July has been a busy month on the homestead, and we’ve had our share of long days catching up on work, gardening, projects needing attention and putting up food for the winter in between fun summer adventures, but it’s been coming along beautifully. The garden is looking mighty fine thanks to all of Corey’s hard work weeding, and things are filling in now that the cats have evicted the chipmunks and squirrels. Berries are ripe on the bushes and vines, and fruits are steadily ripening on the trees. We’ve been cooling off in local swimming holes and making hand cranked ice cream with fresh fruit at the end of hot days. It’s everything summer should be like, and I’m enjoying every second of it.
Our basil crop did quite well in the raised bed, so we harvested the first round and made a batch of pesto to freeze. Since one can never have enough pesto in their house, I plan to make a couple more batches when the basil fills out again.
We ended up with 13 baby food jars to add to the 12 or so left over from last year. It will be a delicious addition to pastas, pizzas, sandwiches, potatoes and many other kitchen creations.
We made it over my old place at Empty Gate Farm to harvest my Nootka Rose garlic crop. We ended up with a good amount of loose bulbs and several braids to hang in storage. Any bulbs that didn’t looks so good from as storage standpoint when straight into that pesto, so nothing went to waste.
I harvested the lavender off the bushes I transplanted in the spring, and the dried bunches are lending their delightful floral aroma to the kitchen and workshop where I hung them up.
We were realizing we had no concept of canned food inventory with everything still in boxes, and nowhere to unpack them, so we rounded up all the cinder blocks on the property, pulled some nice cedar plank boards down from the wood rack the previous owner left behind, and put together a set of pantry shelves that fit exactly along the back wall of the root cellar. We’ll add some wooden ones eventually on the opposite wall, but this fits the bill for the time being. It was a good feeling to get the canned goods, homebrews and empty jars all unpacked and accounted for. We hung some wires from the ceiling for onions and garlic and set baskets out on a shelf for onions, potatoes and squash. It’s going to be one incredible root cellar come fall.
Our cats have been doing a wonderful job addressing the rodent issue, so we were finally able to harvest some of our berries to eat! The kids picked a big bowl of blueberries to make ice cream with, and we spent a morning down the road at McKenzie River Organic Farm picking our blueberries and strawberries to freeze for the year. This has always been one of my favorite u-pick farms, so living a mere few minutes up the highway from them is a real treat.
Those blackberries that give us so much work pruning back throughout the year are finally providing benefits with abundant fruit all up and down the driveway for easy picking. It takes no time to fill up a bucket with huge, juicy blackberries, and we’ve just been setting out a bowl on the counter for munching. This morning they made their way into buttermilk blackberry pecan pancakes, and they made a great granola topping last week.
Summer’s abundance makes for great rewards from all the hard work that goes into a homestead. It feels good to watch our efforts turn into something tangible, and to reach out and pick the fruits of our labors.
That all looks wonderful. What a lot of work you have put in but what lovely rewards you are reaping now. I managed to grow basil for the fist time this year, but not enough to make pesto. I make mine with mint, spinach and almonds (as pine nuts here are so expensive).
Love your root cellar shelving. Do I see a demi-john on the bottom shelf? do you make your own wine? It's something I intend trying next year. My father alway made his own, and beer, when I was small and I loved following the process.
I hiked up to 2300m last wednesday and along the way saw lots of blueberry bushes but not a blueberry in sight. They are very late here this year due to a very wet cold spring.
Mint almond pesto sounds good! I've used lots of different nuts over the years because pine nuts are expensive here too. Sometimes I use filberts I've harvested in the fall. We have wild blueberries, huckleberries, here that I am hoping for a good picking in the fall. Putting up food is so much fun.
Cinder blocks! ! ! Genius 😀
The cinder blocks were my partner's genius idea, and there just happened to be exactly enough here!