Wednesday, July 11, 2007

From Our Garden

This is what you'll find in my kitchen sink this morning, fresh from the garden!



The swiss chard is ready to be used and I found this cool recipe online (via Ali Edwards') at Taste the Seasons that I hope to try soon. I've been intrigued to read more about local food and the green movement, especially the thoughts on how so much of our food comes from far, far away and the huge energy costs to our environment while shipping food worldwide. I like the idea of growing our own food and supporting local farmers. In Alberta, the hardest part of that seems to be getting fresh fruit. We are not blessed with a climate for peaches, cherries or blueberries so I guess I will have to buy those if we want to eat them. But vegetables are easier to grow so I'm trying to make good use of our garden this year.

While I was doing some weeding, I realized that there were a few turnips ready to use! It's good to get to them before the little bugs do! And my 2 pots of herbs are doing wonderfully - I picked parsley and basil this morning. And I found one pink raspberry on a bush this morning but it'll be a while until the berries are ready. Can't wait for that - hopefully Melinda will be home right in the thick of them - they are her favourite summer fruit.

And in case you are wondering if the silage project is finished - ah, no - we had a breakdown yesterday and Bob's busy welding this morning. Hopefully we'll be back in operation soon. I'll show you some of the not so happy pictures tomorrow.

6 comments:

  1. I love fresh veggies straight from the garden!
    I want to make a reaised garden here, but am gonna have to wait until the kids are done with the swing set, as that is the spot where it will go.

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  2. Your veggies look scrumptious! I too am starting to really get into gardening. It is a shock. I know! ha ha But I too feel that we are being far too dependent on getting our food from out of country, let alone out of province = waste of money and energy. Time to bring it back home.

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  3. Anonymous7:45 AM

    We are blessed to have a CSA in town this year. So far, so good, we love the produce and have been able to experiment with lots of new goodies like chard, kale and garlic scapes. We also have a garden full of tomato plants, but those are still a month or so off from being ripe.

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  4. I read Ali's post yesterday too. It totally made me think. I also checked out some of the links and it made me realize how much more we can do in our own home to make the world greener. I wish we had a garden to grow our own veggies in.
    Hope the break-down gets fixed and you're able to finish silaging soon.

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  5. Hey Crystal!

    I do hope you enjoy our Swiss Chard recipe. Let us know how it worked out! We'll be posting the recipe for what we did with the stems soon (think penne, sausage and caraway).

    -Krystle
    http://www.TasteTheSeasons.com

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  6. Anonymous5:42 PM

    I'm definitely with you, Crystal, on growing your own crops and buying locally--especially because of the drain on the environment. So glad to hear that you can grow lots of veggies where you are...and that you have raspberries, too.

    We're getting lots of yellow string beans right now from our garden.

    XO

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