harvesting a rainbow

No, I am not referring to Skittles, I am referring to the mound of vegetables sitting on our picnic table, freshly picked from our garden.
We just arrived home from our trip to the state capital to show our heifer, Izzie. On a quick side note, she did great. We brought home some purple ribbons for her winning division II champion on Saturday afternoon.

What are we going to do with all of this????

After we unloaded her from the trailer and set her free in the front pasture, we strolled on over to the garden to see how far behind we were on picking produce since we'd been away for about 5 days. We were excited to see that the striped German tomato plant (the one we are most excited for with yellow and red striped flesh) had thrived during our absence. There are two monster tomatoes coming along quite nicely (I'd say that one of them weighs 4-5 lbs).

We have tomato plants that are producing tomatoes of every shape,
size and color.
Here are some mini yellow pears, red cherry tomatoes,
black cherry tomatoes, & orange cherry tomatoes.

All summer long I've been waiting for my eggplant to start branching out, like the rest of the squash and cucumbers surrounding it. Having never grown an eggplant before, I had no idea what to expect out of it and just assumed it was a dud. Not anymore.. I about did a cartwheel when I saw three of them growing straight down from the branches of the plant. I can't wait for them to be ready to harvest so I can experiment with making eggplant parmesean. Yum :)

We are so blessed to have such fertile soil on our farm. Our plants are doing so well. I like to think that Chris's great-grandma Mary Happ would be proud of our garden. Its been said that she grew just about everything, including grapes, and had an orchard full of fruit trees that extended beyond our house to west, an area that is now part of our corn field.


I might even take up canning, after Chris's Grandpa Bill strongly suggested I do so after looking at the size of our garden. I've always had a fondness for the "lost arts" of the American farm wife. It seems as though canning may become just another thing of the past after our parents generation moves on.

I am so lucky to have a husband who was willing and able to help me make and tend to our very first garden. I read a quote somewhere that, I feel,  really holds true:

"The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses" ~ Hanna Rion

Here's to many years of produce to come :)