After a day of picking strawberries (okay well we spent about half an hour picking!), I made several batches of strawberry jam this week. We ate strawberries in many dishes and salads and put them in our glasses of water, wine, lemonade, smoothies and I only made one batch of my mom's "world famous" strawberry bread. It was so exciting to sell a few jars of strawberry jam and even have a little display at my favorite feed n' seed! I even picked up a new bakery customer, too!
We have been eating plenty of sweet peas on salads and now that they are more mature and full, they are excellent in the shell on the grill! And we are still serving up lots of salad with homemade croutons and dressing!
The onions bulbs are getting much larger and the carrots from the cold frame are big, healthy, deep orange, quite photogenic. We'll start harvesting carrots and beets from row 1 at the start of June and expect more carrots from the Back 40, row 2, and row 4 in short succession. The beets in row 1 are huge and I'm looking forward to making as many jars of pickled beets as I can! The potatoes have been blooming for over a week, the lavender now has it's pretty purple flowers, the cilantro plant is full of coriander seeds, and the cucumbers have finally popped up from the soil! The basil plants and tomatoes are looking superb; it's so much more exciting to grow from seed than just buying the plants at Home Depot like we did in gardens past...but it can be more frustrating too. (Check out the Garden pics here! I try to update them weekly.)
We've been reseeding corn and beans almost daily as the darn birds keep digging them up! It's getting pretty frustrating. (And just last weekend got rid of my pile of old chicken wire. Ugh, that could have made a nice guard over the seeds from the birds.)The lettuce is just about done and the bare spots in the garden look a little sad, but leafy greens don't prefer the hot, humid, near-tropical summer temps we have here in the southern Piedmont of North Carolina. I am wondering if the plethora of little radish sprouts remaining in the cold frame and filling their spots in row 2 and the back 40 will ever make it to the table or if the heat will ruin first.
We had a fantastic weekend fish fry with our neighbors - everyone brought something and my daughter baked dinner rolls that got rave reviews (and no leftovers)! There was fried fish, crab cakes, slaw, broccoli salad, corn on the cob, dinner rolls, and four or five types of homemade desserts including a strawberry jello-pretzel dish that was my favorite of the night! It's great to have such nice, friendly neighbors (I borrowed a cup of sugar last week while making jam) who share with one another and look out for each other and can get together to share a meal and some wine along with laughter and good conversation. I'm recruiting a new neighbor for the 'hood...come on "perfect new neighbor", come on and buy this house so we can move it to the Big Farm, you'll love it here...I promise and you've got a garden ready-made! :)
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