Eating Our Way Through July

The main garden as seen from the new barn floor.

Abundance! Thats just the best word for the summer garden. Its wait,wait, wait through the cold of spring, and the first tentative days of warm weather.  Little bits of this and that.  Then, suddenly, it is a tsunami of vegetables,a hurricane of harvesting, and days are occupied with making use of the abundance.
We are picking berries (from a friends garden mostly)  all sorts of greens like lettuce, chard, and kale, green beans by the gallon, cucumbers,  zucchini, celery, summer squash, herbs like basil, cilantro and dill, the first tomatoes, a few hot peppers, green onions. Even the chickens are picking up production.  The challenge is to make good use of everything before it goes by. The lettuce is reaching that point...i have had to pull many that are going to seed. 

Today I put up about 35 jars of blueberry and raspberry jam. I started two jars of fermented green bean pickles, and one of cucumbers. I froze quarts of berries. I am dehydrating celery leaves.

Fermenting veggies

This would look so much more impressive if I lined up all those lovely jars on the counter, but then I would have to take them out of the boxes.  There are 36 jars.  

The decking is finally down, covering the first floor of the barn.  This will be where the hay is stored. The second story walls are being built off site, and delivered next week.

Looking up at the decking from underneath.