We harvested our garlic tonight.  The kids even helped.

It was a little bit of a surgical maneuver to get them out without harming the parsnips which are right next to them.  Adam got underneath them with the fork and I dug through the loosened mud (it rained today) with my fingers and pulled them out.  Then the kids stacked them up on the grass for us.

We got some big ones!  (Rowan’s and my hands)

Here’s our whole haul, drying on a piece of cardboard in the garage.  It will cure there in the garage for two weeks, and then I’ll clean it up a little further and bring it in to the house.  There is absolutely no way this will last us the winter, but we’re probably good for a couple months.  We grew some of it out in our flower beds as an experiment this year.  It looked really  nice and — most importantly — the rabbits had no interest in eating it.  I plan to expand next year.  Well, really, I plan to expand everything every year.

In other news, I lost a good 1/4 of the tomatoes on each of my potted tomato plants to blossom end rot.  My own fault for not remembering to water them daily.  Potted tomato plants dry out so much faster.  We’ve been getting a lot of rain but apparently not enough for the potted plants.

Finally, I tried making raspberry freezer jam today.  Boy howdy was that easy.  Mix some crushed up berries, sugar, and pectin, let it sit for 30 minutes, put it into containers and freeze.  It was a very productive day; we also made yogurt,  butter, and 4 batches of pesto which are also cooling in the freezer now.  Coming later this week: PICKLES!