Fall Harvest 2012

We've been spending a good amount of time the last couple weeks taking care of our fall garden. 

 

This is our sweet potato harvest.  I've never grown sweet potatoes before, so I really didn't know what to expect, but we got all this from 6ish plants.  (Once all the vines ran together it was hard to tell where the original plants were and I don't remember what I planted anymore! LOL!)

 

This was the monster sweet potato.  I had Blake hold it, so you could get an idea of how big it really was.

 

We also picked our pumpkins the last day of September.  We had some going soft/rotting already, so we didn't want to wait any longer.  We figured we might as well decorate with them while they were still good.  I was having a hard time getting a good smile from Morgan and turns out she was sick when we took this.  I thought it was cute the way Blake was looking at her in this pic while she was trying her best to smile.  I also thought it was funny that the cattle had to come see what was going on.  And, even though the chickens aren't in the picture, they came to check things out too! :-)

 

These are 6 of the 10 butternut suqash we got.  I've used 2 already and gave 2 away.  I found a yummy recipe where you mix one squash with sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla and a little flour and bake it.  It's suppose to have a topping too, but I like it just fine without!  YUM! :-)  I'll probably use some in pumpkin recipes too, since I didn't grow pie pumpkins this year.

 

The last of our tomatoes that I picked before we got a frost.  This is what's left after 17 quarts being canned and 15 pints of salsa...plus some that I just froze because I didn't have enough to do much else with them at the time.  I've also used several in some dinners.  I'm hoping to can most of the rest of these and maybe make a few green tomato recipes :-)

 

These are the last of our peppers too.  I've used several and froze a bunch.  I'm hoping to make some stuffed green peppers before freezing the rest :-)

 

Part of our indian popcorn harvest!  This, along with digging potatoes, has to be the kids' favorite thing in the garden.  These are fun and easy to grow and pick.  Plus they love husking them and seeing all the pretty colors...of course that only lasted a little this year while before they wanted to play with them.  They were sorting them by 'boy' and 'girl' colors then making little 'families' of them-lol!  Once the playing was over, I then bunched them and hung them to dry, so in a couple weeks we'll have some home grown popcorn to eat...just in time for the colder months! :-)

We got a boatload of potatoes too.  I'd take pictures, but I gave a bunch away to my sister and her husband.  If we had them all, I'd imagine we dug at least 2 milk crates full.

I couldn't be happier with what we were able to get from our garden this year!  It's SO much work to grow, then preserve or come up with recipes and ways to eat it all while it's still good, BUT it's also very rewarding!