Closing up Shop

Sorry I have neglected my blog so badly lately, but we have had such a busy fall this year. I hope things quiet down a little before the holidays so I can get caught up. I have LOTS to share.

The weather has turned cold here in the Northwest, so when we got home this weekend, everything in the garden had been kissed by the frost. That means that we are ready to close up the garden for the winter. The kids and I went crazy and filled up the trailer with the garden leftovers. Our plan is to cover the garden with a couple tractor scoops of the compost pile and put it to rest for the winter.

This year was a very poor year for growing things so we were happy to clean out the rest of the harvest and put it in storage for the coming months. We ended up with a lot more that I thought we would and now I have a bunch of work ahead to store the food.

The chickens got busy scratching there way around all the yummy goodies.

The goats thought it was Christmas morning with all the tender vittles to snack on. They LOVE to eat the raspberry leaves an broccoli. I did have a bit of a hart time keeping them away from my rhubarb, that is still growing.

I ended up with quite a big box of onions. We don't eat a lot of onions so I may have to find some friends to pass some of these onto. Oops, my cucumbers got away from me. I am not sure they will taste all that great, but we shall see.


The kids and I were sooooo excited when we saw that there was some good ears of corn on our pathetically small stalks. We had to fight the dog, chickens, and goats for what little corn we got. Who new that everyone loved corn so much.


I had a lot of tomatoes on the plants, but most didn't turn green. I will take what I can and put them in the freezer and make sauce this winter. I will try and ripen the green ones in my windowsill before I freeze them. We were even lucky enough to find a few more squashes and zucchini. I am not sure what the green and yellow ones are. I guess we will find out when we cut them open. I love to make purees. Click here for a great idea on how to make purees.

We were excited to find a few potatoes. I didn't expect to find any, since my potato plants didn't do very well in their containers. I am going back to having them in the ground next year. We will enjoy these though. I think I need to make some stew for dinner tonight.

Hope your garden harvest was bounteous.