Yesterday we started our first major harvest of the summer. Our garlic crop produced scapes while we traveled down south, so we pickled them. They’ll be ready to eat in a week, but we’ll likely eat them sometime tis winter. Today we begin to can rhubarb.
We also learned from our precious book, Keeping Food Fresh, now called Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation (paid link) (check your local independent bookstore) that we can easily preserve our beloved bumbleweed pesto (see Am I Working Too Hard? Bumbleweed Pesto). Since it’s largely garlic (which has antiseptic qualities) and olive oil, it can keep in jars for up to a year without hot water bath canning. Given that we have a bumper crop of chickweed this summer, we can easily put away a winter’s worth of this nutritious, delicious meal to see us through the coming winter.
In the two weeks we traveled Outside, our garden went from small samples of this or that vegetable to scrambling to keep up with the output. We think we can handle it! Every day we eat fresh greens, and if we stay on task over the next few days, we’ll continue to eat from our garden through the coming winter.
