Putting food up

It's hard to believe, with a teen and tween boy in the house, that we'd have any food to preserve this year, but we do.  I'm going to the store today to buy more canning jars!  I haven't done that in a long time (bought more jars).  I have a few dozen now "put up" with tomatoes, and dilly beans, plus a dozen-ish pints of frozen grated zucchini in our freezer to use later in bread.  We've also been eating lots of it daily, and I've made 2 big batches of fresh salsa that got devoured within a day or 2.  I'm also so lucky to have a family that gets excited each time stir-fry is served for dinner (which has been frequently)!

Unfortunately, we already had a freeze in the garden that wiped out a big chunk of it, including half of my okra plants, and all of our pumpkins, but it taught us a valuable lesson.  It only hit one section, and it is a section that has never produced well.  Plants there for the last 2 years have been stunted, or failed to grow well.  Now we know why.  It's a tiny micro-climate in our garden, a low spot that cold air drains to.  With that knowledge, we'll plan our garden much differently or try to protect plants there.  We may even move the garden a bit, but that's hard to do with the deer fence.

Speaking of deer, we've had some hanging around our house lately.  We think they're what killed 3 young Aspen that we planted this spring.  There are antler rubs all over the trunks, and most of the bark has been rubbed off.  One is even snapped in 2.  Bummer.

Another loss we discovered,  upon digging up our potatoes, is that those have been eaten by gophers or some other underground creature.

We ate the last of the corn last night, and I'm afraid except for the tomatoes and winter squash, most of the garden is slowing WAY down, despite the hot afternoons we're getting this week.  Usually by this time each year, I'm more than ready for this transition, but this year I'm not quite there yet.  Maybe I will be after a few more dozen jars have been put up....