My veggie garden has mostly flourished this year. My lettuce bolted and so did a beet plant, but otherwise the garden is doing quite well. Tomato plants in pots are a little scrawny, reminding me of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. Not a lot of leaves on it, but still producing.

Early June, planting done

I expect a bumper crop of potatoes. They’ve grown tall and flowered, and when the plants are ready to pull, we will see what’s under them. We have plants alongside the workshop garden too.

potatoes and dill

basil and shallots

one cucumber, two…

There are plenty more cucumbers growing and I’ll need to share my bounty, but that’s okay.

Thursday’s picking

I actually picked two cucumbers, but shared one with a neighbour since I’m the only one in this household who eats cucumbers.

Earlier this week I went to Herrle’s Country Farm Market to pick up my order. In it was 6 quarts of beets, 3 each of green and yellow beans (already in the freezer) and a small basket of peaches and smaller amount of plums. Thus the beets on my shelf are courtesy of Herrle’s growing crops. It’s a good place to go when you want more than just enough to pick and eat right away. And that’s the case with canning.

pickled beets Aug 5

Yesterday when I set up supplies to start on the beets, I knew I’d need more apple cider vinegar so once I had the beets  cooked, cut and in jars, I headed over to the nearby grocery store to get some.

The canning supplies are nearly decimated there and it’s only the beginning of the season. I was hoping to get more jar seals. I inquired if there’d be more seals coming in. The answer was no. I was not indignant but merely told the employee that this is only the beginning of canning season. The reply, equally as informative and not defensive, was that they make only two orders of these things in a year and they won’t get any more this season. That employee is perhaps not a canner.

The cashier told me people buy them up. I did not reply to that. We canners usually just get what we need to get through the season, and that if the store doesn’t get much in, that might be how it seems. Not like the toilet paper issues of early in the pandemic. When we’re in the middle of a canning process, it is counter-productive to have to run out and look for supplies. We want everything handy that we need and get the job done while the produce is fresh.

I did manage to get small jugs of the apple cider vinegar so I could finish my task. The big ones were sold out. And I remembered that other stores carried these supplies into September. Home Hardware, here I come.

There will be more canning happening here. I still need to make dill pickles and bread and butter pickles. My friend Doris and I are hoping we can make fruit relish together this year. We’ll have to see what the COVID numbers look like in a few weeks.

And that’s it for today… but make no mistake, there will be more.