Our garden is thriving, and I have to be upfront and say we don’t do all this work by ourselves here in this big plot – we have help from our construction crew – when work load is slow they help in the garden.
Last night I went shopping for dinner up on the hill behind the house, pulled potatoes and onions right out of the ground, it’s a beautiful thing…
I made some triple berry jam, throwing some store bought strawberries in with our blueberries and raspberries…
and made my Grandmother Elsie’s BBQ sauce… she was an outstanding cook and made some fancy dishes including an incredible roast with dumplings and gravy I have yet to duplicate and her pies were legendary- but one of my favorites was her bbq ribs – and her recipe for sauce came off the back of a dominos brown sugar box. It’s soooo yum. The ribs are first baked for an hour at 400 in Coca Cola – then drain the coke and smother with bbq sauce- bake for another half hour till ribs are looking perfectly saucy baked . This sauce can be used on chicken, burgers, even hotdogs !
I grew up on Staten Island where most of us had postage stamp sized yards …. across the street from an old Italian named Joe. He had the most magnificent tiny garden and each summer he would let me come over and pick a few of the best tomatoes for our family. We would save a few for my grandfather, who thought a good garden tomato was food worthy of the Gods and he wasn’t wrong. Joe would also let me eat the peppers right off the plant because that’s how I loved them most, before they were fried or roasted.
It doesn’t escape me for one minute, how fortunate we are to farm this land. What a treasure it is to harvest dinner from our own hill. If you’re not already doing it, I honestly believe it’s one of the best things you can do for yourself- and it can be a container garden on your deck or herbs on a window sill , you don’t need acreage. It just feels so good to stick hands in dirt, tend plants, reap the rewards- and gives children a quality lesson and skill that’s never wasted in life.
Think about it… reap what you sow, grow where you are planted, …
Life is like a garden, you reap what you sow… from your own fertile soils, your seedlings do grow
Mmmmm, that jam looks delicious!
I love that as you grow, you are also preserving, eating off the land you are tilling. Your garden is beautiful and I”m so glad you have help with it! There is great satisfaction, isn’t there, pulling or picking food you will eat from the ground. I love this.
I tried very hard this year but, once the heat hit- the water needed weighed against the drought and cost …sigh Maybe next year I can figure out a different approach but this year everything fried. 🙁
Karen,
I’m going to try Grandma Elsie’s barbeque recipe the next time I make baked beans. Should be delicious with a tiny bit of liquid smoke added.
You make me miss having a vegi garden so much. I loved that stuff! You look absolutely lovely and as always, I love your hair! I was telling my hubs a week or so ago as we were musing on what we would do if we won the huge lottery (ha!) and how we’d love to buy millions of acres and build houses for all of us to live like the Judds did. I told him about your family and we sat a few minutes lost in thought how that would be so lovely. Xxoo Karen dear!
You are too kind~~ Thank you for the compliments! We feel very blessed to have this farm shared by the whole family. Speaking of the Judds… how absolutely horrible that their beloved mom was tortured so by her depression, ugh, so awful.