Mary is in full harvest. I know what it's like just harvesting my small backyard garden, so I asked if she would like help harvesting her garden. Of course, she accepted the offer!
She has 6 acres of land. This is the view coming onto her property showing the garden in the background.
Lots of blackberries speckle the fence line. We ended up filling 3 colanders full! She makes a delicious blackberry jam. We took fresh blackberries to Janet's and she made a scrumptious blackberry cobbler. MMMMM!
Her garden is 40X60 feet. I didn't realize, but it took me almost 3 hours just to harvest 1 row of lima beans! She has all kinds of wonderful veggies, and cans them as she harvests. Sooo...
We started with making bread and butter pickles from all the cucumbers she had already picked before I got there.
Of course you have to start with making the juice with all the spices.
Then you add the cucumbers and boil them.
When we were done with the process, we had 9 jars of pickles.
Next it was onto making the blackberry jam. My job was to mash and juice the blackberries.
Once I did the prep work for Mary, she prepared, boiled, and canned the jam. I am looking forward to bringing some home. Yum! :)
This is what we were able to harvest in the 3 hours Sunday evening. Mary tells me we don't have to shell the peas and lima beans. She has a pea shooter that does that. Whew!
I only had to rinse the veggies, she ran them through the shooter. I was thinking we were going to can all these before we went to Janet's. Luckily, she said we would do them Thursday when we came back. I'll do another post of that whole experience.
Looking in Mary's refrigerator, there is lots of corn to prepare. That is going to be for another day. I have to admit I am exhausted from helping her with just the few things we did. I am glad we have a reprieve to visit Janet and Rick for a couple days. :)
Janet wanted to know what we wanted to do while there. I asked, "can we just do a puzzle?" I needed to park my butt in a chair after all the standing required when canning. No wonder why Mary is so skinny! Well, I must admit, putting a puzzle together with these 2 is a hoot. We spent more time giggling. Janet was insistent we were missing 35 pieces, Mary was going cross-eyed trying to place the black-eyed susans, and I was putting puzzles pieces in "time out" that I tried numerous times to put in the same spot that didn't fit. And when we couldn't find a missing piece, we laughed all the more when we realized it was the piece I put in time out!!!
Mary, Janet, and I standing on her back porch.
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