A Little Harvest

It’s been a year plus since we settled into a new home. I’m not really aiming to homestead like I used to. Life has successfully convinced me a farm in the suburbs is a rich-girl pipe dream. Or at least something that precludes a lot of the responsibilities that have come up in a modern world. But being frugal and creative is still a style I like. So here’s a few things I collected this week. There were others, but I didn’t document well.

This was about a five dollar haul from the thrift store. We check in there regularly for unique items. And sometimes we donate a bag. The cause is an animal rescue place and the people there have really big hearts. So it feels triple awesome to declutter old things, bring home new-to-me things and support a good cause. This time I found some wooden salad claws (hopefully that will inspire me to make more salad?) Two square lunch plates (pretty, right?) and a really beautiful trivet made in Italy. When it had no price, I took it to the counter, and the lady said 99 cents and put it in my bag. It’s really gorgeous. I love those little finds.

Don’t get too excited. (That’s me telling myself not to get too excited). I only have one row I can plant tomatoes in. I spent a lot of pennies this year on buying plants, put them in late in the season, and failed to support them until they were sprawling all over the patio, then spent more pennies on new stakes. But we’re now at the point in the season where there are more tomatoes than we can keep up with eating. So I dice and freeze them before they go bad. This time I had to bring in a bunch of green ones because a recent windstorm blew over the supports and A lot of tomatoes were grounded. But I’ve been picking them often at first blush and putting them in a paper bag to ripen because it seems if I let them ripen on the vine they split or get mealy-mushy in the middle. I think the ground where my row is has wet feet and retains a lot of water. It means less watering, but if I want decent tomatoes I have to pick them before they ripen all the way.

Not pictured is the green and purple basil I’ve collected and dried. Also, I collected a ton of chives and rough cut and froze them to include in future veggie and one broth pots. I also had planted three jalapeno plants. Two are giving me a handful of peppers with some decent warmth to them. I think I lost one plant. I weeded and couldn’t find it. I might try banana peppers next year and maybe ornamental hot peppers in a pot or something.

I made this tiny half pint of pickled hot peppers in my fridge. I just put them in apple cider vinegar with-the-mother for my immune shots. I’ll expand on the batch with some garlic cloves and other good stuff later. I just needed to soak them before they spoiled.

That’s it. For today.