Millions of Peaches

Peaches for me! Millions of peaches, peaches for free.  (Some of you should now be humming an annoying song from the 90's.)

We planted 7 fruit trees the first spring we were in our house.  We used the Christmas money from my fruit stand loving Grandpa Loveridge to pay for them.  It seemed fitting.  This year we finally got our first big harvest on our peach trees (the past few years we've had just enough to eat.)  I suppose we got a little anxious because the branches got too heavy and two of them broke.  It was a sad, sad day.  Ryan cut up the branches and boxed the nearly ripe fruit up.  We got 30 quarts off just those two branches.

Fall Harvest

The first spring we were in the house we took our Christmas money and bought fruit trees. Five got planted in the lower section and I'm sad to say have been a little neglected. But our two peach trees were planted in the garden and have flourished. This year we got our first harvest. We ate fresh everything that came off the first tree and froze what we couldn't eat from the second tree (Ryan bought two diferent varieties so they would ripen a month apart - smart man!). The peaches were large and beautiful, and we froze 9 quarts worth. Yum!

Teeny Tiny Tomato

When we put our tomato plants in this year one of them came with a little bud on it. Ryan can't stand to kill anything that is growing, so the plant got put in the soil complete with what has proven to be our first tomato. The funny thing is, the plant put all its little energy into nourishing that tomato and didn't have anything left over for growing. So we have a 4 inch tall tomato plant with a 2.5 inch round tomato on it. Aww, isn't that cute?

Raspberries

We've been picking raspberries like crazy. A few days ago Ryan picked a big load to freeze. He was so impressed with the harvest we took a picture. We're still trying to get Caden to eat them. He doesn't care much for eating them himself, but loves to feed them to anyone else who will oblige him.

Garden Update

Just because everything is so green and pretty! The strawberries are in full bloom and it looks like we'll get a pretty good harvest this year. Our lettuce and spinach are getting ahead of us. Our onions are bigger than they have ever been, and our peas are looking fantastic! There is also a picture of our front flower bed (our only flower bed, really). Our first year here we just transplanted lots of irises into it until we were ready to do something real with it. Ryan bought bushes this week, so I guess we're doing something with it. I'm taking out most of the irises and we'll plant summer/fall color flowers in the front portion.

Strawberries

The other night Ryan brought in a small basket of berries and washed them for us to snack on. Caden, of course, wanted to sit right up at the bar and participate. Since berries were on the list of foods to trial this summer we figured we'd let him have some. He was not so impressed with our sweet, juicy berries. He kept touching them, then pulling back quickly. He tried putting a bite in his mouth, but he just shook his head and spit it out. Even though he didn't want to eat them, he also didn't want to get down from the bar until they were all gone. Silly kiddo.

P.S. We found the camera. It was folded up in one of our beach towells.

The Fruits of His Labor

All the digging Ryan's been doing for the sprinklers has really beefed up his arm muscles. We both laughed when we saw this picture because it really highlights the 'second arm' that is forming.

And all that digging has not been in vain. Its amazing what regular watering can do for plants. Our strawberries are starting to ripen and we had our first ones last night. Mmmmm. Fresh strawberries off the vine. I was in heaven.

The Harvest Begins

Mmmm.... fresh spinach salad. Don't you wish you lived at our house? Our spinach started producing last Monday, and on Saturday when the snow all melted we decided to pick some. We'll have salad nearly every day for the next 6-8 weeks.

Spring Planting

Better late than never, we planted our peas and onions last night. It was truly a family affair. I handed Caden his shovel and rake (an Easter present from Grandma and Grandpa Scherbel) and he promptly sat down to dig in the dirt. He stayed there while we prepared the soil and planted the onions - nearly 30 minutes! He is such a good daddy's helper. The camera battery died and I had to take Caden in for his bath and bedtime so I didn't get a picture of the peas, but they take up about twice the area the onions do. After tilling, leveling, and planting, Ryan spent another hour and a half working on getting more sprinkler pipe in. Too bad the weather will preclude much progress the rest of the week.

The Harvest

We've been harvesting from our garden like crazy the last month. In addition to what we've eaten fresh, we have bottled 21 pints of green beans and 23 pints of beets. Our tomatoes are about half done and so far we've bottled 19.5 quarts of salsa. Ryan traded out with a co-worker and we got enough peaches to do 26 quarts plus 8 half pints of jam.

The dehydrator has been running full time as well. From our garden we have dried and crushed onions and 3 types of hot peppers. From our neighbors' excess we've gleaned apricots and plums to run through the dehydrator.

Still to come: Carrots, potatoes, and corn.

The Bean Crop

We harvested the first of our green beans this week. We were able to get 14 pints plus a little left over for eating fresh. The finished product looks better than the picture - the water isn't really brown like that. Its just a combination of weird light and a slight discoloration in the beans because I used idodized instead of non-idodized salt.

I was thinking today as I spent three and a half hours washing, snapping, washing again, packing, and processing the beans that Ryan and I make a pretty good pair. He loves to garden and I enjoy canning. I'm so greatful for my loving husband who works so hard to provide for our family.

The final pea crop

I mentioned that we pulled out the rest of the peas last Saturday. We decided to salvage what we could for seed for future years. Here is a picture of our biggest plastic bowl full of the peas. They are now drying safely in our dehydrater.

Garden Update

With the extra cool spring our garden got off to a bit of a slow start. Ryan climbed on the roof yesterday to take this updated picture. He ahs been working extremely hard to get all the weeds out and put mulch between all the rows. The peas are finished for the year, so we took those out yesterday and will plant corn in their place. The first round of spinach and the romaine lettuce are also done for the year. We're about halfway through our second crop of spinach. The peppers are getting close to being ready to harvest and we have two zucchini that will be ripe early next week. The tomato plants have little bulbs on them - we can't wait!

Update on our Week

Its been a crazy week around our house. Ryan and I have both been working like crazy so we can play hookey on Thursday and Friday, and Caden picked this week to get sick. He's been running a slight fever, refusing to eat, and been extra fussy. We went to the doctor on Monday when he started showing signs of dehydration. The diagnosis was some long word I'd never be able to remember, but basically he has a rash on the inside of his throat. The doctor described it as a mild version of hand, foot, and mouth disease. The treatment is to just push the liquids and let the virus run its course. We'd been trying really hard to teach Caden to drink from a regular cup but even after two months of practice he's still not very good at it. So we gave in and bought a sippy cup. In typical Caden fashion, he first shook the new gadget but eventually settled in to holding it. He also likes eating Otter Pops right now (they were Grandma Dodds' suggestion). I think the cold and cool eases his pain.

In other news, the strawberries are out in full force. Ryan picks a few every night when he comes home from work and we stand around the kitchen savoring the sweet goodness. We got a pretty good haul the other night and took a quick picture. You all are missing out. Berries from the store just can't compare to vine ripened berries. Its like the difference between store bought and home grown tomatoes.

We leave early tomorrow for our camping adventure. We plan to take lots of pictures, so check back Saturday or Sunday for an update on that.

Strawberries!

Our strawberries are starting to turn ripe! Its looking like we'll get about 30-50 good sized (store size) strawberries and then another 50-60 smaller (marble size) berries. Ryan covered them with a net so the birds won't steal them all like they did last year.

Rescue 2008

The internet was down at our house for most of the week, a casualty of the road construction, and then its just taken me a while to get things ready to post on the blog. Sorry for the dry spell.

Tomatoes struggle in temperatures lower than 40 degrees, so we waited forever to plant ours. We watched the weather faithfully and as soon as the entire 7 day forecast showed overnight lows above the magic number our 30 tomato and 14 pepper plants went in. A week later the temperatures dropped as a storm front moved in. We spent nearly an hour Tuesday night covering the fragile tomatoes and peppers with cloths or buckets held down by bricks and rocks. The coverings will probably stay on another week or so. There has been some crazy spring weather this year!

Taking Shape

Ryan has been hard at work in the garden. In the last few days he has trimmed the trees, weeded, tilled, leveled the dirt, plotted the area, and planted potatoes. The peas are coming in nicely. It looks so nice out our bedroom window!

More on the Engine and the Garden

We've been a little slow on the uptake for posting the last few days because our method of getting pictures from the camera to the computer died over the weekend. Ryan brought home a cord from work today, so we're back in business.

Saturday was a beautiful day here, and we spent most of it outside. In the morning, Ryan and I worked on the strawberry patch. We completely dug up last year's strawberries, put them in root starter, Ryan reshaped the patch, and then we replanted all the strawberries. The old patch was a little unwieldy, and Ryan read that replanting the berries will help them grow better. I think last year we got a total of 10 strawberries, so anything should be better this year.

Here is a picture of the new patch. The old one was a 7x7 foot square. This one is about 2.5x15 and runs parallell to the rest of the garden.

Mike arrived shortly after noon and he and Ryan spent the rest of the day dropping the new engine into the Prism. Its a lot of work to get all the necessary parts moved over from the old engine to the new one, and it takes quite a bit of skill to guide the thing in.

Ryan is running the engine hoist and Mike is pushing and pulling the beast into the correct position. Shortly after taking this picture I was recruited to help with the pushing and pulling. If you look closely, you can see Caden in the background supervising. After his nap he sat in the stroller and watched the men work. Now that the engine is in the car the process of hooking it back up begins.

Spring is Here

Its officially spring. I know that because the peas have now been planted in the garden. On Saturday morning we planted 44 rows of peas, with each row being approximately 7 feet long. For those of you who don't want to do the math, that works out to be a little over 300 feet of peas, or about twice as many as we planted last year. Mmmmm. I can't wait for the harvest! We took this picture when we were about half done with the planting.