A Good Harvest

Grig was pretty amazing over the last couple of months. Kevin and I were out of town from half-way through July until the 2nd week of September. While we were gone, he kept up with the garden and tried to keep the house clean.

Our garden has done quite well this year. While I was gone, Grig blanched and froze quite a few green beans. By the time I got back, our garden, and especially our tomatoes had exploded.

The second day after I got home, Kevin and I went outside and harvested quite a few things from our garden. My little guy is a great helper!

Here he is with the fruits of our labors.

 This is only the beginning of our tomatoes, though it is about the end of the beans. There is one onion in there too. We made a half batch of salsa with these tomatoes, and it turned out super well! I made two and a half quarts of salsa. The half quart we just ate right away, and the brother in laws really liked it too.

In the corner of the previous picture, you can also see some tiny plums. Early this year, we found a wild plum tree (with three inch thorns) on our property. The plums were tiny, like cherries, and recently they've ripened to orange. We tried a couple, and they were pretty tart. However, on one random branch, we found some purple ones that were very sweet. It was kind of strange, but we're not complaining too much. We might try to turn them into jam.

 Our garden isn't very big yet (though we have great plans for expanding next year), so we only had five stalks of corn, but we got some pretty good ears off of them. They tasted amazing. I love corn on the cob, and I was excited that the corn waited until I got home before we picked it.

Nothing, however, compared to our carrots.

 They were huge! I'm still working on cutting them up, blanching them, and freezing them. We definitely don't want these bad boys to go to waste! The biggest ones were nearly the size of my wrist. They were pretty huge! I don't think I've ever seen carrots this big.

Then, on Monday, my sister called and asked me if I wanted to go and pick tomatoes with her. Even though we have quite a few tomatoes in our garden, most of them are green, and we really like salsa, so I told her I did, and I was able to get a bushel of (orange) Roma tomatoes for $20. We picked them ourselves. We also got a whole lot of bell peppers. I'm probably going to be making salsa today because quite a few of them are ripe now. We love salsa.

I'm super grateful that we've had such a good harvest this year. Our apple tree is doing really well too, but the apples aren't ripe yet. Once they are, we're going to be making a lot of apple sauce, dehydrated apples, and apple juice. Every year, we also make fresh pressed cider. The place where my aunt is living has a cider press, and all the family in the area goes over and helps press tons of apples into cider. It always tastes amazing, and I'm really grateful that they invite us.

Hopefully it doesn't freeze too soon. I'm excited for all of our tomatoes to ripen as well. I'm really hoping they do so before it gets too cold.

Mormon Monday: Asparagus and Faith

A month or so ago, we planted our garden.

When I was a kid in primary (church classes for children), we sang a song about faith. We talked about how "faith is like a little seed, if planted it will grow. (Faith)" At the time, I though, "Duh, you plant seeds and they grow. Where is the faith in that?"

Faith is so simple when you're a child.

We decided to plant asparagus. I think I mentioned this in a different blog post. (Yes, I did. Here is the link: http://atomicottercinema.blogspot.com/2015/04/gardening.html) I have been praying really hard that those asparagus would come up, and for a while, it looked like we were going to have to try again next year.

Arkhon got into the asparagus, and we kept finding the roots above the soil, half-eaten. We fenced off the asparagus, but we were afraid it was too late. A few weeks passed and there was no sign of life from our asparagus patch.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, Grig came in the house and said, "We have some asparagus!" Surprised, I followed him out, and he showed me where a nearly full-grown plant seemed to have appeared overnight.

Only a few days later, we found another plant that had survived. I was super grateful. I didn't think we were going to have any asparagus, and now we had two. Then, a couple of days later, we found a third plant that had lived.

All three asparagus plants are doing well.

This actually is not our asparagus plant, but it looks pretty similar to it. I found the picture here.  It's too dark to take a picture of ours. I'll post it later.

This is a great analogy for faith. We had faith that the 20 asparagus plants that we planted would grow. We toiled and worked hard to help them, but adversity (Arkhon) appeared and tried to destroy our faith. It caused doubts and made us wonder if any good would come of our efforts.  Even so, we replanted and watered and prayed.

Weeks after we had nearly given up hope, the plants appeared, far larger that we had expected.

Just recently, we had some adversity appear in our lives.

Our car has been having problems again. The alternator broke and we had to get that replaced, delving deeply into our pockets. Then, just last Thursday, we thought we were in really trouble. As I was parked at a store, I returned to find liquid underneath the car. It didn't seem like very much, but it concerned me. As I started the car, the low coolant light came on.

That wasn't a good thing. We quickly bought some antifreeze and poured it into the car. Everything seemed fine, and nothing seemed to be leaking, so we drove away and headed home.

Half-way home, the light came back on.

When I checked the radiator at home, it seemed to be far emptier. I poured some water in, and in moments I heard the sound of water falling to the pavement beneath the car.

It appeared that our radiator had a serious leak. Adversity had appeared and it seemed to be eating all of our finances.

It was really scary that night, we didn't know what we were going to do. We couldn't really afford more car repairs, and we couldn't afford to buy a new car. We prayed pretty hard.

The next day, Grig took the car in, and to our astonishment, everything checked out fine. They didn't even charge us for bringing the car in. They told us that our sensor was probably not working right, but there was plenty of liquid in the radiator and there didn't appear to be any leaks.

He also informed us that sometimes clogs will occur in the radiator during winter, and when they break free, sometimes liquid can spill out. He told us that was probably what we heard. Either way, everything seems to be working fine now.

It is a miracle, and we are very grateful. Just when all hope seemed lost, the Lord blessed us with blossoms and living miracles.

I am very grateful for faith and trials. Without the trials, how would we come to depend on our Savior?

The rest of our garden is doing well too, and we can't complain. We are a little low on money, but we have sufficient for our needs. The Lord is taking care of us, just like he took care of our tiny asparagus patch.

Gardening

This year, we are planting our first garden.

It's been a lot of work. The house that we've purchased has been a bit neglected for the last few years. It's seen a few changes of ownership and some renters. It isn't in the worst of shape (trust me, we saw a LOT worse while we were house-hunting), but it definitely needs some love.

I keep forgetting to take "before" pictures, but I'm remembering to take "after" pictures most of the time.

Grig loves fresh asparagus, so we're trying to plant some. It took us some time to figure out where we wanted it. We finally decided to plant it right in front of the shed. Here's what that spot looked like when we first bought the house:

After a few hours work and some dismantling of a broken picnic table, here is the after:

Before planting the asparagus 

After planting the asparagus

We think it looks a ton better. Hopefully our asparagus blooms. We're learning a lot about gardening. My family has always had a garden, and I've always helped (most of the time, anyway), but I've never been in charge of the garden before. My dad has quite the green thumb. It seems like he can make anything grow.

Asparagus is a perennial vegetable. It is one of the few that will grow back every year for up to 20 years. However, it doesn't always take root and you can't eat it for the first couple of years while it establishes itself. We're going to put up a fence around it to keep the dog and kid out, but we didn't finish planting the asparagus until late Monday night.

Monday, we also planted our onions. The garden is ready for us to plant more, but we wanted to get the vegetables planted that would go bad if we waited too long.

Here's what our garden looked like when we moved in:

You can't really tell, but it was really overgrown and covered with grass. Here's what it looks like after Monday nights planting:

The dark, wet side is where the onions are planted. Hopefully we're going to plant the rest of our first crop tomorrow.

We're pretty excited and hoping that all of this effort yields some fruit (or rather, vegetables).

We had a minor miracle while we were trying to get all this figured out. We couldn't get our hose faucet that's attached to the house to turn on. Everything seemed to be hooked up properly, but for some reason, it wasn't working.

We didn't want to plant our crops until we had a working hose for watering, so even though we bought the seeds and sets on the 10th, we didn't plant them that weekend.

It turned out to be a good thing, because the next week, it snowed over a foot! Welcome to April in Utah.

It snowed for two days straight, and then it all melted. We were worried about our apple blossoms, but they seem to be doing just fine.

The next day after the snow melted, I figured out where I needed to turn on the water in order to make the hose work. I really felt like the timing was incredible. We planted last night, and the onion and asparagus seemed to still be alive.

Gardening is more fun that it was when I was a kid. It's exciting to find out if you can make things grow.

Historically, I have more of a black thumb. I've killed more plants than I've grown. Hopefully, as I learn more, I can inherit a little of my father's green thumb.

That's what I'm hoping for anyway.