farmers' market

this is our new project this year -- farmers' market in pittsburg. we're doing this project together w/ summer and lucas and family. the little girls are great help w/ projects like this! sometimes that's true and sometimes that's not true, but they still believe it to be true. if you are ever in doubt, they will certainly give you instructions on what you should be doing or involve you in a dirt clod fight!

we've had a garden each year for the last 3 years, but this year we made our garden bigger with the intention of having some produce to sell at farmers' market. it seems like each year we have more than we can use of something, and sometimes we have more than we can find homes for use! by planning to do this, it insured that we had what we needed and hopefully some extra.

i can tomatoes, salsa, greenbeans, jalapenos, pickles, relish, and find uses for the other produce in cooking or meal prep. this year, i've put about 30 bags of zucchini in the freezer to make zucchini bread. it's already cooked and measured out in the needed amount. i've picked some blackberries and put in the freezer. i told a friend the other day that i'm in a "feeding the freezer" frenzy! if we don't start eating some of this stuff soon -- there won't be any room for the beef that we're wanting to butcher soon!

so this year we planted our garden of the things that we like to use, and we just planted extra. that way if that crop was just ok, we still had what we wanted to use. if the crop was bountiful -- we had enough to sell at farmers' market.

as you can see from the picture, the crop has been bountiful so far. we still have a ton of tomatoes that need to ripen, but they seem to be taking their own sweet time about getting there! we also have tons more gourds, a few more canteloupe, new zuchhini planted and growing, and turnips growing.

this picture is from farmers' market this morning. we had birdhouse gourds, green peppers, canteloupes, red tomatoes, husky gold tomatoes, sweet tangerine tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, cherry tomatoes (sugar snack, sun gold, and italian ice), zucchini, basil, and mint.

summer made a batch of fresh pesto (basil and olive oil) and served samples on some italian bread. lots of people tried samples and then bought basil to make their own. we sold out of basil very quickly, but we still handed out samples. we laughed and called it a "teaser" for next week so people would come back!

i think next week summer's going to make pesto again, and we're going to make and serve mint tea. we've been having mint-flavored tea a lot lately -- very refreshing!

so now you know that friday nights at our house are spent picking, carrying, washing, sorting, packing, and planning for what's going to farmers' market on saturday mornings. we have garden work time another couple nights a week, but friday night seems to be the most involved. we're planning to do this again next year, except we're planning it bigger and better!

come see us at farmers' market!