. Today, I've got jam on the stove, huge pans of roasted root veggies in the stove (garlic, potatoes, carrots, turnips and beets generously seasoned with rosemary and sage...) to be frozen for winter soups. 2 huge bags of basil to turn into pesto, and another 20 lbs of tomatoes to be made into soup or sauce.

It's alot of work, but, frankly, I'm relieved. I'll get to eat local/organic/wildcrafted produce all winter long. Now that I'm used to it, it's really the only way to live.