The Harvest

It's harvest time! My garden is slowly dying out, my bees are making honey, and I've been busy canning. I just got a sweet new job at the Ecomuseum, an educational zoo in Montreal, so I've been extra busy lately. Last weekend, I harvested my potatoes, which did surprisingly well considering the really poor soil quality that I started with. My zucchini, squash, and cucumbers did not do so well, which shouldn't surprise me since I didn't have enough compost to help them, and didn't want to use synthetic fertilizers.

I was kind of disappointed that my tomatoes never ripened. But it's pretty cold where they are in the eastern townships, so I ended up with about 15 pounds of green tomatoes. At first, I had no idea what to do with this nearly useless product. However, I found a cool recipe for green tomato salsa, which was super easy to make. I adapted it since I didn't have cumin or hot peppers on hand, and just added some Frank's Red Hot sauce and it turned out fine. I ended up making 8 jars of green tomato salsa, and I also had some fried green tomatoes for breakfast. I was pretty happy to turn something that I thought was a failure into something delicious!

Bees with capped honey for winter

My bees have filled up the whole first box of frames that they started with. My hive is still too small to harvest honey from this year. They need the honey to eat during the winter. I have to admit, I've been stealing a little from them here and there. I added another super yesterday, so they have room to expand into another box. I used the smoker for the first time, since I got stung the past two times I visited the hive. (On the bright side, I don't appear to be allergic). Apparently, bees are most aggitated in the spring and fall. This explains why during the summer the bees were pretty chill, but I got stung twice within three days last week.
Next up on the project list: pickling beets from my grandfather's garden (an old family recipe, which is amazingly delicious), making a root cellar, and figuring out what to make for the next food exchange. I'm thinking maybe making my own mozzeralla cheese, or basil olive oil.

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