Harvest Begins

It's that time of year again and the bounty is beginning to flow.

We've been eating tomatoes for awhile on a daily basis and plan to can some today because they are starting to take over our kitchen now, providing more than we can eat.

We ate our first watermelon last night for dessert after dinner and it was SUPER sweet, unlike from the grocery store, although the ones from the grocery store aren't bad like the store bought tomatoes.  But this watermelon was just as much sweeter as homegrown tomatoes are, in comparison to store bought, so you can just imagine.

We are also getting a lot of cucumbers and zucchini which we are eating as they come in.

I was just getting ready to make zucchini bread last night when Nick called from Japan and we ended up on Skype for 2 hours.  So, my evening plans changed a little. But it was a very pleasant change of plans after a day of taking harvest inventory of our two gardens and orchard.

We have also been eating our strawberries that have been constantly popping up for awhile now and they are just starting to slow down.

The pumpkin are still green but ought to be ready for Halloween

and the grapes are still ripening as we patiently wait to pick them.  It looks like we'll get enough to make some grape jelly this year.

And the orchard is showing signs of a good crop of fruit on several trees.

The plums are abundant so we'll be able to make more plum jam and then also preserve some by canning.  Canned plums have a tendency to disappear very quickly around here because they are so tasty!

We are also getting a good crop of apples from our one little apple tree.

We are on our last jars of apple butter so we'll be making more this fall, for sure. Apple butter is everyone's favorite of all our jams and jellies that we make and everyone looks forward to their holiday gift of Bratney apple butter!

We are also getting a few pears from our pear tree. 

This tree doesn't appear to be a huge crop but if we get more than we can eat, we can always can the pears, too, like we do the plums.  

Overall, we are very pleased with our harvest this year and our daily walk from house to garden is always our favorite walk this time of year.