Pre-Freeze Mini Harvest

One of the things I perhaps didn't explain in my summary of preparing for the freeze was a very quick mini-harvest of items that we knew from past experience would not make it through the temperature drop.  With that in mind, we had to harvest everything edible off the stalks, feed all the stalks to the animals and preserve the harvest.

I won't be able to show you everything tonight, but we'll make a start.  Sugar Snap Peas.  These little guys are a favorite of mine.  The greenery and blooms are beautiful, attracting honeybees and the occasional nozy goat that cranes its neck over the garden fence to rob goodies off the trellis.  These, we've learned, don't fare well when temps drop into the low 20's.

On a beautiful day just before the plunging temps, I brought a basket and walked near the trellis on both sides, plucking off the tender pods.  Of course I ate some raw just standing there.  Once I was sure I had gotten them all, I snipped off the vine and tossed to the livestock.  They quickly devoured it.  It's too bad, really.  Without this two day freeze, these would have produced and produced and produced.

Now we had already harvested several quarts (easy) of sugar snap peas up to this point, but we quickly filled another basket.  We'll stir fry these in butter, leaving a bright green color and a nice crunch to them.

But once I emptied the basket, I went out with Tricia and we picked every last tomato off of the tomato that had come up from seed in the garden in late summer.  I don't even know which heirloom variety it is.  If I had to guess, I would say Cherokee Purple.  All of these tomatoes were picked on January 14th from ONE TOMATO PLANT.

That's quite a haul from one plant!

We decided to weigh them just for grins to see what we had.  Unfortunately, we didn't zero out the scale.  The gross weight was 13 1/2 pounds of green tomatoes.

We put them in a box in an attempt to get them to ripen.  We'll cook with a bunch of them, too!  My Mom and Dad harvested some green tomatoes from their plants and had fried green tomatoes for supper.  That is some pretty good eating.  There's more coming out of the garden, but I've got to make room.  I am planning to plant the spring onion crop this weekend.