Summer is over and fall is finally here. I have been looking forward to fall all summer. Harvest time is my favorite time of the year. The vegetables in the gardens are getting ripe. The peaches are getting ripe. In the mountains the wild blackberries and huckleberries are getting ripe. The fall wild mushrooms are starting to come out and hunting season is beginning. It is time to start laying in the winter food supply.
I started with my potatoes. Last spring things did not go as planned so we did not plant near the number of potatoes I had wanted to. We planted Yukon Gold potatoes and here is a picture of a couple I harvested.
Yukon Gold potatoes have a buttery flavor and are good for any of your favorite potato dishes.
Wild blackberries are a great thing to harvest. They are present in every state in the country and are easy to find. Blackberries have a very unique flavor and can be easily made into jams, jellies, pies, cobbler, ice cream topping, and syrup for pancakes and waffles. The different varieties of blackberries have flavors that range from very sweet to tart.
We also have Walla Walla sweet onions. These are really mild onions with great flavor, and can be used for cooking in place of the onion you might normally use.
Next is the sweet corn. It is so hard to get good corn in the store. Most canned corn tastes like the tin can. Frozen corn is better but for really good corn you just have to grow your own. You can grow corn in a surprisingly small area. I have even grown corn in pots.
Next we have radishes. These are one of the fastest and easiest vegetables to grow. You can normally grow several plantings in a season. Radishes are great in salads, soups, or raw with a little salt. Radishes can also be grown in pots if you don’t have room for a garden.
We also have Roma tomatoes and Beefsteak tomatoes. The Romas are perfect for making salsa and the Beefsteaks are good plain or on a burger or sandwich.
Last are the peaches. I have one peach tree here in Idaho and this year it is loaded with fruit. I thought the 20 quarts of peaches I canned last year from that tree was a lot, but this year it looks like there will be even more. The peaches are within a couple of weeks of being ripe so I will be harvesting them and canning them soon.
Over the coming weeks I will be posting my recipes and tips for canning the peaches, making the blackberry jam and depending on how my hunting season goes, I hope to have some new recipes for grouse, deer and elk.
My freezer is empty and ready to be filled with this year’s harvest. I will be starting on that this weekend. Enjoy your Labor Day weekend everyone.
Clacked by Jeff Love
on Sep 05, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
