Thank God for a Bountiful Harvest

 This is that peek into the cold room.  Pickles tomatoes, squashes, pumpkins.  We had a great tomato crop this year--9 big boxes of green tomatoes came in green just before the big frost on Oct. 5th.  From the first pick-over I froze about 49 pounds (12 pkg of 4+lbs each) and have already canned 21 quarts (some of the above picture are still from last year).

 21 clean jars

waiting for these tomatoes to fill them tomorrow.  Now there are only two boxesful of green tomatoes left.

I also cleaned up all the leeks, which we love for soup.

These, along with fresh celery from the garden were chopped and sautéed with a bit of margarine to make a soup concentrate, which gets frozen, then I only have to add potatoes, broth and milk in the deep cold winter.  I did the same with celery alone, for celery soup.

Harvested some pretty kale, red and green, made a recipe of our favorite Kale and Chickpea Soup.  The remainder will be blanched and frozen.  I also got about 4 meals of brussels sprouts.

Our late apple tree gave us two large boxes of lovely apples.  I told Kubota Man that I would bake pies and pastry with the blemished ones, and keep the sound ones for fresh eating--he indicated a wish that there  be lots of blemished apples.

And a couple more peeks at our bountiful harvest:
Onions:  Walla Walla, Ailsa Craig (similar to Kelsae), Candy, White Sweet Spanish, and Red.  I rarely buy onions, sometimes in April and May.  These are 5-gallon pots.

Our potatoes:  Sangre, Red Norland, Kennebec, Yukon Gold and Russet.  Also lots of Squashes.

This is Kubota Man on the--you guessed it--the Kubota, rototilling my new patch, where I planted 16 Saskatoon bushes and 28 Haskap (Honeyberries), as well as where I will plant a new raspberry patch next year.

I'm  really busy now with seed orders, plant orders and shrub orders.  The soil-less mix for the greenhouse was delivered last week, and Kubota Man has already got most of it in the greenhouse.  I haven't taken inventory for pots and supplies--need to get on that.

The garden is all cleaned and rototillled.  Tomorrow it's tomato canning and if there is any daylight left I'll clean a couple of flower beds and the flower pots on the deck, and get them stored away.  I hope our nice fall weather stays a while.